Filed under: Fiction
Some short pieces produced in my writing class this term. They are far from earth shattering, but they seem like a nice way to start blogging again.
This first piece was an exercise in which we were not allowed to use adverbs and adjectives:
She stepped lower to the landing, the carpet scratched against the soles of her feet. Her hand lingered on the banister, and she shifted her weight, swinging round to the next set of stairs. In the hallway a parcel hung through the door. She had not been expecting anything. She opened the parcel at the kitchen table. It contained a photograph in a frame, a toy and a whistle. She pushed them around the table until they sat in size order on the wood. The toy was an alligator, she wound it up and pinched its stomach as it walked and snapped. It petered out. She stood and reached to switch on the radio. The sound of laughte r filled the kitchen. On the table the alligator lay on its back. She sat and sipped at her tea. A corner of paper poked from the parcel remnants, she slid it across the table and read the pencil marks that had been scrawled across it. It said it was sorry, that it hadn’t known what to do with these things. That they belonged to someone else but this was the address in the book that had stood out. It wasn’t signed. She picked up the photo frame. The reflection of light from the window slid across the glass. Finger prints appeared like an oil slick. It was a photo of her.
Another piece, another week:
A Note
The paper he received the message on was ordinary. It was bleached, white paper, sharp cornered and concertinaed up to fit inside the brown envelope. It was the writing that made the hairs on his forearms prickle. Not the message, per se, but the size and placement of the letters.
‘The cafe on the corner of Lexington Street and Highgate Road. 12 noon. April 5th.’
It was in the exact middle of the sheet, in a tiny, neat handwriting. There were no rubbed out pencil markings that might have been used for reference, or mistakes in the sentence. The regimented and level capitals, all though quite definitely hand-written, could have been printed. The ‘t’ was no bigger than the nib of his biro. He tried to copy the writing. After four sheets of paper and a wasted half hour, he gave up. It was impossible to recreate such perfection. What kind of person could have written such a note? They must be a master of art. Or perhaps a painter of miniatures. Whoever it was, they were either a calligraphic protégé or, more worryingly, possessed such a calculating mind, that this note could be produced at a moment’s glance.
He felt the bile rise in his throat. When he had sat at his office desk that morning he could not have known the danger he faced as he began gutting envelopes. He had wielded his thumb like a knife, carelessly and callously through bills and documents. Until this. He pushed the shorn envelopes across the desk and pressed his forehead against the cool surface of his mouse mat. He would have to go. Shit.
And a short section of a longer piece we produced:
“Nice boots.” The beady-eyed man across the table was staring at me. He nodded pointedly at my feet.
“Thank you.” I turned a page in the free rail magazine. A woman in a yellow dress laughed vapidly up at me from the picture. It was an advert for women suffering from slight incontinence. She didn’t look incontinent, but then you never can tell.
“When did you go?” said the man. He was persistent.
“What?” I knitted my eyebrows together.
“Your wristband, Glastonbury, isn’t it?” As he said it he clicked his lighter repetitively. It was out of gas.
“Yeah.”
The conversation limped on, and I stared blankly around. The man on the other side of the aisle was sat in a pleasurable silence, I glared at him. No one was trying to talk to him. This was the last time I wore these boots, next time I would wear a suit and loafers. I nodded in response to something the man had said, he was leaning forward in his seat and tapping his finger on the table. It was plump and round. I averted my eyes from it. The city outside the window was composed of lines of derelict warehouses and tagged concrete walls.
He said something about the toilets at Glastonbury. “They are pretty horrible,” I replied, trying not to think of the smell of port-a-loos on a hot day.
“That’s nothing compared to Iraq.”
I half snorted, but he was definitely in earnest. He looked at me seriously, “It’s hell out there.”
“How do you know?” Shit, I was being rude. “I mean, have you been?” I pointed at his khaki army trousers. He shuffled his bum up the seat until he was sat up straight.
“It was on the news: ITV special report. It’s worse than hell. There’s bodies everywhere.”
I put my face in my hands. I was changing in an hour and twenty minutes. That was too long, I had to get out of there. “Would you keep an eye on my seat? I’ve got to pop to the buffet carriage.” He nodded, and I slid out and away from his tapping fingers and sideways glances.
