The two big lads squeezed into groaning chairs in the snug. Regulars compared the pair to two large teddy bears in a broom cupboard.
‘A couple of babes on the go; how did I get myself into this mess? ’ McDonagh said, palming sweat from his pale forehead.
O’ Shaughnessy took his first slurp of Murphys which formed a cream ring around his mouth and said, ‘There are worse problems.’
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1985
‘Pass us a Carlsberg’, Brian grunted from his recliner.
Stella hauled her heavily pregnant body back to the kitchen and grabbed her husband’s beer and her own TV dinner.
‘Move – I want to see the beginning of this!’ Brian said in an irritated tone, as his wife of three years passed by his seat. There was no way he would be missing a moment of Crimewatch.
As the now-familiar theme tune began to play, Stella crossed the great divide to the floral, velour sofa that was fast-becoming out of fashion. She sat down, finally resting her swollen feet. Nick and Sue appeared on-screen and started discussing a woman who shot dead her husband.
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I love a conspiracy theory, don’t you? Say what you like about them, mine is the best. It’s about…well let me take you to our inaugural meeting to hear believers and the yet-to -be convinced shouting the odds…
Newbie 1: You’re saying Earth is a penal colony used by several peaceful and well run planets to deport their undesirables? Well that makes complete sense to me. I’m in. Who do we have to kill?
Newbie 2: Where did you get the information? Q Anon are very clear about their origins.
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FADE IN:
EXT. New York Street – DAY
Two young fellers, COMANCHE and OBI make a beeline down a New York Street. Both are wiseass street hustlers, COMANCHE is half Native American, half Mexican, OBI is half black, half Italian.
OBI
Remember Syd Muir, tiny guy, bald, no neck?
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Tobermory held his daughter’s hand as they walked along the corridor, their footsteps echoing from the stone walls. He sensed her looking up and gave her a little squeeze.
“Don’t worry, daddy,” Eleanor said, “I’ll be okay.”
“I know, Pumpkin,” he said, displaying a sad smile. “We’ll all be okay.”
“Did you bring Flibut?”
Tobermory pulled the stuffed, one-eared camel from his bag. “Yes, he’s here.”
“Because I couldn’t go without Flibut.”
He looked down at her earnest features, a pixie face in a halo of red curls. Just five years old, he thought, how could there be a god?
He could have scooped her up right there and bounded back down the corridor. But he knew the guards would pick him off before they got out. And a stranger would make the long walk with her.
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HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday midnight, 23.05.24.
TASK: ‘Escape’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘escape’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by midnight, Thursday 23rd May 2024.
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 26.05.24, Discovery Room, 1st floor, Central library. Finish at 3.30pm.
Members: send all homework to Pat
Joiners: contact us through the Facebook Group
I’ve developed a grudging respect for my disease, it’s merely fighting to survive same as me; both of us were unwitting guinea pigs of doctors who misdiagnosed us, then prescribed inappropriate treatment, courtesy of the deplorable Sackler family. It was an osteopath in the end who felt the adhesions under my skin, with more skill in her fingertips and common sense than the scores of medics who had assessed me before. What precisely are they trained for if they can’t spot a disease as common as diabetes that only occurs in women?
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Alyria stood, tears pricking the corners of her eyes.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
All the sacrifices she’d made to get to this point, all the favours traded, the coin expended, the hard graft… it was all for nothing. Before her, the ruins of the gateway taunted, its rubble strewn over twenty square metres. With a wordless, throat-ripping howl, she sank to her knees.
Even the breeze through the dusty ravine seemed to mock her, whispering “too late, too late, too late” over and over until it became almost torturous.
Three long Earth years she’d travelled to get here, following rumours and sotto voce conversations in bars she thought she’d never get out of. The laser pistol at her hip had seen more use than she’d hoped – slavers, kidnappers, and perverts had all stared down the barrel, and more than once she’d barely escaped with her life.
And all for this. For nothing.
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“Three ruins at an older ruin.”
At Jane’s gesticulation, Shelley lifted her gaze to the hilltop. The forlorn skeleton of the banqueting hall had once pulsated with bacchanalian pleasures. Then rescanning the high-tide line, “At least we’re more than these empty shells”
“Some of us not much more” Jane batted back acidly.
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‘Don’t you remember?’ her daughter asked in an exasperated fashion. ‘That trip in June when we went to the beach and made friends with those people building a fire?’
Grace’s recall was not the same since the bleed but as this memory was so important to Dahlia she decided it was worth delving into that scary, cavernous place they called the hippocampus. She rarely visited it these days due to the destruction that lived there.
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Hunched at the desk of the paediatric consultant, her face eaten with anxiety, Jeanette briefly thought about her scream when the young doctor had told her. For fifteen months that scream had whirlpooled about her brain, making her feel like she was drowning. Next to her Simon gripped his fists, as if trying to crush the awful memories.
