tom_photo_tales

We were driving home, when we saw it. A giant plume of fire rising from our home town. Our way of life vanishing in a single moment of incandescent light.

We had always known this day would come.

Once, when we were young, and dangerous, my lover and I had devised a grand idea. The grandest anyone had ever had.

Life is for living, we said to each other. Every moment of every day.

More than that, every moment is essential, because as humans we live with knowledge that every moment could be your last. That is the truth, the great urgent truth that lies beneath everything and gives life meaning.

And so, with the fervour of the truly insane, we had done a truly remarkable thing. We decided to live according to our convictions.

We dug down into the foundations of our building, and planted a device in the darkness. Our hands trembling with excitement, we set the timer to an unknown moment, ahead somehow in time. And then on the top of it we built our new home.

And every day had truly been glorious. Every moment had been tinged with the deep-seated thrill that the threat of imminent destruction brought. Nothing had ever been put off.

Looking back at the destruction, I felt somewhat guilty that somehow we had escaped the consequences of our youthful folly.

Still, I never did like the couple that bought the old place, I thought, as I drove on up to the farmhouse. Such awful taste in curtains.

...when I find my special uploady cable wire thingy. Seriously, I just can't find it.

It's in here, finally. I've been looking for this churchyard for a long time.

It's cold, but I don't care. I hardly even feel it, to tell you the truth. I feel like I'm burning up.

Finally, this all comes to a head. Today I find some resolution for the rage that's been in me all this time.

Twenty-two long years.

You see, it all stems back to a day in a more innocent age, when I was young, and happy, and did not know hurt. But someone changed that. Someone with too much power.

That day, I was hurt like I had never been before. I was just a little child, but on that sunny afternoon I was given a burden of pain to carry with me my whole life.

Call an election on a school day, will you, prime minister?

Close school for a day, which means I go to the park and then fall out of a tree, breaking my arm?

Right. You're having it.

Two hours ago, I drank a gallon of water. My bladder is fit to burst.

Time to find your grave and have my revenge.

This little boy's come to write 'fuck you, Mrs Thatcher' in the snow.

It was a hell of a mess.When the ambulance crew got there, they found two crashed cars in the snow, and a hell of a lot of blood. In the first car, the blood had come from the head of a pregnant thirty-two year old Portugese nurse. She lay slumped over the steering wheel, leaning on the horn which sounded continuously, its pointless blaring warning violating the pure winter air. The discordant tone it made was added to by six dogs barking and scratching in the boot and a baby who was strapped into the back seat, screaming its head off.

In the other car was a lecturer, a world expert, luminary of the college. No-one on God's fair earth new as much about solar panels and the electric car as this man. He was going to be the future. Not any more. Now he lay impaled on a shard of glass as large as my fist, his blood slowly trickling out over the boot and staining the snow, a look of puzzlement and terror on his face, just so much pointless meat.

Everyone said it was a god-damn tragedy. No-one knew why the two cars hit each other.

And there, in a forgotten corner of the scene, the girl from the oil company stood and watched, unnoticed, distant, silent.

It was a shame about the woman, she thought idly to herself.

Ah well. Her profession didn't really allow any space for a conscience, or thoughts of the fate of innocent bystanders.

Her boss had been right, she reflected. If you're going to kill a man in his forties, distracting him when he was at the wheel was the way to go.

Still, it sure as hell was cold with just this jacket on. 'Next time I flash somebody, it's going to be in summer' she thought, as she buttoned up her coat and walked away.

The people stood in line and waited. It was time.

A bright light shone from over the horizon, just a pinprick at first, and then slowly it spread to fill the whole of the sky.

Then came a sound, gentle at first but slowly building, building. A low, rumbling hiss that grew and grew into the rumbling like a thousand jet engines, like a white blast of sound to match the light, overwhelming the senses.

And still the people stood and watched.

Lovers held hands, united in that moment, knowing that it was the most important thing that they had ever shared. It became a thing known to each of them in different ways, the understanding that it was over. All of it was over.

In that fleeting instant before the end, everything became more precious. The most precious thing of all is to be alive, and to be with the one you love.

Moments spent together. A dwindling resource for those who watched the end of the world.

They felt no sadness.

It was simply time for things to end.

The light and the sound grew, until no-one could see or hear anything.

All that was left was touch, the feel of each other's hands, or the embrace of a lover.

Then heat.

Then....

It was done.

I watched from my window as my flatmate's boyfriend left, probably for the last time.
I'd heard it all from them. The laughter, the talking late at night, the door slamming and the giggling at 1am when they got in. The other noises that no-one ever lets on to hearing, that seem to last forever when you're trying to sleep and have work the next day.

I'd heard the shouting too, and the arguments. I'd seen things go from bad to worse, especially in these last few days. One evening, I'd come in to find a shattered cup on the floor, and empty wine bottles all over the place like signs of a struggle. I'd kept well out of it. It wasn't my place.

