Aaron

The sun feels like it's everywhere. It's heat makes it all the way in to the shade. If you can find shade. The light seems to come down and sideways and upwards all at the same time.

There's not much of a breeze. But what there is, is coming from the north and manages to be warmer than the sunlight almost. Definitely more moist.

It's only 10am bit it feels like the days work's been done already.

The idea of steaming milk and having a hot coffee seems almost tiring. But he enjoys the ritual, the cups and saucers. The way that the coffee feels relaxing and stimulating at the same time. Sit down, relax and wind up.

From up on the side of the hill there's a view all of the way up the coast. The slight ruffle starting to show on the water hints at a sea breeze already. It might provide a bit of relief from the heat but it doesn't really feel like it'll help too much.

After the coffee it seems like time to do something else, some kind of action given that it's still really morning. 

Wearing only his still damp board shorts he grabs a towel and finds his jandals. It's not a short walk down the hill, and coming back up will undo the cooling of the swim but it looks too tempting. And what else is there really to do, on a hot summers day like this it seems the only right thing to do. 

It's shady going down the path that bisects the snaking road that winds more slowly up the hill. The humidity is in full force now though. It feels tropical, and a few palms in one of the back gardens he walks past only enhance that perception. 

Out from the last set of steps and back to the road, it flattens out for the last few hundred meters to the beach. There are a lot more people here than there was when we drove down this morning for a surf. The little beach community is coming alive, just a bit. A few cars driven out from the city for a day trip, and a few local ladies power walking their way to the cafe so that they can power walk their way back in an hour. Hardly broken a sweat but feeling justified in their lycra and white running shoes. 

On the beach there are fewer people than he expected but still he's not as alone as he likes. Alone like he is in the winter.

But winter is the furthest thing from his mind now. Furthest from anyone’s mind. The black sand has already soaked up enough energy from the sun to cause him to break into a trot and crosses the soft stuff. 

A little way up he finds a spot for his towel and lies down in the sun. Board shorts feeling a lot dryer now, and a slight shimmer rising from the heated sand. 

The tide has come in from this morning and is looking even more inviting than it did from the house. The heat is making him sleepy and he thinks that he could just have a bit of a sleep here on the beach for a while. It's only the thought that he hasn't bothered with sunscreen that forces him to lumber up to standing. 

He brushes the sand off his elbows and the sides of his legs where they were sprawled over the edge of the towel. A stretch and he puts on a yawn. 

It's a lazy walk towards the water after the jandlas are kicked over in the general direction of where he was lying. 

The coolness of the water on his feet feels refreshing without sending a shiver. Usually not too keen for the swim for its own sake, he's hungry for the release on this baking morning and wades out to about thigh deep. Times the approach of a wave with his dive and kicks off, and strokes out towards the endlessness of the ocean. 

The Fight

It all happened quickly, I didn’t have a chance to think about how I reacted. I just reacted. It was all instinct I guess, plus the training. I’d say that the training sinks in after a while. It must become second nature really, but I don’t remember actively thinking about the training, that’s for sure.

He came at me straight away, there wasn’t any period of sizing each other up. Which now that I think about it makes sense, he wouldn’t need much time to size me up. It would have been pretty apparent to him right from the outset that my size didn’t factor as a consideration for him. I was dwarfed by his bulk. Shoulders that rippled and a neck that looked as sturdy as the trunk of a tree that’d been planted before anyone alive could remember.

All I could do was try to distract and confuse him. There was no way I could engage in the fight directly. At least not at the beginning when he was charging at me and throwing his bulk around. Somehow I managed to for a while, and the longer it was that I remained unscathed the more confident I got. He was starting to tire as well, after his initial rush we almost settled into a pattern. He’d come at me, I’d manage to evade him, we’d stop and look at each other for a moment, and then he’d come at me again.

People had gathered in a circle around us, witnessing rather than watching. They seemed to feed off my dodging and I think a large part of my growing confidence was due to their buzz. It carried on for a while, this attack and evade, his tiring accelerated but I could see that this wasn’t going to lead to an end on it’s own, it was only making things easier for when I’d eventually have to do something.

There wasn’t any way, even with his growing fatigue, that I could engage in the fight physically, he’d kill me in no time if I tried. But fortunately I had weapons. If it was an even fight I wouldn’t think of using them. But as I’ve told you, this wasn’t even close to being an even fight without them. I was just levelling the playing field.

I hit him with the weapons, driving the sharp end into him. It was terrifying the way he just shrugged them off. They hardly altered his course, I was still in defensive mode but I could see that it was speeding up the process of breaking down his strength. He was getting sloppy, staggering a little bit. He was beginning to be less and less danger to me with every charge. Still dangerous though, but less predictable than his precise early attacks. Easier to avoid but harder to predict. I could see that he knew he was starting to lose. It could get ugly if he let go completely, he might get hurt more but could certainly do damage to me in the process. I didn’t want him to go completely wild. I had to take my chance.

