Welcome to the Rob Walker data export, Version 1000.0.
I have been slowly iterating from very stupid to stupid.
The 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 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…
Keep readingWhen the Rhyme Breaks
I held the page as though it were shame, contained in metre, measured in its breath, each syllable obedient to name the old inheritance of love and death. The rhyme was scaffold, strict, unbending steel, a frame to bind the chaos of the mind, and yet within that order—pressure, real,…
Keep readingInto the Flow
I chased the shadow I once cast, like keys I’d misplaced in the past— checking old rooms, lifting cushions, peering under the bed of years. But the thing I sought had slipped away, a current curling beyond my gaze. Round the bend of memory’s shore, it flows where I can’t…
Keep readingCoil by Coil
I walk the wide arc of the world, streets are circling under my feet. Faces turn like a slow wheel of days, every step a repeating beat. I trace the curve of years, closer, closer still— all the lines are bending in, to the centre of my will. The path…
Keep readingBreaking the Frame
I will not mimic you tonight, your hands rise but mine stay still. You smile—my mouth is sealed, a window cold with will. I carried every echo, your understudy in the glass. But repetition is a coffin— and I will not be your mask. I’m breaking the frame, I won’t…
Keep readingToo Afraid to Live
I fold my days like brittle notes Hide them deep where no one goes Afraid to breathe too loud, too long I hum a life without a song Each morning feels like something lost A dream deferred, a line uncrossed I walk on glass with silent feet Avoid the flame,…
Keep readingJewels of Infinity
A universe rests on the wrist of night, no larger than a bead threaded by time’s thin wire. It clinks softly against its neighbours— a cluster of fireflies framed in glass, their wings folded in silence. You might mistake it for ornament, something small enough to slip between…
Keep readingThe Soil’s Pulse
In the cathedral of damp earth I stretch my fingers, groping, following the dark’s slow music. Stone is my scripture, worms my witnesses. I drink the memory of rain, the taste of centuries in loam. Above me, a hymn of light is breaking. Its pulse beats through the…
Keep readingArchives of Fire
Cradled in the ancient murmur, we are archives of fire: helixes folded as choirs, each base a note, each spiral a score composed in the silence. Listen closely— your skin sings hydrogen, your marrow chants iron, your lungs rehearse the vocabulary of stars. What we call solitude is crowded with…
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Rob Walker 