Short Story – Needs

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For a creative writing workshop I ran today in Preston I used an exercise designed to snap writers out of writer’s block. The idea is to have a principle character from a story you are stalled on, or unsure how to start at all visit you as if you are a fortune teller. I dealt each writer three cards from the Major Arcana section of a Tarot deck I own. The cards represent a character’s past, present and future respectively. The exercise was then simply to create a story bridging the gaps in time between the three cards to create a narrative or dialogue. I dealt myself in too, and my three cards were 1/. The Devil (past) 2/. The Tower (present) and 3/. The Star (future). This was the text my cards inspired from me. 1/. The Devil – My lusts have always got the better of me. I have savage appetites. I offered love, but who was I kidding or fooling? I craved. I desired. I took way more than I ever offered in return. I made promises just to secure control. I left many partners just when they need me. I was a taker, a user, a fraud and a phoney. I never set out to be selfish or this arrogant. I have tried snapping free of my state of being many times as I know too well where it might lead me in the end. Oh, I don’t mean a literal Hell. I have no time for such mystical claptrap. I mean the physical risks of unbridled unchecked urges, and the emotional damage I do to myself is incalculable. The older I get the more alienated I become as word gets round that I offer little if anything for the affections I snatch for myself. I am likely to become a lonely, embittered, frustrated old man, dying alone. The revelation of my true nature comes to me in blistering undiluted fury as I gaze at my fading greying hair in the mirror that will not lie. I need no ghosts of fornications past, present or future to reveal the nasty truth to me about my wretched nature or warn me to change my ways before disaster strikes me down. I find for myself the ugliness within me. I only wonder why others do not see the Dorian Grey portrait of me is superimposed on my own visage rather than hidden away in some dark festering attic. Some say I am handsome. I find myself vile. I must change my ways, but I simply cannot snap out of my appalling habitual longings. 2/. The Tower- My debts assail me. My ivory tower is in ruins. My own fault of course. There are no others I can blame. I have squandered my inheritance buying my lovers the finest wines, champagnes, diamonds, lobsters and hotel apartment hiring over many lost weekends. Strangely I find my sudden doom liberating. 3/. The Star – My recent doldrums depressions lift and float from me. My step lightens. I am bankrupt, bereft, homeless, but high in my spirits as opposed to high from the spirits consumed. Many still shun me because now I smile despite giving the appearance of having nothing to smile about. I’m as happy as an idiot. I walk the road with no destination but the horizon. I beg no alms but many offer them anyway, giving without me pleading, begging, or exerting pressure and manipulation. Pity or just natural kindness denied to my persona, I have no idea. I see the stars above, when I mostly saw only bedroom ceilings before. One star in particular stands out, Venus, Morning and Evening Star – Venus, goddess of the love I craved while giving none back – Why does she guide me forward now when I stole so much from her? Forgive me, Aphrodite – Venus. A lady offers me the services of her affections in a village I reach. I politely decline for I see in her a reflection of the man I once was. I am tempted to offer her an evangelical lecture on my metamorphic transformation, but I halt myself. I am no preacher or messiah. She must find her own path. I bid her good fortune and walk on through the village to the open path beyond. I keep walking. I am still selfish. I ought to help her, and warn her of her folly. I tell myself I must keep going though and my contempt for myself shadows me like a second shadow – I welcome my contempt as a travelling companion though I walk as a solitary nomad. Despite what a certain book states, man was sometimes meant to be alone. Arthur Chappell