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5 More Stories in Ruin

Universal Time

Rav works the Deep 7 as a Tempus man, ferrying light-speed adjusted time in his cargo-hold full of clocks. But the empire has been split by a gigantic schism, the worlds are seceding, so what is the value of universal time any more?

This is probably the first short story I wrote. Rav works for a dying empire and spends his free time living out the life he could`ve had in virtual reality, until the end really hits home.

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5 Stories in Ruins

Ruins feature prominently in my fiction, and continue to do so even though I haven`t posted any short stories here for a long time. I`m currently working on a trilogy set in my fantasy universe of Jabbler`s Mons, about halfway through the second book and revising the first. Since I`ve posted no fiction for a long time, I thought I`d reintroduce a few pieces through the lens of ruins. Here are 5 of my short stories, all about ruins.

Click through on any of them to read the full thing.

Sir Clowdishley and the Sea

Sir Clowdishley once explored the oceans, astronomer to the King, until his family died in the waves. Now he wanders the coasts of England in the ruins of his own once-glory.

I love the idea of a guy hell-bent on revenge on an inanimate object. There`s something beautifully self-deceptive about it, but also hopeful. Can he force the sea to relent?

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Gutterman

by Michael John Grist

I found him one mad marsh-walking night.  I was out in the bogs, I don’t know why, crossing wet rivers and wading through peat mulberry patches, dashings of filth worming their way into the cuffs of my suit turn-ups, smidgeons of muck smudging up and under my fingernails.  I must have trekked two thirds of a golf course and the circumference of a lengthways lake when I hit upon the road.

It was just an ordinary road.

It had double yellow parking lines and gutters and manhole covers, and it had curbs and sidewalks, and that central white line, dash dotted.  It had lights too, tall curving streetlamps, blotching out yellow glow like a line of fairy lights in the dark of the fens.

It was an ordinary road, except it went nowhere.  I could plainly see that, from my dell in the darkness.  It began from nothing to my left, ran down for 4 streetlamps, arcing like bare back ribs from an all eaten feast, then it ended, a neat line, and back onto the marsh grass and stalky reeds of the night, lit up white like a front row of soldiers in a firing line, floodlit and waiting.

Image from here.

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Building New Atlantis

by Michael John Grist

The first stage in the construction of New Atlantis went quietly, and the world scarcely noticed. It looked enough like a new ship or oil drilling platform on the satellite photos that no other nation would pay it too much mind.

It was only after that first stage was completed, and the second stage begun right next to it, that the world sat up and took notice.

“Is this a new fleet then?” asked the United Nations.

“Whose property is this?” asked NATO.

“How did you finance this?” asked the WTO.

“What shipping rights have you declared?” asked UNESCO.

“What about all the little animals?” asked the WWF.

New Atlantis sidestepped the questions. Lawyers were sent to spill nothing answers over the courts and demands. “Wait,” they said. “Give us time. We’re building something amazing here.”

Image from here.

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Waterfall

by Michael John Grist

I cut open his brain because he needed help.

“Help me,” he’d whispered, banging at my fly screen in the middle of the night, his wet shirtsleeves slapping against the cracked glass of my back porch slide door. “I need help.”

So I’d let him in. Set him down. Listened to him talk.

“There’s a waterfall,” he’d said, lying there in the dark kitchen slumped across my table. “I see it when I dream. And the dark creatures. There are dark creatures in the waterfall. Slithering in the cold, behind the falls.”

“Oh?” I’d said, keeping my voice low and steady and calm. “Is that so?”

“And there’s fish,” he’d said. “In the water. Falling down the falls. And they think they’re happy. Hoop de hoop. They think falling in this water is so much fun fun fun. But when they pass the cave, the cave behind the falls, it’s not so fun. They start to panic, they flail and twist, because they know. And sometimes, yes, they do die. The dark creatures, they reach out, and they catch the fish.”

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Tawnymoor – a poem

by Michael John Grist.

Make the feet for children’s shoes,

Down the alley, back from hell,

This whole town is made of iron

Witnesses shall turn to steam

Their Pockets filled with earth.

•

Grub the mantles, merrymen!

Seize the steam and come to me,

Here the zephyr rings on steel,

the judge becomes a narwhal’s spike

fill it with his blood.

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