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Ian Craine

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2024

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33 Followers
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36 Stories

601 karma pts

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Sister Breda of the Carmelites

Weekly Contest #288

SISTER BREDA OF THE CARMELITES That afternoon I drove south. At lunchtime I had touched base with that windy desolate coast, and I saw the great white ball that is Sizewell B. It was a dismal day. The air was full of threat and portent. By three the sky was a bruise of blue and green and purple, and the darkness was closing in on it. Leaving the shore I saw a last church white against the sky and there was a corposant adhering to its steeple. This alone may I save, said some Lord. The wind got up. A strand of poplars was bent double like a ...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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When Night Again Meets Day on Equal Terms

Weekly Contest #286

TILL NIGHT AGAIN MEETS DAY ON EQUAL TERMS On those days the water returned. It bounced and flowed across the wild grasses. It pounded the old stone wall. Spume and spray rose into the air. The grassy twiggy abodes of the nesting birds were washed away, and the rats were swept under the promenade to enter the piping and the inner runnels of the old houses. That night I looked across the water to the dim lights of Bagillt, far away and crouching on the shoreline. Now a man could swim all the way to Wales. It happened twice a year. I turned bac...

18 likes 6 comments 6
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The Times of Remembering, The Times of Forgetting

Weekly Contest #285

THE TIMES OF REMEMBERING, THE TIMES OF FORGETTING Memories like islands now in the silted waters of his mind. He remembers the times of remembering. The child who could not but remember when there was so much to learn. The sight of the green leaves of summer on a perfect smudgeless blue sky. The sound of grinding metal from the goods railway at the bottom of the road. The smell of soapy sticky tar new pasted on the road. Then the teenager sitting in smoky Kardomah basements forcing a coffee to last two hours. And the young adult seeing the...

4 likes 2 comments 2
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The Man Upstairs

Weekly Contest #284

THE MAN UPSTAIRS Patricia divorced me last month. She said I was a wastrel and was not good enough in bed to compensate. I needed money and I needed a holiday. I could just about afford Ireland. A mate who ran pubs in Central London came from a small place in County Limerick; I’d been there a few times and decided to revisit, reckoning on a bit of judicious gambling. An oxymoron perhaps- Patricia would have dispensed with the oxy-. It was a sleepy Irish town where the pubs outnumbered the combined total of other businesses. The best two we...

6 likes 0 comments 0
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Once Upon A Time in the Watford Gap

Weekly Contest #279

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WATFORD GAP Armitage left Towcester behind, and the empty centre of England opened itself to him. It was a fine evening. On his left the sky was still aflame, scored with parallel bands of blue and yellow and red. It was if the light had been refracted through a giant spectroscope. Then the yellow smudged the red and they all fell down the sky together until nothing was left but a variegated blue, and a red aureole of fire on the far horizon. Then the light went out and he shivered. He wound up the window against the ...

12 likes 3 comments 3
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I Columbine

Weekly Contest #277

I COLUMBINE It started like they all did before time immemorial, handed down to awe and fear and shock. A liminal creature from the nether world, and known as Hellequin. He preyed on girl childs caught on the turn. Their fathers fretted at the change in them. While he, alone or with others, wandered the limits of ancient villages seeking his semi-willing victims. I have no direct experience of the things I am describing. But I have talked to grandmothers and sat in dusty libraries researching the old ways and the tales that were never writ...

7 likes 2 comments 2
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