Tag Archives: into

Perfect Day

Posted on by under 2024, Feb 2024 - Crossroads

Alfie disappears into the classroom without looking back. It swallows him whole. That’s good, I tell myself. He’s happy and I’m free to be ‘me’ again. It’s terrifying.

Turning towards the gate, I focus on the shiny new stilettoes that I hoped would bring me confidence. But I feel ridiculous. A pool of sweat is collecting beneath the too-tight waistband of my trousers, the material straining to contain my bulging flesh. Why did I let Ben convince me to pursue a career again, at my age? Asking his university colleagues to consider me for a job? They’ll see right through me. Inadequate. Embarrassing. Fat.

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THE TOSS OF THE COIN

Posted on by under Feb 2024 - Crossroads

Feeling totally confused, Jaxon lay there. He could hear lots of noise, occasional conversation that seemed to be about him. His eyes refused to open; where the hell was he? Drifting off, the bleeps seemed to soothe him.

Out of nowhere appeared a boy about his age, wearing funny clothes like you see in the black and white photos his mam had. When he started to speak to him, Jaxon’s mind went into overdrive.

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Petulant Child

Posted on by under 2023, Dec 2023 - Misfortune

My mother tells me my middle name should be misfortunate. She blames it on my being born on Friday the 13th, sliding into the world feet first, causing her intense pain, which she still remarks on today.

”AS IF ITS MY FAULT I DIDN’T ASK TO BE BORN”

I had the misfortune to have very curly brown hair and green eyes, unlike the rest of my family. Mother is still convinced that I was swapped at birth.

”SURELY SHE CAN’T BE SERIOUS!”

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WATCHING THE FIREWORKS

Posted on by under 2023, November 2023 - Fireworks

While the world waited for Armageddon with tightly clenched fists, tear-stained faces, and racing thoughts, Sir Michael Peckham waited for morning.

He glanced at the silent smart-slab sitting insouciantly on his bedside table. It said “02:14 – 5 Nov” on its face, but it was the things it wasn’t saying he was most interested in. He wanted it to ring and not to. A conflict of such breadth it seemed analogous to the sabre rattling provided nightly on the talking head shows. The hawks and the doves making cases for greater or lesser annihilation.

For two weeks, the world stood on a precipice, while his world sank into the abyss.

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Billy and the curse

Posted on by under 2023, October 2023 - The Curse
Granny Herbs House

As the bell rang young Billy Thomas barged his way out. Racing off he headed into the woods above the school Megan’s words echoing in his head: ”I’m sorry Billy we can’t be friends anymore.”

She had  just walked away from him.

Gasping for breath he threw himself onto the floor. What had he done? He and Megan had been like brother and sister. They had played together for as long as Billy could remember.

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In the dark with no way out

Posted on by under 2023, July 2023 - No way out

The land that surrounds me was, up until fairly recently, a lifeline to man’s very existence. There was a time when it was a valley of black waste, tall chimneys, steam powered locomotives and the pit head winding gear. Some men worked and some men died for a meagre pittance with which to feed their families. It was a place whose narrow seams crippled the people that produced the wealth for the owners. It was somewhere I used to work, not anymore. I kept telling myself that I’d never return to this hellhole. Since its closure, I find myself once again plodding over this once industrial landscape.

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Trapped

Posted on by under 2023, July 2023 - No way out

There’d been an atmosphere of suppressed excitement in the village that morning.  The boy was glad to go into the solitude of the woods to search for the fox.  It wouldn’t take long.  Foxes didn’t hide their tracks, unlike people. He stopped to hoist the shotgun onto his shoulder, then moved stealthily forward.   Most of his friends knew nothing about foxes, but the boy knew where they made their dens and when they were most active.  He could even tell if they were a dog or a vixen from the muskiness of their scent.  The fox couldn’t escape him. 

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A refuge in the storm

Posted on by under 2023, June 2023 - Home Sweet Home

Of course, the forest was dark that night, in these sorts of stories it always is. But, even as I stumbled through the undergrowth, the wind whipping razor-sharp branches into my face like an enraged banshee, I couldn’t allow myself to slow.

There it was, by some miracle, a light up ahead. I almost physically stretched toward it, like a dying man in the desert offered a flask of water or, perhaps, to flip the analogy, a drowning man thrown a rope from a passing ship.

