It was a game that no one enjoyed.
The book I’ve been working on, if it constitutes a book, is called The Last Crisis, a title I like because of the acronym it forms and because of the dual-meaning of the word last.
Some of the stories date back to before I Would Haunt You if I Could (available in paperback and scandalously inexpensive ebook from its astonishing publisher here!), but most of them have been written over the last year and a half, fifteen months of which have been defined by M.E./CFS and what the nice posh talkative doctor at the fatigue clinic termed ‘episodic acute depression’, which has a nicely official ring to it.
I read somewhere that the publishing trend, post-Covid (if in fact we are post-Covid), would be for cosy, happy fare. Which doesn’t suggest much hope for this particular project. The stories in TLC are studies in anxiety & despair.
Several of these pieces have been published already:
‘Funny Faces’ in The Dark, issue #80
‘Nothing is Wasted’ in The Dark, issue #86
‘How the Cat Woman Became the Giant Lady, Circa 1995’ in The Dark, issue #90
I posted a couple of the shorter pieces (I can’t stand the term flash fiction) the other day. Here are two more.
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THE THIRD GAME
It was a game no one enjoyed. The aim of the game was to appear to enjoy it. The more you appeared to enjoy it, the better you performed: appearing to enjoy the game was the way you improved your position. You were pretty sure that if you improved your position some specific but indeterminate amount, you would start to enjoy it. (Whole industries sprung up to answer the question of this specific but indeterminate amount: quacks, gurus, analysts.) That was how the people who got really good at the game appeared to enjoy it, because they actually did enjoy it. They were winning and they enjoyed it. Their enjoyment obscured the fact that they weren’t really enjoying it. Sometimes, if you paid attention—you have to pay attention—you noticed a flicker of doubt in their expression—something less than a flicker. Sometimes that was all it took. Doubt could tank your position. Once doubt had set in, collapse became inevitable. God, the tension of it, the excitement—from that first flicker of doubt to the collapse! That, you are sure, is the only part of the game anyone actually enjoys—that span of time between the first appearance of doubt in an opponent’s expression to the sudden, total collapse of their position; once the actual collapse happens, it’s a pretty sordid and unpleasant thing. Pitiable, really—the enjoyment is all in the build-up. Sometimes you wonder if this is the real game. The thought heartens you. It means maybe you don’t need to improve your position. But there are others behind you, inspecting you closely. They’re watching your expression for that flicker of doubt—less than a flicker. You wonder is there a third game—something else: anything.
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One venue that rejected this piece provided comments from two readers: one, that it would benefit from more concrete detail, the other that it could be even shorter and was a bit repetitive. That one also assumed it was about social media.
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PROBABLE CAUSE
Annie went to the doctor because she was sick and in pain, the third doctor she had seen in as many months. She told the doctor she was sick and in pain, but he could detect no recognisable cause. Because he could detect no recognisable cause, he told her she was not sick, she was not in pain—the third doctor to say the same thing in as many months. ‘But I am sick,’ she told him. ‘I am in pain all of the time.’ He looked at her, then glanced down at his watch.
‘I am sick—’ she said, gathering her strength, what strength she had, ‘of doctors.’
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That one probably won’t make the cut, but it made me laugh, which is the main criterion of success, at least for me. No shade to doctors, though. One of my best friends is a doctor.
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If anyone would like to read some of the longer, unpublished stories, let me know. I could use some opinions. The brain fog has been particularly bad this week: I feel like I’ve been walking around cross-eyed every time I try to concentrate.
Although I’ve gotten this far without it kicking in, so maybe today will be better.
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