I didn’t enjoy it. I’m not proud of it. When the people watching cheered I only felt sadness. I wiped the blood from my sword and hung my head. I did what I had to do, but I would like to avoid doing it again. After all of that training I decided right there that I was walking away from this. It was my one and only bullfight, I wont be doing it again. 

The Man in the Hat

It’s not very common, but he wears a hat. It’s not a baseball cap or anything like that, it’s a bowler hat and he wears it proudly almost every day. He’s developed something of a “look” around the hat. Although he’d probably cringe at the phrase. People recognise him by it, friends and strangers, mostly everyone he comes across on a regular or semi-regular basis. Along with the hat he’s most often dressed in a suit as well. He has his suits tailored rather than buying off the rack. It’s an expense that’s probably a little bit beyond his means but he makes sacrifices in other areas and manages to get by. He considers dress to be important, the measure of a man.

On this day it happens to be raining so he carries his umbrella with him. It’s black with a wooden handle, spring loaded so it will open itself at the press of the button. His suit is a three piece today so he’s also wearing a tie. It’s odd that he doesn’t always wear a tie but he feels that it’s the outer layer of the suit and shoes and hat that are most important. A tie is nice, if warranted. But before he buttons on a waistcoat he usually ties a tie around his neck first. A modest half Windsor knot, noting to big or too skinny, fashion neutral is his motto.

Fully decked out he makes his way around town, sheltering from the rain as he stops at his favourite coffee house on his way to work. Coffee house is the expression that he prefers, why he can’t just say café is beyond his friends. He chats politely and engagingly with the barista as he waits, then out the door to carry on his way. Pressing the button by the handle he opens the umbrella and strides his way to the office. Colleagues are always impressed that he walks so much, even in the rain. And it’s weird how he manages to stay almost completely dry despite the downpour they can hear hammering the windows and the roof.

Once he’s at his desk he gets busy for the day. No one’s really sure what he does, when asked he can be a bit vague himself, not because he’s trying to be obtuse but it’s just that he isn’t quite sure how to best explain what he does. But aside from the uncertainty around job description, everyone agrees that he does a good job. People enjoy working with him, he gets things done and he’s pleasant about it. He brings a bit of cheer to the office as well. He doesn’t crave for attention and he doesn’t hog the limelight but the metaphorical party always seems a bit more alive when he’s around. People like him.

When he’s done for the day he’ll head home with that same purposeful walk he started the day with. Maybe, on a Friday he might stop at the bar and have a drink with his friends. During the week he’s more likely just to head home, listen to some music and read late into the evening. He doesn’t bother his neighbours although he’s always up for a chat if he sees them. It’s rumoured that on the weekends he’ll exercise. Nobody can actually confirm having seen him doing it though. You can’t go running in a suit and hat. But maybe they just wouldn’t recognise him without it. He isn’t a man jogging in a park or riding near the water’s edge, he’s a man in a hat. 

The Jazz Man

The jazz man has his favourite place on the road. It isn’t a glamorous high street, his road. It’s a little bit run down, central enough to keep it busy but not central enough to keep the rents up and the riff raff away. People pass through the street. There’s a cluster of buss stops where office workers gather right next to the alcoholics who spill out at all hours of the day from the twenty four hour bar. There’s often a splattering of blood on the footpath on a Monday morning, the remnants of the weekend. The night clubs come alive, some of them you could walk past in the day time and not even realise there was anything there. But come the late nights, and you’ll find them easily enough by the queues of people waiting to get in.

This street isn’t just run down though. As the rents go down, the less affluent but more creative folk move in. They call the area “edgy” and give it a certain kind of chic. Following them are the tattoo artists, and the vegetarian restaurants, and coffee served by the clients of the tattoo artists. Sooner or later the street will “benefit” from its cool. The shops will slowly get less affordable for those who live there and before long their divey flats will be advertised as funky character pads at twice the rent. But for now this seems a bit of stretch to the jazz man as he sets up his busking spot; turns a crate on its end and spreads his beanie out as a collection plate.

He has a space that he prefers. It’s halfway between two sets of traffic lights. He always picks the sunny side of the road, even in the heat of summer. He’ll open up his saxophone case in front of his little seat. He’ll take hold of the instrument in his oversized hands and wait. He doesn’t start until the right moment strikes. The phases of the traffic lights form a kind of urban air lock. There’s a golden period, maybe tens of seconds at most, where there’s no traffic on his little strip of this longer, dirty strip. It’s almost like someone has put the city on mute for a moment. A street sweeper might shuffle along, or the clip clop of a woman in high heels on the other side of the road. But mostly it’s quiet. It feels to the jazz man a lot like the main street in a small town. There are people, but there isn’t the need for big city noise, things keep happening but life is just a little bit more civilised for a moment.

