I bring to you another teaser from the upcoming release; Concoction V2. This time a quote from one of Andrew Taylor’s short stories written for the prompt ‘Whisky.’
Teaser – Concoction V2
Tag: Time
Alarm
The obnoxious screeching tore through consciousness, wrenching from some distant dreamy place. One far more appealing than this. 6:00am screamed as heavy eyes flew startled open, red and dry. The Dead arm fought to shut that raging thing up. Fucking 6:00am!
Quiet now but that wasn’t to last, it never did. Soon I’d hear the echoes of other bellowing alarms chasing other slaves from sleep. Got to get the magic paper or the idea of it anyway. Pay service to the authorities, whoever the hell they were and contribute! To what, I don’t really know.
It’s all lies…
Lies that we follow almost mindlessly if not completely. Following until there’s nothing left.
I had only been sleeping two hours if I was lucky. Less in fact, I recall 4:00am, as I always do, so definitely not the round two. Desperately trying to empty my stupid head on to scrap pieces by my sunken bed. Open door at four. Evacuating this mad racket noise so I could sleep. The paper was completely drenched in scrawlings that made perfect sense at the time. Now appeared as if they were written by some foreign ghost. It was me though, it’s always just me. Even with the ghosts clambering and scratching at my exhausted soul, they couldn’t tell what was what. Scrambling for desperate scraps, something to cling to, or let go of. They weren’t the only ones. At least they were dead.
I never sleep enough, never was programmed for the job. Maybe that’s what came of all that screaming in the night or was just some missed connection before even then. It’s harder for this mind to shut up when everything else does. So much echo within echo bouncing off metal over and over again.
When will the 6:00am screeching be done with me? Maybe one day Death will cast her final shadow before it starts. Stuck for an eternity in that dreamy place before the alarm excitedly bellows; a surprise whip lashing my back raw. That will surely be more than two round hours…
Or I’ll be stuck somewhere else, scratching at your soul…
I hate alarms.
(C) Natasha Sinclair, all rights reserved
Concoction – Haunted
Exciting Summer Anthology of shorts release!
Falling Seas and Espionage By Andrew Taylor
The Snow is not done with us yet. Not enough of you have been out to feel it and allowed it to creep close. It will return day after day until it is satisfied and like almost everything else in the world, satisfaction is not a state reached quickly. Few exceptions exist, but their acquisition is painful and consuming. You cannot have one without the other.
Time is an awful mistress and she will bend for nothing on this earth. Work is an expression of life, whatever you occupy yourself with. Everything is corruptible and you only have to look at the coast line for a good example; nothing stands the test of time. Values, cultures and beliefs change, die out, are reborn, become a shadow of themselves and disappear. Things take the place of other things. You change your furniture, change your clothes, rearrange your desk, realign your point of view, forget something, cheat yourself, hurt somebody, hurt yourself, swear you’ll never do it again, make a resolution, break a promise, fall down, pick yourself back up, gaze at the reflection in the mirror and think, “Am I……………?” Forget it and let the water rush in.
A beach is a beautiful thing, the canyons under the oceans are said to be some of the most wonderous mountain ranges on earth and the oceans themselves are as yet vastly uncharted. Who doesn’t like a mystery?
©Andrew Taylor 2019, All rights reserved
From, ‘The Whiskey Stories…A few years on it and still going, a drunk love story’
About the Author;
Glasgow based writer who began fictional writing while studying Sociology as a way to merge learning and art. Themes of “work,” general distaste for society and a dystopian world prevail. Andrew finished Uni over 10 years ago and let writing fall away, but has recently began engaging in it again. A fan of the current “flash fiction” genre as well as short stories. His favourite writer is Charles Bukowski and he’s tried reading Hemingway on several occasions, love it but just cant seem to finish. Burroughs is another favourite and he enjoys the cut up work.
