Very Slight Stories | Like short stories, only shorter.





'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

 

New Dublin

   Perhaps we'll go to Galway next week. If we don't make it all the way to Galway we can stop in a field and start building a new Galway. This is how my uncle Billy created Dublin in 1972. He was on his way to Dublin to see a man about a dog. He was still fifty miles away from his destination when he stopped in a field to sleep. Billy could sleep for a week. This was because he'd get into long arguments with everyone he met in his sleep. He'd get into long arguments with everyone he met when he was awake as well, but real people would never argue with him for longer than six or seven hours.
   He slept in the field for five days. When he woke up he found that someone had built timber walls and an iron roof around him. He decided to make this the new Dublin and he'd wait for the man with the dog to come to him. Many people joined him in his new Dublin over the following weeks. One of the newcomers was a man called Tim. Every time he was struck by lightning, he'd dance. He was struck by lightning three or four times every week. On cold nights, people would crowd around him for the heat after he was struck. They were liable to get kicked by his dancing feet, but a good kick in the head only helped keep out the cold.
   Billy was often woken from his sleep by a kick from Tim, so he decided it was time to expand Dublin. He built more rooms in the field. The town kept growing, and the influx of Dubliners gathered pace. It took three years for the man with the dog to arrive. Billy decided not to buy the dog. The man and the dog stayed in the new Dublin. Billy went back home to Limerick, but when he got there, everyone had gone to the new Limerick. Billy stayed in the old Limerick because there was no one there to disturb his sleep. In his dreams he populated the abandoned city with people who never tired of arguing with him.










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The East Cork Patents Office
Mizzenwood
Words are my favourite noises


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very slight stories

They Met a Bear
  They stopped in a small seaside town and they went for a walk. They met a bear.
  This is one version of the story. In another version, they met a sailor, and in this one they ended up being held at gunpoint on a speedboat and becoming unwilling participants in a diamond robbery while disguised as a cow, and sharing in the proceeds of that crime.
  So when they tell the story they just say, "We met a bear. He waved at us."

The Story of the Fortune Teller and the Alarm Clock
  A fortune teller threw an alarm clock at me. This story is deliberately lacking in details to mock the predictions of the fortune teller. Although she was right when she said she'd throw an alarm clock at me.

Counting
  One. Two. Three, the study. Four, a candle stick. Five. Six...
  Seven is missing, presumed dead. One has taken up the case, and two is helping him in his investigations. They both suspect six. Seven was last seen next to six in the garden.
  But seven isn't really dead. He's consumed half a bottle of whiskey and he's currently in the orchard, talking to a rabbit. "One of us is as boring as a gate post," he says, "and it's not..." He stops to count on his fingers. "No, actually it is me."
  Eight nine ten.

Debbie and his dog
  Debbie was sick of people mistaking her for a man.
  "Is your dog my parole officer?"
  "No."
  She was sick of people asking her that too.







Very Slight Stories: like short stories, only shorter

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