The Art of Boredom

I hadn’t noticed how Harry’s garden had filled up with so many guests - shouldn’t have been there at all, actually, but had chosen today to return a borrowed book which had haunted my conscience for over a year. That wasn’t a good idea at all, as I was about to learn.

The book was called The Art of Boredom. It was a dull volume of secrets; the literary equivalent of a vibracrete pyramid. It claimed that by lending people things, you’d rapidly increase your circle of friends and avoid boredom, but it lacked any convincing argument that the reader would not be bored to tears while attempting this devious method of social sculpturing.

I couldn’t see what Harry had enjoyed about it in the first place. He was a quick-minded man with a restless edge to him that I liked but he could be exhausting to be around. Although he was often smiling, he seemed to exude violence, as if his daydreams included rope, duct tape and rusty razor blades.

That was one of the reasons I was anxious to return his book.

He didn’t seem to be anywhere nearby, so I dipped my hand into the aluminium bath filled with beer bottles and grabbed two. The book was in my pocket, and I had hoped to surprise him by just leaving it in his bathroom next to the copies of Samurai Monthly and the collection of animal skulls he’d gathered after wildfires where he’d find them, white exclamation marks among the blackened vegetation.

I wandered around the garden. Spoke to a woman I recognised but whose name I’d forgotten on both previous occasions I had met her. She laughed and touched my shoulder, called me Mickey. The beer started to weigh on my bladder, so it seemed like the right time to head for the toilet.

At every party I have ever been to this has happened: I go to the toilet, wash my hands and discover that there’s only one towel hanging up. Not a hand towel, but the towel which is very clearly used for drying off after a shower. There’s an element of guilt to drying your hands on that towel, but then you notice that everyone else seems to have used it, too.

At Harry’s, the towel wasn’t looking too good. It was a black towel, but it seemed blacker in the middle. I didn’t want to wet the book so I used the towel anyway. My fingertips came away smeared in redness. The coppery smell was unmistakeable. Blood.

I looked down. On a table next to the bath was a book. I felt the volume in my jacket pocket weigh heavier as I read the title of the one on the table:

Bored to Death: The Art of Boredom, Volume Two.

Forgetting my bloodied fingers, I picked it up. Sat down on the toilet. Chapter One, it read:

“How to alleviate boredom by committing the perfect murder.”

The words swam a little as I read them, but I felt compelled to carry on.

“Invite everyone you know to a party. Especially the ones who have borrowed your books, DVDs and favourite Tupperware. Stock up on dark towels for cleaning purposes.”

The key in the bathroom door rattled and a shadow fell across the page.

“Hello, Michael”, Harry whispered.

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This post was written as part of a tandem blogging experiment. EIGHT other bloggers have used the same title as a prompt, and their work will go live at the same time as this. None of us have seen anyone else's posts yet, so each will take a unique angle on their blogs. Take a look at their creative efforts at blogging 'The Art of Boredom' and like, share and comment if you've enjoyed what you read!

Click away on the names below:

Kerry

James 

Megan  

 

Sarah 

Dave


Nick

Brett

Cath

Magic Words

Brian held Hammy in both hands. Hammy was cold, unusually still. He wasn’t always active- during the day he’d roll into the sawdust shavings in the cage on the opposite side from where he’d leave the looped droppings. At night his rustling was quiet enough for Brian to get some sleep, as long as the wheel was kept oiled. But today he hadn’t emerged for his slice of apple, Hammy was dead.

It was quite cold in Brian’s room, and he nudged Hammy’s grey fur with his knuckle. Made the psp-pssp-psp noise which sometimes coaxed him out of the toilet rolls he’d hide in. Still nothing.

It upset him. Even though his mum had told him hamsters don’t live very long, he’d grown up with the familiar smells of the cage. Two whole years. He’d been only seven when he’d asked her what “dead” is, and had been rather confused with her talk of golden roads and clouds and angels and something about lovely feasts with roast beef and apple pie. He didn’t like beef. The chewy gristle gave him the chills.

Apple pie, though, that was something he could get into. The little family always had some leftovers after Sunday lunch, but he wasn’t allowed to have seconds. It would be put in the fridge for tomorrow’s supper, and he’d have to ask very nicely to get some. “What’s the magic word, Brian?” his mum would ask. “Abracadabra!” he’d reply as part of their ritual, and they’d all laugh.

Please. He knew the magic word was really supposed to be please, but he hardly ever saw his mum smile anymore, so the laughter was welcome. Ever since he’d gone to camp last year and his dad had moved out by the time Brian had come home (even though he’d moved back a week later), the house had become like his local library; whispered conversations that he couldn’t hear.