Now, it was over, and you could tell, you could just tell somehow from the hunch of his shoulders and the trudge in his walk that he was never coming back.

I looked down at him. I'd always liked him, and there he was, walking away in the snow on his own, his dreams shattered. I didn't even know if he had a place to go to. I felt bad.

But not that bad.

Anyone who plays the Birdy Song to mask the sounds of sex deserves all the suffering they get.

It's morning, and the sun is rising behind my family's home, wrapping its familiar silhouette in bands of gold.

In there my family are probably still asleep.

It is so long since I ran away. Since I turned my back on the good things I had going for me, the comfort, and the love of home and family. That day was the hardest day of my life. I remember the look on my mother's face, when she ran into me in the hallway. I had my long coat on, my bag over my shoulder.

I had told no-one I was leaving.

She looked at me like I had stabbed her. She didn't understand, and never would.

I had no words to say. I had known before, how hard it would hurt. I had also known that there was no way to explain, and that the look in her eyes would almost be enough to make me stay. That wouldn't have done. I had to go become the person I knew I could be, out there in the world.

It was many years since I left that hallway, but I still remembered the sound of her sobbing as I closed the front door, the slam like finality.

And now, I'm back I who once was their prodigal son. It had always felt strange. I always wanted to be close to her, to make her proud. I just wasn't quite the person she wanted me to be.

But I'm reminiscing. Thinking about a past that's gone forever.

No time like the present.

I'm pretty sure that they're going to be happy to see me.

And I can't wait to see what they make of my fabulous dress.

Now mother has her own little girl, just like she always wanted.

Yes sirree.

Pretty as can be, all six foot nine and thirty stone of me.

It was in the woods I found him. My quarry, feral and wild. He was a living force of nature, the dark spirit of the woods made flesh. I moved through the shadows, one man against the wildwood. I knew that my home, my family, all the gentle rules of kith and kin were as nothing. Out there, it was kill or be killed. Him against me. And it was there I made my stand and truly proved myself a man.

Admittedly, I did have seventy-five hounds, six footmen with guns, a horse to ride, and twenty-three friends with me, but those foxes can give you a nasty nip if they're cornered, you know.

It's so cold out here. I wish I had a home.

Sometimes, I pass by here as the sun is rising, and the door to this place is shut.

Other times, like today, I see it open, and I see evidence of the people inside. They look out at me, shambling, tired, a leftover from a tragedy who walks the streets unceasing and never comes to rest.

But they never look for long. They see me out here, and they hide, as if scared.

I wonder what it must be like, inside that building.

It's a workplace, so probably they grumble about the cold, the cramped conditions.

I wish I was in there with them. Complaining that the things I have aren't quite good enough.

But I do not have the time for such luxuries as regret. Not out here on the street.

So I move on, and the door shuts.

It looked so much bigger when I was young. I remember my brothers and I climbed it, one sunny day when we were off school, so very different from today. We raced each other up to the top, eager, excited by life and its boundless possibilities, drunk on being young.

When we got to the top, we were so proud of ourselves. We stopped to congratulate each other and then my father showed us how to fly a kite, whilst my mother sat, just a little out of breath, and watched proudly as her brood ran about together, laughing and joking so happily.

I remember it as a golden time. A glorious happy memory of childhood that no-one can ever take away from you.

Of course, things would have been even better if I hadn't pushed my brother off that cliff.

Still, I feel no shame.

He may have spent three months in traction, after that I ALWAYS got to have first go with the kite.

There's something in the water. No-one wants to admit the truth, but I see it sometimes. It lurks beneath the surface, and at the corners of our sight. It takes the unwary, and the weak.

I've worked here for twenty years. I've seen people come and go, and I know the truth.

And now, on this snow-bound night, I see it. It's there, moving slowly in the cold, its scales grazing the surface of the water.

I know what I need to do.

This is for the fresh-faced innocents, and the broken down old folk it took. This is one man standing up to the horror that lurks beneath the surface of the waters, the dark soul of this corporation, facing the darkness and hoping that against all reason, all sense that says I stand no chance at all, my hope and my spirit can triumph and set us free.

And that, officer, is why I was standing in the company pond, whacking the Koi Carp with a cricket bat.

It's a funny thing, right and wrong. Some say it doesn't exist, others that it's a fundamental rule of the universe. Endless arguments, discussions, wars, have come to pass over some trivial interpretation of the meaning of those two concepts, or at the very least, their application.

Everyone, except the ill, or the psychopathic, wants to think of themselves as a person who does right. When it comes to living this creed, however, the way of the righteous is beset by all kind of complications. To whose truth am I adhering? In whose name am I doing right? What laws, what obligations should I listen to, and which should I disregard? What about the rule of law itself?

