Dreamy Quirky 12 Short Stories

By David Swan

'Dasein’ was my attempt to personify Heidegger’s notion of Dasein or beingness. As you can imagine these philosophical ideas are quite hard to grasp so I wanted to try and write a piece of flash-fiction that attempted to understand why we, as beings trapped by space and time, find it difficult to experience beingness. I’m no philosopher but I try my best.

‘Diary of a Lost Boy’ was a funny one and one that I wrote just after my father had passed away. I was staying at a Tibetan Monastery and attempting to get my head around ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’. My mind was full of world ending theories and I was compelled to write this piece. The important bit being the leap into the unknown and the freedom thereafter.

‘Beer and Buddhism’ is a slice-of-life memoir taken from my other book. It just captures a period in my life when I was living and working in London. Caught up in the usual busyness and trying to keep my feet on the ground. To make peace with myself I headed of to visit a friend at a Tibetan Monastery.

‘Frankenstein’s Ubermensh’ you can call pop-fiction-philosophy. I’m having fun looking at this notion of Neitzsche’s ‘Ubermensch’ and the supreme-being clearly misunderstood by the Nazis and maybe many other misguided politicians. This idea that we can create perfect beings from nowhere and hope they maintains their humanity doesn’t work. Supreme-beings are like avatars or spiritual figures that have spent life-times perfecting their skills. Knowledge alone is worthless and dangerous without compassion.

‘The Great Santa Delusion’ has a kind of cheeky farcical tone to it. As I say, ‘If a young girl can get it’ so can you. This is looking at the myth of God and Christ and equating it with Santa Claus. It ties in with a spiritual message in the end when the kids bump into a bald-headed mystic who had been running the show from the start.

‘Hojosan’ is another slice-of-life memoir detailing a journey to a Zen Monastery in Uithuizen. A peaceful and inspiring story about a Zen Priest ‘Hojosan’ and his story about the time he nearly became a Kamikaze pilot. Beautiful.

‘Running Away’ is a conspiracy totalitarian thriller looking at the up and coming surveillance world and drone society and how quickly it can all go wrong. It’s fast and dark.

‘Shit Happens’ has a farcical comedy feel to it with a large dose of surrealism added in. The residents of Planet Grey live on a grey planet typifying their dull lives. All of the things deemed ugly in life including colour have been erased for safety reasons. They even sleep during the day so they don’t have to look at the yellow sun. Then one day a large bug lands on the planet offending the locals. Well I won’t tell you the rest but it does get a bit fruity.

‘The Irelefunt’ I am proud of as it was published in Philosophy Now magazine, and it is my only publishing credit to date. It concerns two brothers arguing about different spiritual journeys. One goes on a long adventure gathering wisdom and knowledge and the other stays at home watching the Discovery Channel and reading esoteric books hoping to attain enlightenment without effort.

‘Reverse’ is a very dark story. It involves a servicemen who is suffering from trauma who embarks on an ill-thought out relationship with a young girl in Russia. It turns out bad but the story is told from back to front as he comes back to life after shooting himself and is given a second chance to undo the things he has done wrong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Swan
• Release date: Nov 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370313495

David Swan

I have been writing for 5 years and prefer novellas. I have not yet established a genre and find myself enthused by an idea and then build a story around it that happens to be science-fiction or urban fantasy.I studied creative writing at Bangor University, Wales and had the chances to study other great writers which helped me a lot.I have not written much since a I have traveled a lot recently but I am starting to fire things up again.Looking at what I have written so far I am inspired by the world around me, my own personal experiences, and my hopes and fears for the future.

Book preview

Short Stories

by

David Peter Swan

Copyright © 2020 by David P Swan

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

http://www.dpswanwriter.com

Contents

Behind the Curtains

Dasein

The Diary of a Lost Boy

Beer and Buddhism

Frankenstein’s Ubermensch

Suckered

The Great Santa Delusion

The Birthday Gift

Star Bucked

Hojosan

Running Away

Shit Happens

The Irelefunt

Reverse

Malcolm

Who are we?

Behind the Curtains

She pulled the curtains back ever so slightly and peeked out onto the cobbled streets. She stepped back from the curtains and looked the other way looking out for anything suspicious. Things out of place. Signs or symbols that might hint at a good or bad day ahead. She stepped back from the windows and then retired into her armchair sofa. The rest of the room was dark, and all the other curtains were drawn. It was eleven o clock in the morning and the sunlight outside was begging to be let in but that couldn’t be done until 12 o clock.

There was no rhyme or reason as to why this needed to be done but this was one of the myriads of checks and balances that Susan went through each day as part of her religious ritual. It never appeared religious to her, but it was. The way she had placed all furniture in the room to be symmetrically opposite each other. How each piece of ceramic pottery or brass statue was placed two inches away from the end of the shelves or tables on which they sat. And how the checking of the furniture and ornaments required an early rise each day.

