Saturday Short Story 500 – Playing Jenga

~ tidalscribe.com

‘It’s on local radio now, as well as all the social media.’

Councillor Brian Blogs was beginning to wonder why he had been so keen to get elected, let alone becoming the leader of the council. His colleague Jaylene turned the radio up.

Locals are up in arms over the gigantic new art installation down on the sea front, apparently installed without any consultation. These were some of the comments.

I thought the council were broke.

Call it art, monstrosity.

Completely spoils my sea view.

Brian turned the radio off and proceeded with plan B. Go and see it for himself. Would the public believe the council had nothing to do with it? The two black monoliths were not there yesterday and this morning they were, set firmly in the ground …

‘Jaylene, call the police and um, do we have an engineering department? Could this thing be dangerous, topple over?’

Brian had to admit he was impressed. The monoliths stood close, an eerie silence emanating from them, amid the hub bub all around. Black with a strange glitter, interesting textures … his thoughts were interrupted when a microphone was shoved in his face.

‘Councillor Blogs, who came up with the idea for this very unusual structure?’

‘Absolutely no idea, this has nothing to do with the council, it has been illegally erected.  Our engineers will be examining how it can be removed safely and police will be investigating who put it there.’

‘Is it true that no one saw it arrive?’

‘CCTV footage shows nothing there one moment and the next moment it was there, as if it had appeared from outer space. I suggest our next move will be to get the UFO experts in.’

Brian was rather pleased with the result of his radio interview. All the UFO experts and other nutters had come out of the woodwork and taken interest away from the council. He was beginning to think they had the only logical explanations.

‘Time to put away your toys children, count the Jenga blocks to make sure none are missing.’

‘Daddy, two are missing, I bet it’s Yogo’s fault.’

‘Yogo, have you been throwing toys down the chute again? If those blocks have fallen out that will be another planet we can’t secretly visit.’

‘Daddy, you promised we could land, we’ve never been to a planet with water.’

‘If the inhabitants are clever they might already be tracking us, we can’t take the risk. Let’s see what data Mummy has found out.’

‘Mummy, Mummy are there any people on this one?’

‘Yes darling, just like us, except, except… they are very small, that explains how they fit so many on their little planet.’

‘How small, I promise to be careful.’

‘As small as your Lego figures. We would frighten them and that goes against the second convention.’

‘But I want my Jenga blocks back.’

‘Daddy, can we have some as pets.’

‘No, certainly not, that goes against the third convention. We do have an obligation not to leave litter so we will use electromagnetic extraction and hope no tiny humans are in the way.’

25 thoughts on “Saturday Short Story 500 – Playing Jenga”

    1. Hello Liz, thanks. Yes the monoliths are an art installation by Boscombe Pier. I remember them going up, think they represent the sun, but I have forgotten the why and how and strangely haven’t been able to find anything about them on line. The globe is a shiny ball on top of the car park ticket box, makes good reflection pictures on a sunny day.

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      1. Back in my career days, 11:00 was my bedtime. Nowadays, though, I find that I do my best thinking/writing after everyone else is in bed, the t.v. is off, the kitties are sleeping, and I have complete quiet, so that’s usually sometime after midnight! Occasionally I actually see the sun rise!

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