I say, to thine own self be true. Follow your heart, even if the world turns against you. Do what you know to be right, even if it means the end of you.

And I live this creed. Out there in the city, in the dark back alleys where the feral and the desparate prey upon the unwary, and where terrible deeds have for too long gone unpunished.

I walk in those places, and I do what I can to make this terrible, debased world right. I ask no favours, I seek no reward or recognition. I act only out of the purest of motives.

The Fanged Avenger must seek out injustice.

Now, if I could only afford a slightly more expensive disguise.

You see, the elastic chafes my ears, and the felt pen tends to run in the rain.

Sooner or later my enemies are going to wise on that I can only fight crime on dry nights.

It was a beautiful day, the best in a long time. I looked up at the sky, and man, I just smiled and smiled. Not a cloud in sight, nothing. Not even a wisp. I thought of the best days, the wonderful times that live in memory, that feel like dreams even as they happen. I remember, too,  that sense of meaning that you get when walking out under a beautiful sky, a purpose in your heart making you stand that little taller. I remembered, god I remembered, the way you feel pride in yourself on those perfect days when life aligns, and who you are and where you're going seems like a good thing.

Not too many of those days, lately. I had been without purpose for too long.

Still, I was out, now, after fifteen long years.

I was out, and I had a list.

It's good to be free.

More than that, it's good to have a purpose.

My job? Yeah, it's dull, it's cold in winter, hot in summer, but you know what, I'm my own boss, and I can start and finish when I want.

And oh, my god, the things I've seen, I couldn't even say.

No, really, I couldn't.

For one thing, there's a court order banning it, and for another, that couple in the panda costume and the tutu smashed my camera before I could take a picture.

The first impulse a parent has is to love, and that is often the long and the short of it. A child is yours, they go out into the world vulnerable and innocent, and in the short time you have them, you do what you can to equip them for the challenges which lie ahead. Then, when it is time, you watch the path they choose to take, and you cheer them on, waiting nervously to catch them if it goes wrong, hoping quietly that they will do you proud, trying not to make them feel that pressure.

More than anything, you support them. You make them know that you are on their side, and that they should always chase their dreams.

And if what they want to do is be the best Frankenstein impersonator in all of West Glasgow, then by god that's what they'll do.

Our former monarch. Perhaps our greatest ruler. She stands proud, enshrined in metal, an effigy staring out over the nation she once ruled. Some say her spirit lives on in that cold, imperishable body, that she still looks out over her kingdom. Some say her indomitable will presides over the dying echoes of her glory, and that on dark days for britain, tears flow from those iron eyes.

Some people say she gets down off that plinth and fights crime with her kick-ass ninja moves.

Some people don't half talk a load of old shit.

From here I sit, and I plan. Silent and unnoticed at the heart of the great capitalist machine, I wait. 

One day, the call will come, from those who put me here, at the right moment of circumstance, of timing, of the shifts and swirls of the market, I will be called upon to push. I am a lever, a button for my masters to press.

One day I will take the disc I always have in my pocket, and place it in my computer, type in a few simple, short, commands, and then wait.

And then, fifteen minutes later, every ATM in the western world will display, not bank balances, not the facts and figures of debt, but a badly-drawn picture of Gordon Brown and George W Bush, performing a sex act on a goat.

That'll show them.

I was sitting at the bus stop, waiting to go home from work, when it happened. I don't know why they chose me, I just saw a shining light coming down from out of the sky, and a sound like whirring all around my ears.

Now I know we are not alone. Now I know that our destiny lies beyond the stars, and that before that destiny comes, I must be on guard against these creatures who wish to keep us from them.

I alone stand against them.

I realised this, just half an hour after that nice man gave me the stamp full of chemicals to lick.

We were looking forward so to seeing Edinburgh, when we came here from southern Arkansas. We'd heard so much about Scotland, and our roots are from here, what with our uncle being called Scot and all, and so we just had to come look see.

Kinda disappointin', though.

The first night out, we got hella drunk in the station bar, and this guy offered us a ride in his car.

We woke up the next mornin', and this is what we saw.

God Damn.

I'm sure Arthur's Seat was meant to be be bigger than that.

The camera records everything. The slow change of the seasons, the coming and going of everyone, whilst the sky rolls and boils above it.

But things aren't like they were, not in the good old days. the sky's a different colour, no birds sing in the trees.

The world is going to hell and still we grasp onto everything and tell ourselves pretty lies. We think recording the chaos on our streets every day will keep us safe.

And what good does it do, I ask you? What good at all?

I'll tell you what good it does. It means that when I get knocked down and break a hip, a court of law has some proof.

And now that stupid old guy who lives on my street is going to have to give me his electric scooter.

That'll teach him. Screw you, grandad.