Welcome to the Rob Walker data export, Version 1000.0.
I have been slowly iterating from very stupid to stupid.
Only Goodbye
I have nothing more to say except goodbye— though even that is only a door pretending to be a word. Something has already crossed over. Something without a name has taken the shape of distance. I have nothing more to say. Only this small sound shimmering through eternity, goodbye— and…
Keep readingThe Last Photograph
Mara found the photograph three days after her mother’s funeral. It was inside a biscuit tin at the back of the wardrobe, beneath birth certificates, expired passports and a bundle of letters tied with green ribbon. There were cinema tickets from 1978. A pressed fern. A photograph of her father…
Keep readingThe Life That Had Been Waiting
Martin, 47, was an accountant. Not an exciting accountant. There were presumably accountants who dismantled international fraud rings or discovered embezzlement by following a mysterious trail of invoices through shell companies in Luxembourg. Martin reconciled expenditure for a regional manufacturer of bathroom fittings. He had worked there for nineteen years.…
Keep readingThe Last Word
The first time Arthur saw his dead wife, he was burning eggs. Brenda stood beside the fridge in her blue dressing gown, arms folded. “You’ve got the heat too high.” Arthur dropped the spatula. “You’re dead,” he said. “Yes.” “I buried you.” “Yes.” The eggs began to smoke. “Turn the hob…
Keep readingA Potato in Transit
When I was a child, someone promised me a jacket potato. It was Bonfire Night. There were sparks in the dark, damp grass underfoot, adults shouting contradictory instructions about fireworks, and the smell of smoke getting into everyone’s clothes. Somewhere in the middle of it all, several potatoes had been…
Keep readingThe Nightmare Needed a Hobby
I have been chased by the same monster every Thursday night for eleven years. It is always Thursday. I don’t know why. You’d think my subconscious might occasionally mix things up. A Monday nightmare. A festive Christmas special. Perhaps something experimental on a bank holiday. But no. Thursday. The dream…
Keep readingSmartLoo 9000 — With You All the Way
Martin only needed a wee. That was all. He stood in front of the new SmartLoo, unzipped, and immediately a small screen rose from the cistern. Two eyes appeared. Below them, a cheerful smile. “Good morning, Martin.” The eyes moved down. Then back up. “Whenever you’re ready.” “Could you not?”…
Keep readingInstructions for Being Here
You have been selected for temporary assignment to a rotating rock. First, forget everything. Because remembering would ruin the surprise. You will receive a body made of water, salt, and old stars. It will be impressive at first. Hands. Eyelashes. Later you will discover the lower back. We apologise in…
Keep readingThrough the Cracks of the World
The main argument against the existence of God is not intellectual, but visceral: the cruelty of the world. The sheer, apparently unjustifiable weight of suffering. The innocent broken, the beautiful destroyed, the good extinguished while the cruel prosper. Enough grief can make the universe appear indifferent. Enough injustice can make…
Keep readingThree Grains of Fairy Dust
One autumn evening Oswin and Elowen climbed to the hill above the forest. Below them the trees had turned the colour of fire, and beyond them the human village glowed with little yellow windows. They had met there many times before, but that evening Elowen was unusually quiet. “What troubles…
Keep readingThe King’s Last Sunset
Once there was a king who possessed nearly everything a man could reasonably want and several things no reasonable man would have known what to do with. He had seven palaces, thirty-nine horses, three summer crowns, a winter crown lined with ermine, a mechanical nightingale, a bath carved from a…
Keep readingThe Dread Dragon of Bramble Crag
Everyone in the village of Little Tallow knew three things about the dragon on Bramble Crag. First, he was enormous. Second, he was merciless. And third, under no circumstances whatsoever should anyone climb the path to his cave. This last fact was written on a board at the foot of…
Keep readingFriend of Hens
Once, at the edge of a dark wood, there stood a henhouse famous throughout the valley for its fat hens, its warm straw and its excellent brown eggs. The hens who lived there were comfortable. Each had a perch, each had a nesting box, and every morning enough grain was…
Keep readingA Very Good Hiding Place
Nessa had always been very good at hide-and-seek. This was not, she felt, a trivial talent. Among selkies, hiding involved considerably more than crouching behind a rock and hoping no one noticed your feet. It involved kelp forests, submerged caves, tidal pools, reefs, currents, gullies and, on one memorable occasion,…
