Demolition

He passed the tax building, now being slowly demolished.

“Everything’s done online these days,” he thought bitterly.

He’d been a manager there, running his section with the efficiency of a concentration camp commandant.

“Got any spare change?” asked one of a group of teenagers watching the demolition.

Giving them an evil stare, he walked on.

“Goddam!” The beer can struck him on the back of the head.

“Fuck off and die, you old fart!” he heard as they ran off laughing.

He looked at the shell of the building for a while.

Soon – like him – it would be gone forever.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

The Statue

The old master carved the tortured limbs and anguished face out of the stone.

Christ on the cross came from his very soul, he who had witnessed war, massacres and the plague that had taken his wife and dearest daughter, his whole life seeming one long crucifixion.

He cursed the God that had forsaken him and the bishop who had commissioned the artifact for the new cathedral. Tired and sick, he died a few days after the statue was completed.

For centuries after his death, visitors stood in awe before his creation that spoke of suffering and, to some, redemption.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

A Philosophic Mind

He returned the edition of Kant to the library, unread again. He came out bearing Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness.” Surely he could make a last effort to master existentialism.

He decided to sit down on the bench in the high street to watch the passersby.

“How foolish they are,” he mused, “going on so unreflectively with their trivial business.”

“Not a philosophic mind amongst them,” he scoffed.

“They probably think I’m just an elderly man sitting here with nothing to do,” he surmised.

How wrong he was, for, unnoticed by the passing multitudes, no one thought about him at all.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

Death’s Head

Retreating from Leningrad respect for the Soviets had grown amongst SS Totenkopf, elevated from Untermensch – ‘suhumans’ – to Bolsheviks.

After the bombardment from the eerily howling Katyushas – ‘Stalin’s organs’ – half of Franz’s platoon had been blown to bits, their blood staining the snow.

Silence.

Then line after line of T-34 tanks covered in infantrymen appeared over the frozen steppe.

The odds were impossible, yet none would surrender, warriors moulded by the code of blood, iron and unconquerable will.

Franz, 19, watching the approaching hordes, glanced at the Totenkopf – ‘Death’s Head’ – insignia on his lapel.

Yes, this was what he existed for.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

Sniper

As if part of the land Masha merges into the rubble. A file of battle-weary Wehrmacht fighters passes.

The last is in her sights.

She had hunted deer in Siberia. They never detected her, so camouflage in Stalingrad’s snow-clad ruins is easy.

Deer, she respects, sharers of the Motherland, killing only for meat.

These Nazi scum are vermin. She would exterminate them all if she could.

She aims for the chest to mortally wound. He falls.

Two comrades rush back to help.

Her next two bullets pass through their foreheads.

She scurries off undetected, three more notches to her name.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

The Course of True Love

here is my number call would you like to see thanks I had a really I think I am falling my love is like a shall I compare thee to my true love hath I will love you until to be my lawfully wedded from this day forward to cherish till death do us what God has joined how could you treat me how long have you been after all that I have I want to get a have filed a petition for citing irreconcilable differences irretrievably broken by this agreement decree nisi to voluntarily be duly executed and delivered

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

Revenge

Home for a funeral, I pop into my local of yesteryear.

I recognize that boozy bleary-eyed pig face propping up the bar.

Wilkins, the school bully!

Wanker!

How he’d tormented me forty years ago, but clearly he remembers me not.

How I’ve fantasized about going back in time and standing up to him!

But now he has aged, badly, looking like a grotesquely inflated beach ball with his vast beer belly, all muscle turned to flab.

I fantasize about following him out at closing time and beating him up but desist, for life has already done the job for me.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

Dream Beach

He walked along the beach he’d frequented as a child in holidays long ago.

“All those years,” he thought, “and my life has had as much significance as a grain of sand on this shore!”

“Even my memories are fading,” he reflected, as the past receded ever further year on year.

“My senses too are dulled. The sights and sounds of the sea are not as vivid as before.”

Hearing the mesmerizing cadence of the waves he felt he was walking in a dream.

Yes, it would soon be time for his return to the dust from whence he came.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

Old Flames

A haggard creature across the bar clutches her G&T with claw-like hands.

The aquiline nose stands out from the sunken skin, triggering a disconcerting recognition.

“It can’t be,” he thinks.

Sensing his gaze, the woman looks over.

The shiny dome where once was hair, the double chin, the beer paunch, are a disturbing parody of the man she’d known.

“Lawrence?”

They’d been passionate lovers a generation ago.

Overcoming mutual revulsion, they chat a while, no chemistry between them now.

The only chemical they have in common is the alcohol anesthetizing them until they go their separate ways into the night.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

Last-Minute Shoppers

“Wrapping paper! Ha, ha!”

Shoppers passed by clutching rolls of it.

“Fancy spending Christmas Eve wrapping presents!” Ian thought, reflecting on how he’d finished his yesterday.

“My God, they’re fighting over chocolates,” he sneered, observing a couple of housewives tugging the ends of a Milk Tray box in Howell’s Department Store.

He resolved to have a latte in Starbucks to fully savour the spectacle before the shops finally closed.

“Chocolates?!...Christ, I forgot the wife’s chocolates!”

Ian rushed out of the café.

“Where the hell can I find some now?” he thought, seeing the doors of Howell’s snap shut.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher