Saturday Pomes & Words, 19/04/2025
Dosing up on microfiction fragments
Following on from the previous Pomes & Words, here are some more microfiction fragments, most of them prompted by
again. See his Fiction Dealer newsletter if you feel like developing that habit.Talking of dealers, ironically this first one is not from one of his prompts.
Katrina will be returning next week, by the way! So in the meantime, some light distractions for you. A sort of intermission refreshment in between the darkness.
And how wonderful to have such a short intro!
[25-03-02; 117 words - this one is from my ‘jottings’ file; it didn’t have a prompt, and doesn’t really have a title either]
I met a man on the way to St. Ives
And he said, “I got a cure for the summertime blues.”
I said, “what makes you think I got the summertime blues, on the way to St. Ives?”
“I can see it in your eyes.”
“Well,” says I, “I still don’t think you got a cure for the summertime blues.”
He just grins, and pulls a cellophane bag out his pocket.
Full of MDMA pills.
He grins. And I grin.
Five and ten of your English pounds later, my grin turns into a gurning.
So I’ll ask you again, darling. Look me in the eyes
And riddle me this. “How many pills, made it to St. Ives?”
[25-02-06; 60mg of a Teardrop; it’s 102 words]
Ped-G-7 was telling us kids the truth when we were young. Our human emotions are nothing but maladjustment.
But now, no explosive tears hurt my soul no more,
No dropped bombshells break my heart.
The operational procedure lasted - I don't know - they cut communication with my hippocampus in the pre-screen.
I knew I'd made the right decision when they wheeled in Grandmother.
Her old tears dropped across my bedsheets.
"You don't know what you've done!" she said.
They euthanised her the next day and the next day I returned to work.
All refreshed again.
All refreshed in the year 2121.
[25-02-13; 100mg of a Bouquet]
[I did two for this one!]
[This one is 119 words]
Me an' my beau - that's my husband, case you didn't know - were in the other room watchin' Valentine's Day Massacre. What can I say, we got an offbeat kinda romance goin' on. Still, beau's always buyin' me flowers, 'specially in mid-February. Probably knocked 'em off the garden center, but a girl don't ask these sorts o' questions.
Anyways, we suddenly hear a commotion outside. My turn to go.
Maisie is only three, our lovely little daughter. Well, she was lovely, once.
And she's far too young to die.
But there she was, Valentine's Day, clearly havin' a tantrum 'bout bein' left out. Flowers strewn everywhere.
There she was, kickin' the bouquet.
Still too young to die, though...
[I thought of another silly one; 168 words]
Kay was not a good wizarding apprentice. And none of the other apprentices hung around with him either. They all made fun of him. Clumsy, he was. Always knocking things over and causing all manner of magical mishap.
In his defence, when his mother was pushing him out, someone in the vicinity had mischievously cast Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter on the birthing party.
And so poor little Kay was born with UTS, aka Uncontrollable Tourette's Syndrome.
He simply couldn't help it. All those tics, limbs lashing out at inopportune moments.
Today was a bad day. The wizarding library in total disarray. Magical objects flying about the place, homunculi doing strike action for better pay.
Archmage librarian Monty strides in and immediately discerns what's happened. The infamous tome of mischief spells knocked off its hallowed pedestal.
He took the young apprentice by the talons and shuddered at him. "How many times! How many times do I have to tell you, don't kick the book, Kay! don't kick the book!"
[25-02-14; 70 words of an Embrace; 72 words]
MBRACE; report #77; Classified (obviously)
"Well, Sir, we just went in there and did our usual shit, you know."
"You fucked up the entire pharmaceutical research institute!"
Shrugs.
"What the fuck is that shrug supposed to mean, Mister [REDACTED]?"
"It's to say, ain't that our remit, Sir?"
"Huh?"
"MBRACE, Sir. Motherfucking Badass Revenge And Counter-Espionage. Kinda like if Tarantino did SPECTRE."
Shrugs.
Eyebrow raise.
"Fair point... So let's discuss your next mission..."
[25-03-06; Astronaut, 80mg; this is indeed 80 words! Wonders shall never cease!]
The nanobots did their work well.
Motherprobe guides, and watches.
Slice through the skin of the ISS.
And seek.
Sleep time for the humans.
There is one. The American.
Slice through cranium. Incision.
Cerebellum. Hypothalamus. Grey matter white matter. Amygdala.
Cortex.
Brainstem.
DNA samples returned to Mother.
She weighs them. Chirrups satisfaction.
80mg of an Astronaut.
Soon, she will slip back through the portal to Procyon.
The cloning facility will be pleased.
The invasion, it seems, can proceed as scheduled…
[25-03-14; 90mg of Hum; 90 words exactly!]
There’s some background to this one, for afters.
Some micrometeorite hit us.
I, only one survived.
I roam this ship and I know it’s haunted.
I hear their constant hum.
All ghosts now, the others.
I couldn’t tolerate them anymore, their dead decayed faces accusing me through cryostasis pod glass.
I ejected them. All of them.
But I still hear their hum.
I will be dead long before we arrive.
Perhaps I shall wake the embryos. Perhaps not.
Perhaps I shall drink myself to death.
Perhaps I shall learn to love the airlock.
Sleeper ship monologue.
Sleeper ship.
A few notes on this one.
This turns out to be the third ‘sleeper ship monologue’ idea I’ve written. It was in my head at the time because I had just finally completed the version which will be the epilogue to my Immigration Control collection (this link takes you to the Spec Fic pinned index post for that section, which has all the appropriate links). This means I have finished the book! Notwithstanding an intro, a cover design, a formatting and all the rest of it. But it does mean I can go ahead and think about publishing the thing. Naturally, I shall keep you updated.
Both that version, and the second version, relate to the story X & Y, which you can start reading there, although there are paywalls in each episode.
The second version has a crossover with the second version of the Katrina story, so I am quite fond of it. I submitted it a month or so ago to a spec fic magazine, and haven’t heard back yet. Which is not a bad sign, as they usually give rejections quite quickly in my experience. Well, if they like it I will let you know. It would indeed be lovely to get paid for doing some writing after all these years.
And I do say ‘all these years’, because this idea of mine of writing a story about just one character on a sleeper ship goes back at least thirty years. I have never gotten around to writing it as a novel but it has always been in my mind to do so. For some reason, I have always been personally and deeply taken by the idea of being alone out there in the deep spaces in between the stars, and I am perfectly aware of what that says about me. But I would also say there is a distinct element of ‘going home’ in it. Or ‘belonging’ as much as ‘longing’.
Hah! Having spared you the long intro, I now subject you to a long outro!
Let it not be said I ever lacked for a sense of irony.
See you next time - at which point, here shall a link be also (that’s more microfiction/fragments, by the way; although one is more of a poem than a fragment).
In the meantime, please don’t ignore the like button or it will be very, very sad and upset and lonely. Same goes for the share button, which is her big brother.
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Excellent batch of pomes and words! Congratulations on completing the novel. And I hope you hear good news from the magazine soon. Outros - I thought you'd made that up, but lo and behold, it's a real word. Your writing is good for my vocabulary. 😁 I had to look up "gurning," that's another cool one - I especially enjoyed the references to gurning competitions!