Festive Party Foods

Prawn Ring
Beef Cube
Ham Tesseract
Chicken Cylinders
Tofu Venus de milo
Quorn Henge

(This post was going to contain photoshops, but then my brother walked in on me photoshopping packaging for a quorn henge and I questioned my life choices. We watched a film instead.)

Steel

To do this job, you need nerves of steel. And a neck of rubber. And a nose made of marzipan. To be honest, it helps if you have a thorax of lithium. And alabaster feet. And ankles of weetabix. And amethyst shins. To do this job, ideally, you should have nylon ears. And thighs of dough. And marshmallow teeth.

I am not entirely sure what this job is.

Dear Caller

Dear caller, 

There are no operatives available to take your call. All available operatives are busy. They caught a bus to Southampton. They’re in a Pizza Express, laughing, and chatting, and learning about each others’ lives. Like Kevin, from finance, is a widow. Did you know that? His wife died age 32. And just after his father won the lottery, man, Kevin’s lived an interesting life. And Arlene, from accounts, is talking to Steve from service fulfilment. It turns out they are very distant cousins. And don't like each other very much. In the afternoon, the operatives will take part in a team building exercise run by a guy who went freelance because he couldn’t bear to stand pricks like this.

Please stay on the line.

Extremely Ergonomic

Dear all, 

Some of the longer-serving staff members may be sad to hear that Craig Wilson, from accounts, is no longer processing PO’s with the efficiency and wit that we came to know and love. The Finance Department ordered him a new ergonomic chair, but accidentally ordered an extremely ergonomic chair, which he sat in, and refused to leave. According to Debora (from payroll) his eyes rolled back in glorious ecstasy, and he started moaning gently to himself and dribbling. They tried talking to him, but he seemed unable to hear them, and when they attempted to forcibly remove him from the chair, he began to bite and kick anyone who came within distance of his jaws and/or feet. He’s just slowly atrophying away, in his office on the second floor, and a state of furniture-induced euphoria. Accordingly, unpaid invoices should instead be forwarded for the attention of Danny Clevinger.
Additionally, if you spot an extremely ergonomic chair, DO NOT SIT IN IT.

Yours, 

Aiden

Inktober: 02 Mindless

Day Two's prompt was Mindless, so here's Jimmy Urine from Mindless Self Indulgence. (Based on a photo I believe was taken by one Claire Marie Vogel). If you're a fan of experimental electronic music, I can't recommend his solo album EURINGER enough. The first time I listened to it, it left me with that weird spacey feeling Blue Jam causes.)

Wicking

"This top," the label says, "is moisture-wicking. If you go for a run, it will absorb your sweat. It will absorb the sweat of the runners around you. It will absorb the duck pond, if you run past a duckpond, and will leave the ducks as desiccated, feathery husks. It will absorb the tears of the children who were feeding the ducks, and it will leave the bread that they were throwing a sandy residue. It will render all cakes, biscuits, and pastry products in a five-mile radius a crumbly disappointment. Chefs will lose their jobs. To be honest," the label says, "We regret developing this moisture-wicking top. Please don't buy it." 

Cosmo

Graham screamed like a kettle.
Allison put down the lemon.
The copy of Cosmo lay open on the ground.
She'd done it again.
Page 24 was "10 ways to please your man".
Page 42 was "10 ways to ensure a tender steak."
On the barbeque, the steak sizzled in whipped cream. 
And fishnets. 

Eleven word story

Graham began to suspect that he was in the wrong abbatoir. 

The Bullet

The bullet missed the policeman’s heart.
He had enjoyed their time together,
and wished they had parted on better terms.

Jeans

Steven Prentice killed the toothfairy. He hadn't meant to. He'd put a glass over her and slid a piece of card underneath, and meant to take her to the open window - to release her into the cold October night. 

But one of her legs had got caught. 
And she'd started writhing. 
And it seemed kinder to put her out of her misery. 

So Steven Prentice had lifted the glass and brought his hand down to the table, pressing his palm against the wood until no light shone through. 
He wiped the gunk on his jeans.
Then watched Question Time. 
It was disappointing. 