The camp had been awful. It had been his first time away from home, and the constant noise of the other kids had seemed intimidating. Then, on the last night, the teacher had told ghost stories. He hadn’t slept at all. He shuddered as he remembered one in particular, The Monkey’s Paw. How the old couple had used the mystical paw to wish their dead son back to life. And regretted it.

He shuddered again. Then paused. His mouth was open in surprise at a sudden thought.

He didn’t have a monkey’s paw but he did have another trick.

“Please” he whispered into Hammy’s ear.

Nothing happened.

“Please!” he called out, as if magic is made more so by volume.

Even less happened.

Brian shrugged. He’d go back to the pet man on his next birthday and get a tortoise. Tortoises can live a thousand years, he guessed.

He placed Hammy back in the safety of his cage and turned to pick up the library book he’d borrowed. It was quite a difficult one, but his mum had said that he should read out loud to help get the hang of new words.

“Taxidermy for beginners”, he read, and imagined himself wearing a magician’s cape.

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This post was written as part of a tandem blogging exercise/experiment. Five other bloggers have used the same title as a prompt, and their work will go live at the same time as this. None of us have seen anyone else's posts yet, so each will take a unique angle on their blogs. Please take a look at their creative efforts at blogging 'Magic Words' and like, share and comment if you've enjoyed what you read, too!

Mandy Collins 

Dave Luis

Nick Frost 

Brett 'Fish' Anderson

Cath Jenkin

Revelations at Dawn

A low hoot woke him. The soldier didn’t open his eyes straight away, but listened to the creatures in the liquorice-black of the night, the owl and the crickets. The intensity of the sounds teased him, and, just for a second, he thought he could hear the earthworms sliding through the soil and the throb of his own pulse. The sounds of the countryside. Home.

He lay awhile thinking of his mother’s cooking, smelling the butter slipping in the pan as the breaking eggs whispered a quiet ssssh and rolled into fluffy mounds. The gammon being slapped onto the block in the honey his father had burgled from the hives just last week.

The soldier had been thinking about food a lot lately; daydreams that teased him with their attendant memories. He wondered what had happened to the boy he’d once been, hiding out in the woods and making a fire out of twigs,wrapping his two pork sausages in the square of foil he’d tucked into his pocket along with the penknife he was never without. Roasting them until the juices fizzed and the waiting was too much to bear.

He’d toyed with the idea of being a chef in some grand hotel, a sleight-of-hand genius plating creamy clouds of mashed potatoes under peppered steaks slick with sauce. Cajoling the waiters in his whites and, occasionally, murmuring his appreciation to the diners on the floor when they nodded their ecstasy at him. But the war had intervened. His kitchen dreams had faded even as the steam train burped him out at the port where he was hauled off to another country.

Army food became his imagined foe.

The watery chicken stews would turn his stomach; the bread chunks were an awful imposter of the still-steaming loaves he remembered from home. He began getting ill shortly after every meal, clutching his belly until the spasms subsided. Each day was another front to conquer in the mess, and, towards the end, he’d felt himself losing the inward battle.

He’d been slightly incoherent when a platoon had found him limping alongside a horse pulling a cart full of onions. They weren’t too sure what to do with him until he began hurling the little papery orbs at them, railing against the war, the war, the war. A scuffle. Dragged back to the trenches in restraints.

Wartime is brutal. A court martial was convened in a dark burrow. The soldier, kneeling on the duckboards that didn’t keep the muddy pools from seeping into his blistered feet, confessed right away that he couldn’t stand the war anymore. He’d deserted. In fact, he even laughed as he said it, picturing the sickly sweet desserts he’d left behind along with his family. He’d desserted them. The Officer in Command had no other option, then: the soldier would have to be executed at dawn by firing squad.

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The owl’s hoot still echoing in his sleep-fuzzy head, he finally opened his eyes. There was no owl, but some sap nearby weeping his trauma into a balled-up trench coat. Sobbing his fear out in great gulps.

But the soldier wasn’t afraid. No, in the final silence of the night, when the air is coldest and the sun is still setting somewhere else, he was feeling alive for the first time in months.

As he was led towards a small clearing among trees splintered by shelling, he realised something. The only thing he’d ever really enjoyed in his life was a good meal. A well-executed one.

It was a flash of revelation brighter than the abrupt bark of the guns as the sky slipped into blues again, and he felt nothing other than the comforting warmth of his own blood oozing like syrup over his chest.

This post was written as part of a tandem blogging exercise/experiment. Five other bloggers have used the same title as a prompt, and their work will go live at the same time as this. None of us have seen anyone else's posts yet, so each will take a unique angle on their blogs. Please take a look at their creative efforts at blogging 'Revelations at Dawn' and like, share and comment if you've enjoyed what you read, too!

Mandy Collins 

Dave Luis

Nick Frost 

Brett 'Fish' Anderson

Cath Jenkin