The Smile of the Unvanquished

Each month the Scottish Book Trust opens a challenge to write in merely fifty words a story for which the Trust provides a 'prompt' on the website; a picture that should help to spark off your imagination and set you work around a flash story. http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/writing/love-to-write/the-50-word-fiction-competition February's prompt was this picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellostanley/4534776744/ Anyway, my story unfortunately was proven unsuccessful (ach well... it was too clever and too allegorical for its kind), but the administrator took nonetheless the opportunity to encourage me to enter again, starting next Monday (March 3rd) with the March competition. Will keep trying, I don't quit easily without hangovers of guilt and besides... I never believed in  the no-win scenario. Here's the story... I might use it eventually as a template for either a post-apocalyptic themed poem or a short story. The 50 words limit doesn't reall...

one flower among many, yet she smiles to the sun, because she's never been forgotten. her fragrance stuns the troubled mind, silk petals sooth wounds, and her courage bears heirs among the vulnerable souls.

through treacherous terrain and the wild endeavour of sprawls to the imperishable archetype - the Self - engaged by willpower - a seething arrow, the conjoined twins, perseverance and patience, for conquest summoned - series of milestones ransacked for booty - constantly venturing beyond the tangible, shattering the limits - obedient to your Essence's Mad Design.

i have no dreams, but find myself suddenly in the middle of the action in some warped counter-reality of our sharply accentuated pedestrian world, where logic follows the school of escher, sequences climb up and tumble down like staircases without landings, the linear perspective is mellowed away, colours and light are sunken in dank latrinary industrial ooze that looks like old sepia photography drenched in an icy slate grey tincture that creates a permanent dusk. i register no words, only their shadow etched in obfuscated ink or pixels. I listen to voices which are not interesting by themselves or what they deem categorically of vital importance, but relinquishing my attention, the concatenation of rhythm, tone and amplitude sounds like the murmur of the sea, the rushing of my blood deeply trenched in my body. i walk in desolation, because everything around me has this bitter-sweet melancholy that cowls over the furrows and potholes of misery ravaging lofty expe...

langs de kliffen... ik vlei me neer aan de rand, koperen schilfers wiegen een stil intermezzo op de wenken van de machtige dirigent: de overjaarse zilte bries die het grauwe land bestiert. tijdloze roest, de schitterende dood van industriële fossielen, verwelkte ijdelheid dat lacht om het cliche van de lotus-bloem en het gewrocht van duizend ganzeveren op perkament die haar schoonheid en onpeilbare wijsheid bezongen. onpeilbaar, een diepte zo nauw en toch bewoont door kolossale gedrochten die je stom aanstaren. uitzicht op een eindeloze witte vlakte van aangekoekte zandkorrels, dat knersend een polyfonie aanheft, waar ik mijn bastaardnaam in herken. ik hoor hier niet thuis, maar dat ene moment van lucide zinsverbijstering stevent reeds van me vandaan. verankerd op deze plek, versteen ik met het landschap - een doorn rust op het slaapbeen van de granietrode koningin.

dead of night: a town cloaked in sensual velvet a soft whisper of wind rustles up the debris of a season fading and  sweeps over the unruly waste of mass-produced instant gratification eternity tainted by perpetual twilight a man walks by: his gait is fluid and his mime, inaccessible  he prowls on phantom menaces,  lurking from behind any street corner his thirst for wild endeavours matches their hunger for blood and loot as per dialectic chemistry muffled sounds wave in from distant highways the neighbourhood, though, hears only his solemn military pace - a metallic cadence grinding rain-washed pavements vapid opinions stopped death, sensations purged he shears across a mileage of blighted patina -  footman to his stream of consciousness.

eyes dwell upon the restless sea and the blind wall of the sky the heart drums up its will to take up authority which strides towards the pulsing core of its yearnings the soul endures the parched and idle earth amidst towering coffins and the sewers of our pretension when, at last, will our light find the brilliance to unlock the inscrutable wild blue yonder?