I dawdled up the aisle. Double vision had kicked in and the only way I could stay up straight was to walk my arms along the tops of the seats. There wasn’t much movement in the carriages. The occasional turn of a newspaper page. A woman talking loudly on her phone. A line of swaying people outside the toilet. When I reached the buffet, the counter was deserted and the cabinets empty. My stomach growled and I hung around for a few minutes, hoping to waste some time. The train pulled in at a station, no one got on, it pulled away. I had only ever seen this town from a train, and it was soon out of a sight. Newton Abbot. No, thank you.
When I reached my seat only the man’s beret remained. Either he had been swept away by ITV special reporters for further insights into the Iraq war, or he was in the bathroom. I carefully checked the bag I had left for bombs or faecal matter. Then I rolled up my jumper and leaned on the window, feigning sleep.
The man came back, I could hear him tapping and clicking. I kept my eyes shut. It was a game of sleeping lions. He got off at Taunton, no surprises there. He saw me staring at him as the train pulled away, he moved to wave at me, or swear. I’m not sure which. The train got faster and faster until we were overtaking cars on roads, and a shower of rain slid horizontally along the window.
Today’s efforts (very rough):
I came through the lobby into the bar, my shoes slipping off my heels at every step. I was desperate for a drink and some company. The room was all mahogany and green silk, as if the designer had taken inspiration from illustrations of Victorian gentlemen’s clubs. It all looked flat. I wasn’t sure if it was the oppressive lighting caused by the heavy drapery or the dressing over my left eye. I stood for a few seconds in the doorway, turning my head slowly so I could take in the whole room. There were lounge chairs and low tables scattered in pockets around a central parade to the dining room. People in evening wear milled around, gathering to drink and chatter before dinner. The only places left to sit were the stools at the other end of the bar, so I crossed the room towards it. A waiter brushed past me, spinning a tray between his hands, the reflection from the chandelier blinded my eye for a second. I swayed on the spot, feeling the rush of air touch my bare arm. The hairs bristled and prickled. And I turned my head and peered past my nose to where he approached a large group of people. He said something and they all rose, turning their bodies towards me as they made their way to the dining room. I stood still under the chandelier as they pushed past me, wondering if I should take their table. I turned back to the bar. The room felt longer than it had first seemed, and someone walked over the floor above the chandelier. If there hadn’t been a lull in the conversation as well as the piano music coming from the hall I would have missed it. The chandelier tinkling with each footstep. I stared up at the dusty pendants, my eye straining against the muscles in it’s socket. Someone passed me and my eye began to water. I swept away the tear, I didn’t want them to think I was crying.
Filed under: Fiction
This is a five hundred word stub of a story for my Writing for Children module. I produced it straight after chatting to some year sevens (eleven year olds). It’s not heavily edited, but I enjoyed the characters so I thought I’d post it up. It’s aimed at 11-14 year olds. Though you can probably tell.
Natalie Brightman. Natalie. Bright. Man. Natalie, I am. Bright. Man. Two things I am not. I am not bright in any sense of the word; clever, sparky, cheerful or any other patronising generic word a teacher uses in a report. I am not a man either, no matter what my brother tells me or my friends when they call. Sorry, my friend, not friends. Drew saw to that. Gemma is her given name, given to her by her ‘idiot, pro-life, pro-learning, pro-happiness and procreating parents’, she’s one of five, and her mum’s pregnant again. I think they must be at it like rabbits. Her chosen name, Drew, assists her much more in her attempts at androgyny. Last week we walked around the shopping centre holding hands, but no one stared or shouted ‘Gay!’. Our two pronged plan: to attract open-minded boys and to offend old women failed. Drew’s my only friend because she stood up to do a reading in assembly and threatened the whole year group. I think her exact words were ‘Look at me like that again and I’ll stab you.’ She wouldn’t stab anyone of course. She’s a pacifist, but because she dresses in black, wears a lot of eye liner and had just shaved her head everyone thought she was serious. ‘Too bad’ is what she said when I told her she’d ruined my life.
I spend a lot of time online, I even set up an account for her on this forum I thought she’d like, but she never uses it. Sometimes I go on it. I just keep it active for her, like keeping a seat warm. The odd post here and there. When I first set it up we went on and wound up some boys, they asked to see photos of us so we found the ugliest pictures and sent them instead. I think Drew’s forgotten about it all. She says she’s into steampunk now, and steampunkettes hate the internet. It’s all about goggles and cogs and stuff like that. I changed her profile to say what she thought, and this guy whose screen name is Fusion messaged me. He’s pretty cool, he writes poetry. I think he fancies Drew, or me, or something in between. It’s easier to express stuff online, there are no time restrictions and you can look up things you don’t understand. You can just be yourself. Or someone else.
