Very Short Story - The Apprentice

I wrote this piece to a challenge prompt of the word "weave". It’s written by me, so it’s weird and slightly warped and very strong with my own opinion on certain matters though I have updated some of the names, since they were about a decade out of date. Some choices may be a bit British, but persons of whatever nation may feel free to insert their own offenders as appropriate. Because I know you’ll all have some…;p

The Apprentice

Okay, I admit it. I may have made a few mistakes.

But I mean, this soul-weaving lark – it’s not easy, is it? The apprenticeship is a thousand years for a reason and how much help do you get? All those other weavers, they sit there glued to their looms, churning out visionaries and artists and geniuses and did one of them bother to show me the threads? No. They just sat me down and told me to use my instincts.

And I’ll admit, it hasn’t always gone well. It is possible I got a little confused with my backstitch when I was working on Henry VIII’s benevolent, eternally loyal and forgiving nature. I might have overestimated the amount of thread I’d need for Nero’s ego. I admit that perhaps I over-egged the pattern with Genghis Khan’s desire to help his people. But I learnt from these small, insignificant errors and I reined my work in. And if tiny, tiny little mistakes like Elvis’s appetite, Lennon’s taste in women, Boris Johnson’s ambition and well, Kanye West crept in, it was hardly my fault, was it?

And now I’ve reached the end of my apprenticeship, finally, after all these years of effort, and then they punish me like this?

Making the souls of reality TV stars?

It’s cruel, it really is. So hollow, so vile! Somewhere I’ll do less damage, huh? Well, I’ll make them pay for this. I’ll make them sorry. When they see the abominations unto human nature that arise from my loom such as Rylan, anyone from The Only Way is Essex and the true and terrible horror of the plastic souls of the Kardashians...

All designed to destroy the souls of others. My brethren’s hard work reduced to nothing, the imagination and depth of their creations rendered null. Let’s see how many visionaries and geniuses are left to thrive when I’m done!

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