Tag Archives: now

The ballerina

Posted on by under 2024, Oct 2024 - Defeat

The blade glints in the light that breaks through the shutters.

Dust motes lazily dance in the illumination, like galaxies spiralling away from The Big Bang, sending her mind to thoughts of fractal patterns, never-ending repetitions of mathematical formulae that are mesmerising in their complexity and beauty.

She can see everything now, the enhanced vision they gave her at sixteen just one of the many upgrades that apparently make her better, faster, stronger. She’s supposed to be more than human but, somehow, feels lesser, as if this isn’t meant to be.

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PENSIONER’S LAMENT

Posted on by under 2024, Oct 2024 - Defeat

Liz sat drinking her oat milk latte, and seeing her reflection in the cafe window sighed. This is not how I imagined my retirement, my face all puffy and pale from the medications I had been prescribed. After an active job I had felt prepared for the future, but my body had other ideas it had decided. Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol had suddenly appeared, although I was told they had been on their radar for years!!

Having lost the ability to wear stilettos, I reluctantly admitted defeat and replaced them with sensible shoes. I loved my old shoes even kept my favourites, just in case, trying them on now and again but usually ended up going ass over tit .

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Trapped

Posted on by under 2024, August 2024 - Limbo

Mum’s crying again. That’s how my days go now, thinking she’s talking to her comatose son, but in reality I’m right here, locked inside my own body, fully conscious but unable to move or speak. I braced myself for her routine onslaught of confessions as she wiped the tears from her eyes and adjusted the stiff hospital chair.

“Oh, Danny, it’s just so hard,” she began, her voice cracking. “I’m working night and day, and when I’m not working I’m cleaning. I love Mark dearly but I wish he would just once take something off my shoulders.”

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Escape

Posted on by under 2024, May 2024 - Escape

I heard stories about the Eternal Windstream. It will test you; it might break you, but if you’re strong enough, it will take you wherever you wish.

My search for it is finally over. I feel the flow of air and its pulsating energy before me. Excited, I step off the cliff.

The fall doesn’t last long. I spread my wings and enjoy the sensation of the wind in my feathers. And up the sky I go, gaining speed. Effortless.

I look back. The land gets further away. How far can I go now? How far should I go?

The wind gets stronger – now I have to fight with it to stay in the flow.

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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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The Snowman

Posted on by under 2024, January 2024 - A winters tale

Harry’s Nike Air Jordans branded the snow as he sprinted across the lawn. This time last year, when his only worry was whether he’d find said trainers under the tree, he’d wished for a white Christmas. Now, the weight of the world on his shoulders, he had bigger things to wish for. Like a Dad who wasn’t in prison, and an end to the creeping dread that something evil lurked inside him, too.

“Exciting, huh?” came a shaky voice. He turned to see old Mr. Morris from next door leaning against the gate, a silvery puff of breath escaping from behind his scarf.

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Losing the Lumps

Posted on by under 2023, August 2023 - Loss

Randolph Crow remembered his boy Martin as an excited ten-year-old, leaping out of bed Saturday morning and hurrying to the local library two miles away, before returning arms loaded with books on moths and roaches. His bedroom was transformed into a museum of mounted bugs.

An obsession that, Martin’s old man noted with some relief, was replaced with a love of chemistry in his teen years.

At an age when one should be sullen and moody, Martin had the bright-eyed look of a curious toddler, treating the world like a big playground, his bedroom now a laboratory of powders and test tubes.

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The Maze

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

I must say, it was the weirdest outing ever. I can try to laugh about it now but really, it just reinforced all my early fears about not getting into things where you can’t see a clear way out. (I completely blame the Brothers Grimm for this, what with Hansel and Gretel having such a close encounter with an oven – nightmare).

Dilly, my sister, (Delia, but she hates the name)and I live far apart so we take the occasional weekends together and meet up for hotel stays, meals out, the odd show and whatever we fancy.

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NO WAY OUT

Posted on by under 2023, July 2023 - No way out
Native girl in a cave with the body of her chieftan, a flask, and oil lamp on a low table

Aysha had been running and hiding for two days, and still they followed her relentlessly. Now laying under a thorn bush, she was quivering. Her once sleek body was emaciated, a pale grey colour, her eyes seemed to take up her whole face, a beaten look in them.

            The hunters found her the next morning, dragging her out and they set off for the krall. She had to be returned. They placed her in the care of the wise woman who set about treating her wounds, purging her of the parasites that she had swallowed in the river water, feeding her honey water and thin gruel. She slowly  recovered .

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Home Sweet Home

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

You know there’s something seriously wrong when the police arrive at your door past midnight.  I guessed what it was at once.  He had finally done it.

I’d moved out of the family home when I was seventeen, and haven’t put a foot inside it since.  After years of wanting my father’s attention, I finally had it once I reached puberty.  It was the wrong sort of course, “our little secret” he used to call it.

Poor Mum, the things she had to put up with over the years.  She didn’t deserve any of it. She’d never told anybody of the mental and physical abuse she had been subjected to from ‘HIM.’  Even now I can’t call him ‘Dad’, he’s such a despicable human being.  Why she stood by him all these years I will never understand.

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