They’re called the Wiblets of Oldpark Wood, but as I am sure is obvious to a knowledgeable reader like you, they are really from AlphaZenturianSix. Their claim to be from Oldpark Wood is simply a ruse to lull us into a false sense of security. For if they belong to an earth locality, then we may be less inclined to monitor their behaviour. But monitor we should, fellow earthling, monitor we should, as there is more to the Wiblets than meets the eye. The Wiblets first came to earth forty-five years ago, when the M25 had burnt a hole in the soul of parts of southern England. The Wiblets spied it from space and saw their chance to begin their slow colonisation of a new planet. As the M25 had damaged, deaded, or dispersed a great many of the indigenous natural powers of certain parts of Surrey and Kent, the land
[I wrote this earlier this year for a writing competition which I got nowhere in. I still like it, so I am posting it as my final story of the year.] You are standing on a cliff overlooking the sea. It can be any cliff, any sea, but for me it’s a Scottish cliff and a North Sea. The wind is whipping around your head, but it is not so cold that it hurts: it is a rejuvenating kind of wind. You have been here before. It is a place you come when you need to think, when you are burdened with a melancholy that you need to set free. You stand for a long time like a sentinel—seeing but not seeing, watching but not watching, hearing but not hearing—allowing the wind to move through you, carrying away the heaviness until the thought beneath is revealed. Here, there is so much
Marvin was a megalith, although you couldn’t tell him that. He was convinced he was a third century Buddhist nun. Rose and Veronica kept tying to tell him how unlikely that was, but he wasn’t having any of it. He was a nun and this was Tibet. It drove Rose and Veronica spare for centuries and it wasn’t until little Billy pointed out that maybe they’d want to take a leaf out of Pedro’s book and ignore Marvin’s fantasies, that the squabbles ended and they all got along. Maybe it was because of his size and that he wasn’t technically a megalith, but little Billy had always been more flexible in his thinking. He enjoyed pretending he was a way stone for the stars. He liked to think that the sky beacons knew which way to move across the sky because they were oriented by him. Rose and Veronica grew some
According to a local folklorist, these glasses were left here by a trickster god named John. He’s been doing it since at least the seventeenth century, although many of the older wise ladies say it started long before that. Nevertheless, the locals have learnt the hard way to leave the spectacles alone, and there is a consistent and verifiable corpus of knowledge as to what happens to the unsuspecting wearer of the glasses covering the last four hundred years. To be honest, John is a rapscallion more than anything, but his pranks can still be traumatic, especially to the naive and humourless. Nowadays, some of the younger folk enjoy wearing them on a Saturday night, as youngsters from other villages might trip on ‘shrooms or acid, or get blind drunk. The folklorist said that, in 1962, a twenty-three year old mechanic called Bob figured out that the simple mantra “I see
Harry was electric, at least, that’s how he liked to think about himself. Sometimes he felt himself sizzle up to the sky, like the devil had stuck a fork in his roots. Other times he fizzled and popped with energy like a disco ball in the centre of a room. He was the centre too, even though most of the humans walking in Hackhurst Downs didn’t notice. Somewhere a snigger: ‘it’s not only the humans, you know.’ A side-eye of lichen; Harry concentrated on his ray beam curled boughs thrusting upwards to the sky. There was no-one pointing as hard as he was to the heavens. He’d got the power! Julius the tree spirit sighed. It was just like Harry to forget about him, forget about the bargain they had made long ago. It was his own fault: he’d known Harry was an egomaniac when he made the pact. He’d just