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Shortlisted for Contest #303 ⭐️
I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. That’s what people say isn’t it? When something bad happens to them; anything from an ingrowing toenail to acute and blazing grief, out comes this line with no adjustment for scale:‘Oooh, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy …!’Really?You wouldn’t?The Motivation: There are five elements which must combine to exact revenge, whether you are a writer crafting a plot - and good luck with that - or an ordinary person who is compelled by this primitive and unsung urge.Forgiveness is that most Christian of tene...
Submitted to Contest #302
Peggy does not like this man in her kitchen, this totem of the zeitgeist - or as her daughter puts it - the shitegeist. Here is a man who dismisses the great train of history with a vicious contempt, because clearly nothing noteworthy happened before he was born. Her old and brittle bones harbour a resentment so profound that she is reminded of a super-power she wished to own as a child: the ability to kill people on sight.Of course, the only thing Peggy has ever murdered is a good meal. The man in her kitchen carries the vague scent of exot...
Submitted to Contest #301
Oscar and Harry had been friends since their first day at school. Four-year-old Harry was afflicted by runny nostrils which gave him two permanent snot slicks on his upper lip. For some years he bore the nickname ‘Eleven.’ Oscar turned up clinging to his mother’s skirts and wearing a full-face helmet, an unaccountable disguise which went on for the entire first term. When he returned after the autumn break, no one knew who he was.And so it came about that Eleven and Evel Knievel formed their unbreakable bond.Well, the years turn. Nowadays, a...
Submitted to Contest #300
The laws of physics dictate that the length of a river can only be ten times its width before it is forced to meander. If it does not do this, it is evidence of human interference.Not all rivers reach the sea. There are some which die of fetid boredom long before they mingle with the salt. The river she walks along now is one such failure, a pathologically idle flow which has written its destiny as a puddle some five miles distant. She cannot stomach this lack of purpose, this dwindling of responsibility. She is looking for her place, and it...
Submitted to Contest #299
They say that if a man has not succeeded by thirty, then he has failed - and if any proof of that were needed, ask Dixon. At fifty, Dixon worked part-time in a shoe shop in the centre of a dying city where department store doorways gave way to a global parade of beggars and addicts, shooting up and spitting out. He found the only way to deal with this unsatisfactory life was to laugh at it; not as an act of futile submission but as a nod to courageous defiance.Ten years earlier, his talents had led him to the foothills of corporate greatness...
Submitted to Contest #298
I didn’t consider spring when I planted my garden. In September it is glorious, but in the early months it is nothing but lawn, daisies and dandelions. I liken the latter to teenage spots: their arrival announcing a growth spurt.My neighbour has a magnolia tree, which drapes into mine and drops its petals like lavish confetti. His name is Terence. Can you believe it? Terence! And he insists on its full form and won’t answer to Terry. God knows, he’s made it clear enough that he won’t. I never gave him a sidewards glance when my husband was h...
Submitted to Contest #297
8am, 17th May 1536The queen’s view was obstructed on all sides by the curtain walls of the White Tower. On the day they executed her brother, she could only hear the teeming crowds, and snippets of speeches, nobly delivered, from the black scaffold.To distract, Mary Z had suggested a game of piquet, a card game for two, which, although popular in France, was little known to England. But the queen’s first card had been the Queen of Swords, and although it hardly served as a prophesy, the game was abandoned without words.‘How long have we been...
Shortlisted for Contest #296 ⭐️
CW: As you might expect in a room full of maladroits, there is a lot of swearing in this piece. I ought to apologise, but I won't. In the lofty interior of a methodist chapel, (it doesn’t matter where), a woman called Simone lays out cheap bottles of wine and various cans of cider and lager on a trestle table, which has glittered blobs of dried glue and scratched graffiti on its surface. The booze is paid for by the weekly subs of the Maladroits Anonymous group. The chapel plays host to many diverse assemblies, and this is but one of them. ...
Submitted to Contest #295
That Was ThenIt is hard to think what the consequences might be if word got out that the Witch-finder General did not believe in witches. Miriam Lyons, who had begged to have her skirts bound at her ankles to stop the shit from escaping, was a bad bitch, but no conjuror of spells. They ask, always, why he doesn’t burn them as they do in the kingdoms and palatinates of Europe. Blessed always quips that firewood is expensive and that hanging is cheaper. If they want a spectacle, he is obliged to disappoint. There has never been a sin...
Submitted to Contest #294
If Birdie Lomax had paid any heed to her appearance, she would, in the music hall vernacular, scrub up well. But she’s tossing chicken scratch in the air, and the light of dawn is at the cruel end of the spectrum. Her hair, still more brown than grey, escapes a poorly-drawn knot at the back and flies in all manner of directions, as if in a mood to fall out with its neighbours. The farmhouse behind her is long and low, full of rooms she never looks in or clears out. Beneath these timbered beams lie cricket bats and exercise books, beds s...
Submitted to Contest #293
A man died on the train today. I have never wanted to see a dead body, or to ease the passing of someone so close to the angels. I know how to do CPR, but I am wary of performing such an intimate and selfless act in the service of another.He was in the opposite aisle, one seat down and facing me. These are the people you study the most on a train, because to observe someone directly opposite you is so boldly confrontational. I have seen him before because we both favour the same carriage, although it’s ridiculous, because they’re all alike.I...
Submitted to Contest #292
Two Years BeforeBetween fear and hope is where most people spend their lives. For the citizens of Graustadt, the balance is unequally applied. They may nurture a single flame of the latter, but are daily consumed by the former. In this linear dwelling place of half-timbered buildings, three-deep at most, the Florian provides the immediate focus. The river, in the slow march of time, has carved a V-shaped valley through the rock. The slopes are now densely wooded, and beneath their canopy, the grey wolves roam. It used to be called ...
Submitted to Contest #291
‘What’s the deal with this bloke you sent me, Ron? I’ve got his resumé in my hand, and frankly it’s thinner than my wife’s skin. A corpse in Casualty, a rioter in Silent Witness, several ‘passers-by,’ and — oh! fucking stellar! A speaking part in an arthouse silent movie, for which his only verbal contribution was to say, “The End.”'‘I hear you,’ said Ron Lumet, agent to the stars. ‘But you have to admit, he is seriously handsome. The man’s a vision. Never seen anything like him. Not so much as an open pore.’‘Can’t be denied’ said Vinni...
Submitted to Contest #290
A woman, slightly past her prime, drapes herself in a cardinal red wingback. Her Slavic features, or at least those details which constitute a recognisable face, are inscrutable. Only the eyes, dancing with malice, betray her hauteur. She wears a long string of pearls, which form a seeded rope between her sagging breasts. They are the only notable detail of the pose, for the woman, dark-haired and dark-eyed, is otherwise naked. At her left shoulder the sun forms a square of light on her already pale flesh. It lends an angularity to her ...
Shortlisted for Contest #289 ⭐️
(Staff Quarters): The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here. Normally when I wake up like this, there’s a man by my side, or a man recently vacated, leaving a warm hollow in the mattress. Normally, when I wake up like this, I’m in an unfamiliar house belonging to man I don’t know. A man I don't recall meeting, but must have done. But this time it’s different. Normally when I wake up like this, it’s because the unfamiliar man has gone to work or gone to get croissants, and each time I wake up wandering where I am, I have a headache ...
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