One saw these sunkies everywhere one went, sitting, standing or lying on the pavements, roads, grass, in the mud, in puddles, in gutters, totally oblivious to their surroundings. Their limbs became atrophied from complete lack of movement and turned into something resembling gruesome, withered tree branches, further accentuating their plant-like appearance. The sight of these addicts was both sickening and unspeakably sad, especially as many of them were young people who had sacrificed all the promises the future held out for them.
The greatest tragedy was that the sunkies denied their lives had turned into an irrevocable tragedy. Not only did they become physically blind, they also became blind to the reality of their situation, convincing themselves into believing they were the superior beings living superior lives, and the only ones in possession of the ultimate secrets of existence. These Sun’s Sons (as they preferred to call themselves) were totally untroubled by their loss of sight and mobility, for there was nothing down on Earth they wanted or needed to see or do.
But this unfolding global tragedy was of little concern to the company that brought the beverage into the world, for its technicians were busily working on an even greater creation which would undoubtedly trump the bottled sunshine for popularity. Inspired by instant coffee and instant noodles, the new invention-in-the-making had the brand name of Insta-Life, and the advertising department was already market-testing various slogans such as “Insta-Life™: The Ultimate Product for Fast Living!”, “If You Thought Instant Coffee Was a Time-Saver, Wait Till You Try Insta-Life™!” and “Say Goodbye Forever to Boredom and Routine! Live Your Whole Life in a Jiffy With Insta-Life™!”
With the lure of holiday profits in their minds, the management kept prodding its engineers and scientists to work harder and harder, so that Insta-Life could appear on the market around Christmas time. And so it was only a matter of time before this new invention swept the world, and people would begin to live and die faster than mayflies.
the end About the author
Boris Glikman is a writer, poet and philosopher from Melbourne, Australia. The biggest influences on his writing are dreams, Kafka, Borges and Dali. His stories, poems and non-fiction articles have been published in various e-zines and print publications.
Boris says: “Writing for me is a spiritual activity of the highest degree. Writing gives me the conduit to a world that is unreachable by any other means, a world that is populated by Eternal Truths, Ineffable Questions and Infinite Beauty. It is my hope that these stories of mine will allow the reader to also catch a glimpse of this universe.”
The Light of their Lives was highly commended in the Fire and Ice competition.
ADOLESCENT REBELLION
Ann Bupryn
It wasn’t what Officer Sellet expected to see as he burst into the house, mere seconds behind the suspect, and with his colleague Officer Glenny at his shoulder.
Tanz, the gangly youth they’d been chasing lay slumped in the corner of a settee, glaring up at them, trying to look like someone who’d just woken up, rather than someone who had leapt desperately into the leather upholstery a quarter of a second previously.
Officer Sellet let out a sigh as he looked at the fresh rain in Tanz’s hair. The room’s only other occupant was Tanz’s grandmother hunched in a high-backed chair way too close to the open fire. She took no notice of them as she picked at the threads of a flimsy garment in her lap.
‘Now then, Tanz,’ said Sellet.
Tanz glowered. Sellet recognised the look; he had adolescents of his own. Part strop, part sulk but mainly indignation at being caught red-handed.
‘Where is it, Tanz?’
Another glower… a bit of a grunt.
A mumble from the fireside. ‘He’s a good lad, our Tanz.’
Sellet wasn’t worried. In the quarter of a second Tanz had had to stash the stuff, he was unlikely to have got it beyond this room. He glanced round. OK, Tanz had got it further than simply hurling it to one side. The device had started to emit its distinctive glow even as they’d chased him. If it was in this room, the walls would be pulsing green by now.
But even supposing a level of preplanning and an accomplice ready and waiting, they had officers round the back. No one could have left unseen, certainly not with that bulky contraption.
‘Where’s your mum, Tanz?’ asked Officer Glenny.
‘Out.’
Sellet and Glenny exchanged a look. They needed a responsible adult. Tanz’s grandmother didn’t count. Her hooked crochet needles were now flying to and fro, making a worse tangle of the threads that pooled colourfully in her lap, outliers escaping in glittery tributaries down her legs. As he watched she gave an irritated shuffle and flicked at the garment as though to shake it out. He cringed. The silvery lines snaked towards the open fire.
The large grate’s only flame was a scant flicker licking around half a fire-lighter. Close though she’d crammed herself, there was no danger.
‘Let’s nip this in the bud,’ Glenny said. ‘No one wants a youngster going to the bad.’
Not when it’s only adolescent rebellion, thought Sellet.
‘No rebellion in our Tanz,’ the old woman rumbled, as though he’d spoken aloud.
Unexpectedly, Tanz looked Glenny in the eye, and said, ‘Yeah, that’d be good.’
‘Ice! I need ice.’ The tone from the fireside was imperious, the movement of the crochet hooks lost fluidity.
Tanz made as though to rise. Glenny said, ‘You stay right there.’
‘She wants ice,’ Tanz muttered, then snapped, ‘There’s a bowl on the hearth, Gran, right beside you.’
Sellet moved to look. A glass bowl half full of water tucked in beside the chair, a few floating ice cubes bespoke the meagre heat from that inadequate flame.
The old woman lifted it clumsily to her lap, resting it wetly on her crochet. The fibres rippled out from the pressure, glinting sharply, a sudden kaleidoscope of colour. Sellet tensed, certain for a moment that fire had leapt right up the threads to the bowl.
Just a trick of the light.
She’d somehow sewn shiny fragments into the cloth. The refracted light from the floating ice bounced off the flicker of the tiny flame, rippling hues up and down, running into the old woman’s skirt, merging into the fabric of the chair.
‘I need more ice!’
‘It’s your fire needs topping up, not your ice,’ murmured Glenny.
Sellet dragged his gaze from the dancing colours and saw that Glenny too was fascinated by the undulating shades of the cloth.
The old woman dipped pinched fingers into the ice bowl and flicked them towards the grate. The tiny flame hissed and spat, almost vanished under the onslaught before sputtering to life again.
Then the chase converged, from front and back. Doors banged open. White-suited agents crowded in. Uniformed officials brought Tanz’s mother with them, pale and shaking.
The old woman muttered a furious monologue as white coats surged amongst them, tracker rods waving over and around everything and everyone in the room. They all knew it wasn’t here but the search must be painstaking. At the open grate, the rod was pushed up the chimney, the searcher swore as the diminutive fire speared out a tiny but potent shaft of heat. Sellet saw exasperation in the gesture that knocked the rod against the remnant of firelighter to smother the flame, which flickered at the point of extinction but then caught again at the edge of its almostspent fuel supply.