Tag Archives: was

The hunted

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

“Hello?”

Beams of light sliced the darkness, and she shrank into the corner, shivering. Hopefully they’d not see her, move on, and she could get back to eking out her existence on whatever she could forage at night time, and the small creatures that fell into the crude traps she lay near the entrance to the cold, dark, cave system.

Maybe, she thought, as footsteps echoed, getting louder and closer, that was what’d drawn them into the depths, that she’d been careless and left signs, indicators of her existence. Whatever had got them here, they weren’t leaving.

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I’m here to rescue you!

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

Measuring time was next to impossible. No clocks, no sunlight, no signs from the outside world.

Smith had called out in his windowless cell, heard his voice echoed down the dingy corridor and yet there were no noises in response. No rumble of traffic, no coughing or shuffling of feet, no bellowing “to keep it down,” not even a crackle from the pipes or the creek of a floorboard. The silence outside was deafening and the only sounds Smith could hear were made by his own body.

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Rescue dogs make the best breed

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

“The sedative is starting to take effect now”.

I began to tell the vet of her uncertain start to life but hesitated. That didn’t seem important anymore, it was the here and now, this exact moment, and I found myself lost in the vibrations of her gentle snores, the soft rise and fall of her warm breath.

She was absolutely and unashamedly my child substitute. As one half of a childless lesbian couple, a puppy was bound to become our baby, and neither of us ever denied it. Still, it was my idea to go looking for a pup and when I met her, I knew she was the only one that would do.  

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Blackpool Rocks

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

            The president’s plane took off from Paris. He was going home. Before reaching the Atlantic, there was a huge explosion of lightning in the sky like Armageddon. It struck the plane, a wing caught fire, smoke was billowing everywhere.

            ‘Parachute! Parachute!’ the captain shouted. ‘Prepare the president for emergency exit.’

Two of the crew bundled him out of the toilet where he’d been tweeting.

‘Hey, what about my pants?’

‘Strap this on!’ one guy shouted.

‘Open exit door!’ said the second.

‘Release!’

The president, falling to earth, trouserless, looked up at the plane wreathed in fire. Next thing he knew his parachute was snagged on top of a metal tower, the heavens still electrically charged with tongues of lightning.

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Not exactly Danse Macabre

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

A rather puny skeleton squeezed himself out of the cupboard and moved silently around a bedroom. It was a boring job, representing some rather meagre misdeeds needing to be tucked away, but at least he wasn’t locked up and could rove around a bit. He knew of some more burly colleagues whose cupboards were permanently locked, chained and protected by serious legal teams standing in protective readiness. What horrors they were representing was kept firmly under wraps.

The real downside of being a low status skeleton (and who knew, maybe it was the same, or even worse, for the stars of the skeleton-in-cupboard world) was that there was very little to do. He had to make his own entertainment.

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Reel Life

Posted on by under 2025, January 2025 - Returning

“NO. Not back there! Can’t do it. Don’t give me that 30/180 degrees clash shit. It’s my weekend with the kids. Surely Pika can do it?” Jon, voice rising, was fearful he had overdone it. Following the marriage breakdown he needed the money. But how he had hated that farmyard location,- the greyness, the endless rain, the sucking of his every welly step in the mud.

“Not there yet. Still learning.” Cinematographer Alastair and editor Mel joined forces anticipating his objection. They did not share his unease. AI was their bread and butter and Pika one of the most respected programmes.

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In the rain

Posted on by under 2025, January 2025 - Returning

She told him it was over.

Sure, she loved him, but she just wasn’t in love with him if that began to make sense.

He looked down at his lap and blinked a little to hide the welling tears. Then rising without a word, he marched upstairs.

She knew he didn’t want her to follow, and she lingered there in his living room, knowing this was a heartless way to end the relationship but God, was there ever a right way? She plucked his housekey from her keychain and wondered if he’d return the key to her flat.

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Point of no return

Posted on by under 2025, January 2025 - Returning

There was never any question of a reconciliation.  There hadn’t been a dramatic rift, just a dwindling, eroding sense of partnership. What remained was an exchange of items and after that, their disentanglement : all that had been done was to be finally undone in this ritual handover.

The separation had been efficiently accomplished. The flat was on the market  and new living arrangements were in place. Guy and Freya showed no animosity, indeed they intended to remain on friendly terms.

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Return Match

Posted on by under 2025, January 2025 - Returning

            When she’d entered the church, she’d felt trapped. At the altar just one thought: I don’t want to marry. But it was too late. She couldn’t let the crowd down, nor Colin, her boyfriend since schooldays.  She blamed herself for her negativity, swore her vows emptily, and walked out of the chapel on Colin’s arm displaying a forced smile to the many pairs of sugar-sweet eyes offering her love. But there was no love inside her and she left Colin six months later.

