This piece of surrealism was penned for the weekly Unicorn Challenge to come up with up to 250 words in response to a photo prompt.

He knew they were following him. They knew that he knew they were following him. They thought it was important that he knew they were following him.

He came to a rapid halt at a roundabout. Leaping from the car, he ran off around the corner and into the forest.

They stopped and searched his car but found nothing to add to their knowledge of him or of where it might be. They didn’t try follow on foot because they didn’t know if he was armed this time and waiting to ambush them. They’d never known if he was armed or not or if he would ever ambush them. But they decided not to find out tonight. Besides, they didn’t think that was where it was.

…

They sat in their car and talked about this latest development. Clearly the situation was unsustainable. They couldn’t keep running around the countryside following every Tom, Dick or Harry looking for it. Was it actually important enough to devote their resources to finding it indefinitely? They decided, reluctantly but firmly, ‘No’.

…

When he realised they’d abandoned their chase, he was furious. How dare they do this? What was he supposed to do with it now?

When they’d driven away from the roundabout, he set off in pursuit of them. They knew he would do that. He knew that they would know he would do that.

So they sped up, just to make life interesting.

This piece of nostalgic nonsense was written for Jenne and CE’s weekly Unicorn Challenge to produce a story of up to 250 words based on a photo prompt.

‘So, you’re just back from Paris and you take me out to this Godforsaken beach in the middle of nowhere to look at a pile of rocks?’

‘Yes. It’s a shrine.’

‘Bugger you shrine. What did you bring me?’

‘Sorry, nothing. But I brought back Jim.’

‘Jim?’

‘Yeah, Jim. I stole his ashes. Because Bon was getting lonely.’

‘Bon?’

‘Yeah, I rescued him from Fremantle last year.’

‘So you’re going around the world stealing the ashes of dead rock stars and burying them here at your tacky little shrine.’

‘They told me they want to rest in peace and not be bothered by nutters crying and taking selfies 24/7. They all did. Not Elvis or Michael of course but the others.’

‘What others?’

‘I brought Janis from LA and Jimi from Washington and Brian from Gloucestershire and Buddy from Texas. I would have got Michael but he’s swimming with the fishes in Sydney Harbour and John’s all over Central Park. Some families are so inconsiderate. Imagine having to put up with jet skiers and joggers for the rest of eternity.’

‘But what about the poor families of these people!’

‘As long as they believe they’re still where they put them, what does it matter? This way everybody wins.’

‘You realise that with global warming and rising sea levels this will all get washed away one day.’

‘Of course. And then we’ll all be together. That will be so cool. Imagine jamming with Syd on the dark side of the moon.’

Cast (in order of appearance): Morrison, Scott, Presley, Jackson, Joplin, Hendrix, Jones, Hutchence, Lennon, Holly, Barrett.)

This piece of dark nonsense was written for the weekly Unicorn photo prompt Challenge. BYO 250 words and jump in.

‘Hey, Gus! What’s with the red dot and the circle?’

‘Shush, Charlie, don’t tell everybody!’

‘We’re all connected underground, you idiot. There are no secrets. So, what do you think you’re up to?’

‘These nice men came along and said I was very special and would I mind if they decorated me a little, so that everyone would know I was special.’

‘So these would be the nice men wearing yellow helmets and green overalls with Parks Service written on them that visited this morning?’

‘Yes, that’s them. I feel so honoured.’

‘I doubt that you’ll feel that way tomorrow when they come back with a chainsaw and a truck to carry you away in pieces for firewood. You really are thicker than two short planks, as well as diseased.’

‘But, hey, all you guys and gals in the grove, you have to help me. Can’t you stop them?’

‘Of course, Gus. We’ll just get Pooh Bear and Tigger to come and cover the sign with honey to hide the red paint. Perhaps even Noddy might come and help in his little red car with the horn that goes parp.’

‘Look, this is no time for jokes.’

‘You’re right. That’s why we’re cutting off your underground trunk line before they come, so we don’t feel the pain with you. You understand. Herd immunity and all that. Bye, Gus.’

Gus screamed ‘Charlie!’ but the citizens of the grove could no longer hear a tree about to fall in the forest.