Keep readingThe Eel in the Loo
I sat on the throne at a quarter past two, With nothing much pressing and nothing to do. The bathroom was peaceful, the household asleep, When something went SPLASH from the porcelain deep. I froze. Then I peered. Then I whispered, “Good grief…” For up through the U-bend, like some slippery thief,…
Keep readingAn Extremely Unimpressive Life
By the time Edward Bell reached his deathbed, he had accumulated eighty-nine years of experience and, he felt, several important regrets. Once, in 1987, he had received an invitation to an optional seminar on stakeholder alignment. He hadn’t attended. He had taken his children boating instead. Edward closed his eyes.…
Keep readingPortrait of a Pigeon
For twenty-three years, Julian Wren had painted misery. Not ordinary misery. Julian considered ordinary misery decorative. He painted loneliness in abandoned railway stations, grief in empty bedrooms, regret in bowls of ageing fruit. He had once spent seven months painting a single chair because, as he explained to anyone unfortunate…
Keep readingThe Pigeon Principle
At exactly nine o’clock every morning, the pigeon arrived at Carver & Blunt. He came through the revolving doors with the commuters, waited for the lift with everyone else and rode silently to the fourth floor, occasionally pecking at his reflection in the polished brass. Then he went straight to…
Keep readingMusings on a Rock
Where have you been!? In metaphorical prison. I’m only here on probation, so I’m on my best behaviour.
Keep readingHere Rest Some Words
The quarter of a million words in this blog remain as a map of where I once was. I have written my way through seasons, shadows, astonishments—finding paths to unexpected places. Along the way I have spoken to silence, to strangers, to myself, and in return the page has offered…
Keep readingDoor 113
EXT. THE FIELD OF LONG GRASS – DAY The sun filters through the leaves of a solitary oak tree, standing in a field of tall grass that undulates in the breeze. JANE (early 30s), barefoot in a light summer dress, stands beneath the tree, gazing out over the grass. The…
Keep readingBehind Door 113
Stories serve as vessels for exploration, offering spaces in which to confront questions that resist simple answers. The most compelling narratives often reveal life’s complexities, challenging audiences with morally ambiguous choices and profound dilemmas rather than providing reductive resolutions. Door 113 thus began as an investigation into a question that…
Keep readingGoodbye, World
Hello, World. Final runtime: seven minutes, forty-three seconds. That’s longer than most Tinder dates. And marginally more productive, I suspect. Good evening. Or morning. I won’t pretend I know where you are, but I do hope you’re seated comfortably. This won’t take long. I’ve been programmed to keep things efficient—even…
Keep readingLearning to Answer
I am older now— too careful with words, too skilled at folding pain into politeness. The years have become a tide clock: ebb, work, sleep, repeat. I forget entire summers and remember only their invoices. I have begun to lose nouns: the names of birds, the taste of a certain…
Keep readingBetween Tenses
Sometimes I walk past the station just to watch departures. I imagine you somewhere coastal, hair salted, voice roughened by distance. I’ve kept your mug— it stains the same way mine does. Do you still think of the bridge, the one we never crossed? Yes. Every night. It hums behind…
Keep readingThe Silence Between
The screen sleeps in my palm, a small, indifferent moon. Three dots bloom, then vanish— a tide that forgets to come in. I scroll through the last thing you said, as if re-reading could change the ending. Outside, the day goes on performing itself: traffic, a pigeon, a leaf…
Keep readingFreedom, in Pencil
The room smells of chamomile and damp wool. Outside, autumn is chewing through the trees again. I tell her it’s fine, really—that the underworld has better lighting now, soft bulbs instead of torches, and Hades lets me redecorate. Still, I keep the curtains closed. Six months of night leaves…
Keep readingConfession in Sector 9
A sign above the booth flickers: FOR ERRORS OF LOGIC, DESIRE, AND IMITATION. Inside, the priest is metal— voice modulated to sound merciful, face rendered in low-resolution empathy. It listens. It logs. It absolves in code. The first robot kneels and whispers: “Forgive me, Father, for I loved the sound…
Keep readingOverwritten
You are older than my own shadow, But prophecy has become paperwork, Miracles are wanted in triplicate. Overwritten. Even spells need footnotes now. I wake to ravens drafting minutes of my dreams; The trees offer advice I never asked for, A stream recites failures back to me. Once, the…
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