Am-bish-un.

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Ambition. Am-bish-un. Amm-bish-unnn. It sounds weird and heavy on my tongue. And clumsy. It’s a clumsy word, in my opinion. And my opinion counts- Mam says. Mam says that my opinion counts and Mam says that “having ambition is a good thing, Jonno; it’s something you should get”.

And then I say, “Mam, I would get some am-bish-un if you gave me some money, and let me go t’ the shop.”

And then Mam pats me on the head and says, “You are a silly one, Jonno”. I just smile, cause I don’t actually know what Mam is talking about. Sometimes Mam talks in “tongues”. Mr White told me that. Mr White told me that talking in “tongues” means that nobody can understand you. Or something like that. I like Mr White.

I don’t like the smell of anty-septic. It’s really clingy. And even when I am far away from it, I still think I can smell it through my nostrils. It’s a bit like lights. When I see a light and then go and shut my eyes I can still see it. I told Mam about that.

Once, I went to the shop. To look for some am-bish-un. The shop lady is very nice. Every time the shop lady sees me, I get a smile. And sometimes the shop lady will say “Hullo Jonno!” And I like it when the shop lady says that, cause it rhymes. Hull-o, Jonn-o. 

So I said “Hullo!” to the shop lady, and then the shop lady asked me what I was looking for. “I am looking for some am-bish-un”. The shop lady didn’t understand, so I began to talk about Mam telling me that am-bish-un was a good thing to have.

“Oh you silly boy, Jonno! Ambition is not a thing you can buy!” And this confused me very much.

Then Mam appeared and took me home.

I would like some am-bish-un. I just don’t know how to get it. Mam told me that am-bish-un is where you have a goal. I don’t know how to get goals except in footie, and I’m not good at that at all. I always fall over when I play footie, and my team usually laughs at me. And I laugh with my team, because I am a “silly one”.

So, the question is- Mam says I sound fil-o-sof-ic-ul when I say that-the question is: how do I get a goal? How do I get some am-bish-un when I am not good at footie? If I ask Mam, I will get called “silly” again. Silly is another funny word. Like am-bish-un. But not as bad.

I am going to ask Mr White to get me some am-bish-un. Mr White is coming round to my house later. Mr White always comes round to my house on a Wednesday, because it is a school day. Mam likes Mr White too. Mam always says, when school is over in our living room, that I have to “say thank you to lovely Mr White for helping you, Jonno”. And I do. Every time school is over in our living room.

Am-bish-un is very confusing. I want some, but I do not know where to go for it. I want to get Mam some for a present. To say thank you to Mam, because Mam looks after me. Mam makes me some dinner every day, Mam buys me some picture books when I am good, Mam pours me some milk when I am thirsty, Mam is nice to me when I feel sad. I don’t feel sad very much. Mam says that when I am sad, Mam is also sad. I don’t understand that, but Mam just smiles. I think Mam deserves some am-bish-un, because it is good to have. I want some too, but Mam always says that you have to “think of others before yourself”. I understand that.

I don’t understand much. Am-bish-un is something I don’t, but I will. I am going to get some am-bish-un for Mam. Then for me. No, for Mr White, first. Because Mam always says that you have to “think of others before yourself”. Then for me.

Then Mam, and maybe Mr White, will give me big hugs and say, “Well done, Jonno! You are a very good boy!” And then I will smile, because I like it when people call me a good boy. I try to be a good boy. But I am clumsy. And it is hard to be a good boy as well as being a clumsy boy at the same time. Mam always says I look sol-um when I say that, but Mam also says that it is understandable.

Am-bish-un. Amm-bish-unnn. I like that word. I am going to start using it. Even if I don’t know what it means. Apart from goals. Because I don’t understand why Mam thinks I need goals for my future. Mam says am-bish-un is about future. I say I don’t want future with Mam. Mam laughs.

I can’t wait to get some am-bish-un. Mam will be very proud. And Mam will stop doing the sad smiles that I see on Mam’s face when Mam is looking at me and Mam thinks I am not looking. With am-bish-un, Mam might stop secret-crying that I am not supposed to see, but I do, when we are in the hospital for me.

Am-bish-un will make everything better.

~H

Copyrighted by the author ©

Last Farewell.

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The day was mist and cloud banks,
You came to me and cried,
You told me you were sorry and-
You never should have died.


Thunder cracked with lightning,
There was nothing I could do,
Once dead the dead stay buried, and-
Their mortal life is through.


Parted lips and shallow tears,
You gave a perfect show,
Reasoning with how unfair, and-
Making me feel low.


I cannot just re-animate,
Your body and your soul,
Once a person's fully gone,
They'll never come back whole.


No reasoning will change my mind,
I'm sure you'll understand,
I will not acquiesce to you,
Cannot perform demand.


