Two stories on the topic of LOVE

…because LOVE is all that stands between us and them. Between the Devil and the deep blue meanies. Because Lil’ Hipsy said she wanted to write something about Love, and I said, crazy! Me too. The rules: 1,000 words only! One day to write it, one to edit. So here are both of them!

IF YOU have a good short Story, 1,000 – 2,000 words on the theme of LOVE SAVES email it to me and if it’s good enough, I’ll publish it here!

STORY 1

DEAR EARTH

By LORNA MALAN (Lil’ Hipsy!)

The letter you hold within your hand will have come to you in many different ways, the content of this letter will have first created within you a deep feeling that you cannot at first explain, it will “tug at your heart strings” ( a phrase I learnt while observing you for some 30 years) thereafter you will wonder, doubt will start forming and conspiracy will be the ‘reason’ for some 8 billion people receiving the same letter. It does not entirely matter what you think, I only ask that you read it until the end. 

My name is Squish and whilst I sit watching my class full of yungins learn the very complexities of your planet, I think back to the year I was sent on an experimental mission from my galaxy to yours. They never sent the ‘big thinks’ on these types of missions, as much as my elders tried to make me feel important, I knew it was only because I was a ‘small think’ and they had no other use for me.

My genetic make-up was different and I had what you would call an ‘under developed brain’ – what they didn’t know though and the very reason I am writing this to you is that , that mission changed the course of the lives of so many ‘little thinks’ for eternities to come and I feel I need to return the favour, by uncovering the paramount essence you hold, however blanketed by the concrete weight of how you in fact lack ‘little thinks’ , the funny thing is that you are capable of both little and big thinks all at once, you are extraordinary and I hope this letter helps you in some way, to separate the rush from the river that runs so deep within you and that you remember the one thing that now has an entire mission named after it, from another world, with what you call aliens inhabiting it.

First of all, we are not the silly looking beings you think we are, I laughed so much hearing all your conspiracy stories and reading books or watching films where you depict us as, quite frankly very scary looking creatures, gosh I too hope there isn’t that sort of reality out there. The only real difference between us is that we are much shorter than you, a little more flexible and most of us have access to both sides of our brains, yes you got it, the ‘little thinks’ well we don’t, so it makes us much like you but even you have more brain power than a ‘little think.’ We also don’t quite die, we only age enough to become elders and we fall asleep only to wake up some hundred years later having regenerated. It’s a whole warped story and I still find it somewhat weird.

Many of us roam Earth, we have one other ‘super power’- we cannot be seen by you, somehow your mind blocks us out, maybe it’s not so much us that have this so called super power but it’s you that is able to sort reality from what you call delusion, very few earthlings have been able to spot us and when they do, they go entirely bonkers. It’s not really good for them because they end up in much trouble with their fellow earthlings, some even locked away, I’ve cried for nights on end watching this happen, little thinks are particularly empathic. 

I was sent here at the age of 10 to watch and observe your behaviour, the elders were particularly interested in how you held the capacity of little and big thinks at once without having full access to your brain. I didn’t quite understand my task but I knew that I wasn’t going back home from the way my poor mum cried. I was an outcast but even still I had a job for my planet and that was to relay information that could help our world grow. Just by my thoughts, they received that information instantly.

I started off by learning the very many different languages, cultural behaviours and religious ethics you hold, as a small think, everything was somewhat confusing in the beginning, I couldn’t understand the way you made many insignificant things such big thinks. I knew from then, I really never wanted to be a big think at all. I learnt your behavioural patterns, your emotions, how they coincided but I knew what your trouble was soon enough and I did this by remaining who I was – a little think. 

It started off one day as I sat in the rain and felt it pounding on my skin, it was a beautiful feeling, I saw how other earthlings enjoyed it too, some sat smiling, others crying, some jumping in puddles with those funny looking shoes that grew up their legs, some twirling around and singing, some couples touching lips with each other, later I found out this was called kissing and of course others shying away from it with umbrellas, some rushing to get under cover, some swearing their gods for this downpour. 

On a different day, I sat in the heat of the summer sun, as a small think it was much easier for me to take in the ‘smaller’ details, I searched for a word to describe how it felt to have the warmth of your sun penetrate me and the smell of the air whilst little creatures roamed around spilling magical dust on flowers as I watched them grow and bloom, I saw how they made earthlings happy too, I watched how some would pick flowers and at first I was enraged until I saw them smiling and passing it over to their significant other, causing another bloom that created the perfect colours surrounding them, I couldn’t as a small think quite place what exactly this feeling was called, it bothered me to extremities and I set out on a mission to keep observing the little thinks earthlings had until I could place it, until I could find a word that matched it.