The biggest issue with my life is my family. My brother is an aspiring Olympic swimmer. God. He thinks he’s Apollo or Zeus or something, the idiot. Just being in the room with him, especially when he’s drinking protein drinks and burping vile gases everywhere, makes me gets this itchy anger in my hands. My parents take it in turns to drive him to the pool before school every morning, so they’re always tired and refuse to negotiate with me about anything. Like fishnet tights, or cereal before bed, or how much time I’m allowed on the computer. Fusion has something similar, apparently his parents yell at each other round the clock. They both work from home and so he can’t even get away from them during the day. He doesn’t go to school, sometimes I just sit at home and don’t go either. Drew barely goes anyway. And if she isn’t there I get shoved about. So screw school, screw it. I almost sounded like Drew then.
Filed under: Fiction
A very short piece written for creative writing workshop.
The minutes grated by as I counted the change for each grim-faced customer. They were an assorted crowd of regulars and the occasional new comer; dismayed businessmen, stoned teenagers and truckers who reeked of cigarettes and burgers.
CRUNCHIE £0.59
I watched my fingers pick out the coins from the till, I was on auto pilot. No, worse than that, I was a machine. I let my movements hint at my electronic insides, so that the customer gave me a dirty look and left. Who cared. It was two in the morning and all I could do was rub my eyes and yawn. I ignored the post-it notes of stuff that needed doing according to Yvonne, and when back to aimlessly turning the pages of the newspaper.
‘MI6 SEEKS BUDDING BONDS THROUGH RADIO 1’
The picture with the article showed Daniel Craig with Eva Green, they were naked and entangled in some tropical sea. The bright strip lights of the shop made the blue all the more enticing. God, I’d give anything to be like James Bond, Daniel Craig, even Eva Green.
I turned sideways and gave myself a stern, manly pout in the fridge doors. The buzzer made me start as a customer came in and my hand jumped to my hair, it was coarse and greasy. I pretended it wasn’t. I was undercover, I was acting on a movie set, I was biding my time waiting for the bad guy to come through. There was a gun hidden in my left pocket and the man in the store had no idea of the danger he was in. I glanced suspiciously at the CCTV screen, nodding slightly, he was one of them. He shifted from foot to foot, sneaking looks at me from over the collar of his coat. I was a genius, nothing got past my hawk eyes, my sharp hearing and my amazing reactions.
He handed me the magazine, the processed sandwiches and a packet of ready salted crisps. I could tell simply from these things that he had other things on his mind. I heard the trigger being pulled in his mind as he shot me, then the bone crunch as he sliced off my head for proof. He made me sick, this hired thug had no morals and no self respect. I slammed down the change on the counter and looked him straight in the eyes. He couldn’t hold my gaze for long, within seconds he looked down at the stuff on the counter and for a moment I thought he was going to try something. My whole body tensed like a cat and I let my lip curl.
“Can I have a bag mate?” he pronounced aggressively, the ‘t’ hit me right between the eyes. I was gone, I was beat. I handed him the bag before my eyes could cloud over and he left the store without checking if I was still alive. I breathed a sigh of relief, yet another lucky escape. I could see the headlines now.
Filed under: Fiction
The other short story I produced at the workshop I attended, it was inspired by the fortune cookie I was given which is the title of this piece and waking up to find that one of my clementines had spontaneously turned into a snowball (mouldball) over night.
The market was a patchwork of fruit and vegetables that looked more like they should adorn a Christmas tree than be consumed by wet, greedy mouths. Mervyn, an annual visitor, bought one hundred apples, fifty pears and seventy oranges. He took them home in his battered fiesta and put them in his shed. He waited twenty two days, and then on the twenty third day he went into see what he had created.
When he opened the door a cloud of flies escaped, swerving about, dizzy in the rising odours. The pile in front of him was transformed beyond recognition. Every orange had turned into a powdered white snowball, covered in tiny delicate white hairs, and spotted with green. The apples had browned, wrinkled, begun to scab and the pears were not to be found. A syrup oozed out from the bottom of the pile and crept out of the shed under the door, seeped through the planks, soaking the pine in a stinking sweetness.
Mervyn unhooked his shovel off the wall and began shovelling the fruit, carrying each load the width of his garden to the green plastic compost bin. He sweated in his thick rough overalls and workman’s gloves, so that when the sun was at its highest he had to stop and peel the gray cloth down to his waist to let the October breeze nip at the damp patches of his vest.
