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Submitted to Contest #340
Contains sensitive content around an accusation of child abuse.Stephan Always believe the victim. That is what they taught us. That is a principle I have consistently held to, in every aspect of my life, in my work, with my family, with strangers, all of the time. Always believe the victim. Always. And yet, here I am. Awaiting trial, goodness knows when. Awaiting my fate, whatever that may be. How on earth could my life have come to this? I have been here for three months. The cell is about eight feet by five. They say I am lucky to have a w...
Submitted to Contest #329
Night is when they say you have to sleep. They say that, then they go away, and they sleep. They think sleep is a good thing. Because they know they can sleep, they think you will sleep, while they sleep. They think sleep will be good for you, like they think it’s good for them. They think sleep is the same for everyone. They think they have left you alone, because they have gone, and left you by yourself. They have abandoned you, in a space and time of your own. I think there is a song that says that. They are my parents. They leave me and ...
Submitted to Contest #325
It really is like looking into another world, Bryony Thomas thought, as she gazed out of the train window. A fantastic universe you can’t enter, on the other side of the glass. Like the land of reflections, behind a mirror, all manner of imagined horrors lurking beyond the quicksilvered portal’s narrow field of view. Dark bellied, fluffy clouds, like a smartphone-enhanced photo, marched in phalanx across the wispy blue. Fields rolled, farmsteads and rivers slid by. What was that train-trip line from Philip Larkin? “All sense of being in a hu...
Submitted to Contest #323
Ok, I’ve got you wondering. Am I writing about the pre-Big-Bang, dimensionless speck of concentrated matter, comprising everything that is now the universe? I know, I know, I go off at tangents. Explore all avenues of meaning instead of just stick to the point and get on with the story. I’m sure it’s my OCD. It runs in the family. OCD, that is, not exploring all avenues. Although that’s what got me into the events I have to write about now. This isn’t about Professor Stephen Hawking’s singularity. It’s about my singularity of habit, which I...
Submitted to Contest #307
God, I hate this exam hall. Up above the dark-panelled walls, the ceiling is so high, it makes me giddy. It smells old. How many years have people like us been filing in here, scared half to death of failing and flunking out? Floor polish mingles with stacked generations of anxiety, ineradicable, immediate, terrifying. I don’t even have Tracy for company now. My room-mate of two years, she suddenly dropped out to take a gap year in The Gambia after her interim exams, last summer. Next day, she and her stuff were gone. So I’m on my own. She n...
Submitted to Contest #305
At the intersection, I could turn right and head home. But turning left would take me the long way, around the forest side of the lake. Heck, I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking about that old trail all day, the clearing, where so many of my formative experiences took place, under the pines’ green canopy. Warm memories. We had some great times over there, for sure, back in the days when summers and legs were long and hot, my old pal Bob and I. Before our voices broke, we’d ride our bikes round there and go fishing where the pines reache...
Submitted to Contest #304
GRIZEWATER HALL. NO VEHICLES, proclaimed the two tarnished brass sign plates on the imposing grey stone gatepost. Tom Branch reversed gingerly back out onto the narrow road. Through the rear window and a gap in the trees, he had a clear view of the picturesque Grizewater Lake, blue beneath the towering green and slate of the north Cumbrian fells, bright in the early April afternoon light. There was a lay-by almost, so he parked his car there. His was the only vehicle. He guessed none of the others had arrived yet.Dense, deep green foliage ov...
Submitted to Contest #303
Connie was used to Franks going out at funny times. Franks knew that, because after ten years of marriage he could feel her every thought, awake or sleeping. He had no belief in telepathy, but he nevertheless enjoyed certainty that two people could get to know each other so completely that each might as well be inside the other’s head. Like siamese twins sharing a brain, he thought, loving the way her dark curls fell and spread themselves so naturally over the pillow’s smoothness. Deeply, beautifully asleep, she stirred slightly, exhaled, th...
Submitted to Contest #300
When twelve-year-old Yasmin Juffail had kissed her Aunt Suhaila goodbye at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, and walked away holding the hand of the smiling, blonde lady who had introduced herself as Candy, she had never imagined her journey would end here. Candy had reassured Aunt Suhaila, who Yasmin thought was being a bit over-anxious, that unaccompanied minors on Trucial Air were accompanied from gate to gate, until handed over to the adult collecting them at destination. Yasmin had rolled her eyes at the oxymoron but said nothing. She...
Submitted to Contest #295
So this is my diary. I’ve never kept a diary before. I’ll tell you in a minute why I’m starting one. I like writing and Sister Boniface says I’m good at it, but those aren’t the reasons. First, about me. My name is Ama. I usually have to say it twice to people. It’s short for Amaranth. Amaranth Christelle Obojo. I’m in Year 11 at Cloisters House. It’s a residential school for girls in north London. It’s pretty expensive. I go to boarding school because my parents live in Lagos. That’s a big city in south-west Nigeria. But I’m not starting th...
Submitted to Contest #275
I have to stop the man. My guide told me. At any cost, I have to stop the man.That’s my purpose. I have to. I must stop the man making a mistake. A serious mistake. A life-ending mistake. I can stop him. I must stop him. It’s my goal. It’s the reason I’m here, now, pursuing him, chasing him, across time, across the nation, forever and ever, amen, until I stop him. It’s what I have to do. It just is. It’s what the guide told me.It’s grey here. I can’t feel my feet. The man drifts in and out. Sometimes I see him clearly. Other times, he’s in t...
Submitted to Contest #272
I am sure it used to be here. Shit, there can’t be much of my break left. This is ridiculous. I get little enough free time as it is. Hell, one corridor looks just like another in this place. They’ve moved it again. They must have done. We used to have a proper smoking room with soft chairs and a water cooler, kettle, fridge and stuff. It’s no more than we’re entitled to. I know some people don’t smoke. I get that. But it’s about freedom of choice, isn’t it. You can choose whether you smoke or not. We won’t inflict our smoking on you. We’ll ...
Submitted to Contest #269
Sensitive content: suicide and assisted dying.A tear pricking the corner of her left eye, Fiona pressed the cool, disproportionately heavy metal-and-glass object into Rosemary’s palm. “Thank you, Rosemary,” she said, quietly, as both watched the mechanical, numerical display on the beautifully crafted, nineteenth-century timepiece click rapidly down from seven to zero, just as they had both known it would.Reclining into the capsule’s super-comfortable, ergonomically sculpted, reclined seat, Rosemary smiled up at Fiona. “I should be the ...
Submitted to Contest #268
Sol Crabbe blinked. He blinked again and stretched stiffly, joints popping like an old man’s. It was dark. There was a weird yet familiar smell, like a hospital. Where was he? This was a peculiar place. He didn’t recognise it. He’d awoken here, wherever here was, and he had no idea how that had happened. He was sitting - perhaps lolling fit better - in a high backed armchair, that felt like it was upholstered in vinyl or faux leather. Sol’s mind snapped back to boyhood, when he’d often slept over at his grandma’s house. Befo...
Submitted to Contest #260
As the hunter and the soon-to-be victim converged, the searing purpose of dark intent blazed black in the killer’s heart. Unshaven and unwashed, the donkey-jacketed, thick-set, bearded man, black woollen beanie pulled down over his ears, remained locked onto his quarry, his face expressionless, his pace an unstoppable march of inevitability. The slim young blonde bounced jauntily on, swinging her designer bag, the embodiment of carefree and footloose. He was certain she was unaware of her pursuer. She could have no inking of his plans. God, ...
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