I found myself visiting places where your elders’ gathered children who had no parents, those who had suffered a great deal and needed shelter from much of the harsh realities of your world, only because that concrete weight you carried around on your shoulders, overpowered this magic within you. I saw these children being held by people they didn’t know and hearing their heartbeats slow to a rhythm of bliss, I could feel their hearts relaxing into what you call safety and finally content. I watched them play and sing, embrace one another and grow. These little thinks they had started growing on me. 

I visited many different homes and observed patterns, some weren’t as lovely as others but in every situation I encountered with earthlings, they had these small thinks that changed everything, while they had very big thinks too, it was clear to me that big thinks is what drew them away from little thinks but through it all they seemed to find a way pull through some dark places, ones that left them dreary and sad. 

I had started jotting them down as I got older because I couldn’t quite keep track anymore. I had a little blue spotted diary with Squishy written on it, given to me by my mum if I had trouble forgetting. She told me little thinks generated a malfunction when they came of a certain age but that writing helped with memory. 

Here are a few extracts:

*An aged lady crossed the road today but she was certain to meet her fate if a young gentlemen hadn’t run up to help her with her cart. She smiled at him and told him to be blessed by God, her aged face turned young when her smile reached her eyes. 

*A mother caresses her yungin after a tumble and kisses her little foot chanting “mommy’s kisses make the booboos go away” the yungin believes her and smiles, tears still visible but again I hear the rhythm of the yungings heart as it slows down to this feeling the mother passes on.

*A young man pushes his wife in chair with wheels because she cannot walk, he speeds around the corner with her and she laughs hysterically…they go on to singing a song about never getting old and never dying young. How complex. That feeling is there again. 

* Men come off flying saucers dressed in a strange green, to meet their wives and yungins, they cry, they smile, the wives jump into the men’s arms, the kids hold up little cards and they walk off into their own sunset. Their heart rhythms speak to me again.

* A blind man pets his overly hairy dog as it licks his hand then guides it to where he needs to find the thick paste, he is looking for to put on his white squared food piece, the man smiles and again I feel the rhythm of both their hearts. This feeling is becoming more intense.

*They are putting a child into the ground, he is no longer of beating heart, he has died, this is unfamiliar to me. I watch how people cry, their eyes don’t stop overflowing with tears, the mother puts her hand on the casket, lays a single white rose across it and utters “what is grief, if not love persevering” in her mind it is a quote she knows and holds close and for the first time she uses it and utters “my dear soul, I wish I had written those words but today I say unto you, the memory of your most beautifully intense and energetic love will be what saves me. Rest now my child”

It was right there, right in that moment I knew, that the word I had been searching for to match every rhythm I felt, was “love”. It was always love that persevered, it was love that stopped hearts from combustion as they sped up from anguish or fear. It was love that held families together, it was love that made children believe in magic, it was love that made earthlings kinder, it was love that bonded animals with people, it was love that set young adults out to accomplish dreams and in the same way it was love that was there to pick them up if they didn’t. It was love that kept people holding on when they could have let go, it was those that held so much love within that they could make those who saw the harsher side of this world believe in love again. 

This was the biggest think I had ever encountered as a small think and in that moment, I woke up laying in my mums’ arms while she smiled at me, her own aged eyes filled with tears and in that very moment I whispered to her ” It’s love mama, love saves.” 

Years passed and my story was in every classroom. I wrote a book about love; I taught the elders and went on to become the Ketas first little think to have amalgamated little thinks into a big think and change the course of the world we knew. I took yungins on missions to earth several times to experience the rhythms I had once felt from heart beats, to see the way their little thinks meant so much more than their big thinks. 

I grew old and as my time came closer, I became a teacher. I sit here knowing you’re about to receive this letter. I also sit here knowing my time as a great elder is to come and I’ve chosen to spend it on earth so that I too may utter the words “what is grief if not love persevering” and die as one should, having known it was love who saved me too. 

Squish

STORY 2

Love Saves

Bert Love was forty-three when he realised he was dead. It wasn’t a sudden realisation; he had been carrying on much as usual. Tuesday had followed Wednesday, then came Monday exactly as before. Then, he had slowly become aware that something wasn’t quite right.

He checked the calendar. ‘Mildred!’ He called down the hall. ‘Come here a minute won’t you?’ A door opened further down the corridor and out she came, his eminently blowsy spouse of thirty years. ‘What now,’ she groaned grumpily. ‘I’m in the middle of making gruel. It’s not a good time to disrupt.’

‘Mildred darling dear, corruption of my fetishes!’ Both enjoyed inventing bizarre affectionate aphorisms. ‘Blinding spire of my erections, I beg you: what day is it?’

‘Why,’ she said, ‘most banal and beatific of  Berts, it’s the day before yesterday as it always is. Which is the day before the day before that!’

‘But’, said the Bert, ‘fustian feather of the Finnish forests, potato of the pines, surely by that, time is going backwards?’

