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Weekly Contest #158
I live with Dad now, not Mum, but he won’t tell me why. The trouble with Dad’s place is the space. Think Grand Designs - it’s a house, not a home. Minimalism is king, and its emptiness echoes like an art gallery, its concrete floors cold and unyielding. I swear Dad wouldn’t mind if the bathroom was open plan. The reflection in the vast expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows lures unsuspecting birds to their deaths mid-flight. I pick up the broken-necked victims, dig holes at the base of the trees which surround the house, and bury them with d...
Weekly Contest #147
Emily didn’t like going to Mass with her Mum every Sunday. It lasted too long – sometimes over an hour – and it was in Latin, which she didn’t understand. So, when her Mum took her to another church with a shorter service, in English, things started to look up, not least because there was a shop at the back of the church. Though she was only nine, she was a sucker for retail therapy, even if the items on sale only consisted of holy water, statues of saints, rosary beads, prayer books and holy pictures. Brother Eugene was the friar who ran t...
Weekly Contest #137
I loved him. I went to bed thinking about him and I woke up the next morning thinking about him. No one had ever made me feel like that before. What was that, if not love?His voice, with its Liverpudlian twang which reminded me of my Beatles heartthrob Paul McCartney, his athleticism (he would leap from lab desk to lab desk in an attempt to gain our attention, rather than throw chalk at us like the other teachers), his sense of humour, all sang to the tune of my fourteen-year-old hormones.Sir was the one and only male teacher in our convent ...
Weekly Contest #131
THE NEWBIE (1002 words) It hadn’t been an easy decision, this move to be closer to my daughter. I had left the house that I had lived in when I was married, said goodbye to good neighbours, close friends and familiar shops. But despite my daughter’s assurances that I would soon make new friends, I sensed I was not welcome. The locals appeared clannish, their carapaces as hard to crack as walnuts. Generations of families had lived in this northern town, forging a tight-knit community. I felt like a dandelion clock blowing directionless in the...
Weekly Contest #119
The number 417 is more crowded than usual this morning. I move down the aisle, then flop down as the bus lurches forwards. The raised seat over the rear wheels is a bit lean on legroom but it is good for people watching. I like to guess people’s professions as they board the bus. Actor or accountant? Social worker or salesperson? I will never find out, of course. But that’s not the point. All of a sudden, I am old in the official sense of the word. State pension, free bus pass, concessions. The last time I felt like this was when I hit mid...
Weekly Contest #112
The sky today is cerulean blue, the clouds forming a Daliesque surrealism of floating feathers, drooping eyes and melting moons. The intoxicating smell of the sea wafts around me: salt, seaweed, ozone, reminding me of happy childhood memories in our cottage with its deck leading straight down from the cliffs to a little-known sandy cove. Every day after breakfast I and my brother would race down the rudimentary rocky steps, fishing nets aloft, and spend the mornings catching crabs and tiny fish trapped in the rockpools by the receding tide...
Weekly Contest #102
I escaped my birthplace when I was a young man. But in spirit, I escaped much sooner. When I was still a kid I became aware that life for many people did not mean scraping your knuckles red raw as you picked up scraps from around the market stalls, holding your breath and pinching your nose to block out the stench of open sewers, and caking your feet in mud to protect them in the absence of shoes. That you didn’t have to bathe publicly in polluted rivers, huddle up to your parents in the absence of warm bedding, gather firewood for cooking. ...
Weekly Contest #42
Everything depended on it still being there. They walked up the weed-peppered drive to a front door swinging gingerly on rusty, warped hinges. Cobwebs hung like gossamer in the porch, punctuated with flies wrapped up like black pearls, awaiting their fate. Anna and the agent sidestepped the jagged holes in the splintered porch, every step they took creaking mournfully. Empty birds’ nests, their job done for the year, hung precariously from the eaves. An umbilical cord of ivy wound up the sides of the house, creating a tracery of green over t...
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