This piece was written for this week’s Unicorn Challenge photo prompt from CE Ayr and Jenne Gray.

The Press Gang

Davo and his retired mates were watching the TV news at their local pub when a report on the bushfires included a reporter shoving a microphone in the face of a woman whose house had been destroyed, killing her family, and asking her ‘How do you feel?’

Thus began the Press Gang, a vaguely organised bunch of retirees bored off their brains and keen for some action that would, potentially at least, bring about some change in the increasingly insane and amoral world of the media.

They began with the usual media scrum outside the law courts and became famous for sprinkling maggots in the hair of women reporters just before they did their piece to camera, persistently photo-bombing male reporters while grinning like maniacs, and quietly letting down the tyres of broadcast vans.

But the movement really gained momentum when the Gang started releasing rats into the spin session press conferences held by politicians, clueless sports stars and vacuous actors plugging their latest piece of pap, such as the movie ‘War and Peace II – Aliens vs Androids’ and the ‘reality’ TV show ‘Celebrities Cage Fighting Bears’.

Having made the media a public laughing stock, the Gang took a breather for a while.  And then the TV news showed a camera crew chasing a young man down the street pestering him about whether he’d had unnatural relations with his chickens. Davo jumped on his bike and headed to the pub. The Gang needed to get back together again.

This piece was inspired by the weekly photo prompt from the Unicorn Challenge to respond to it with around 250 words.

Reminds me of the 60’s and marching in anti-war demos and showing I wasn’t afraid of my feminine side by letting my girlfriend at the time weave flowers through my fashionably long hair. What it actually achieved was to make me a prominent target for malevolent coppers who found great delight in creating a new crimson part in my hairy ginger abomination with their truncheons

Remember causes and affectations of effect on war-zones now gone five-star? Remember sexual honesty and sleeping with whoever felt like you and confining safe sex to heart condoms?

Remember dope and discovering the ‘real’ you  and waking each time forgetful of the revelation?

Remember music and believing decibels were antidotes to megatons and lyrics could shield you from evil?

Remember social action, sitting in smoke-filled rooms with Nescafe activists and impoverished women with no teeth and less hope?

Remember parents, left on some private shelf in case they portrayed you to anybody that mattered?

Remember party politics and seeing neighbours become politicians only to fall in clay-footed exhaustion at the barriers?

Remember health when it was something other people ought to have and you weren’t smoke-free, mineral water in hand and smiling at God?

Remember money and how it was never going to concern you and then you learnt the golden rule and its defensible limits?

And do you remember when the penny dropped that the personal was the political and you found out you had to change?

And you decided to forget the revolution?

This piece is responding to the weekly Unicorn Challenge to write 250 words using a photo prompt. Disclosure Statement: This piece was written by A.I. aka Andy Ingerson, who lives around the corner from me.

Hello, sweetheart. Your Mum brought you here for a bit of time out the ‘ouse? Given you a few coins to buy a bargain? Well, I’ve got some historical treasures here.

Now, look at those roller skates, practically new. Little old lady only used ‘em to go to church on Sundays.

Nah, you’re right. No point in a brand new pair of roller skates when you can’t roller skate in a buffalo herd. That’s what I always say.

What about that electric zombie killer? Wouldn’t want to waste it on eggs and tomarters when there’s all those undead lurkin’ about. Especially since I heard it through the grapevine there’s a flying purple people eater on the highway to hell. Know what I’m sayin’?

Yeah, yer prob’ly right, there’s nothin’ here to interest a clever modern girlie like you. Prob’ly more interested in boys at your age, ay? Oooh, look at you blush! Got a boyfriend then?

What’s that? A girlfriend? Nah, I meant like someone you’re sweet on. Oh, well, I hear it’s all the rage theses days. None of my business. Live and let live and all that. Nothin’ in this load of old tat for a present for her.

Only what was left in the back cupboard when me Mum died. Bring it here every week. To get out the ‘ouse. Never sold a cracker. I just hope someone turns up one day to tell me the real story about the roller skates.

You take care now, sweetheart.

This piece of rubbish was written for this week’s Unicorn Challenge to come up with 250 words inspired by a photo prompt.

Polystyrene love

I thought I was Mark Antony and she was my Cleopatra

but she preferred her needles.

I thought I was Napoleon and she was my Josephine

but she threw me in the loo water.

I thought I was Paris and she was my Helen

but she left me plastered in Troy.

I thought I was Percy Shelley and she was my Mary

but she ran off with Frankenstein.

I thought I was King Edward VIII and she was Wallis Simpson

but she only wanted my crown jewels.

I thought I was Pierre Curie and she was my Marie

but she only radiated poison.

I thought I was Prince Albert and she was my Queen Victoria

but she made sure we were not amused.

I thought I was Clyde and she was my Bonnie

but then she shot through.

I thought I was Johnny Cash and she was my June Carter

but then she made me walk the line.

I thought I was Romeo and she was my Juliet

but that proved to be a dead end.

I thought I was F. Scott and she was my Zelda

but she only wanted Gatsby.

I thought I was George Burns and she was my Gracie Allen

but she only wanted to say goodnight.

I thought I was John Lennon and she was my Yoko

but she couldn’t imagine it.

