Anthem

Fiction Prompts8 Comments37 views

Murtaz clomped into the conservatory, bringing with him an unwelcome blast of frigid air that extinguished the candles and blew the pages of music all over the room.

“For the love of God, close the door!” yelled Otar.

“Sorry,” said Murtaz, pushing it shut. Otar struck a match and laboriously relit each of the ten tapers surrounding his desk. Murtaz raised his eyebrows. “Such extravagance! Did you inherit some money?”

“The church door was unlocked,” said Otar, gathering the sheets from the floor and arranging them on the top of the pianoforte. “I have the greater need, so it’s permissible.”

“We’ll see what the priest says when you confess.”

“I don’t intend to ever confess, my friend,” said Otar.

“Oh? Ascended to the ranks of angels, have you?”

“Something like that. God himself has spoken to me. In music. Beautiful music.”

“You’re certain that’s God you hear, Otar?”

“It has to be.”

The Georgian composer Otar Taktakishvili’s life began in Tbilisi, Georgia on 27 July 1924. Born into a musical family and steeped in the ancient and rich culture of his homeland, he went on to become the dominant force in Georgian classical music of the 20th century, composing the Georgian national anthem. I’m friends with his grandson and namesake, a fine musician in his own right (as well as a first-rate physician). This story is not in any way based on these facts.


What Pegman Saw: Georgia

The Vigil Over

Fiction Prompts, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers23 Comments64 views

The vigil over, I stood beneath the streetlight and thought of what I’d witnessed inside.

Each of us weaves a net of our experience and gleaned information, of our opinions, our likes and dislikes.

We cast this net throughout our world, trapping only that which the net will hold. Everything else slips through, and we, oblivious, continue on our way.

Everyone has an idea about death. Death comes to us all, so we craft notions we cherish and defend all our lives.

And at some point, we all learn our idea of death is wrong. We must let it go.

Friday Fictioneers

The Old Gods

Fiction Prompts, What Pegman Saw7 Comments27 views

My grandfather started this cattle station back in the goldfield days. I was born here and lived my whole life here, excepting the war years when I was in Malaya.

We have the devil’s own time keepin’ white ringers on the station. They start out all right, but none of them lasts a half-year. Most only last a few weeks and one was gone after three days. Rode out one night, not even bothering to pick up his pay. All our ringers are Boons.

Our head ringer, Fairbanks, told me his god puts a curse on the white men to make them leave.

“But I’m a white man, Fairbanks,” I said.  “I like it fine here.”

He gave me his big Abo grin. “That because you grandmother a Boon.”

It’s a ratbag thing to say to a boss,  but I can’t afford to fire him.

Besides, he’s probably right.

 

What Pegman Saw: Northern Territories, Australia

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Ned Ludd’s Invisible Army

Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers19 Comments64 views

Quite a crowd of us had gathered by the massive front door when it was swung open by a grinning James Mulroy. Though just fifteen, he had a mind as spry and quick as a young fox and thus was our leader

“Remember, only the stocking frames,” he said. “It’s symbolic, like.”

We jumbled into the mill, crowbars and hammers ready. Within a few minutes, all the stocking frames were wrecked, their spools smashed on the floor.

I glanced back as we hurried ourselves out. James had a paint-pot and brush. On the wall, he’d written NED LUDD WAS HERE.

Friday Fictioneers

 

 

Ned Ludd was a fiction concocted from an incident that supposedly had taken place in the city of Leicester. A young apprentice named Ludd was working at a stocking frame when a superior admonished him for knitting too loosely. Ordered to “square his needles,” the enraged apprentice instead grabbed a hammer and flattened the entire mechanism. The story eventually made its way to Nottingham, where protesters turned Ned Ludd into their symbolic leader.

The idea of smashing machines as a form of industrial protest did not begin or end with them. The secret of their enduring reputation depends less on what they did than on the name under which they did it.

You could say they were good at branding.

Mutiny With Cause

Fiction Prompts, Historical Fiction, What Pegman Saw4 Comments20 views

Captain Cheap had never been popular at the best of times, and as food ran short he was less so. Added to this was the fact that the injuries he’d sustained in the wreck left him barely able to walk. He spent his days sequestered in the one surviving tent with guards posted outside.

The tent also contained the meager store of food they’d managed to salvage from the shipwreck, something not lost on the starving sailors.

Every morning, Captain Cheap appeared with his marines behind him, bayonets and rifles at the ready. He made great ceremony of doling out the day’s ration, invoking all the dreadful force of Royal Navy discipline as he did so.

The mutiny started in earnest with Carlyle, who fancied himself a sea-lawyer.  “Our pay stopped the moment the Wager broke her back on them rocks,” he said. “He ain’t our captain no more. There ain’t no navy here ashore.”

