Free The Unexpected Occurrence of Thaddeus Hobble by Gareth Wiles

That’s what initially drew me to him. Our first conversation, though on a subject which bored me, was nonetheless an enticing link back to my own niggle of an unreachable memory.
    We had come ashore some peculiar island inhabited by weird creatures I had never seen before, and cared not to really look at. My mind was insular, my vision warped. ‘All of these animals I have studied,’ he called out to me as I passed, ‘are both similar and different in equal measure.’ I yawned, but stopped.
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜This giant tortoise,’ he went on waving his hands at one, as though I should have known what he was trying to tell me.
    â€˜Big, isn’t it,’ I responded glibly.
    â€˜Very big, and yet I have seen other adult tortoises in other parts of the world which are minuscule in comparison.’
    â€˜And?’ I pushed, tiring somewhat at his lack of clarity.
    â€˜Where the tortoises are small, the food is less and their predators more. Here, I see no natural predator and the food is abundant – both may have shared a common ancestor, yet have adapted to their surroundings.’
    He trailed off, turning from me in excitement and darting away. I mused more on his motivations than what he’d actually said, likening his search for something to my own. My life here, right now, is on hold; shut off and without merit. I am travelling the world, but feel separate from it. Half the man. No, quarter the man. It is as though there is more of me out in the distance somewhere – both similar to me and just slightly different – not remembering who I have been or who I will become.

DARREN THE DANDELION CHILD

    It is difficult to appreciate one’s own life until it has been endangered, or is undeniably coming to its end. For me, I have experienced both of these – the latter is ongoing. As for experiences of endangerment, they were constant throughout my youth. On this, likely my final day or thereabouts as an elderly man, let me regale you with a brief recounting of my early years. I was born over a month prematurely on Christmas Eve 1870, my mother dying right there and then before she even had time to hold me in her arms – my father, a cruel man used more to thrashing than hugging, would delight in informing me thusly. That he died an agonising and humiliating death from a genitalia-rotting disease he’d caught from Mimi the travelling prostitute when I was but eight, was truly a blessing. My lasting memory of my father is a horrid smell and an annoying noise as he shat and spat into a bucket beside his deathbed. Now, here I was an orphan and ready to work full time in my uncle’s tweed factory. He was a widower, and didn’t really need or want another child in the house.
    The hours were long, the pay was nonexistent and I quickly developed a hunched back and crippled fingers. Uncle Joe would regularly order me to take my clothes off before proceeding to beat me with his belt after work, saying it was payment for my lodgings and food. The food, when I got any, were the leftovers off the rest of the family’s plates. Usually my cousins would ensure they finished their dinners so that I didn’t eat. Still, the brown water and whatever I could pinch from the animals’ troughs usually sufficed. Cousin Agatha, Uncle Joe’s only daughter, would sometimes make an exception and leave me her stale crust. I would eat it in excitement, knowing that her beautiful thick pink lips had been near it. In spite of this lack of nourishment I grew into a strong young man, due mainly to all the hard work I put in at the factory. And, sheer luck. Though my back remained arched and my fingers severely warped, I was particularly tall and most people didn’t seem to notice any deformities.
    Uncle Joe lost his three sons before they turned fourteen; two to bouts of a mystery sickness. The third, feeling left out, promptly threw himself in front