Write Out Loud (Reviews and Writing)

I sat in my chair, raised my glass and gave a quiet toast to Old John, the one I killed. The one we killed.

Three of us had made the pact together. Old John had to die. We knew it had to be and so it was. We chose the day and the time when we would face him and cut him down with our weapons, carefully chosen for the task, where he stood.

We gave him no apology, though he had done us no wrong. Indeed, he had grown as good and strong as any of us over these last few months of hardship and toil. Yet we sliced him where he stood, at knee height, with our blades. He didn’t cry out. He just fell, silently, to the ground. Meek and pliant to the last.

Then we tied him up and rolled him to the place where we could stab him repeatedly, piercing his heart while he still had life within him. Over and over again we attacked him with our spikes. Piercing his sides – yet no blood, only water, flowed. He was no Christ. He was just Old John.

We laid him on a cart and took him to a barn where no one could see the further acts of cruelty we would inflict on him. We peeled him, skin from bone, and then crushed him between rocks, making sure nothing was left of him that we did not use. There would be no remnants to discover, no evidence of crime committed. We had destroyed all but the memory of Old John.

Yet we loved him. I remember, not that many moons ago, when he had been young John. We had nurtured him, tended him, helped him to become as big and strong as he was. He had no idea that it was always our intention to do this to him. He just loved to stand in the sun, naïve as he was. But John was always going to die. He was born to die.

And now, here we all are, with our glasses raised to the one we killed. Some of us with large glasses, some of us with small. But all filled with the blood of Old John. We cannot do our work without tasting some of his life force at the end of the day. We sang praises to him in our own way, knowing that before too long, we would plan and plot; we will come for his children and they will meet the same fate.

But I taste his blood in my favourite chair and I look around the room at all the others doing the same. I am grateful for their companionship, their comradeship during hard times. I look at the strong, sweet nectar in my glass and I raise it again.

To Old John. The one I killed.

Inspired by a post from Oannes

You can buy me a coffee if you like! More accurately, you can help support my work either as a one off or monthly if you really want to show your love…

Social Entrepreneur, educationalist, bestselling author and journalist, D K Powell is the author of the bestselling collection of literary short stories “The Old Man on the Beach“. His first book, ‘Sonali’ is a photo-memoir journal of life in Bangladesh and has been highly praised by the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide. Students learning the Bengali language have also valued the English/Bengali translations on every page. His third book is ‘Try not to Laugh’ and is a guide to memorising, revising and passing exams for students.

Both ‘The Old Man on the Beach’ and ‘Sonali’ are available on Amazon for kindle and paperback. Published by Shopno Sriti Media. The novel,’The Pukur’, was published by Histria Books in 2022.

D K Powell is available to speak at events (see his TEDx talk here) and can be contacted at dkpowell.contact@gmail.com. Alternatively, he is available for one-to-one mentoring and runs a course on the psychology of writing. Listen to his life story in interview with the BBC here.

Ken writes for a number of publications around the world. Past reviewer for Paste magazine, The Doughnut, E2D and United Airways and Lancashire Life magazine. Currently reviews for Northern Arts Review. His reviews have been read more than 7.9 million times.

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