Freedom of the Presses

This one didn't really come from a specific prompt, but it is the result of me expanding at length on a joke which took The Simpsons roughly ten seconds to do. The word "overextension" does not appear in my lexicon.

“Stop the presses!” he called, his voice echoing through the cavernous room. Pandemonium ensued- a chaos of levers being pulled, buttons being frantically pushed and, in at least one instance that he could see, crowbars being jammed into expensive machinery in flagrant disregard for life, limb and insurance policies. Within a minute or so, the presses had indeed stopped, grinding to a halt with a pathetic squeal of tortured gears as a roomful of printers and journalists turned to look at him.

“Oh,” he began weakly. “I didn’t mean to actually… I just, I was speaking metaphorically. Like, I have a big scoop. But… I mean… it can wait for tomorrow’s edition. Really, it’s fine. Just, er, carry on.”

For a moment, he thought his prayers had been answered, and the ground was indeed opening up to swallow him. But it was just the sound of the presses laboriously clanking back into life, the beginning of a process that would take at least an hour. On reflection, he supposed, the opening of the earth would probably not have been accompanied by quite so much abusive swearing. Unless the mole people were thoroughly irritated by the whole affair.

He glanced down, mainly to avoid the sharp gazes being directed his way, at the barely legible scrawls that covered his notebook. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and assured himself that the self-flagellation could wait. He had a story to write.

***

“Do you have any idea how much your poorly thought-out use of cliché cost us?”

“Er… not as much as might be expected?” It was a vain hope, given the rage writ large across the editor’s face, but he could always dream.

“If only,” she breathed, somewhere between a sigh and a snort. “It was… well, I won’t give you a figure. I find you do better work without your brain dribbling out your ears. Suffice to say: lots. Lots and lots, if you want to be technical.”

“But not lots and lots and lots?” Despite his slightly sardonic tone, he was relieved. The comment about “better work” suggested he wasn’t about to be hounded from the office.

“Very nearly. We were this close to that third ‘lots.’” The editor held up her thumb and forefinger, so close together that they were almost… no, in fact they were touching. She looked at the gesture, furrowed her brow, and shrugged. “I’m not much better with usage of metaphor and analogy than you are. I’m a journalist. Which might be why I’m minded to actually listen to your story before deciding whether or not to fire you. And before you celebrate, by ‘fire’, I do potentially mean setting you alight.”

By way of answer, he placed his open notebook down on the table, turned it around to face her and stepped back, grinning. She bent over it, then looked up at him after a moment looking puzzled.

“‘Butter… bread… cigarettes… AA batteries.’ Maybe I just don’t have your keen investigative mind, but I really don’t see how this-”

He snatched back the notebook, flipped over a few pages, away from the shopping list, and handed it back, red-faced.

As she read, the editor’s brow furrowed further, but her eyes simultaneously lit up, creating a deeply odd and confusing effect. After a couple of minutes, she looked up again, her eyes hard.

“You’re sure of this?”

He nodded confidently, glad to be back on relatively safe ground. “I trust the source. And I’ve seen the records myself.”

She nodded absently. He supposed she was picturing the next day’s front page, if it got printed in time.

“You’ve got an hour to write it up. Make it good. Arresting. So to speak. Don’t use any metaphors, I don’t trust you with them. And don’t go near the printers again for a few weeks. I’m fairly certain I saw them constructing an effigy of you on my way up here.”

He smiled, and nodded. “I won’t let you down, chief!” He was halfway out the door when her exasperated call made him turn around.

She held up the notebook. “You might want this.”

Sad Stories of the Death of Kings

The second piece I have to offer here was written to a prompt which fairly teems with possibilities. The session in which it was written took place on the 5th of November, and hence the idea was to write an alternative history of what might have happened had the Gunpowder Plot succeeded. Now, around the time of the plot, Shakespeare was at the peak of his powers. He was also, from what we can tell, someone who was acutely aware of the opportunities available to someone who catered to royalty; he certainly went out of his way to please James I. So how might he deal with the upheaval of a sudden, violent succession, and the installation of a new Catholic order? Well, perhaps by delving into his back catalogue.

