Peter R. S. Thomas

Category: fiction

  • Flash Fiction: A Vision of What Might Have Been

    Flash Fiction: A Vision of What Might Have Been

    There wasn’t always a castle on the hill. The seed was planted many years ago. A warc carried a stone, a vision of what might have been, and buried it six inches below the surface of the earth.

    The warc covered it with loose soil, its gritted, gnarled hands clawing desperately at the ground.

    A vision of what might have been.

    The castle grew over time, stones assembling themselves piece by piece, year on year. The locals in the village below watched with curiosity, waking every morning to see it risen slightly higher. None ever saw the workman. They went to bed and woke each morning feeling just a little safer.

    It was just what the warc had wanted. A gift for the village, unsolicited, but earned.

    The warc stepped backwards through time. The journey is linear, and to a creature that appears more branch and moss than flesh and bone, it is the correct and only direction.

    So to see what might have been is, for a warc, to see and anticipate the future.

    And the walk backwards, step by step, is, for those whose feet go against that flow, to see the future with utmost clarity.

    The villagers did not survive the strangers, who arrived one night carrying torches and flame, and put to waste thatch roofs and wooden walls. They took with them wheat and mutton and stores of fresh water. And carried on their quest.

    It was an important quest, of that they were certain, but the details matter not. To the villagers, the quest meant nothing; and yet they perished at its hand, and valiantly. They fought against the tide, with pitchforks and sharpened poles, but to no avail. They were swept out to a starless sea.

    The warc watched, and was moved by what it saw. And so it vowed to reward the villagers for their bravery. A stone was fashioned such that it would bless the village with strength and fortitude. A place for them to retreat.

    And so it was that the stone was planted.

    And, so it was, that a hundred years hence, in the deep past of the warc’s journey, as time flowed back against the grain of its footprints, the villagers retreated to the walls of this castle at the first sign of flame.

    And the thatch roofs burned, and the wheat and mutton was taken, but the villagers, brave as they were in that vision of what might have been, lived long enough to rebuild their homes and replenish their stocks.

    And they cursed the strangers who rode through their lands. But they knew not the vision of what might have been, for to them the castle had always been there, a steadfast relic of generations gone.

  • Flash Fiction: The Tomb and the Broom

    Flash Fiction: The Tomb and the Broom

    I entered the tomb.

    In the room of the tomb was a broom.

    The broom was sweeping the floor.

    The floor was poor.

    The flaw of the floor was its scores of doors.

    They were trap doors, of course.

    Not traps for rats or cats, but traps hidden under mats.

    I lifted a trap and found stairs.

    Stairs to where, I did not care.

    Descending the stairs, I entered a lair.

    I said a silent prayer.

    For in the lair was the mayor.

    The hair of the mayor was fair, his stare austere.

    What he said as he turned his head filled me with dread.

    He said, ‘Hi, I’m Fred. And I’m dead.’

    Dead Fred led me to a shed, that he said contained a bed.

    In the bed was Ted.

    So he said.

    But Ted had fled the bed and in his stead was Theodore.

    It was Theodore under the door in the floor, in Fred’s bed where Ted was led, in the lair of the mayor, oh so austere.

    It was not what I thought I would find.

    Not that I ought to mind.

    For I entered the tomb and looked through the gloom for a magical broom that could sweep a whole room.

  • Flash Fiction: Infinite Reruns

    Flash Fiction: Infinite Reruns

    About this post

    This is the result of a writing exercise. The goal is to come up with something short and focused without spending too much time editing and revising. It might read a little raw and unpolished, but that’s the nature of the beast! With this piece, I was trying to find a particular character voice, something a little chaotic and irreverent. I settled on something to do with time travel to raise the stakes a little and play around with a few ideas there, too.

    The hands on the clock just wouldn’t stop turning. I sat there for hours, watching, trying to make them stop.

    I know it was hours because I was sat watching a clock.

    The thing no one ever tells you about time control is how long it takes to figure out how to do it.

    But when I cracked it, oh boy. You better believe I did some heinous shit.

    It all started when the minute hand went backwards.

    That was when I first knew I could control time.

    You see, time moves like water. It’s fluid. It fills up whatever container you put it in. And once you figure that out, you’re in control. Have you ever poured water from one glass to another? Well, that’s me, but with the fourth dimension.

