Radio static

Cherry
Story of the week

By celticman

Thu, 25 Sep 2014
  • 6562 reads
21 comments
 

I go for a drive. My thoughts follow the road. Squeezing up next to each other. I brake. Everyone hurries when they’re younger. Everything a bother when you’re old. You never get it, at the time.

I hit traffic. Heavy traffic. Late-returner’s frenzy. But it’s too late. I built myself a tower—a refuge, a place to be that shelters me and mine.  

I pass drunks besotted by drinks and bars. Spiels and wheels both turn into time. Anticipation of the next turn is better when I know where I’m going.

Remembering pens us in. I’ve nailed loyalty. Buildings argue with each other, cut each other fat and thin. I’ve imagined love. No baludstrades, leading to a safe soft blob of green.  A different life and what could be, but life didn’t agree. It left me a bookmark, flowers by the flickering light of the lamppost. It could be any post where dogs pee. I refuse to believe or disagree. I just keep going.

Shut in. Shut up. Come closer life said. I was too new. Too intense. Always vaulting the next step to get ahead.

Now traffic and silence, the screech of a horn. I brake in time. The beat of a heart, never so clear, until it’s not here.

Success cauterised my soul. Our picture together was too bright, too cluttered with new things. Something is moving and it’s not just the car. Radio static.  Some sprocket is broken. I can no longer do it this way. Just speak to me. I need to know it didn’t have to be that way. Please tell me not to move on. I refuse to believe the fact that you’re gone.

Death and driving. I follow that road. 

Certificate PG
Story
Drama

Comments

Submitted by celticman on

thanks Noo. Just trying something new. 

 

Submitted by scratch on

"I pass a bar besotted by drunks."  Needs revision, the bar can't be besotted it's the drunks who are that.  Maybe:

"I pass a bar, it's packed with besotted drunks".  Or:

"I pass a bar full of besotted drunks".  If you want to personify the bar:

"I pass a bar, it's besotted with the drunks".

Very good as usual celt.

Sorry to sound (be) pedantic but I know you like that sort of thing.

 

Submitted by celticman on

I love pedantic. I was clashing subject and object. It worked in my head!

 

Submitted by Philip Sidney on

There's something trapped in this piece, something trying to get out, but the relentless drive cntinues  Hope is a roadside tribute, bleak, i hope a new road appears around the corner.

Submitted by scratch on

There's a claustrophobic desperation and chronic sadness in this piece of work celt.  Very hard to read without wanting to reach out.  Only those that know what it's like can write about it with such a convincing and frantically wise voice.

Should have said before.

 

Submitted by Bee on

I found this piece deeply moving. It has weight and I felt the weighing down of it. 

Bee

Submitted by celticman on

thanks guys. Move onto next piece. 

 

Submitted by VeraClark on

Beautifully put.

 

Submitted by catherine poarch on

It's like one of those moments we can get of detailed clarity, whether happy or sad. I loved the physical and mental world meshing, and great lines about the buildings and remembering pens us in. Definitely worth the trying of something new. Move on to the next piece proudly!

 

Submitted by celticman on

cheers Vera and catherine. glad it worked. You confirm that. 

 

Submitted by blighters rock on

This reads like a poem and I bet you were writing it like one, but those line breaks are tiresome and sometimes we just have to leave the right road and go wrong. So often have I started what I thought was a poem and thought to hell with structure and people and all the other things that can get in the way, but, by reading this, I realise it's all about the moment; that time when things collide and smack into eachother and we just leave it where it is. This is the first bit of flash that I've seen you do and it's also probably the first time I've seen a long-distance writer write something that started grudgingly as a poem and turned out to be such an acid-tongued, regret-related flash at the traffic lights of life.

You're all unbound up now but I'd love to know where the wotsits that brilliant thing you started about the deathwish alcy who couldn't stop going down the pub is? I stopped looking every day for it months ago but would dearly love to see more of him. Not an easy topic but you've slapped all the right ingredients in. Independence? Who needs it? We're all going the same way. Loads of tasty one-liners here and a well deserved SOTW. The best in a while. It should have got poem of the week too but that would be cheating. Good pick, insert and scratch (no crawly bumlick intended)

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

oh yes this is very good - definitely a new style for you. I really enjoyed it - congratulations on being picked!

 

Submitted by celticman on

cheers blighers. It started with one line - my thoughts follow the road. the rest of it followed. I guess most stories are images that blend into words.

thanks insert - I'm sure if I bribed you as much as I did scratch you'd have picked it too.  

 

Submitted by jolono on

Fuck me CM this is so deep I could drown in it. I mean that in a good way!

There is a sense all the way through of movement. Trying to move on yet being pulled back time after time. Blighters has this nailed on. Brilliant is not an over exaggeration...

 

Submitted by celticman on

cheers jolono. shorts, lots of shorts, enough to get drunk on!

 

Submitted by thornwood on

Haunting and bleak. Well done.

Stephen d

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

Well written picture of the storyteller's state of mind.

Submitted by celticman on

cheers steve and elsie. 

 

Submitted by John Maguire on

Enjoyed travelling along this dark road of uncertainty. I found the piece claustrophobic/philosophical and it flows really well.

J

Submitted by K. N. Thorn on

This was such a hard read for me, I lost my sister to a car crash this summer.

-K.N. Thorn-

Submitted by celticman on

thanks for reading and commenting John. Sorry to hear about your sister KN. Little words. Big loss. It never balances.