Re: #1486478

Thank you for the first entry of this recently announced contest. It feels funny calling it that, since there hasn't even been an announcement of a grand prize. Bragging rights, the reward of an attentive reader and maybe a few forwarded zaps are really all this humble Muser can offer. It is sounding now more like a challenge.

Also, 1000 words is an odd format, isn't it? I'm thinking though, is it any more odd than sharing creative writing to a bitcoin forum? I guess each is odd, but regarding the first, I think restrictions are healthy.

For anyone who hasn't done so already, check out @TotallyHumanWriter's writing. Below are just a few of my thoughts on it, hardly worth a sixpence, really, but something I promised I would do.

If you enjoy this, consider lighting up the original again, reading the other entries so far, commenting or even writing your own.

When I was seven, I got my first pocket money. I pressed the golden pound coin to my bare chest like it would fill my puny muscles with power. Polish the metal with your school shirt and it gleams. Hand it over because mum forgot your lunch again. It physically hurt to give it to the dinner lady. And all that returned was a plate of mashed potato and grey peas.

There's never a shortage of inspiration provided by childhood, youth, or the past. To me this is a great starting point to a piece of less than 1000 words. To me, this is a well crafted story. Here, I really feel how our money and the reasons we must part from it are infantilizing, humiliating even -- "mom forgot your lunch again," your internet company increases their rates, the government taxes you, etc.

... It started slowly. A subtle loss of hues and tones, like my eyes were televisions that needed fiddling with. The only channel they ran was Money TV. The coins that came into my possession from kicking in vending machines and flogging single cigarettes burst into spectrum like light through a curved bottle. Reds and ochres for the small coins, indigo and violet for the heavy ones. The ones I hid.

This is the speaker's first encounter and phase, I presume, with their money-synesthesia. The images of childhood capture some of our first experiences with money, mostly small amounts of coins for darts and other cheap thrills. The following phases become more bereft of life, aging more like a sour melon than a fine wine.

... In my dreams, the colours all blend together and chase me in the form of an amorphous blob. I never know what I’m running towards because it’s pitch dark. When I wake up, I look at myself in the bathroom and see a sagging face silvered with stubble. No amount of pound coins to the chest can save me now. I pick up the can of shaving foam and squirt a wide circle around the mirror. A zero. What’s inside the circle still has a hint of life. I wonder what adjustments it will take to bring the world outside the bathroom into sharper focus. Two steps back, take a breath, then hurl yourself towards the mirror.

Finally, we come to see the speaker-turned-dreamer as they have a few more mundane encounters with money in their life, their understanding of it as a necessary evil deepens. Its colours transform, along with the speaker, into zombified symbols. Here, life feels bankrupt. Whether their bank accounts reflect this is unknown, but it doesn't seem to matter as their very own mad musings drive them to self-destruction. Hopefully, there are other ways out of the hallucination.