    A river doesn’t go in a straight line, and neither does time. It curves and bends and goes back on itself. And sure, if you leave a river alone it’ll forge its own path. But I’m the guy who comes in with a construction crew and digs a canal.

    The first thing I did when I found out I could control time was go back and win an argument with my dentist from 2003. Not even an important argument.

    Well, it was important to me.

    She said I should floss more and I said I flossed plenty. This was a lie. But I’ll be damned if I let her be right about it. So I went back, flossed for three months straight, then returned to that appointment just to prove a point. She didn’t notice. Just said the same damn thing.

    Dentists…

    The second thing I did was become president of the United States of America. Let me tell you how I did it.

    It was pretty simple, really.

    So, the thing is, I still age, but only linearly. I can’t go back further back than when I was born, and I can’t go further forward than when I’ll die (I tried once to push past it and I did not like when I saw).

    But I can do what I want in the middle. Go back and forth as much as I like and change what I want. I’m just the age I am at that point in time.

    This 76 year period is mine to do what I like with. Cool, right?

    Okay, now, take your mind back to probability class. Random variations in how shit works out mean that anything can happen. Monkeys and typewriters and whatever.

    You put your name on the ballot box, do nothing else, maybe a couple of people tick it by accident. No big deal. The odds of a couple people ticking your name are good. Enough to win the presidency, pretty slim.

    But the odds are there. And I’m fluid like water, baby, I’ve got infinite reruns.

    Took me a little over 847,000 tries total. Election day 2016 (come on, you know why I picked that one).

    I voted for myself and went home. Lost. Rewound. Voted for myself and went home. Lost.

    You get the idea. Around try 31,000 I got bored and started seeing how many hot dogs I could eat while waiting for the results. Personal record is 23, in case you’re wondering.

    By try 400,000 I’d memorised all the lottery numbers and had myself a little splurge. By around 700,000 I was going insane. But on try 847,356? I won. By four votes. In Wyoming, of all places.

    So the universe blinked first, and now I’ve got the nuclear codes. Which… brings me to the third thing I did.

    Have you ever launched a nuclear bomb? I wouldn’t recommend it.

    I was destined to live until 76, that much I knew. But I could sure as hell die before that.

    So, yeah, it was me. I turned the world into a post apocalyptic hellscape.

    No big deal, right? Wrong.

    Whatever the fuck mutation meant that I could change time was shattered by the radiation from the nuclear fallout.

    Fuck me, right?

    I spent a while fussing with clocks. Started by turning the minute hand back with my finger.

    It made the clocks show a different time. But it didn’t do a damn thing about where I sat on the continuum.

    I was stuck moving in one direction at the same speed as everyone else.

    Why did I even do it? I know what you’re thinking.

    China.

    Russia.

    North Korea.

    Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

    You’re stumped. Was it France?

    No, you idiot. Don’t you get it? I was bored. The world is my plaything.

    Infinite. Fucking. Reruns.

    Well, not anymore.

    Now, I’m just like everyone else. At least, everyone who survived the nuclear holocaust. Which isn’t that many. (Being president nets you a few perks, not least having a nuclear bunker.)

    And yeah, sure, I shouldn’t have left the bunker. But I was curious. And let me remind you: I didn’t know that the radiation would cook the one interesting thing about me!

    So I get up each morning, if I make it through the night, and try to survive. It was months of eating mutated pork chips and drinking irradiated water.

    Until the unthinkable happened. My body started to mutate again. I got that familiar pull, like when you take the plug from a bath tub.

    Except here I’d be pulling the plug from a dam.

    After all those months, I knew deep down I could go back.

    But I also knew that it would kill me to do it. One last jump, one last reset, take everything back to how it was.

    How did I know? I just knew. It’s that same sinking feeling you get like when the cops show up at your door. You just know it’s bad news.

    Fuck me, I’m a coward. Every day I don’t do it, is a day I could get my head bitten off by some mutated creature that would make those fucked up fish in the Mariana Trench blush. And with me goes humanity’s last chance at survival.

    But if I do it, I’m gone. Permanently. And so what would it matter if I got things how they were if I couldn’t be there to enjoy it?

    So, yeah… Here I am. Sorry, not sorry, I guess.