This micro piece managed 3rd place (and a small sum of money, for which I am very grateful) in this mini-competition run by On The Premises. https://onthepremises.com/minis/mini_57/

btw I thought the top story in the Honorable Mentions deserved to be placed but who am I to say? 🙂

This piece was written for the Unicorn weekly photo challenge provided by Ms. Gray and Mr. Ayr.

‘So who’s the bloke in the foreground there?’

‘Ah, that’s Le Maitre Du Pigeons. Master of the pigeons. He looks after all the pigeons in the lofts you see at the top of the building. Feeds them, cleans up the pigeon stools, that sort of thing.’

‘Then what’s the building?’

‘Le Bureau de Poste Pigeon. The Pigeon Post Office.’

‘Why on earth would anyone be sending messages via pigeons these days?’

‘Simple. You can’t hack a pigeon. Untraceable communication written in unbreakable code known only to the sender and the recipient. Silicon Valley and Western intelligence hate them with a passion but Russia and China can hardly breed them fast enough.’

‘But couldn’t snipers with high powered telescopic rifles pick them off?’

‘Perhaps. But which ones in the daily flocks in the thousands? Entirely impractical. Besides, they’re protected under EU data rules’

‘Clever thinking but they do come with risks. They’re not called ‘rats with wings’ for nothing. With bird flu rampant, they could trigger another epidemic.’

‘Well, they might but, at some point in modern life, something or someone is going to excrete on you from a great height. I don’t know about you but I think I’d prefer that to descend from a bunch of flocking pigeons than from a bunch of privacy-invading flying elephants.’

‘So do you think those multinationals have buildings that house massive flying elephant lofts?’

‘Now you’re letting your imagination run away with you. Do something useful and get us another pint.’

Appropriate bonus clip https://youtu.be/pj0_Ps5c08I

This piece is in response to The Unicorn Weekly Challenge to write up to 250 words based on a photo prompt.

Elspeth had loved moving from Australia to their cottage in Spain when Derek had retired. The steep steps had made them feel on top of the world. They thought of themselves as exotic mountain goats, especially after they returned home each evening from the tapas bar, having usually had one too many sangrias.

Now Derek had gone off to Eternity to save them a spot and each day she longed more and more to join him. Like the succulents they had planted, her limbs were thick and fleshy and her swollen feet were no longer adapted to this environment. Unlike them, her need for water to cope with the heat had become obsessive and she paid the grocer’s boy to carry the big plastic bottles up to her eyrie.

One balmy autumn night, she decided she was well enough to go down to the tapas bar, for old time’s sake. When she’d finished her meal and started home, she thought ‘You’re just a silly old goat now and the mountain is too high.’ But she convinced herself that if she took it slowly, all would be well.

She made it but was far from well and joined the fallen leaves on the ground. Before her eyes closed, she looked at the garden bed and smiled to herself as she thought ‘Well, I’m cactus* too now.’

The grocer’s boy found her and called an ambulance, after he’d emptied her purse. He reasoned that she didn’t need money in Eternity.

*Australian slang for dead or broken

This piece was written for The Unicorn Challenge, a weekly photo prompt for up to 250 words of prose.

Oh, that view. It’s idyllic here in Lower Sidebottom.

Yes, it is. Now.

Was there a problem in the past?

Yes. Before the Great Purge of 2022.

What do you mean?

We’d been inundated by sea changers, Gen-alphabets, lawyers, car salesman, politicians and social influencers. All the scum of the Earth.

So what did you do?

Nature took care of it with the Lower Sidebottom Tick.

I’ve never heard of that.

I’m not surprised. We locals had always known about it and we’d developed herd immunity. But with climate change, the ticks had bred up and the interlopers started getting bitten. We told them the effects were worse than Lyme Disease.

But surely they would have checked with health authorities.

Oh, they did. But we’d warned them the authorities would lie to prevent panic spreading across the country and, given the modern propensity towards conspiracy theories, they believed us.

And did it work?

As you can see, it did. Now outsiders won’t even visit, let alone live here. Hence the absence of luxury yachts, surf-skis, health food franchises, gastropubs and other abominations.

Extraordinary. On a more pleasant note, it’s a beautiful garden you have here, full of all sorts of exotic plants.

Yes, they make an excellent breeding ground for all sorts of insects. Would you like a tour? Best to tuck your trousers into your socks.

Sorry, must run. I’ve got a yoga class and I need to pick up some kambucha along the way. Another time perhaps.