When the fruit was finally cleared he filled a bucket with boiling water and mixed in a small amount of every bottle he had under the kitchen sink, until the water frothed and turned a vibrant nuclear green. He lugged it out and threw the contents over the shed floor. The windows of the shed steamed as he knelt on a folded rag and scrubbed the wood with a coarse brush, the sound of it spelling out a marching tune. Mervyn started with the floor, then the ceiling and finally the windows until the tang of cider and citrus was replaced by the aroma of chlorine. When evening was threatening he stopped, picked up the bucket and surveyed the shed. Look at what I have created, he thought.
Filed under: Fiction
This is a short piece of fiction I wrote for a short story workshop which was brilliant fun, the guy was really interesting to listen to and I produced two short pieces of work that I liked that day. This one he suggested changes too but being a stubborn know-it-all student I have chosen to keep it this way.
I think one of my synapses is broken. No. I don’t think, I know. Some tiny link is gone and now I can’t remember the word for- shit. For… it’s definitely gone. You know those things? Those things that you put round those other things that you wipe your mouth with. They’re pretty ordinary, but when you have to describe them they sound utterly cryptic, like a badly written riddle or an idiot’s attempt to play ‘Articulate’. You remember, surely?
Should I be worried? Is this a consequence of my ill mannered delinquent youth? Have all those Saturdays smoking under the garden hedge with that horrible boy from next door wreaked their moral revenge? Adam. At least I remember that. He had a leather jacket and as an older boy he was automatically cooler. I wanted to be his girlfriend but he was seeing a girl named Lotti who greeted you with the phrase ‘are you dogging me up?’ I wonder what happened to them, they’ve been out my thoughts for years. I think even forgotten about them until now.
The synapse to that word still isn’t happening. Maybe it’s from when I ran into the neighbour’s washing line, fell over and cracked my skull open. It was one of those times where you hurt yourself and you don’t scream, you just lie there wondering what you missed, what exactly happened that changed your position in relation to the ground from vertical to horizontal. Even now the memory is a little hazy. What’s replaced it is like a film where I’m stood outside my body watching the accident in slow motion. My neighbour’s child chasing me, and then the snapping tight of the washing line, my eyes widening and then a point of view shot as the world flips backwards. A close up of blood in my hair, on the concrete, my eyelashes fluttering as I go unconscious. Of course I didn’t go unconscious, but in a film there are certain rules. There might be a montage of the frantic rush to the hospital in an ambulance. The dramatic need might have meant that instead of being stitched up and being fine I would have damaged my brain and gone doolally, been paralysed for the rest of my life or had concussion and died at some unexciting moment: washing up, cleaning my teeth, or perhaps watching television. The words on my gravestone, as my parents wept, might have said, ‘Too young, too soon.’ Or maybe I would have been cremated, and the atoms which had once been essential to my existence would have chemically reacted under the extreme heat to form ash, which might have been spread somewhere significant to me. Perhaps somewhere they remembered me being happy, the garden of that holiday cottage in Wales. It would of course have had to be somewhere outside. The idea of sprinkling the ashes of your loved one in your bath tub, inside their favourite book or on the floor in front of the fridge would be an infringement too far of grief upon hygiene.
That word! I could have had a mini stroke in the night, have I smelt burnt toast? Or is it burning sugar? I don’t remember, but maybe that was one of the side effects. Who knows what else might have slipped away. Maybe one day I’ll get into the car and forget how to drive. I’ll sit behind the steering wheel and not even remember where I’m supposed to put the key. Perhaps I’m overreacting, or maybe someone has hypnotised me. Probably the hypnotist I tried to get me to give up smoking. Maybe she is punishing me every time I smoke by making me loose a little piece of my memory. It’ll be like a Jonathan Creek episode where I’m found mysteriously suffocated without signs of a struggle and by the end a venomous hypnotist will be jailed for vaguely wording her hypno-instructions. ‘You should not have instructed the victim to loose something important from her memory every time she smoked’, the judge will proclaim. ‘When you knew full well she could loose her breathing faculty.’ The hammer will come down and she’ll be put away for life.
How come I can remember the phrase ‘breathing faculty’ but not that thingymajig. Why? It’s like my brain has just thrown it out to make space for something else. I feel like I’ve walked to the shelf for a book I knew was there (I can visualise it precisely, produce the measurement of its spine intuitively between my thumb and forefinger), but there is just a dust print where it used to be. Bugger. This is going to bother me all day. Well, the moment has passed. I’ve no need for that word any more.
N…n… is it an n?
Can I smell burning toast?