What it was, was hope. Lower case, yes, but hope nonetheless.

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The Contract – Special Causes and Conditions

Posted on by under 2023, May 2023 - Commitment

I have reached the age where wraiths of the dearly departed,-siblings, parents, babies lost before birth, partners, friends,- slip unbidden into the monochrome days and restless nights. They dart and hide at vision’s edge, ever eluding the spotlight of full consciousness. Yet as the procedure progresses, notwithstanding this lack of clarity, they appear more substantial, more tangible, than the creature standing beside me on hind legs.

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Commitment to the Cause

Posted on by under 2023, May 2023 - Commitment

Light from the hallway shone through the glass of the door.  A signal to say it wasn’t safe.  She turned away straining to stay calm when time was running out.  The next place was easily a mile away.   Not too far in daylight, but in the dark and with what she carried under her cape it would be difficult.  Nudging the weight into a different position, she cautiously moved on, her arm numb.  The road was quiet, but sensing danger, she slid into the shadow of the wood.  It wasn’t much safer.  If she was caught it would be said that a woman alone at night was asking for trouble. 

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Fly Away

Posted on by under 2023, April 2023 - Missing

Rose settled into her nest, another busy night, sighing as she turned to the others.

            Lily poked her head up: ‘Hard night Rose. You wouldn’t believe it. I had to rummage under the bed to find the tooth, all those dust bunnies’ bits of food. It was disgusting’.

            Marigold piped up: ‘Last time that happened to me there was a mouse there, eyeing me up.’ Gasps from the girls.

            Lily shuddered: ‘What did you do?’

            ‘Chucked a bit of biscuit at it, grabbed the tooth and scarpered.’

            Hyacinth joined in. ‘I had a fright not long ago when a dog came sniffing around sucked me halfway up his nostril. Thankfully it tickled his nose, he snorted and blew me across the room,’

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Rankin Vanishes (2000): Fact or Fiction

Posted on by under 2023, April 2023 - Missing

Celebrity biopics sell movie tickets, although it’s never a guarantee that any particular superstar has led an interesting life. So, if you’re a Hollywood scribe, you can squeeze your subject into a readymade template. Celebrity had a career decline? That calls for a Citizen Kane style rise and fall. Your famous figure OD’d? Great! Turn it into a tragedy, driving home some point or other about addiction. What if their life involves an unsolved mystery on par with the Mary Celeste? Dream up a solution.

Norma Rankin, twice grammy nominated singer-songwriter from Chicago, comfortably slotted herself into category three by vanishing off the face of the earth in 1992. Thus, esteemed director Ivan Shanks, auteur of such classics as “Your Mother and a Cow” (1985) and “Die Slowly and Painfully” (1988) made the acclaimed, highly speculative “Rankin Vanishes” (2000), which nabbed three Oscars, and a golden globe.

It did so by fudging the facts.

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The Myriad Benefits of Darjeeling Tea

Posted on by under 2023, Feb 2023 - The Stain

“Go into business with your twin,” they said. “It’ll be fun,” they said.

If you call sweating in a café, cleaning up after customers while your twin sister’s gallivanting overseas in pursuit of new teas and coffees to sell, “fun,” then they were right.

I sigh. Where to start with this clean-up operation? I watch the stain spread across the pale wood floor, seeping into the grain. It was her idea to get wooden floors, of course. Wood the colour of her platinum blonde hair that she insists on bleaching to look as different from me as possible. “Mousey,” she calls our natural hair colour. “Classy,” I always reply.

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Saudade

Posted on by under 2020, February 2020 - Desire
Saudade

I first met Jose Luis Vercas on the concrete apron jutting out into the mouth of the Targus where the splendour of the Manueline Port of Lisboa ends and a wide expanse of river divides the city from Alcântara. He was short, but well-muscled and possessed of that curiously Portuguese combination of a mane of swept-back, black and wavy hair; and a forehead so high it begged to be labelled, “domed”. He said he too was a teacher, but offered no hint of subject or at what level he taught and, to be frank, my interest did not extend that far.

“Do you have it?” I asked in my formal Portuguese. He smiled and nodded – a slight movement of his head, causing a lock of stray hair to struggle free. Patting his messenger bag, he said in accent-free English, “It’s here.”

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