[A letter to Robert Catesby, Lord Protector and regent to Queen Elizabeth II, thought to date from circa 1607.]

Sir,

I am a playwright of some small repute, and have been fortunate enough in my career to meet with the favour of many prominent patrons. At present, it is the wish of myself and my fellows in my company, known hitherto as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, to present a series of plays which, it is our earnest hope, will delight, entertain and, if I may be so bold, instruct Her Majesty the Queen.

The first of these which we intend to present is the true account of one of Her Majesty’s royal predecessors, Richard II, and his ignominious end. Our play will show how Richard, brutal tyrant that he was and hated by his lords and people, was justly overthrown and killed, and how his killers were rewarded and celebrated for their just and selfless actions. I have recently rewritten portions of this play, and hope that it will meet with the court’s approval.

Following on from this, we will present the successor, if’t please you, to this play – namely, the history of Henry IV. This play, in two parts, which I have also recently rewritten tells of how Richard’s successor enjoyed a happy and bountiful reign, for God Almighty smiled on the brutal despot’s dethroning. It is my hope that Her Majesty will find much of instruction in this play in particular.

After this, with my lord’s permission, we will present a more recent play of mine, namely the tragedy of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark. In contrast to Henry, Hamlet’s failure to enact justice leads to death and destruction, owing at root to his privileging of his own thoughts and fears over the will of God Almighty.

Finally, I beg permission to put before the court and Her Majesty a new play of mine, on which the ink has hardly dried. This is the tragedy of Macbeth, a play dealing with some of Her Majesty’s Scottish ancestors, and the overthrowing of a bloody tyrant. Indeed, I am sure Her Majesty will be pleased to find that she herself makes an appearance of sorts in this play, when cruel Macbeth sees in a vision the glorious issue of his enemy Banquo, a line stretching out to eternity in which Macbeth glimpses a beautiful young queen who wears two illustrious crowns.

If these meagre offerings should please Her Majesty, we have many other plays, penned by myself and others, to offer. Indeed, if I may be so bold, we would be honoured to name ourselves the Queen’s Men, and devote our art and entertainment entirely to Her Majesty. I anxiously await your reply,

Yours,

Will Shakspear.

Bang Goes the Prompt

With a mere week to go before Christmas, I find myself sunk into a lethargic haze, incapable of any kind of higher creative or rational faculties. With this in mind, I'm going to spend the next little while posting a few short pieces that I've written in the last few months in response to writing prompts. All were written in fairly short order; between 15 and 30 minutes for the most part, and I haven't edited much in transcribing. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

For this first piece, the prompt was simply to write about an explosion. After pondering and rejecting the idea of writing about a population explosion, this is what leaked out of my brain.

With hindsight, the mountain was doomed from the moment we decided to store all the TNT together in the same cavernous warehouse, especially given the frankly ludicrous amount of it we had. I think someone misplaced a decimal place on the order form. OK, OK, I’m not trying to evade responsibility. I understand now that I should really have fixed the slanting shelf before I stacked up all those vials of nitroglycerine on it. What can I say? It was the end of the day, I was tired, I thought, “It’ll still be here in the morning, right?”

Wrong.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a large geographical feature explode. I recommend it, if you can find a safe distance. If there is a safe distance. Thousands of tons of rock and soil were not meant to fly, which makes it all the more impressive when they do. Though I do feel sorry for the flock of sparrows which was completely obliterated by a particularly large fragment of mountain sailing through the air. I found myself applauding, as if it was all a carefully organised show, even as pebbles rained down around me. Moments later, as an uprooted tree sailed past me, I decided it was probably time to turn and run. Pity, really. That meant I never saw the second tree coming straight for me.

So here I stand, or float, with nothing to do but take account of my life and all the ways I went wrong. But it wasn’t entirely my fault. Was it?