I thought I was Bogart and she was my Bacall

but she just wanted a big sleep.

Polyamory? More like polystyrene.

This narrative of non sequiturs was pieced together in response to this week’s Unicorn Challenge photo prompt.

So, who’s the target today?

That guy with the black cowboy hat.

Why him?

If it wasn’t bad enough that he’s a dentist, he has no soul. Likes to shoot endangered animals in the wild and hang their heads on his wall.

What’s he doing here then? Horses are hardly endangered.

Because that’s no ordinary horse. It’s a direct descendant of Pegasus.

So where are the wings?

Bellepheron cut them off the original Pegasus after he captured him and rode him to slay the Chimera.

So this Bellepheron was kind of an ancient Greek dentist.

Hmmm, hadn’t quite thought of it that way but now that you mention it …. Anyway Pegasus ended up as thunderbolt carrier for Zeus up on Olympus and sired more offspring than Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

Are you trying to tell me Screamin’ Jay was Greek too?

No, of course not. But that horse out there is a direct descendant of Pegasus and the dentists wants to buy it.

And then what?

Release it into the wild so he can track it down and shoot it and stick its head on his wall.

Well, that’s enough for me. What’s the address of his surgery?

I’ll text you all the details. So what’s the plan?

Take him down in his natural environment, of course.

What, shoot him?

Oh, that would be uncivilised, as well as unsatisfying. No, I’ll just strap him to his dentist chair, grab his drill and put him in touch with his feelings.

This piece of ancient mythology is courtesy of the Unicorn Challenge.

‘Have you got what you need for the toll?’

‘What toll?’

‘The one we’ll have to pay at the toll house up ahead. You do realise where we are, don’t you? Please tell me you haven’t come all the way to Greece to walk with me on this journey without researching our route?’

‘OK, so I only skim read the link you sent me. I figured you’d fill in the rest when I got here.’

‘Typical. The trail we are walking is the dried up river bed of the Styx. Up ahead is Charon’s cottage. Given there is now no river to ferry souls across to the underworld, the Gods set him up with a pension scheme. It’s funded by the tolls paid by walkers like us.’

‘Does he take plastic? I haven’t carried cash for years.’

‘He only takes coins.’

‘Can you lend me some and I’ll pay you back?’

‘No, I’ve only got enough for myself.’

‘So what happens now?’

‘You have to hang around for 100 years and then you get free entry.’

‘Damn that for a joke! I’ll just walk up the mountain and go around him and meet you on the other side.’

‘That’s Olympus, dummy. Do you think the Gods are going to let you get away with that?’

‘So what am I supposed to do for a 100 years?’

‘Think about how stupid you were to go along with the death of cash. Bye.’

This piece was written for the weekly Unicorn Challenge, assembling up to 250 words based on a picture prompt.

Australian ornithologists are beside themselves (or at least they are when two or more are gathered together in the name of birds) with excitement over the first authenticated photograph of the fabled Oomebumbum bird. Most adults have long refused to recognise its existence, putting sightings into the realm of other life lessons with which adults imbue children, such as Santa Claus is real, which they later deny, and then wonder why their children grow up to be drug addicts or Tory voters or both.  

Of course, Indigenous Australians have always known of its existence and depictions of its unique shape and habits appear in rock art and cave paintings across Australia. It’s raucous cry has been preserved in oral history by the Elders as most closely resembling Question Time in Parliament after the latest Budget has been handed down.

Little is known about the diet of the Oomebumbum, although the beak indicates a varied diet, probably including witchetty grubs and hot chips. The streamlined body shape would suggest that it it’s preferred hunting strategy is surprising its prey by swooping down from a great height, grabbing it and soaring back to the heavens. Occasionally, as the young birds are still learning their flight skills, they will miscalculate and scrape their backsides along the ground, and fly off into the sky screaming ‘Oomebumbum, oomebumbum’, hence the origin of the name. The PM has placed an immediate protection order on them and they will replace the kangaroo on Qantas livery.

This piece was written for the weekly Unicorn Challenge photo prompt.

‘Why are you stopping?’

‘I’m not going in there.’

‘Why?’

‘It doesn’t have proper disability access.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know. What disability do you have?’

‘I was born with eyes, ears, a brain and a heart. And I see dead people.’

‘Where?’

‘Everywhere in there.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s artificially intelligent morons shooting up conspiracies. There’s people who want to steal my identity. There’s people with video goggles bumping into each other as they watch the zombie apocalypse on reality TV. There’s people giving more to their cats than to their neighbours. There’s politicians who want nothing else than to be the politicians in charge of wanting nothing else than their own survival. There’s people who think the only art worthwhile comes in a spray can and it should be shared on Instagram to make them instantly famous for a nanosecond. And there’s people who think they can keep taking until there’s nothing left to give and the oxygen of life runs out.’

‘But it’s the only way to get where we’re going. To the future.’

‘Then I’m not going.’

‘But you have to get there. You can’t stay here in the past.’

‘I can. I like it here.’

‘But ‘here’ doesn’t exist anymore. Can’t you see it rolling up behind us as we walk?’

‘Then it’ll just have to roll me up with it.’