New paintings and regular art updates.
New year, new blog ideas? I’ve been writing and adding images here for over three years and I’m bothered I might be getting boring. I have tried explaining simple cience here, written short stories, shared art, and posted photos. But is that what people want? I am a captive of my own thoughts, I try and be cheerful, but sometimes I can be a bit down, if you know what I mean. So January? I need to think about what I’m doing. Any thoughts, let me know?
Bull balancing
Sheep stirring
Python platting
Cat chatting
Axalotle algorithm
Giraffe glancing
Bat battling
Whippet whittling
Chicken chucking
Mole mobilisations
Shellfish shelling
Crustacean chilling
Dugong debating
Man miscellaneous
Seagull sailing
Eagle ending.
Not a Triffid, more mobile and intelligent. The plants are spreading. Faster than a bird in flight. Trapping creatures and absorbing them. Think intelligent pitcher plant. The larger they grow the bigger their prey. Human victims have been caught out in the open, trapped in cars, trains and buses. Now the plants are surrounding our homes. Green walls with sinister intentions.
Against it? Nothing at the moment. Television and satellite signals have been cut. All countries are separate. Where the climate is warming the aliens grow faster. Only in the far north and south are possibilities of a fight back. Who will survive?
Walking round the back of the old house, looking for a way in. The rain was cold and icy, falling hard and freezing on the ground and branches as it touched them….
She needed somewhere warm to dry out. No-one in at home and she had lost her keys? But next door was empty, if she could find shelter she could be OK till the morning?
She pushed on a soggy back door, it gave slightly under the pressure. Then the catch slipped and it flew open into a dusty hallway. Cobwebs hung down from dirty bannisters and old bedsheets covered the victorian furniture. She stepped further in. Moonlight and the sodium coloured streetlights filtered through the grubby windows.
A black cat rushed past her, fleeing out of the open doorway. Somewhere in the distance she heard the distant sound of an old fashioned phone.
Stumbling across the old parquet flooring in the darkness, she started to look for a doorway into a living room or reception room. Anywhere that would be walmer. She gently pushed on a old oak door, it opened a crack, it started to creak so she held her breath and waited. Nothing happened. She pushed again and could see light, orange candlelight. A glow coming from a carved pumpkin, almost out, flickering in the slight breeze from the doorway.
Quickly she stepped in, pushing the door behind her. A covered sofa looked like a good place to hunker down for the night…. She slowly sat down, gently, to make as little noise as possible. She felt something slither across her feet. She looked down, and saw to her horror, a dark gloved hand extending through the floor and reaching up to grab her ankle. A flash, so bright and blue lit the room for an instant. In a second she had disappeared. Gone.
You took my hand, held it tightly. Dragged me up the hill to the viewpoint.
We stared across the tree tops, across the views of hills and valleys. There were old houses and modern warehouses where there used to be fields. It’s gone, you said, our youth and the beauty that was once here.
Remember when we had strength? When hills were virtually flat? When colours were bright and gaudy.
The trees were shorter then, we could see further. We used to hold hands and more. Now, we are lost, can our hearts stay forever together? The hill is steep nowadays. But we walk hand in hand.
He woke up and saw the figure of a blue woman hovering in the bedroom. She was standing, but as he looked down to the side of the bed her feet were a couple of inches above the floor.
She had no facial features, like a mannequins dummy, blank faced, not even eyes. No mouth, no sound. He felt, somehow though, that she was looking at him? The angle of her head, tipped down and intent on where he lay. He noticed motes of dust in the sunbeam shining through the window. He could see them floating beyond the figure. It was dissolving as he watched.
Finally it faded, gradually, slowly, melting into nothing. No explanation, no reason, gone. All he felt was a wash of calm, not fear, and relieved that she was gone.
That tree doesn’t look right? She said. It’s growing in a funny way. The left side could almost be a cage.
He looked across to where she was pointing, it did look strange. But then these were old trees. There almost seemed to be a pattern to it.
They sat on a bench in the graveyard and watched the sunset over the victorian houses beyond. The tree seemed to slump slightly as the sky darkened, but they didn’t notice as they were in deep conversation.
The top of the tree gradually brushed the ground and slid sideways towards them. The cage of twigs and branches shaking gently although there was no breeze. The boughs crept forward, the front twigs lifting up like fingers on a huge hand. Then, Drop! The branches encircled its victims, squeezing them. There were twigs piercing their veins. No chance of escape. They were plant food!
She sat looking into the hand mirror, she was going to put her mascara on, but her face was distorted. She suddenly realised it looked like a playing card, one side flipped over. What the hell was going on….. She felt her face, it seemed normal? She tried to touch the glass of the mirror… Her finger seemed to penetrate its surface. A feeling like rubber or elastic… Push, her finger disappeared into its surface. She pulled her hand away…
She thought for a second, then leaned forward and put her eye near the glass, she felt a pulling sensation, then – POP! She was in another world?
Sunlight burst through the grey clouds, but not normal light, and from the wrong direction. Where had this blast of radiation come from? Was it just light or were there other sections of the radioactive spectrum? The blast blew the clouds away. Leaving a sparkling blue sky, only for the clouds to come roiling back seconds later. Thunder rumbled, lightning sparked overhead.
It was the supernova that had been the star Betelguse. Life had been damaged by the blast, would it, could it survive?
An oily sheen of light flowing out from an almost full moon. Twisted and turned leaves in the orange street lights. Like fire burning up, burning the leaves. Spiralling flickers like sparks from a bonfire. Ice and fire, light and burning embers. Do you reach down and touch the world? Sputtering and guttering your cold glow submerges the heat. Ice spikes fall and pierce the ground. Describe to me what you see. Says the moon….
Mallaband-Brown