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Weekly Contest #337
Sensitive topic warning - refers to an impending plane crash. “Do you ever wish you could just pause time?” asked Eric. I just sniggered and shrugged. Little did he know, I had that exact gift. I just hadn’t worked out how to use it properly in forty years. It’s actually much less useful than you’d think. I can see how it could be helpful to be able to rewind or fast forward time, but pause is just that: a pause, and then you hit play and it’s back to whatever shitty situation you wanted to escape. It’s not the same as “stop.” It buys you s...
Weekly Contest #336
Lovely day, isn’t it? Your hair is looking nice today. Very… voluminous. Thanks, love, I just had it done this week. Have you had a busy week then? Not overly. Went to bingo, the doctor’s surgery, the chiropractor… the usual. Really? No, I did not… how ancient do you think I am? In body or spirit? Careful… Would you like a cup of tea, love? Aye, sure, why not. I can make it for us. No, no, you sit down, it’ll give me something to do. How was your week? Packed. I barely had time to get on top of my emails, never mind anything else. W...
Weekly Contest #308
“You are safe in here, but don’t you want to see what’s outside?” “I have less than the life span of a butterfly once I step into the light.” “Yes, but your condition stops you living.” “I’m fine in here.” “Don’t you want to know what’s out there?” Thalia asked, wistfully. I could see the excitement dancing in her eyes like the fireflies – a simile she often used. She spoke in poetry, trying to share the richest descriptions with me she could, in hopes of filling me in on what I was missing. “This place is depressing,” she said. “Eternal d...
Weekly Contest #307
Sensitive topic warning - references to racism. Professor Evans was the kindest person I ever met. He was always there for me – encouraging me when no one else did. I attended college alone. I know everyone does, but I felt more alone than most because I’d just lost my family. They died in a car crash the week before the semester started. Everything in me wanted to drop out of my course. I didn’t think I could concentrate on it. I was held captive by constant thoughts of disaster and catastrophe. I know there was nothing abnormal about that,...
Weekly Contest #306
Peanut butter Eggs Coffee A sense of humour – I’d need one for the things that have happened to me lately Better luck – they say bad things come in threes, not in fives or sixes, so why me? A tree – it fell on my car while it was parked on a country roadside. I’d stopped to get out and look at the highland cows in the field. I’d left it on the verge. At worst, I thought another car might have clipped my wing mirror, but no – it got completely and utterly wrecked by a falling tree. Perspective – I guess I was incredibly lucky not to be in it ...
Weekly Contest #305
It took seconds to realise I was utterly and completely lost. I should have known my way home by then. I’d lived in that apartment for a year. I’d seen it in every season, from every angle, in all weathers. I thought I knew my way back there intuitively, like a blind person knows all the ridges their cane detects on familiar footpaths. I guess you can become wrong about something in a single second. I kept moving. Stopping and examining signs hadn’t served as a compass in any way. I didn’t know one restaurant, one bar, one shuttered shop tha...
Weekly Contest #304
Some days I think this job isn’t for me. It might sound glamorous and enviable, but really, a lot of my day is spent trawling through emails, hoping to find something worth reading. I get more emails in a week than most people probably get in a lifetime, and I can’t just send them to junk and be done with them. I have to give them all a fair shot. If I skip over hundreds, I might miss that one, single, crystallised idea that’s just magic for the mind. Last week, I was at a literary event. It was one of the ones where literary agents are inv...
Weekly Contest #303
He totalled my car and got off without having to do a thing. I didn’t like him the minute I met him. He didn’t flee the scene, but he had a strange presence. You know when you just don’t like someone for some inexplicable reason, the minute you meet them? Maybe it’s like dogs and we unconsciously detect each other’s smells, or they resemble someone you once knew that unforgivably screwed you over. Whatever the reason, I instantly detested him. The crash was sudden, as most crashes probably are, but the seconds slowed down so they felt like t...
Weekly Contest #302
Trigger warning - contains sexual references and misogynistic remarks. “Dude, why would you want to date her? You don’t even speak the same language.” “Yes we do … por favor, me llamo Christian.” “That doesn’t count, man. How are you meant to get to know each other?” “There are other ways to get to know each other… if you know what I mean,” he said with a wink. “You’re gross. Obviously that’s why you’re looking for a woman that doesn’t speak your language.” “There’s room for interpretation. That’s not always a bad thing.” “Not for you, d...
Weekly Contest #296
Lying has never sat well with me. It was never something I made a habit of doing. White lies, grey lies, black lies – they’re all lies of equal dishonesty in my opinion. That was why I was more shocked than anyone when I chose to do it. I had no experience of it, even in childhood. I’d been brought up in a strict, religious household. I feared my father like he was God. But when my little sister came to me, I felt compelled to help her. She walked into my building one day and let herself into my apartment with her spare key. That’s the leve...
Weekly Contest #277
A great number of assumptions have been made about my intentions. Since day one, I have been labelled “entitled,” “spoiled” and “intrusive,” but has anyone ever stopped to ask for my version of events? Certainly not. They have depicted me in a multitude of unflattering ways in children’s storybooks. I have become a figure of fun. And did they request my permission to do that? Of course not. I could probably sue someone, if I had the appropriate legal aid. Maybe it isn’t too late for that. Why shouldn’t I get some of the royalties when I’m th...
Weekly Contest #252
Sensitive topic warning - references to emotional abuse. This is how it all started: my story with D. I met the most interesting person on a Friday four years ago. They were fascinating enough that I broke my own rules. For one thing, I thought I was a straight cis woman, but when I met this person (let’s for the sake of their privacy, call them “D,”) everything that was previously normal to me went out the window. D was hosting an event I attended. I spent most of that event less engaged in the activity than I’d expected to be. We were maki...
Weekly Contest #251
MIMI HYNES. There was something incredibly special about that name, particularly to Radnor Cliff – one of today’s many aspiring authors. He felt forgettable before he encountered her, especially since none of his books had ever taken off. Maybe it was owing to the fact he hadn’t settled on a single idea from day dot. He jumped from genre to genre, never writing anything entirely committal. He desperately needed a break from it all. The letters were wearing off his computer keyboard from prolonged and often frenetic overuse. “Damn it,” he sai...
Weekly Contest #248
“Could I persuade you to have another glass of gin?” asked Fred. He had just met Stella and he was a bit pushy for her liking, but in the spirit of the party, she agreed. “If I must. I’ve never loved gin.” “Well, why are you drinking it, then?!” he asked, in jest. “Because I don’t drink wine, I don’t like any other spirits and whenever I asked for a coke, the lady serving the drinks grimaced at me like I’d asked to drink out of the toilet bowl.” “Fair enough – gin it is. With tonic?” “Yes, it makes it slightly more drinkable – only slight...
Weekly Contest #247
Paulo was a marine biologist with a thirst for adventure. He’d accrued a team of ten specialist scientists, all willing to remotely accompany him into the abyss. He’d done marine adventuring for thirty years, and he was ready to go to the place that sunlight had never touched. It looked like a huge act of bravery; to be bolder than the sun. But scientific curiosity is hard to squash, whatever risk it entails. Paulo’s best friend was Henry, a subaquatic archaeologist. He wanted to plumb the deepest depths of the sea too, to see what there wa...
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