Too old to have imaginary friends, too young to live without 'em.

That was my last nightshift for the year, and that was the last 7wishes.

It was in its death throes in IV, but I wanted to complete the set, so to speak. One round of madness for every madness inducing shift of the year. I could go on - no shortage of ideas here - but they're getting same-same, and I'm twatty enough, and in love with the dream enough, to not want stagnation to go any deeper.

Also...That's 36 short stories written and posted, 39 if you count the ones I discarded, 41 if you count the CYOAs, 42 if you count that sleep story. 42 short stories written in less than a year.

Pardon me, but that's fucking insane. Not a "wow, look at me, I'm on fiiiire!" insanity either. That's a purely "that's just plain ridiculous," insanity. And I'm daft enough to wonder why I didn't finish my novel this year. I'm giving over the writing room in my brain to the novel now. I need to finish it before I get eaten by a shark or thrown in front of a train, because if I die without finishing this thing, I will come back as a very irate ghost. Which, you know, I'd rather avoid.

But mostly I have to let them go as I'm letting a lot of the year go.

The first stories hatched on a very bad night. They were a feverish exercise in distraction, something to fixate on, to calm down and come down and give me enough space to remember how to breathe. Some of them I told to amuse myself, some of them to say things I didn't know how to say, but all of them were created because I didn't know how else to deal with grief, rage, fury, despair and horror.

I don't think they belong to me any more. Posting them turned them into something else, as defined by you. I think you turned them into something better than their origins.

I couldn't see any wonder in the world or myself, so I wrote wonder into all the places I needed it to be. I don't need to anymore. It doesn't matter how much I enjoy writing them, or how much I enjoy having you read them - these stories came from a terrible place, and I can't get there any more, and I hope I never have to again.



Thank you Russell, Chris, Mike, Jaime, Colin, Jeff, Terry, Nadine, Matt, Yunyu, Kirsten, Ben, Sander, Laurie, Scott, the Mysterious ~, Larry, Gillian, Barry, Stuart, Falkman, Timblynod, (holy moly there are a lot of you), Cory, Gareth, Libbette, Matthew, Gigi, Nautiloid, Ross, Selena, DS, Arthur Miller, Steve, Dave, and any one else I missed for all your wonderful comments, special thanks to Andy for saying "please don't delete them", and thanks to everyone and anyone who spent some minutes of their lives in reading.

I hope you all found something worth finding.

I did.

<3

7wishes Table of Contents

The stories of 7wishes were written to keep my head above water, posted to alleviate the loneliness and isolation of nightshift, and have moved on from their humble bloggy beginnings as these things are wont to do.

The collection has been gussied up so as not to be an embarrassment in polite society and is currently represented by Sally Harding of the Cooke Agency (Canada).

7wishes

• for a day when the gravity is turned down
• for a pony
• for a day in which we are only allowed to talk to strangers, and are not allowed to acknowledge anyone known to us
• for real true amazing sleep
• that there is a little door in my room, only big enough to crawl through on my belly, with paint so faded and peeled it is no colour, it is all colours
• for silence
• for them to finally drop the bomb

7wishesII

• for a tree to climb
• for photosynthesis
• BAMF!
• for a white knight
• for reassurance
• for just once chance to see
• to hear

7wishesSpecialEdition

• for a bigger, better, blimptastic balloon

7paintingfiascos

• moar ass
• after the war
• before the other war
• unlimited power
• i love to fiiiiiiiight!
• when our powers combine...!
• omg its a velociraptor get in the car
  

7wishesIII

• for a world without secrets or strangers
• for a rock to hide under
• to save the world, one light globe at a time
• for foresight
• for the world to respect people on nightshift and during the day just stop it, seriously now, we’re trying to sleep
• for consequences and crocodiles
• for earthquakes

7paintingfiascosII

• GFS!
• GFSB!
• GFD!
• GFDUAG!
• GFP!
• GFU!
• GFA!

7wishesIV

• to say what i mean
• to know where the wind goes
• for validation
• to know the origin of all things
• to walk through walls
• for a little sunshine
• to be god for a day

7choices

• Predestined (to a point)
• c. Wait...er, where am I?
• a. Do I look like I eat peasant food, you obsolete calculator?
• a. Swim to the edge of the bed, find your clothes and GTFO!
• a. Throw the damn parsley porridge at the ButlerBot, throw the pillow at the ButlerBot, throw yourself at the ButlerBot, etc.
• c. Cry.
• c. HAMMER TIME.

7wishesV

• for more time
• to be king, I hear it's good to be king
• to live in the path of some great migration
• for it to be bleeding obvious
• sharing is caring
• for a bear
• for the revolution

Extra Love

• Arthur Miller's CYOA (with accordians)
• Mike's 7wishes Chinese Whispers
• Jaime's drawing of Florence the Bear
  

triceratops come home

This postcard is currently up on Postsecret. I think Bert sent it. I know Bert sent it.

- for them to finally drop the bomb.

A truth and beauty bomb. They’re quite distinctive. No other bomb explodes like a bag of flour, sending great clouds of pink, blue and yellow gas billowing out through the grid that is Melbourne’s streets. It smells like bubblegum and regret.

Some people run. They drop their briefcases and mobile phones and run screaming from the fairy floss cloud come to swallow them. I stand to one side, and watch as the world around me is hidden by a rainbow.

It’s already too late.

A stranger emerges from the cloud, one of the emo kids from the steps of Flinders Street Station. He stares at me, wide eyed and wide mouthed in horror. Unable to stop himself, he points and shouts that my breasts are enormous.

