HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 02.10.25.
TASK: ‘Taking the Easy Way Out’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Taking the Easy Way Out’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 2nd October 2025. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 05.10.25, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
Send all homework to Pat
As Rupa chugged the remnants of her Singha beer she caught sight of her inner arm tattoo and involuntarily winced with regret. The faded unicorn, a hazy reminder of a debauched weekend in Budapest with her bestie Ruby, who had the tattoo mirrored on her inner thigh.
“Who wears it best?!” they would often exclaim in unison. Rupa could never admit that she loathed it, seeing the unicorn as an emblem of her vulnerability, rather than a symbol of friendship. Rupa’s mother called Ruby ‘a bad influence’, whereas Rupa thought Ruby was ‘so much fun’. Collectively they were referred to by various monikers – the Ru Sisters, Ru Squared, Ru to the power of two or the more pedestrian Double Trouble.
Continue readingHer body shook, her legs trembled, her nerves were precious plates in unsteady hands about to fall to the floor. She must somehow keep a lid on it all.
A medic in a white coat came out. The crowd waiting in A & E became alert. ‘Angela Phillips?’ the white coat said. ‘That’s me,’ she mumbled and they all stared at her, a sick, grey-haired woman
‘This way,’ she was told. Fifty pairs of eyes followed her out of the cramped room.
Continue readingFirst year of college I had to endure Jerry Burns. He was your standard, entitled nice guy, forever moaning over his virginity and what an injustice it was that those heartless bitches wouldn’t date him.
I was unpersuaded to be his girlfriend, probably because in addition to being entitled and brimming with rage, he was also criminally boring; his only topic was himself.
Second year, I mercifully didn’t share a house with him, although he kept sending me drunken texts on how much he missed me, how hanging out with me was the best time of his life and what a stone-cold whore I was for ignoring him.
Continue readingCarefully opening her eyes, Holly had a head full of bees. The noise bounding around, clanging, forced her bolt upright. It wasn’t a dream, she was in a cell!!
The smell of urine caused her to gag. There was a toilet in the corner, the sight of which made her retch even harder. Slowly her memory returned in flashes .
Shawna again, why did she always go along with her wild ideas? It had been the same when they were in college .
The trip to the woods ended in a bog, then to add insult to injury a branch swung back and a black eye for Holly, with Shauna laughing her head off. A night on a pub crawl, Holly woke up in a bush on the prom, no sign of Shauna. Apparently she thought Holly looked so peaceful, she left her there. Getting caught trying to sneak into a posh nightclub, ejected by the scruff of their necks. The list was endless but this was the last straw. No more!
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Mick sat in his land-train on an escarpment overlooking the crossing. Below, in the valley, the bots paraded alongside the slowly shuffling line of indentured labourers, their threatening gestures accompanying each faltering step. He counted five bots, one for every twenty humans.
“It’s all about ratios,” he muttered, pulling his scarf up to his nose. That’s how corporations preferred it. Bots were costly; humans were cheap. But everything had a cost. He’d rescued slaves before… for a price.
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HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 21.08.25.
TASK: ‘Persuasion’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Persuasion’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 21st August 2025. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 24.08.25, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
Submit your work to Pat via email. Or contact us via the contact page.
Dr Ima Kwak hesitated. The oblique angle of the antique mirror captured him seated in his wood-panelled office; the leather olive-green captain’s chair highlighted his status. He caught himself glancing and sighed. That advert had sounded promising.
“Immersive Scenarios ensure every trainee surgeon is practice-ready for ONLY a fraction of your traditional cost.”
Still he held back from clicking the know-more link. The responsibilities of Regional Post-Graduate Dean in Medical Education had over the 26 years seeped, morphed and varicosed as if from an untreatable haemophiliac. It now included fiscal responsibility and he was at heart a clinician not an accountant.
Continue readingThe dead body after being held up to the mirror did indeed have a reflection, an infinite number of them as a matter of fact. The police were amused by the two-mirror illusion. The frantic scrabblings by the bedside were dismissed as the ravings of madness.
The cause of death was determined to be that of a heart attack brought on by stress. That’s how the story ended.
*
The infinite mirror trick is a lie. You know how it goes, you stand between two mirrors facing each other and you’re greeted by an infinite line of yous, disappearing into the horizon, but in truth mirrors don’t reflect 100 percent of light, so each repeated reflection is a little dimmer than before. So if you strain your eyes long enough, you can see your reflections disappear into blackness.
Continue readingStanding before the bathroom mirror she was startled by the shadow behind her
Mei always felt something was missing.
Mei 美 meant ‘beautiful’ in Mandarin, which she thought both cruel and comical as Mei felt anything but. Western beauty standards reared their ugly head during teenagehood, sparking a yearning for longer legs, wider eyes and fairer skin. A well disguised eating disorder joined the party.
The bathroom mirror continued to tell and withhold her secrets. A sallow complexion, a haunted stare. A half visible shadow emerged to her right
Continue readingThe man studied the screen to watch and absorb all of the horrors unfold right in front of his eyes.
