STIOFAN O'CEALLAIGH

NOVA

(a short story without an ending)


We knew we had to abandon it.  They claimed, they were on a hunting trip.  Surrounded on five sides; a mountain was proposed by the son; an irrational NOVA.  But not as perfect as it seemed.  Most of the boring citizens congregated beneath cherry blossoms, awaiting its  death and their own.  Fashion was currency in NOVA and the citizens’ inhabitants appreciated bird song and surface beauty.  While, and on the finest paper, the powerful of NOVA documented pieces of war.

Ten years later the upper NOVAs continued to write “right”.  That’s when things started to go wrong.  And it wasn’t long before all of NOVAs citizens began mourning the morning.  Regretting the future and the next day, while hoping and preying for another.  In echoes and colour surely only the fragmented could survive this.  Having lost landscapes and seas the only citizen bearing a child looked up and then spoke up.  And with every word spoken the sea seemed to crack.  She held her unborn baby in her arms and complexity re-began in NOVA.

Like most cities at that time, NOVA was broken with fear.  The citizens talked of “trust” and then stopped.  The powerful NOVAs also stopped; stopped talking and enforced a rigid and superior hierarchy.  They told the citizens sons that “demi-gods get drunk on “gestures””.  NOVA had seen nothing like this before and neither had I and thus a walled Pleasure District was established on the other side of the mountain.  Everyone in NOVA simultaneously turned ninety degrees north-west and walked in unison into the cracked sea.  Above the cracked waves a floating city was then established, and below lay the see-sea.  It sucked ass.  It proved popular.

Slowly, a striking form of celebrity inhabited the rocks, and rolls, and hills & caves around the floating city.  Excited: the government tried to regulate this.  Classify and label it.  Will you choose fear?  With dog hair stuck to their teeth, the powerful signed policies.  They built walls with other citizen’s hands and made profit a prophet.  Soon all the mayors become us...

And without warning sunlight drips from the tips of the hairs of the best citizens.  Days and days passed.  I just couldn’t take it.  With smoke filled eyes all the suns began to point at the moon and the cherry blossoms began to fall.  Rapture would surely come.

I wandered and wondered what was going on, inside, of him and her.  And then an epiphany – I mean I know, but it really does feel f-f-f-f-fff-f-fantastic -:  The citizens were categorised and divided as follows: the jumpers, the deaf, homosexuals, the weak of stomach, those with flu, the unmotivated, those who wore denim, the lonely, the “fit-for-work” and the sons (which included all genders).  With privacy settings intact the sons set out to repair the weak of stomach.


The tallest mayor of NOVA declared a state of flux.  He decreed and de-lighted all celebrities involved in the transformation, he even said “Belgium is blue!”.  I thought to myself and then forgot everything.
        
  •   I couldn’t even remember how to dry my hair.
  •          How to walk over “that” bridge.
  •          How to question and climb.
  •          How to dance and warm.

·         How to sing and how not to approach bears.
I probably needed a minute.  Four little nothings wept and all the sons eyes turned white, I feel strong right now, like cotton, sheets...




by and copyright of ©Stiofan O’Ceallaigh (2017)
artwork by Stiofan O’Ceallaigh and Ron Kibble

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