Category Archives: 2024

Ruin

Posted on by under 2024, April 2024 - Ruin

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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A chance to make it home

Posted on by under 2024, April 2024 - Ruin

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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Memories

Posted on by under 2024, April 2024 - Ruin

‘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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Four

Posted on by under 2024, April 2024 - Ruin

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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Words of Mass Destruction

Posted on by under 2024, April 2024 - Ruin

“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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ANGELINE’S FRIEND

Posted on by under 2024, April 2024 - Ruin

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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Degrees of Ruin

Posted on by under 2024, April 2024 - Ruin

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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The Ruins of Odium Sui

Posted on by under 2024, April 2024 - Ruin

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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Malaprops of Nuffink

Posted on by under 2024, April 2024 - Ruin

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.

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Tomorrow

Posted on by under 2024, March 2024 - Tomorrow

Tomorrow 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

Faith, Hope and Clarence

Posted on by under 2024, March 2024 - Tomorrow

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.

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and the Day After

Posted on by under 2024, March 2024 - Tomorrow

The 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.

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Tomorrow

Posted on by under 2024, March 2024 - Tomorrow

How 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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Sober Tomorrow

Posted on by under 2024, March 2024 - Tomorrow

            ‘How’d he get in this state?’ Potter protested.

‘You take that arm, I’ll take this,’ Evans directed him, murmured ‘Now’ and the two of them hauled the collapsed old man onto unsteady feet. They continued to hold him mistrustfully.

            ‘I’ll be alri`,’ the man said. His large jowls, as if transplanted from a boxer dog, wobbled with the rest of his plump body. ‘What was the sc…?’ Did we wn?’

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Sweet Little Lies

Posted on by under 2024, March 2024 - Tomorrow

Mother and daughter, Dilys and Martha, sat around the kitchen table. Sian and Gareth were playing in the other room. An argument broke out. Martha sighed and, calling them into the room, gently chastised them, explaining they should love each other not fight.

Dilys snorted, watching them leave the room, pinching each other out of sight of their mother. She was thinking she didn’t approve of this soft love, as Martha called it. Loving her grandchildren, she realised that times had changed but in her opinion not for the better.

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April Writing Prompt

Posted on by under 2024, April 2024 - Ruin

HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday midnight, 25.04.24.

TASK: ‘Ruin’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘ruin’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.

Homework to be in by midnight, Thursday 25th April 2024.

Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 28.04.24, Discovery Room, 1st floor, Central library. Finish at 3.30pm.

Contact us via the contact page for submissions.

All Gone

Posted on by under 2024, Feb 2024 - Crossroads

The Security Meeting was tense with unspoken fears. Not seen in the unflinching, inscrutable  expressions…. but elsewhere. Hidden from view under the table, a drumbeat of feet as frog-like tongue extending then retracting, the forgiving wool carpet closed over the anxiety in a darting visco-elasticity; clenched hands scrunched the thighs of workaday suits; heels strummed in silence along one calf, one shin then changed legs.

The President spoke. “Any suggestions how the people can be brought on board? Compliance with whatever we decide is crucial. The survival of humanity, not to mention our intergalactic standing, is at a crossroads. Could go one way or the other” 

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