It'll Never Work

by Robert Ferguson

Absinthe

 “So I thought if I could just show you my design, you might be interested.”

          “I’m sure I would, but perhaps another…”

          “Well, its quite urgent, actually. You have so many candidates, and there’s already a backlog. Let me just show you…”. He spread his large sheet of paper across the documents on the other’s desk.

          “Yes, but…”

          “Now, you see how simple the design is. It can be knocked up quickly, from minimal materials, anywhere and everywhere you needed one. The main thing is a good, sharp blade, forged to fit these twin supports, and the other thing you need is grease, to make sure it slides cleanly in its run.”

          “I’m sorry, but I really must insist that you remove…”

          “Well exactly, you have to remove the remnants after each operation, but that’s easy enough with my design. There’s a basket here at this end, and the labourers simply slide the raw material onto this trough here before the machine is operated, and then slide the

 remainder out again into the cart from which it came. Just a matter of seconds per operation, you see.”                                 

          “No, no, M. Guillotine, I’m sorry, it’ll never work.”

About the Author

Robert has previously contributed a number of short stories to CafeLit, in addition to publishing “Late Starter”, a volume of poetry, and other poems in 2018 numbers of “The Cannon’s Mouth”. He is the winner of the Solihull Writers’ Workshop Poetry Competition 2018.