Postcards And Telegrams

Hello from out here on the Thames Delta. I’m doing like twenty things at once as I write this, so this week is a bit of a placeholder while I get some shit done and build some longer letters for you.

OPERATIONS

POSTCARDS AND TELEGRAMS

The average number of words on a postcard was between forty and fifty. The average number of words in a telegram was around fourteen. Last year, I started playing with flash fictions again for the first time in more than a decade. Here’s some.

So tall, so somehow unreal, the unfathomable adults standing over us when we were small, and now they are all dead, and we look in old mirrors and see how tall and unreal and unfathomable we are now

Even to ourselves

The first ever time someone takes your hand, and the first thought you have is “this is everything” and the second is “what happens when it’s gone?”  The space of time between those thoughts defines the shape of your life.

Radio crawls up his arm and teases pixels out of his skin. Phone in hand and a name carved in his forearm. Slapping the prickled flesh dead before an unwanted call tunes into his ear.

He put the old, cold gun to the back of her head and the treasure of her memories became scattered rubies on the snow

Flat gray post-funeral day, feeling like a human shovel as you dig into your mother’s hoarded life-debris. At the bottom of the midden of corner-shop crap, the book of her crimes. And you recognise your father’s chest tattoo covering its scabbed boards.

I was born into the generations who lived with constant low level planetary fear. Every unexplained flash in the night sky could have been the start of nuclear war. Life seems duller now. And that’s why I bought the bombs. To brighten your nights. Smile.

In the times before, there was a local nutter who would walk around the shops smiling and nodding to himself, like “I understand what happens here. I belong here.” Today, with the sky gone black and the sun under attack, I envy that crazy bastard, I really do.

Look, Orrgo, at the Earth monsters: they only eat things that are alive, even the poor plants.  And they drink the fluid that the fish fuck in.  This is a hell world.

I wonder what horrors come out of their waste holes. Perhaps… perhaps one of us should put a finger up there.

Morse code: speaking across oceans in lightning and iron

And now we all speak in electricity and rare metals, and the world thunders

Still sparking telegrams

(average length of a telegram – 14 words. Ideal length of an email – 10 to 75 words)

ORBITAL

TELEGRAMS

I need more dead bodies in my life

++

Is it rude to send a congratulations card to your old employer’s cancer

++

I once knew someone who claimed that when hungover her teeth went soft.

++

That point at the end of winter when your bones feel damp.

++

I have reached the age where my October Surprise is that I’m still alive.

++

To be is to one day not be, so why ask the fucking question

++

I like to think that Wilbur Mercer’s middle name was Godot.

++

From my perspective, houses are roomy coffins with plumbing

++

Death eats your fingers first, so it’s easier to let go

++

runes are norse code stop hack hack hack slash slash slash hack hack hack

++

There’s a reason for everything, he said, taking off his face

Now: THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT audio drama podcast, DESOLATION JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION, THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM. 2025: FELL: FERAL CITY new printing, THE AUTHORITY Compact Edition

This is available as a print from the lordess.io store.

GOT MORE TIME?

LTD

My digital notebook.

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Okay, I’m heading back to the mines. Will write properly soon. Take care of yourself.

W