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Weekly Contest #357
“Maybe if we dim the lights a little it might help?” said Wendy, her cheeks flushed. “If we dim the lights, Wendy, I won’t be able to see the pictures. It’s important we get this right. Cam said you can pull a muscle very easily.” Wendy rolled onto her back, sounding a bit like an asthmatic rhino. “Maybe we should put the telly on and eat chocolate instead?” “No, Wendy, Cam said we need to explore new things together. There’s no point in paying for a relationship therapist if you’re just going to ignore his advice and eat chocolate instead.”...
Weekly Contest #356
“You smell like chocolate,” said the little girl, her eyebrows raised into a question mark. “This room smells like Brussels sprouts but you smell like chocolate but my Grandma smells like soup. Why?”The little girl in her bright red dress and bright red shoes seemed at odds with the room, which was every shade of beige. A bunch of plastic flowers in a plastic vase stood on a table where an old beige lady in a brown dressing gown sat staring at an unfinished jigsaw puzzle.The old lady squinted her eyes a little as if unsure if she were imagin...
Weekly Contest #331
George pondered how it was we could send humans into space, eating powdered food and drinking recycled urine, then return them safely to earth, but we couldn’t invent an outside light that didn’t get triggered by a snow flake. Maybe if the sensor could be calibrated to detect body heat it would only light up when an intruder walked near it. That would be one way to solve the problem. Thermal sensors, he thought. 💡Eight. George had been counting. Propped up on his pillows, wisps of thin white hair clinging to the headboard like cobwebs, he si...
Weekly Contest #330
It’s not the saying goodbye that’s hard. It’s the letting go. I tell myself, if I didn’t come to check the post, burglars would guess no one was home and ransack the place. Not that there’s anything worth breaking in for. Unless they like the smell of dusty cabbages or they’ve got a thing for incontinence pads and denture fix. Who knows, we live in a strange world. But I come to check. Just in case. When the front door closed behind me, I hadn't planned on staying. Just popped in to check the fridge had been emptied. The milk would smell ba...
Weekly Contest #329
The first time Wendy found maggots in the fridge, she remained quite calm, considering they were maggots. And they were in the fridge. The second time she found maggots in the fridge, she contained her anger by channelling it into a bowl of vanilla ice-cream, served in the posh crockery they’d received as a wedding present, with maple syrup (from Canada, allegedly), all accompanied by a cheeky little wafer she found at the back of the cupboard. After all, she thought, it was Gerald’s hobby, and surely better this than having him shove notes ...
Weekly Contest #328
Black Sand “Lives are grains of sand washed by lapping waves, tumbling over and over until they’re impossible to tell apart, entwined then parted again. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, you might find yourself the sand in someone else’s boot.”Phil Manders She stepped out just before dawn. The door behind her left open, just a little. Like an unfinished conversation. Her sleep, a stranger, like the empty home she once loved. No alarm clock today. No mug gently steaming. Her soft slippers, silent on warm tarmac. The air laced with salt an...
Weekly Contest #326
The Pembroke Popper The laughter started before the patient was even asleep. Mr. Rupert Ignatius Pembroke, consultant surgeon, or R.I.P as he was affectionately known on the golf course. Self-proclaimed “Pioneer in his field,” and former head of the debating team at Oxford, had just relayed the story for the third time that week. Hugo Ferreira, his understudy, nodded with a little too much intent. Fiddling with his mask while trying to maintain eye contact. “Sailed her single-handedly through the Bay of Biscay in a force 3. Bloody marvelous....
Weekly Contest #325
It’s a strange feeling being hated by someone you love more than life itself. “Just FUCK OFF!” she’d screamed, head buried in the duvet like a suppressor on a handgun. An adolescent assassin. It felt like a bullet. Came through slightly muffled but clear enough. Perfect diction just like her Mother. She’s an English teacher. She’d be so proud. My daughter, 16 and full of hormone-fueled rage. For some reason all channeled at me. Hovering outside the bedroom door in my flip flops (I think they make me look cool), dressing gown gaping, stomach ...
Weekly Contest #324
It swelled gently beneath him as the small island shrank behind. His mother’s kiss still wet on his cheek. He acknowledged the ocean with a nod and a grin as white as pearl, remembering how his grandfather had taught him. Singing songs as old as the reef itself, he paddled, asking for calm weather, gentle currents and enough fish for supper. The ocean didn’t respond. He just felt it breathing deeply beneath the boat. He was thirteen. Although his broadening shoulders and reef-scared hands suggested otherwise. He wore a necklace made of fishi...
Weekly Contest #231
31-12-202311.30 pmThe old theatre's ornate stone pillars stood guard, clinging on defiantly to the grandeur they once owned, barely maintaining their dignity in a town that had long since given up on hers. Stained white steps lay frozen, spilling down to the black pavement like bones in a tarmac graveyard. Drifts of hard snow tucked themselves away in icy corners, out of reach of the steely wind that patrolled the narrow Victorian streets. The sickly flash of a neon-lit kebab shop opposite made the boarded-up entrance come alive, then die. A...
Weekly Contest #230
"So Darling, take me back to the very beginning." "This doesn't come easy, talking to you like this would be considered a sign of weakness in our family . . . I just feel so humiliated . . . It's hard. For someone like me. You know?" "Ok Darling, here comes the fluffy talk. I know it might seem hard to go there. I'm here to support you without judgment. I'm here to listen. If you need to stop at any point or feel uncomfortable, we can take a break any time. There's no right or wrong here. Just you sharing with me, blah, blah,...
Weekly Contest #158
WARNING: Almost certainly contains the abuse and misuse of commas. (Sorry Deidra)Luckily, I’m not cursed by an irrational desire to justify my decisions. I know when I’m right. Which, I’m not ashamed to say, is always.It was so tiny when it finally came. It often is. Most people in the room, I assume, would have been oblivious to it. Not me. One might be forgiven for assuming it would be a dramatic, more obvious detail that convinced me. As always, I had to be patient. It’s rather a crude expression, but I always trust my guts. They’ve not b...
Weekly Contest #132
Aubrey squinted at the bedside clock. It was four in the morning and the summer dawn was forcing its way in through a gap in the curtains.“Oh no.” He said, as he realised he’d made it through another night. “Not again.”He struggled to sit up. His twisted sheets refused to let go of his legs, after a bit of a tussle, he gave in and rolled onto his back. Images of a walrus heaving itself across a beach flashed through his mind. He lay still for a moment panting. His chest sounding like old bagpipes.The home never really slept. The majority of ...
Weekly Contest #131
The Lawson family had been in residence at Charlesworth house for over four hundred years. Except for her loyal companion Duke, an old English Foxhound she’d kept from the last of her hunting days, Antoinette Lawson lived alone in four rooms in the east wing: a bedroom, a bathroom, a dining room and a drawing room. She had no use for a kitchen. Albert, her butler, took care of all her dietary requirements. In fact, Albert, a balding, wiry little man now in his late eighties, took care of everything.*******************************************...
Weekly Contest #129
Hibernating beneath thick snow, almost invisible, she’s held captive. She waits. Patiently. When the first warmth of spring tentatively touches her after the long, dark winter freeze, she stretches. Her body creaks and groans in a way only an old lady’s can. She awakes. She welcomes the warmth and allows it to enter her. To soothe her. Every beam relaxing, respectfully yearning for the long hot summer. This is her place in the universe. This is home. This is where she belongs. This quiet wooden lady who sits by the lake. Perfectly wrapped ...
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