            That was a decade ago. Here she was again, in a registry office, no ostentation, just the two of them and a witness. Did she love Tim? The question whispered gratingly, as the woman registrar studied her with, she fancied, laser-like insight.

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Returning

Posted on by under 2025, January 2025 - Returning

No-one can explain the expansive nothingness of flying through space; it makes you wonder if movement is an illusion hurtling through the flat darkness – everything looking the same as though you were stood still.

Our hero, our returner, Frank 4000, had been enduring this journey for six months. His automated system forged towards his pinpointed base on Earth; that beautiful, colourful, noisy, all-consuming, wondrous place that we take for granted. His slick, silver shell yearned to feel the heat of a human hand once again and his giant eye wished to devour something other than the same stagnant view he’d experienced for so long.

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DID SHE, DID SHE NOT ?

Posted on by under 2025, January 2025 - Returning

Low lighting and heavy drapes held the evening at bay. Valerie Trent sat across from her new client, Anita Wallace, who was devoid of makeup, her hair chopped short, her shoulders hunched.

”Anita can you tell me why you are here?”

“My husband died six months and five days ago and I keep thinking I killed him”

”Did you?”

Her eyes filled with anguish. ” I don’t know, he tripped over my foot as I scrambled away from him and he went over the cliff to his death.”

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Je ne regrette rien

Posted on by under 2024, Dec 2024 - Regret

It was a hollow victory, Hugo thought as he tucked into his last meal. Now that the initial excitement of escaping the care home and boarding a plane to Switzerland had worn off, the stark finality of death began to sink in. 

After all his dear friend Ron had done to help him – booking the Dignitas appointment, fetching his passport, lying to the staff and Hugo’s family, and driving him to the airport – he felt bad even thinking like this.

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TERGER

Posted on by under 2024

My first game was not going well.

“Terger?”

 Me ….“Wiktionary’s definition is  ‘a person who teases, taunts, aggravates, angers’”.

As organiser and chair of the scrabble tournament Bryn bristled with self importance…. and incredulity.

“Translated from Norwegian! Come-on Charlie. You know the rules.”

Using a practised left hand to flick through the T’s of  the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, his right hand twisted first one greasy handle, then the other, of his handlebar moustache.

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Promising Young Mind

Posted on by under 2024, Dec 2024 - Regret

UPON BEING NAMED INDIA’S most wanted criminal, Fariha went to her local shop, where she bought a bottle of bleach to drink.

She stopped briefly to look at the rack of newspapers and her worst fears were confirmed. The Mumbai Mirror – a newspaper she had previously contributed articles to – had launched a hate campaign against her. Other papers carried headlines and stories pertaining to Fariha’s crimes. These included the assault of a friend from her university days; her suspected role in the murder of a Bollywood actor; and her involvement in a conspiracy to detonate a bomb in the US embassy in New Delhi shortly after 9/11.

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The Miracle of Twice Hanged William Cragh the Scabby; or The Wealth of Wax

Posted on by under 2024, Nov 2024 - Witch Hunt

Annus Dominus 1287. Western Gate, Swansea

John lifted his eyes from the gibbet and groaned at the stench. The De Braose family had trusted him with captaining the hanging party: he could smell a traitor and a murderer. William, as leader of the Oystermouth Castle Revolt, was both. If the cross beam had not buckled under the weight of that other Judas, the second hanging would have been avoided; John would have had the time to take his victuals – time denied due to William’s obstinacy in reviving… twice. 

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Cake 1 Witch-hunt 0

Posted on by under 2024, Nov 2024 - Witch Hunt

An unexpectedly early inheritance: poor Aunt Hettie shouldn’t have died so early, and Janine hadn’t considered the implications. However, hearts wear out, and as a result, Janine now owned a largish suburban house and just enough income to enable early retirement from a dull, mid-rank civil service post. Janine stepped out of her job and (at last) from an unsatisfactory marriage, kicking them  both aside like dirty clothing. Free!

The house had a lovely garden backing on to a small copse. There was ample time in Janine’s rethought life to take on beekeeping, two hives of bees soon making good use of the garden.

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The Laelaps Hound and the Teumessian Fox

Posted on by under 2024, Nov 2024 - Witch Hunt

Winchester Hall had seen better days. Not especially photogenic or a marvel of design, it nevertheless stood proudly between tall oak trees whilst a meandering river coiled around it.

This site was infamous for the legend of Lady Elaine Winchester, accused witch who was rumoured to haunt the grounds.

“Of course,” the groundskeeper informed me, during our steady trek up to the property, “the witchcraft charge was all hogwash. Her accuser, Simon Mathers who was just eyeing the estate, cooked up the witchcraft crap, and after he had her hung, brought the house from her dissolute and estranged son. Oh, and before she died, she vowed to kill any descendant of Mathers who’d dare step foot in her house, and to do everything in her power to help her descendants reclaim their ancestral home. Do you know what happened next?”

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