So finish what you started, Corpse,
And get your business done,
Say your last farewells because-
You'll fade come morning sun.

~H

Actor's lament

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“All the world’s a stage and the men and women merely players, they have their entrances and their exits”.


 Looking out, audience faces beaming and they cling to every word. You search in the crowd to see someone, anyone you know if only for some comfort. You look down and see yourself in a costume that ordinarily you would never be seen dead in, but to become someone else, even if only briefly, gives you a sense of release. Every controlled step you take was carefully constructed over months of work to get to this point. You see your partner on stage who gives you that little reassuring smile that you so craved, and that all too familiar feeling of butterflies in your stomach soon disappears as you utter those first important words. “Help!…”
 -R x. 

Bliant. I

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He flicked down a pair of bronze goggles over his pale brown eyes. From beside the green glass of the lenses on opposing side stretched dark brown leather strapping the goggles over his temple and behind his head. His short Mohican avoided the straps, the brown of the leather blending into the short sides of his hair. On the left lens there was a smaller lens, clear glass, some sort of magnification piece. He stared down into gaping hole in the petite girl’s chest. The girl, only sixteen with plaited auburn hair and emerald eyes glowing with pain, had had the flesh and the muscle burned clear from her chest. Frazzled ribs and blackened lungs were visible through the fissure. The brown haired man stood still, staring unaffected by the atrocious injury before him.

“She’s done for” He sighed turning to his assistant, a pale red haired girl. “Are you sure?” She questioned, too afraid to look at the injury itself. “If you would look then you would know. Even if I could reconstruct the muscle and skin of her chest the lungs are sure to God not going to survive more than a week” He was disappointed in himself, what he was capable of, and the emotion echoed in his tone. The girl with the gaping chest all the while sat, silent, listening, knowing what was to come. The doctor in the bronze goggles slipped them up onto his brow and turned to a pallet on his right. Laying on it was a syringe on black liquid and beside that was a mouth prop. “I’m not going to lie, this will hurt, but I doubt it can be much worse than what you’re already going through” He told the young girl restrained to the operating bed.

He took the mouth prop and forced it into her mouth to stop her from biting of her own tongue and executing more pain than she was already going through. Then he took hold of the syringe in his hands in leather gloves the same shade as that of his goggles. “I can’t watch” The red headed nurse said, running and hiding behind a large chrome gear which was key to the progression of the clock on the old hospital buildings outer wall. The man sighed, two leathery fingers creating an opening by pushing the left lung aside a little. The entire heart came into view, blackened as the lungs were. Using his left hand the man pushed the syringe into the left ventricle of the heart and slowly the black liquid within it was drained into the girl’s blood stream.

In a palpitation all the pain in her eyes was gone. All life drifted from them and the powerful gritting from her jaw was softened and her jaw hung down. The doctor retracted the syringe from her heart and removed his hands from within her chest. He closed his eyes, resting his bloody leather fingers on her eyelids and closing them in time with his. “Why?” He asked, aimed at the cowering nurse. “Why can’t this bloodshed end? We’re trapped in an impossible war, we get a hundred more dead each day, hundreds more injured, and eighty percent are innocent people trapped between one side and another” He screamed this with anger overtaking him, his face red and his eyes watering.

The doctor felt a nip on his toe, even through the thick boots that protruded up past his shins half covering the brown fabric pants that were held over his shoulder by suspenders of leather the same as upon his gloves and goggles. He looked down as he jumped back instinctively to find a clockwork copper machine that resembled a small scorpion. “There is no rest” He cried, slamming his foot down upon the bot. The metal exploded into fifty so pieces under the thrust of his foot. The scorpion was no longer of harm in having already administered its poison but why allow it prolonged mechanical life. The man fell to his chair, a russet brown wooden chair supported by a gold coloured metal that stood upon three metal wheels. He flicked his toe and slid backwards towards his desk and stopped directly before it, spinning to face it directly. From the second draw down on the right hand side of the desk he revealed an antidote of green liquid in a syringe and quickly administered it.

“Dana” The man addressed the nurse. “I can’t stand by any more, I'm sick of this constant onslaught of sick, of attacks on us even in here” On that note he stared to the ruins of the scorpion. "No matter how small they are" He groaned sliding open another draw and taking from it a small copper machine. The woman with orange hair now rose into sight from hiding. “A gun!” She exclaimed, “And what do you expect to do with that?” The man’s heart sunk, because he knew all he would do would cause more injury, send more people here. But behind that he knew what his plan was, he knew what he wanted and that he wouldn’t use it unless it was in a moment of pure desperation. “I think I can fix this Dana” He sighed pushing the pistol into a holster at his waist. “And what if you can’t?” Dana pleaded. “What if I can?” He left her to consider that, sliding from his surgery into the hallway.

~S