Dr Bennett, the report in his hands, said in his slow, self-certain voice: ‘These are the hospitals own findings, let us not forget, and they are damning. Short-staffed, equipment missing or not working properly and, most crucially, a doctor who didn’t understand the significance of baby having different oxygen saturations, SATS, in her hand (99%) and her foot (88%). Such a difference is an indicator of coarctation of the aorta, a congenital heart condition.’
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“Can you draw your voice, Theo?” says the therapist. She gestures to the felt-tip pens, screaming with artificial brightness on the table.
I want to shout in her smug face. “You think I’m going to draw a bird in a cage or some shit like that? A bird of prey, too dangerous to set free? Forget it. I’m thirteen, not three.”
I don’t say it, of course. But my eyes must tell her because she sighs and stares at her ugly vegetarian shoes.
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Walking through the early morning mist, I remember years ago thinking I was walking on clouds. When the mist was higher it would wrap itself around me pulling me to the old mansion.
It all started with a dare that I could not refuse: entering the local haunted house. I pulled the board from the entrance and an earthy musty smell raced out, as though it had waited too long to escape, and disappeared into the undergrowth. Opening the entrance further, I caught my first glimpse of the damage inside. Stairs were misshapen, lurching this way and that. Rustling erupted, balls scurried into the depths away from the light. Once inside the dust swirled around my feet and a breeze caressed my cheek like fingers, but I didn’t feel threatened.
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It isn’t hard to ruin the life of a thirteen year old. I seem to do it all the time. Take yesterday:
‘Mum, you are ruining my life. Everybody has an iPhone. You need it to look things up in class and to talk to people. I’m completely humiliated without one. Who knows what people are saying about me?…’
‘I accept that your life is in tatters, and I’m sorry for you. But in 20 years you will come and find me, throw your arms around my neck, and thank me. You will be able to think without the help of influencers and you will not have a repeating backdrop of porn movies and pile-ons to spoil your dreams.’
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Extraction of the site was going nicely. It was something of a private amusement to Devlin that the remains of a Roman temple were wedged between suburban white homes.
No doubt the residents would coo over the heap of rubble if a few heritage signs were erected, and they could boast of a relic over a thousand years’ old laying just beyond their driveways.
Devlin, feeling naughty, had decided to inspect the sealed off remains for himself, after giving his solemn word to never go past the yellow ticket line. He was pretty curious to see what the local university bigwigs kept marvelling over.
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The pub had familiar liturgies: football, beer, women, and Aristotle, although not necessarily in that order. Set upon a hill in the backstreets of Uplands, it also had a fine literary history, a meeting place for luminaries such as Kingsley Amis, who could often be found, in days gone by, luring students to certain reputational doom in the snug. And, it is said, Mary Shelley, when visiting her mother in Laugharne, would stop over for a bevvy.
Continue readingTomorrow never comes around
It is a day that can’t be found
The mystery of what lies ahead
Thoughts running through a busy head
In bed wondering what’s to come
Ideas pounding like a drum
Dreams and aspirations dwell
Then midnight rings its final bell
Tomorrow holds an ambitious fate
Tomorrow’s always running late
Another day has now arrived
But tomorrow has not survived
Future desires have gone away
Tomorrow’s just another day By Sarah Rengozzi
Clarence had been a disappointment to his mother from the day he was born. He had been expected to be a she, to fulfil the prophecy of the seventh daughter to the seventh daughter.
Throughout his life, she had never forgiven him for spoiling her dreams. His sisters on the other hand, were delighted that they didn’t have a sister who would rule superior over them. He grew up, being showered with their love and also all the things they didn’t want to undertake themselves.
Continue readingThe mirror in Selina’s bathroom was a focal point for her rich theatrical dreams. It was surrounded by small lights, much like a glamourous dressing room make-up mirror; it was Selina’s confessional.
Selina loved the theatre and was a member of the town’s am-dram soc. It attracted all the local luvvies and a fair few from towns further afield who enjoyed a strut round the green room, and huddled round pieces of gossip like barnacles on a boat. Selina, having unglamourous theatrical skills, enjoyed a rather peripheral am-dram life. She offered services such as box office duty and prompting.
Continue readingHow I came to be in McLaine’s commune on the shore of Puerto de la Valencia is a story for another time, because today, of all days, is about tomorrow.
McLaine was busying himself with his fishing nets in the courtyard at the back of the pre-civil war building housing his community, his wives, Consuela and Pamela were arguing in a mixture of rapid-fire Spanish and Surrey English about the best way to gut hake, and the writers, me included, were sitting on the garden wall watching the TV we rented for the occasion. We’d positioned it there because no room in the house was big enough to hold more than two of us and one of those would have to be standing.
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