To the left he sees a woman silently screaming at the top of her lungs, a hammer enters into the shot. With one felled swoop the hammer strikes into the womans left temple, with a violent shuddering her expression is rendered lifeless and almost blank. The wall beside her and even the screen the man is viewing are stained with fresh blood splatter. The man staggers backward too disgusted to keep his eyes open yet so morbidly intrigued he peeks. Then the nausea hits him and he viscously wretches as the slight contents of his stomach exit his mouth. Feeling a slight wave of physical relief the man lays his head down on
Continue readingThe girls’ toilets were the best place to avoid PE lessons and the odd double maths period. Here Nettie could read, sing in the tiled echo chamber, attempt new hairstyles and, best of all, try to figure how many times she was reflected in the mirrors on opposite walls. It was impossible to count, each iteration was smaller than the last. The opposing mirrors made a thing of wonder for Nettie. If she waved, all the Netties did the same, exact but diminished.
At home Nettie tried the same effect with two of her bedroom mirrors. It was less stunning than the school arrangement and Nettie’s friends weren’t awestruck. Their main concern was the amount of time Nettie spent in front of her mirrors.
‘Come on Nettie, let’s go out for a walk and get some chips.’
Suzie, the best mate, rarely failed to get a response to the chips lure.
‘Nah, I got loads of homework to finish . You go and enjoy my share’.
Continue readingA 92-year-old woman in Maespoeth has been found dead. Police have arrested a man, 64. They said the woman and man were known to each other and have described it as a ‘very sad case’. Valleys Radio news website.
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Perkins looks at himself in the dresser mirror. The lines on his forehead remind him of the staves on a sheet of music. He’s a semi-professional bass player, makes a bit of living from it. Those days are over now. He pulls out his mobile and taps 999.
Latterly it’s been tough. The privatised caring company, profit before people, make their first visit at eleven in the morning. No good at all that. So he’s been getting her up, showering her, changing her himself. He sort of switches off when he does it, same as when you accompany an uninspiring melody. He just makes out he is himself a paid carer, dealing with somebody else’s mother, not thinking it odd that he’s washing the naked, broken body of an elderly female. Switched off yet kind, that’s the way he does it.
‘Which service?’ the voice on his phone says.
Continue readingThat old ad is doing the rounds on social media again. It has always haunted me, but after the day I’ve had at work, I’m regretting my life choices more than ever. I indulge myself by dialling the number.
“Is it too late?” I’ll say. I sigh when a recorded message tells me that my call cannot be connected.
I know exactly where I was on Friday 4th March 1994. It was mum’s fortieth birthday, so I had trudged into town after sixth-form college to browse the shops for a gift.
The mirror had caught my eye immediately amongst all the other bric-a-brac, emitting a soft golden glow under the lights. It had been relegated to the back of a shelf behind five dusty dolls, which I ceremoniously brushed aside.
Continue readingPhil didn’t mean to become a murderer. Not at first.
It all happened because he read on social media that humans, on average, live about 4500 weeks.
Being a number geek, Phil calculated that the first 900 weeks are spent learning how to walk, talk, pass exams, and unclip bra straps. The last 1500 comprise an increasingly strident existential shriek translating into “How the fuck did that happen?”
Of the remainder, about 100 is spent in utter confusion, comatose, or madness, leaving 2000 weeks, or more to the point, weekends, of life to live as you want.
In short, life comes down to eleven years of weekend fun sandwiched between unremitting drudgery. For most people, anyway.
Continue readingSitting half way up the Witches Hat, Billy Thomas was trying to comfort the young couple. They had tried to climb down the Hat, but had become stuck after a slip on the shale had left the young lady with a badly gashed leg.
Billy and his friends were on their Boxing Day trek and had been walking along gossamer trails, the hoar frost thick on the ground. A weak sun hung sulkily in the sky. He was always thankful to escape the aftermath of family Christmas Day.
Continue reading“Did you see that?”
The man before me was a horror. It’s pale face was twisted in anguish like a Halloween mask held to the fire. It scratched at it’s scalp, at the visible, glistening wounds that ran like muddy rivulets between tuffs of matted hair. It’s eyes, milky and dull, were set deep into it’s skull. It’s jaw hung slack. Teeth haphazardly stacked like a tombstone lying abandoned upon a vandalised grave. A monster. Always watching. I hated it.
What was it’s intentions?
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HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 24.07.25.
TASK: ‘The Mirror’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘The Mirror’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 24th July 2025. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 27.07.25, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
Send all homework to Pat.
The robin is perched on the railing of the balcony outside. I can tell without even looking out there. I’d know its song anywhere, though I wouldn’t have expected to see one here, at this time of year, and in this idyllic holiday cottage where I’m staying. I smile to myself and finish making my morning coffee. I picked up these coffee beans in the local market yesterday, and their chocolate-rich aroma fills my nostrils as I stir in the milk, the spoon jangling pleasingly against the china cup.
A robin used to arrive in our garden every year on the anniversary of Grandma’s death when I was a child. Mum would ask me to help write a newsletter for the bird to take to her, wherever she was, updating her on all that we had been up to that year. I used to love sticking in photos and drawing pictures of all the activities we had done and all the holidays we had been on.
Continue readingThey say the Chancellor made the sacrifice no one else dared make, for many of the emperor’s subjects had longed to end their master’s life but to do that deed would be to forfeit their own.
The emperor was descended, or so it was claimed, from almighty Jupiter himself and thus his word was law. If he demanded for you to leap into the sea you would do so. If he desired to bed your wife or daughter, you’d smile and stand aside.
When the emperor spent the summer solstice by the mediterranean sea, a local fisherman collected a huge haul of fish and neglected to share this bounty with his lord. The emperor upon learning of this, had the fish rubbed against the man’s body until he bled to death.
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