Exclusive story: ??????!!!!!!??????; Forgotten Suns art; Poem: Snow; House/Disco Mix: La Tuna Ave; Tales From The UniversE 47 - newsletter from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
An arcadia of imagination
Welcome - and thanks to all my new and cool as cool non-paying and paying subscribers. Any comments, love, free money, etcetera, let me know in the section at the end.
Purchase an annual subscription for £50 (10% cheaper than monthly) and receive a free autographed copy of my first novel, Night Time Cool, plus a PDF of my second novel, Adventures in LovE. Or take a month for £4.99 and receive the latter.
1. Short Story
??????!!!!!!??????
At 21 years 4 months and 9 days old Babe Holiday knew what he wanted and this was to feast like a gourmet, imbibe a magnum of vintage champagne, and go out in a fantasy daze.
Let the senses consume.
Think about it.
Fresh baked bread rolls warmed in the oven coated with salted Cornish butter.
Pink grapefruit straight from the icebox dusted with raw cane sugar.
French press brewed java from newly ground Peruvian beans.
Toasted crumpets and wild raspberry jam.
A fat porterhouse steak seared and blackened and done medium rare with rosti of Jersey Red potatoes and fried button mushrooms, tomatoes halved and grilled.
A green salad dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper. Lime to squeeze.
Hot chocolate pudding, fresh double cream, strawberries handpicked from Poynton Fruit Farm.
Ice cold springwater sourced from Adlington Brook streams.
Split crackers and chili jams and pickles and Corsican chutney and cheeses: Salted Caramel, Danish Blue, Emmental, Roquefort, Ricotta, Gruyere, 7-year aged Cheddar, a crystal-studded block of fromage royalty: Parmigiano Reggiano.
Wash this sensory overload down with flutes of sparkling golden Dom Perignon ‘64.
Was it possible?
To gorge on this and go spinning into the voluptuous ether of soul body mind. Send the world a-whirling while he dizzied and nirvana enveloped.
To meet his maker this way.
There was one way to know.
Babe Holiday’s house was on the main junction of Poynton. It gave views of the village left, right, north and south. It was a reclaimed Edwardian abode with bay windows and portes-fenêtres and a sweeping garden that held orange and lemon trees. It was prime real estate worth a cool £1.5m-plus and Babe Holiday paid zero mortgage on it.
The oak-wooded country-style table was laid. The banquet his to start in on.
Standing up, he chomped on just baked bread rolls with butter, sucked at pink grapefruit and brown sugar, slurped deep and rich Peruvian java. Wolfed toasted crumpets and wild raspberry jam. Moved next to a prime cut of porterhouse bloody and blackened, chased chunks of this with Jersey Red rosti, fried button mushrooms, grilled tomatoes. Noshed olive oil and salt-n-pepper spattered green salad, splashing lime all over.
Senses reeled. He cartwheeled through himself. The world became another world distinct from the one once tethered to. The steaming chocolate pudding childhood relived, fresh double cream and handpicked strawberries from Poynton Fruit Farm a reveal of existence’s dance. Galaxies span by. The Universe evolved brothers and sisters. The slake of thirst from the cold springwater of Adlington Brook an ethereal refreshment. Crackers and a smorgasbord of chili jams, green and red pickles, Corsican chutney, and the cheeses Salted Caramel, Danish Blue, Emmental, Roquefort, Ricotta, Gruyere, 7-year aged Cheddar and crystal-blocked Parmigiano Reggiano billions of stars descending into his eyes to take him on an interstellar rocket ride.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Tales From The UniversE to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.