The only thing missing were any references to a religious god or deity. Susan had no faith. Routine and order were her faith. Once she had checked and double checked everything in the house, she would go about preparing to get ready for the day. On her coffee-table lay a white business card and stamped in black letters was the name Michael Davidson: Grief Detective.

Michael lay on his bed. His quilt and bed sheets were wrapped unceremoniously around and through his legs. He slept in a position that said much booze had been consumed last night. There was an ashtray on the bedside table that looked like it belonged to a tramp. The ashtray sat in front of a photo of his long dead wife. The irony was astonishing. A man whose job was to help people through their own grief was still consumed with grief about his wife that had passed away ten years ago. But it was more than that. Michael seemed consumed with the grief of nearly everyone passing away. His last shrink said he couldn’t work out if it was death anxiety or a morbid way for Michael to seek attention. This hurt Michael and naturally he let the shrink go. Not because he didn’t know what he was doing but because he was too good and had hit a nerve.

Michael was great at seeking help from others but not so great at seeking help for himself. He was a car crash that had happened again, and again, and again. But today he was feeling good. He had received the call last week from the lady in grey and had to admit she had been the most beautiful, fragile woman he had worked with to date.

Michael never mixed business with pleasure but found it difficult to manifest the cool exterior he was supposed to when visiting Susan in her home. Most clients were broken in a visible and obvious way, but Susan showed no signs in the way she dressed but the attention to detail when it came to her house and her insistence on regimentally checking everything, showed classic signs of death anxiety. Susan was an astute aware woman who was watching every move Michael made and looked as if she was analysing every single word he spoke.

It was always a tougher case when the client had awareness about their own condition and in many ways one would have to play a careful game trying to unpick the remnants of psychological traits that had been taken on while the client continued to hide and add others.

Today would be their first walk and proper talk. Susan only went outside of the house at 12, 3 and 9 o’clock. Her first outing would be for two hours. The mid-afternoon stroll was 45 minutes and the 9’o clock time was a brief 15 minutes. Not a second more or less. She kept a keen eye on her watch. If she erred over the seconds a resultant panic attack would occur. She had arranged for Michael to call the bell at least five minutes before, and of course not a second less.

Michael made sure he had risen earlier and was waiting down the street leaning against a lamppost. He was unsure about leaning against the lamp post as it made him feel like a stereotyped character from a post-war movie. All he needed was a cigarette and a three-quarter length jacket. The cigarette he had. The jacket he didn’t. His kind of jacket was a black leather jacket that middle-aged men wore when they wanted to appear cool. He refused chinos and the expected checked shirt. He swore blind he would try to hold off from wearing the age-appropriate stuff even if it meant he would end up looking like a poor man’s Mick Jagger.

He flicked the cigarette into the bin opposite him and it bounced of the litter fine sign and into the bin. That made Michael feel cool. He decided on a walk as he felt the environment didn’t quite match a saunter. He sauntered in Central London. Paris. Rome. He walked briskly in suburbia.

He reached the door and checked his watch. He was three minutes early and knew that he would have to hang around idly for two minutes feeling like a local pervert or worse still a poorly dressed Jehovah’s witness. The curtains across the road twitched. Either a wealthy older woman, bored and lonely while her CEO husband played Golf after a business lunch, or an elderly lady or man bored shitless with retirement and counting the seconds till death came.

Michael shuddered. Death. The biggest bummer ever invented. Why oh why did he end up in this profession. The door suddenly opened which made Michael jump and owing to Susan’s fragile condition she screamed and jumped too. Michael calmed himself down and raised his hand for reassurance.

‘Sorry Susan. It’s ok. I’m here for our first visit. It’s Michael.’

She composed herself as well. She was about 5ft 2 and very svelte-like. Her hair fell in a low bob just above her shoulders which he noticed were showing before she placed the jacket on. Again, the grey dress. A white cream jacket, and this time red shoes. She also had pearls around her neck and a pearl bracelet. She dressed as if she was a very wealthy and classy woman and Michael wondered about her choice of residence. It didn’t seem her. Quite boring.

Maybe the entire house and neighbourhood was a kind of safety net. Each plot dived into the same parts. Each house looking the same. With a green carpet of grass out front the only connection to nature. She stepped outside the house and looked both ways. Michael stood around wondering what to do next, but the problem was answered when Susan placed her arms through his and said, ‘Let’s walk this way.’

Michael’s chest puffed with pride as he walked but he tried to readjust himself and appear relaxed so as not to show that he was too impressed by her presence. She walked with a little uncertainty and he could see her eyes darting to the left and right as if on the lookout for some spook or stalker. Her condition forced her to squeeze his arm a little bit which made him feel happy. It also brought back memories of his wife and the love they had for each other.

They continued to walk down the street for a few minutes not saying much until Susan stopped, ‘You see him over there. What does he want?’ Michael looked across the street to see