What Pegman Saw: Patagonia

The HMS Wager was part of a squadron commanded by George Anson and bound to attack Spanish interests in the Pacific. Wager lost contact with the squadron while rounding Cape Horn and ran aground on the west coast of Chile in May 1741. The main body of the crew mutinied against the captain, David Cheap, abandoning him and those who remained loyal to him. The mutineers sailed back to England. Cheap also made it back with a handful of survivors. During the subsequent court-martial proceedings, the mutineers asserted that were not guilty because their wages automatically stopped when the ship was lost, so they were no longer under naval law. The Admiralty declined to convict them, instead opting to change the regulations so that sailors’ pay continued after shipwreck.

Changing Times

Fiction Prompts, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers21 Comments50 views

I was just getting her set up when Crabs come around to tell me I was wanted in the office.

There was a new fella behind the desk, a kid. He told me Butler Amusements was taking me off the wheel and putting me on the kiddie-boats.  There had been complaints, he said. I should consider myself on probation, he said.

I been with this outfit on and off for twenty-three years, summer and winter. Hell, I was here before Butler was Butler, just a tin-horn operation of three or four carneys.

Back then, everybody drank on the job some.

Friday Fictioneers

Our Mutual Friend

Fiction Prompts, What Pegman Saw7 Comments26 views

It was early morning as I came round the barn and saw Calraigh’s Ford puttering up the hill.

He’ll have news, then, I thought, and no more.

Ciaran was in the barn tending our mutual friend, as we called the hostage.

He wasn’t a bad sort, the Major. In Killylastin we’d be reared to hate the English as we would the Devil, but it’s hard to keep a heartful of spite when you see a man’s face every morning, break bread with him, play a hand of cards and even share a tint of whisky now and again.

Calraigh’s face was grim as he got out.

“The truce has failed, Sean. They hanged MacBride this morning.” He tugged his Webley pistol from its holster, handed it to me butt-foremost. “No sense in waiting.”

Reprisals were to be swift and merciless.

Still, the Major wasn’t a bad sort. I hoped he’d still be asleep.

What Pegman Saw: Northern Ireland

On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, a group of Irish nationalists proclaimed the establishment of the Irish Republic and, along with some 1,600 followers, staged a rebellion against the British government in Ireland. The rebels seized prominent buildings in Dublin and clashed with British troops. Within a week, the insurrection had been suppressed and more than 2,000 people were dead or injured.

Both the British Army and the Irish nationalists made a practice of taking prisoners hostage, often executing them when peace talks failed. “An eye for an eye” was the usual refrain in such cases.

The great Irish writer Frank O’Connor brilliantly addresses this subject in his famous short story Guests of the Nation,  the inspiration for this piece.

Call the Doctor

Fiction Prompts, Friday Fictioneers25 Comments91 views

His voice was so deep it set the glasses to rattle on the table, and when he laughed his eyes were almost swallowed by his jolly cheeks.

But it was when he sat down at the piano that he come really alive.

You’d never think fingers so thick and calloused could move like that, drift with such grace over the keys like he was barely touching them.

Even more surprising was the music itself, magical and thundering and sinuous and hilarious.

You could feel your heart pulling right out of you, your feet set to moving all on their own.

Friday Fictioneers

Destiny Unfold

Fiction Prompts, What Pegman Saw9 Comments29 views

He wanted to get away from her, from them. If he was honest, from himself.

He didn’t announce it because it wasn’t planned. One day he’d grabbed his passport and driven to a used car lot, taken the salesman’s first offer and hitched a ride to the Greyhound station.

On the San Diego docks, he talked his way onto a container ship.

He stood on the deck as the ship wended through the Panama Canal, been sick in his berth when storms battered the craft, learned rudimentary Filipino from the crew.

Three months and nine countries later he found himself in Paamiut. He did not plan to stay, but somehow feels he belongs there.

Now he sits with Agdlak, who is teaching him to speak Kalaallisut.

“Your case is not unusual,” says the old fisherman. “Paamiut is very difficult to get to, but somehow it is much harder to leave.”

What Pegman Saw: Greenland

Teithwyr Coll

Fiction Prompts, What Pegman Saw8 Comments19 views

Anarawd steps from the beached coracle, his steward Heilyn following behind him carrying their swords and lances.

“What is this place, I wonder?” Anarwd says. “The sea-fog was so thick it might be anywhere.”

“Is that not Castell Cricieth, Lord? Do not you recognize the tower?”

Anarawd wipes his face to clear his eyes. It is the tower of his castle, though what horrible fate has befallen it he cannot say.

“And look, Lord,”  says Heilyn. He points to the far cliffs which both of them have known all their lives. The same cliffs, yes, but now with strange buildings colored like summer flowers, the edges glittering like shined bronze.

Though considered by many to be the bravest man in Wales, Anarawd feels his guts drop as if pierced with a smallsword.

“We do not belong here,” he says. “We must put back to sea, even if it kill us.”

What Pegman Saw: Wales