‘Oh somnolent sweet sibilant symphony of the seas, exactly right! Have you not heard of that universal tautologous truism, that secret of the spheres – that explains all, encapsulates all, sums the whole of everything in a few words?’

With that she floated up to him, so that her whispering mouth approached his shellish ear. ‘There is,’ she whispered, ‘Life after death!’

‘Really!’ Bert scoffed. ‘anomalous amateur, how bland and bibulous! How often have I visited All, and his sibling, Sundry Religious, every brand your baffled brain may consider, from the Cross-eyed to the Jubilists, from the Brotha to the I Slams, the Jades, the Hind Quarters and even the Bar, hi! Each one, dearest desecrator of delirium, says this: ‘Behold there is Life After Breath! Trust me and it shall be yours. Quoth Erat Demon Stratum!’’

 ‘How nearly! How Almost!’ Mildred cried, clapping her hands in glee. ‘I almost believed ALL of them, till I died!’

‘Pardon?’ For once Bert was baffled. ’What? Why do you say that? Hark! Art dead my love? Or mad in the head? Yet here you are, grinding gruel, boiling beans, burning breakfast as is ever my want! The dead hath no breakfast making powers. Surely! Perfect pudding of a patient partner. Or surely I could not see and hear you as clear as clear?’

‘Ah,’ sighed the woman spectrally. ‘dearest Bert Love. And were you not dead too, you could not.’

Bert swallowed. This information was entirely shocking to him. Only little ago, he was shaking his head, laughing uproariously as he leapt from the roof of the building! Hang on, perhaps that was a clue.

Wait. Just wait. With a horny hand, he reached deeply into his memory. And this is what he found.

*                 *                 *                 *

It was a cloudy day in late May, when Bert Love received the letter. He wasn’t often in receipt of letters. As Network Manager for Grace Notes plc, almost every communication he received was electronic. His life was interspersed with bits and bytes, and pieces of paper were rare. 

         At first he set it aside, rather as a curiosity or something precious to be enjoyed at  leisure, once he had finished setting up the Quondam database for the Sales Team. It was a big job but one he found interesting, and let’s face it, fun. 

         Yet his eyes strayed continually from his screen to the envelope lying next to the keyboard. Fascinating. A hand-addressed envelope. A stamp! Not quite straight and square on the whiteness of the top right hand corner which displayed the Queen’s head as if she was still going strong, still in charge of something. Royal Mail. 

         ‘Mr A Love

         IT Manager

         Grace Notes Ltd

         Albermarle Crescent

         London WC2 5LG’

         Three mistakes. It should read Network Manager. The Company was plc not Ltd. It couldn’t be official. It wasn’t notice to quit. Or a lottery win. And only his mother called him Albert. To everyone else he was Bert.

         Perhaps he should open it.

         No! Still the Database design called! Integrating the advertising, monetising the Social Media responses, ensuring all the formulas worked – – ! Wait. Wait till lunch break.

*           *                 *                 *

They crowded gawping in horror at the mess on the street. Blood, cloth, snapped bones. Some looked up at the horrified faces looking down from the Grace Notes’ cafeteria balcony on the twelfth floor. Somebody’s shaking fingers dialled 999. Somebody shaking fingers prised the note from the hard-clamped fingers.

                   *                 *                 *                 *

‘I perceive you might be right, my sprite, my flight of glee. Seems I am dead! How did this come to be?’

Mildred sighed phlegmatically. ‘Twas the note I wrote’ quoth she.

‘Twere yours! Those words scrawled upon paper – your paws!’ He sputtered. 

‘How sad,’ she said, ‘That a mere jest could break your head. And mine!’

‘I recall….’ Quoth he, ‘Culled in our prime!’

*           *                 *                 *

Extract from the Evening Standard, 15^th May 2023

“….A lovers’ lunch date ended in tragedy this afternoon as both Mr Albert Love (34) and his wife Mildred (30) met a terrible end in  Albermarle Crescent this afternoon. Witnesses describe how they saw Mr Love (33) waving frantically from the twelfth-floor balcony of the staff restaurant, apparently trying to get the attention of his wife who was passing by on the street below. Beano Jobson, a window-cleaner on an adjacent building described what happened. ‘He was laughing his head off, shouting down to her to gain her attention. Then she saw him and looked up and exactly at that moment, he lost his hold and fell twelve floors, straight onto the head of his missus. She didn’t have a chance!’

*           *                 *                 *

Here be the note, saved by me from the cold dead fingers: “Dear Bert, See! I can still write! If you get this, let’s do lunch! I’m in the West End this afternoon! You say where! Big xxx Mildread”

IF YOU have a good short Story, 1,000 – 2,000 words on the theme of LOVE SAVES email it to me and if it’s good enough, I’ll publish it here!