Ghosts

Michael Kent could see ghosts.
He couldn’t hear them, though.
He took lipreading classes to learn to communicate with them.
It turned out they were racist.
Even for the 1800s.

Cream

The anti-ageing cream worked. Steve Harrington, civil engineer, 35, stared into the mirror. The face of a seven year old stared back. He had only applied the cream to his face. The effect was unsettling, a boy's head on a flabby, adult torso. He had a meeting with the Sakamoto Corporation at 12. Should he apply it to the rest of him, to even it out? He settled for applying a fake moustache.
If anything, it made his face look younger. 

Boneless

"Boneless Apples," the packing said. "£3.75". Steve Prentice didn't realise that apples could contain bones. But now that this packet had introduced the possibility of it, was he willing to pay extra to ensure that his apples contained no gristle? He was. He placed them in his basket, next to the free range grapes and low fat lightbulbs. 

Product Recalls

1) Tesco is recalling  its own-brand 500g bags of lentils.
They may contain broken glass.

2) Asda is recalling its own-brand 500g bags of broken glass.
They may contain lentils. 

3) Persil is recalling its three litre bottles of non-bio fabric detergent. There is a manufacturing fault in the packaging, which means that the user is likely to lock eyes with their reflection when pouring, and reflect upon the fact that life is transient, morality socially constructed, and that they spend their Saturday afternoon not seeing elderly family members or basking in the company of friends, but comparing the labels on different bottles of fabric softener. Full refunds will be given.

Short Story: The Man Who Broke the Fetish Engine

Publication news: a story what I wrote appears in the latest issue of Popshot (The Fantasy Issue). The idea for this one came from browsing Amazon. I've bought enough stuff on there that the algorithms which predict my purchases have become disconcertingly accurate. The recommendations show me what I genuinely want to buy rather than what I think I want to buy or what I should probably buy... and to be honest, it's not a flattering picture. This story was an exaggeration of that idea, featuring a machine that offers you up the fantasy you really want (not the fantasy you think you want). 

That famous saying

Nature abhors a vacuum.
Dyson hates a hoover.

Stone

Alan Morningside was turning to stone. He'd looked at a gorgon, but over a slow dial-up internet connection. He'd closed the browser as soon as he'd realised what he was looking at, but it was too late. His fingers had ossified. His toes felt stiff. His shoulders felt heavy. 

The stone-ness spread slowly. He quit his job, and did his bucket list. He rode a horse. Saw the pyramids. Sank with dolphins. 

And here he was, four months later. The savings had run out, and the stone extended just past his wrists. Was it wrong to wish it would happen faster?

The Umbrella

David Blake turned into an umbrella. His parents were disappointed, but not surprised. For months now, he had been changing – limbs lengthening, voice deepening, and skin covered in a slick of grease which seemed to bubble up from the surface. The umbrella seemed like a logical climax to that unsettling precursor.

The umbrella was many things that David was not; neat, quiet, and useful. It sat politely at the dinner table. It didn’t rant about the climate emergency.  It didn’t scream that Conservatives were killers and it hated, hated, hated them.

The Blakes continued as usual, dropping David off at school, and collecting him at four from the same kerb. The other parents looked on with pity. They were skeptical. “He’s not an umbrella’, they said. “He’s run away. The umbrella’s what he left behind.” But David’s parents knew the truth.

He was an umbrella now, and it was something of an improvement.

Adequate Danes

If all Great Danes are Great, does this mean that they are all, in fact, merely Average Danes?

Short story: Ghosts

This is a link to a short story what I wrote, what was published on Daily Science Fiction. It was inspired by a surreal situation my brother found himself in, where he was trying to sort out some tax stuff over the Christmas period, and HMRC send him an activation code which, due to the slower post, expired three days before it arrived. Watching him try to navigate automated phone lines with a problem that wasn't supposed to be technically possible was equal parts hilarious and terrifying. 

The NDA

Steven Harper signed an NDA. When he woke up the next day, he couldn't remember what it was about. He wanted to ask someone, but wasn’t sure if asking about the NDA would break the NDA. Or who to ask.
He never spoke again.