I point back and yell that he’s too fat for skinny leg jeans, and wince when I do. The truth will out, and it isn’t always beautiful. He bursts into tears and disappears in a waft of pink.

Time, then, to do what must be done, and quickly. The containment plan, set in down legislation more than a year ago when the first truth and beauty bomb hit and incapacitated Auckland in New Zealand, would have wound up before this bomb even hit. Somewhere, the RAAF is scrambling all the combat jets it has. It has been proven, time and again, that civilisation cannot function with truth and beauty. Nations have collapsed under their weight. Australia has no desire to suffer the same fate.

I duck into an internet café. The attendant, hidden behind a gas mask, charges me significantly more than normal. The truth is, he’s a money-grubbing opportunistic jerk, and with the gas thick in my lungs, I have no choice but to tell him so. He shrugs, amused, and after taking my money begins his escape from the city.

It starts as a letter to my family, a last good bye before they cut the power and concrete the lockdown, but the truth will out, and out, and out, and it grows to be a letter to everyone, then a blog post, then a forum post, on every forum, in every journal, anywhere I can say-

They dropped the bomb. The world is changing. My eyes are changing the world. I’m already dead, I just haven’t stopped moving. The truth is,
you drive me fucking crazy
you made me cry when you didn’t call
you made me cry when you wouldn’t look away
you made me shy with your consideration
you’re awesome
you’re awful
i miss you even when you’re here
i want to get to know you better so i can miss you better so i can abuse you and lose you
i would have stayed up all night
you were too cool stylish amazing for me
i wish i'd just kissed you
you’ve never listened to a word i said
i didn’t say i like you can we hang and i should have
you take yourself too seriously
i tried
you should have said sorry
you’re boring
i should have asked you why
you’re not the friend i wanted you to be
i lied
you disappoint me
i made a mistake no several mistakes with you and i’m sorry
you’re my favourite person
you did me so much damage and you didn’t even notice
you should know better than to ask
i admire you and your clarity and your strength
you stopped being gay for her why not me
you crushed my dreams
you make me a better person
i don’t know how to be happy
i can make you happy
you’re adorable and fuzzy
you make me feel worthless
i was right
you need to shut up and learn about silence
your normality puts me off kilter
i was afraid you’d say no so i didn’t ask
you need to stop coming on with an agenda
you hurt me every day
i did that on purpose
i don’t know how to say thank you for letting me stay in your life
the delight you take in the world makes the world delightful
you’re a pathetic whore
i want to hold your hand on a winter’s night
you need to lighten up
you should be nicer to me
you should just go ahead and do it trodden toes be damned
you think too highly of yourself
you’d be a kinder person if you could read minds
i was never as important to you as you were to me
i deserve nothing any of you have ever done for me
you make me what i am
you don’t know me
i don’t know you,
nothing changes.

The truth is-

Press send. Press send. Press send. The power disappears. It is beginning.

I go home.

I open the window, and stand with my arms hanging out, and watch the pigeons flutter across the narrow alley from my sill to the opposite. Sunlight reflects on the birdshit and dust streaked glass. Little feathers, city grime, the sound of hundreds of people crying as they have no choice but to be truthful with themselves, maybe for the first time, certainly for the last time. The pigeons bob their heads madly, and chase each other along narrow filthy ledges. Here is the fast growing roar of jets thundering low overhead. There is the concussion of bombs, real deadly damaging destructive bombs tearing the city apart, wiping Melbourne and everyone drowning in the truth and beauty of the world off the map.

It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

- for a pony.

No, wait. For a triceratops.

With a comfy saddle. I could ride him all over town. Like the maharaja and his elephant, me and my triceratops. It’d have to be a fancy saddle. With sequins and ribbons. Probably glitter on velvet. We could paint his frills, put tassels on his horns. His name would be something stalwart and resistant, like, oh, I don’t know, Bert. Bert the drag queen triceratops. He’d live on a farm. A dairy farm, with the cows. They’d get used to him. They’d love him.

No, wait. A flying triceratops.

Not some dinosaur twat with wings, no, Bert would fly like superheroes do, with his legs stretched out. We’d fly to the beach, somewhere empty and clean, and build enormous sand castles. Me and my triceratops.

Tourists would look up and point, and cry, what on earth is that?

That, the locals take one look and shrug, that’s Tessa and Bert the flying drag queen triceratops.

Do they fight crime?

I don’t think so.

Then what do they do?

Mostly, they just zoom about dropping confetti with bad haikus written on them.

But Bert, the flying drag queen triceratops, he’s lonely. He tells me he’s all alone in this world, and when I reply that we all are, each and every one of us, alone, he shakes his head sadly. You don’t understand, he says, you can step outside and see hundreds of people who look and move and speak like you. There are no other dinosaurs. I am alone.

I rub his nose. He likes that.

He tells me he’s leaving.

No, you can’t leave.

I am. I’m going to find some dinosaurs. I can’t be the only one.

But where will you go?

The moon, he said, and takes off into the sky.

Wait! Take me with you!

But Bert is gone, a plump silhouette shrinking in the disc of the full moon.

And I am alone.

Later, men knock on my door. Men without uniform or ID. They inform me that the ISS has been destroyed, and show me a satellite picture of the wreckage. A mess of metal still in orbit over the Earth. Amid the glittering shards of mirrors and ribbon strips of foil and mangled twists of girders is a frozen triceratops, legs stretched out.

We believe that is your dinosaur, they tell me.

The ISS cost a lot of money, they tell me.

Do you have insurance, they ask me.