Babbling Brook (6)

He watched tour highlight videos on GolfingWorld.com all night long to take his mind off the revelation. He'd had no idea that ______ held such a resentment towards him. If anyone had asked, he’d have said they were friends. Then to learn of the grudge—murderous in its proportions—it had thrown him big time. The golf was therapeutic. He read Money Monthly magazine, too, which helped enormously.

His mind was like a mountain goat leaping from intellectual crag to intellectual crag. Sauntering down Fortune Street one November day he ran into a thespian friend whom he hadn’t seen in a while. “If anything, I’d like to be busier,” the actor said.

He neglected to include a trigger warning in the opening paragraph of his sixth Babbling Brook. He did not believe in such things. People of his generation had stronger stomachs, were less precious, than the notice-box narcissists of the internet age.

There were rings in the puddles. There was a hole in the top. He was talking in riddles, unable to stop. At the back of the circus, the animals were residing, in a menagerie of cruelty, when not in the ring. The rain poured down as Zampillaerostation swung above the clown.

If he had his way he’d hang the ringmaster higher that Gilderoy’s kite!

She read: “The world is a school that draws us on always to know more.”

He was on the bus again reading an article entitled: “Recovering from Wisdom Tooth Removal.”

For the past few weeks his boss was chronically bullshitting him. He found himself saying “Get behind me, Satan!” with increasing frequency.

There was a café he liked to head into with his laptop and work for hours over several cups of coffee. He was becoming like the ghost of troubled Joe. It was just gone ten and he had already jumped on his first bandwagon of the day.

He proffered a piece to a “friend” who responded with a handwritten note: “Pretentious, but sub-literate, it is gibberish from beginning to endgame.”

She wondered if there was a way to evolve beyond Facebook. Wherever she went she quickly became the cynosure of all eyes. She spent money like it came out of a tap. Nothing held her attention for long.

He knew his anger was getting out of hand when he found himself following a man round the supermarket who had failed to use the tongs when selecting a scone to purchase. Sense prevailed at the last moment and he held back from launching into an attack. Nevertheless, he felt a trip to Doctor Schlagman would not go amiss. He had been too hard on Golvan during their initial consultations.

She passed her mornings dodging clickbait, and her evenings searching for a date.

In the café he asked the waitress for a refill. Upon his question the face focuses; a face that some man fell in love with once.

He grew bored with his iPhone. He couldn’t stand to look at another celebrity Instagramming the shit out of their honeymoon. He thought that the airs these little insect people put on were in the last degree ridiculous.

She was sent down from university for reading the Daily Mail in the Freshers’ bar between lectures.

Like Tories trumpeting growth figures, two junkies started screaming ’bout the buzz they were on. He closed his laptop and headed for home.

© Brian Ahern 2015