Category: Flash Fiction
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The Eleventh Film XV
In previous times of doubt and despair the world has always sought solace in the written word, hoping to discern a truth among the millions of symbols and ciphers and syllables.
And so slumberous stories emerged through dreams about a library long-lost to the world. A place where the answers to the world’s final question might still be found.
She was the world’s last lexicographist and so she was chosen to lead the expedition.
The hunt for the site began. There was nothing to lose and there was the possibility, however small, that there still might be a way out of all this.
As the years passed the world lost hope that the library would ever be found. The lexicographer entered her eightieth decade.
A broken office block standing sullen on the edge of a vast ice field coughed-up an old map of the inlands and the library’s resting place was eventually uncovered.
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The Eleventh Film XIII
And so the world begged. Like the world’s last radio show. A montage of lips, mouths and eyes. The sounds of no hope.
We are very sorry.
Isn’t there someone who can stop this?
Queríamos envejecer juntos.
Who is in charge ‘round here?
I can’t find my mammy.
Je ne veux pas mourir.
Can we talk about this?
Are you’s all angels like?
What did we do to deserve this?’
Are you kind-of like aliens?
How dare you!
Please don’t do this to us.
My wife died this morning.
We’re not afraid.
I think my parents are still alive.
Et absterget Deus omnem lacrimam ab oculis eorum. Mors ultra non erit neque luctus neque clamor neque dolor erit ultra quae prima abierunt.
I refuse to say anything.
And then she died.
I have always been ultra-compliant with my taxes.
… for my Bible tells me so …
Is this an advert?
And no one helped him, he just lay dead in the street.
Isn’t this illegal?
So this is what the Rapture is really like?
How long have I got?
Say goodbye, children.
Did I miss the referendum?
Quanto àqueles que rejeitam a fé, eu os castigarei com terrível agonia neste mundo e no Além, nem terão ninguém para ajudar.
What happens if we all say no?
You absolute bastards.
But she was too young …
If only I had told him earlier.
If anyone is listening, please do something. Tell the world what is happening here.
Ég er svo ein.
When you walk through a storm …
I don’t have any shoes.
She meant the world to me.
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.
I need a drink.
I am so so scared.
She was only a wee thing.
Is this gonna hurt?
Has anyone seen my brother?
What happens next?
Bonvolu, ni petegas vin. Bonvolu forigi la infanon. Ni feliĉe mortos, sed ne ŝin, bonvolu ne!
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The Eleventh Film XI
Someone suggested that we simply ask the angels what it is was that the world had done to warrant such attention.If we do this then we might know, they said.And if we know then we might find favour with them by stopping doing what it was we did to incur their wrath in the first place.But how to go about this? The digital was now an obsolete concept. That whole new world was now just more relics and ruins.Millions of dead devices piled high like cairns and contours. Redefining eyelines in every direction. All those memories and images and files lost forever.The world hung this particular hope on a beehive.An elderly beekeeper suggested that his last remaining hive might be able to generate sufficient electrical charge to reach out to the angels. It was their particular sensitivity to electrical current that made them an unlikely source of succour.Bees and flowers are oppositely charged. Without even trying, bees build up a positive charge on their bodies as they fly. Flowers are negatively charged and that makes their pollen stick to bees through static electricity. But the electric field is more than just that static charge.If such a field could be generated once more then perhaps the angels would see the the tiny drop of energy and interpret it as a signal for parley.Share this:
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The Eleventh Film X
It was always thought that certain corpses were offered a special dispensation by which divine intervention would prevent them decomposing as a sign of their evident holiness.Saints and knights. Kings and clerics. Holy corpses used to inspire nations.It was simpler then. Hierarchies were still in existence. Religion was a binary affair.With all boundaries broken now, society had nothing to left to regulate itself with.And in any case there were simply far too many corpses for any such distinctions to be relevant any more.Any intervention now was far from divine. There was no purpose to such a distinction.And so the survivors did what people have always done. They hid among the rubble. The constant reminders of collapse. The deluge of debris.Share this:
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The Eleventh Film IX
The scars that the Earth now bore could best be seen in the varied spores of decay. The shift from life to death is laid before us like a portrait of the end of the world.
Each mould sits heavy like so much paint on the canvas. Or hangs like a poisoned star in the sullen night.
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The Eleventh Film VIII
Spent.Bereft.Devoid.Shorn.Indigent.With nothing left, the world began to slowly exhaust itself.And that was when the first transmission was received.Two voices. Discordant harmony.Looping continually.Heard all around the globe.It became more apparent with every listen that the world was listening to the sound of its own demise. There was nothing else to do but accept this as the end it truly was.There was a hope that once shone deep within us all. That all these questions might simply resolve themselves over time as questions are wont to do. But it was the absence of discernible answers that made the questions themselves fade from view.Leaving only empty.Share this:
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The Eleventh Film VII
Ministers rushed to anoint these visitors with a sacred hue. Channelling their embrace for global purposes. The world’s biggest stadia were filled with their expectant flock, desperate for an embrocation.
The angels moved among like the wary wolves they were.
Dismantling.
Rupturing.
Destroying.
It’s too easy to say that this should not have happened. Perhaps the world needed to listen less to demagogues and more to the Earth itself.
In any case, all points were moot now.
It just got cold.
And that was that.
Ever more.
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The Eleventh Film VII
Some thought it had to be negligence.
Others proffered chance as an explanation.
A by-product of progress.
An unforeseen response to technological change.
It was all of naught.
There was no suitable analysis.
The cosmic die had been cast.
They were among us now.
Summoned by the Eleventh Film.
It was now simply as if they had always been here.
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The Eleventh Film Part VI
At the start the world thought that their presence was something of vital import. Something founded on their notions of variation.In the shifts in quality evident in the images.The tones and lacks and blurs and blemishes.The filters and the fragments.The spaces between as well.The joins.The fissures.The friction.But they danced before us here and not here.There and not quite there.We were never able to properly overcome their liminality.Share this:
BARNABY TAYLOR 