That’s when he starts playing. He takes this golden moment and tries to add to it with his songs. He’ll sit there for hours on end, passers by dropping coins for him. Along with the occasional note if he’s lucky. Helpful as they are, these notes aren’t the highlight of his day. It’s the times when the quite comes, when he’s playing away. That’s what keeps him coming back to this spot to play for the people walking past, whether they drop a note or a coin, or nothing at all. 

The Girl Who Was Eaten by Her Job

When this story first started, right back at the beginning, the job was just a skinny wee thing. It wasn’t greedy and it wasn’t mean. It only took a little nibble of her out of curiosity. It was just to see what she tasted like. If she even had a taste at all. Well, it turns out she did have a taste. At first the job was satisfied just to find out, just to know the taste. But after a while the job began to crave more. It wanted to experience that tingle of the tongue and the warmth in the belly that had come after the first taste.

So the job took another little bite from the girl. She hadn’t really noticed the first bite, that initial taste that got the job started. But she definitely noticed the second one. Not in a particularly horrible way, it was just that she was conscious of the biting now. I say biting, not bite, very deliberately. Because this wasn’t, as you might have guessed, the last bite that the job took. The next few didn’t get too much bigger, they didn’t hurt, they weren’t big scoffing mouthfuls. Only they started to come more and more regularly.

Now of course, the girl was starting to be a little bit annoyed by the job. She still liked it though, aside from the biting it was quite a nice job really. But the biting had moved from something that she could brush off, to something that was difficult to ignore. The problem was, that aside from liking the job, which as I mentioned she still did, she needed the job. She was as dependent on it as it was of her, hanging on her back with its teeth in her shoulder.

Eventually it was clear to everybody who came across the two, that the job was slowly eating the girl. She was disappearing just as the job was growing. She carried it around with her even as it got heavier and she got weaker and slight. The girl was just a shadow of her old self, but the job was becoming bolder. The job started to dominate any interactions the girl had with other people, people who weren’t already involved with the job. The sight of this gnashing fattening beast over the girls shoulder usually scared away these people. They didn’t really want to get involved with the job, they didn’t want to get sucked in.

Eventually the jobs legs, having been wrapped around the girls waist, had made it back to the ground. The jobs feet started to tread the girls steps, it started to carry its own weight, as well as hers. The job started walking for itself, it picked the girl up and carried her. After all the time that she’d been carrying the job she felt relief. She relaxed into an exhausted stupor. And she didn’t even notice the job gobbling down the last of her. 

Meerkat

He walked into his apartment and went straight to the fridge to open a beer. It was halfway empty before he’d landed on the sofa and turned the TV on. He always felt down when he got back from meeting with his agent. It felt like he couldn’t get him out of the office quick enough. That weasel, he’d grown to hate him, but he was stuck. No other agent would represent him these days. Not like back in the heyday. Back when he was on prime time. That Telecom advert had been the peak in the meerkat’s career and everything afterwards had just been a slow fading of the fame and acclaim he’d had then.

Sure the money had set him up, but he didn’t want more work just for money. He wanted, in fact he’d always wanted just to act. He wanted to do it for the sake of it. But these days people didn’t take him seriously, that’s if they remembered him at all. He’d found himself a has been without ever reaching any kind of creative peak. He felt he had so much more to give but couldn’t get a chance. All there was left for him to do was sit in front of the TV and feel jealous of the other animals that had made it.

A few years ago he’d thought things were on the up again. There were rumours going around that a TV station had commissioned some kind of reality thing featuring a complete cast of meerkats. Surely this was going to be his big break. At the time he was quietly confident, clearly the most experienced meerkat actor on the scene. This was going to be his chance, a stage for him to shine from.

He was slightly perturbed when, after the excitement of finally have an audition wore off, it became clear just what the producers were wanting. It was dumbed down TV to the extreme. This wasn’t going to be the platform he could launch again from. But he so desperately wanted it either way. Just to be back on the TV had to be a start. Surely. Maybe after a season or two of this dross he would find other opportunities. Other shows would come knocking. It wasn’t ideal but it could be the start of something.

It wasn’t to be. The producers of Meerkat Manor told him they wanted a fresh face, someone new and without the preconceptions that his fame had brought him. He could tell though, that underneath the words they were using, what they were really saying is that they didn’t want him. After the phone call from his agent telling him he’d been passed over, the meerkat went home, opened a beer and sat in front of the TV. He hasn’t really got up since.