This piece of photo prompt insanity was written for the weekly Unicorn Challenge and this week it stars the progenitors of said challenge in all their Gallic philosophical finery.

CE: Damn, the road is closed.

Jenne: But only for 0 metres.

CE: So it’s not closed?

Jenne: Of course it is. That’s why the barrier is there. To prevent people from going 0 metres. You know what some people are like. Give them a centimetre and they’ll take a metre.

CE: So if we didn’t want to go more than 0 metres we wouldn’t be concerned about the road closure? This is the Catch-22 of road closures. If we wanted to go more than 0 metres, then this is not the road we should be on. Only crazy people would want to be on a road that’s closed for 0 metres. So sane people would not be on this road.

Jenne: Exactly. We are the problem.

CE: I suppose we could always cycle or walk.

Jenne: Then what would we do with the car?

CE: We’d come back for it after we’ve done what we came to do?

Jenne: But what if they re-open it while we’re not here? We’d be blocking the road and people would be upset.

CE: Well, we’d just have to explain we were only gone for 0 minutes. Hardly any inconvenience to a reasonable person.

Jenne: Excellent! We could even say that, like Schrodinger’s cat, we may or may not have been gone at all. That would teach them not to mess with a couple of canny Scots in the home country of Jean-Paul Satire.

A wee bit of what passes for teenage romance this week, in response to the photo prompt posted in the Unicorn Challenge .

It was in the shadows behind the wall, just before that first streetlight, that I made my first fumbling teenage attempts at taking the virginity of Wendy Posingthwaite, the vicar’s daughter. I knew she liked me because she totally ignored me, except for when she whispered behind her hand to her girlfriends and they’d all burst out laughing.

One Saturday night, after the Blue Light Disco, she let me walk her home. Well, at least she didn’t say anything when I followed her and, besides, she lived next door. As we neared her front gate, she stopped and steered me behind the wall and gave me my first kiss, a kiss that seemed to last forever, until she said, like a bad ventriloquist, ‘Ar aces are uck ether’. She meant ‘our braces are stuck together’.

As randy opportunistic teenage boys are wont to do, I took advantage of the situation to attempt to unhook her bra, at which point, suspiciously quickly, our braces were suddenly unmeshed. She slapped my face and ran off laughing and I began to imagine how quickly her tale would spread around the school.

We weren’t Catholics so I don’t imagine her father could have me excommunicated from our church but he could tell my parents, a fate worse than death in our household. In the end, it seemed she didn’t tell anyone and next week, after the disco, she waited for me outside and I noticed she’d taken off her braces.

This piece of alternative truth was written for the weekly photo prompt Unicorn Challenge from Jenne Gray and CE Ayr. Join in the fun with up to 250 words of your own.

Inspired by an article about a former Acting Prime Minister. What a performance. Trigger warning: You might want to skip the bit about a woman waking up to find a mouse chewing on her eyeball.

Mouse plague army should be sent to scratch the faces of animal activists’ children, says Australia’s acting PM – Turbo Celebrity

‘Grandpa, what’s that sculpture in your back garden?’

In answering, Grandpa carefully avoided having to pronounce his grandson’s given name, #tafarian.

‘Oh, that’s a piece I bought many years ago from an artist called Leonardo de Capuccino. He was considered the Rodin of rodents. It commemorates the Great Giant Mouse Plague of 1946.’

‘But how did they get so big, Grandpa?’

‘Science gone wrong, my boy. Spectacularly. They used to be tiny furry creatures that could eat their way through anything. And they did. In plague proportions they brought Australian agriculture to its knees. So scientists invented a poison that killed them by the truckload and they were thought to be extinct. But a few survived and the poison mutated them into giants. Again they bred up in plague proportions until it appeared they would destroy the entire continent.’

Wide-eyed, the boy said ‘What happened then, Grandpa?’

‘Well, the Americans lent us a few H-bombs in exchange for our mortal souls for perpetuity. We nuked the pesky big creatures. The former Garden of Eden that was the inland became a barren desert and the Army bulldozed all the dead ones together to make Ayers Rock.’

‘Oh, Grandpa, Uluru existed for a long time before that!’

‘Boy, your AI humanoid teachers will say anything to cover up our sordid past. I bet they haven’t even told you that Tasmania used to be connected to the mainland and we had to dig a bloody great ditch to keep the Devils out.’