HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday midnight, 21.11.24.
TASK: ‘Witch-hunt’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Witch-hunt’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by midnight, Thursday 21st November 2024.
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 24.11.24, Discovery Room, 1st floor, Central library. Finish at 3.30pm.
Please send your homework to Pat.
The ochre light of the sun hugs your face through the windscreen as you smile in a way that gives the warmth of the day competition. Scenery of greens and blues and mountains and sheep fly past behind your head out the driver’s window, and it’s as though the music takes over. I hear nothing you say but I can count the lines around your mouth and the glints in your eyes. Then like that – it’s over; I can recall nothing you said or did but this image in my mind where your face convinced me magic exists in this world.
Continue reading
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.’
Continue reading
I take a drag, the nicotine hit combined with the rush of seeing you again proving a heady concoction. My legs twitch with such an urgency to run that I fear they’ll carry me down the hill, unbidden, towards you. I force myself to remain seated, hidden from view.
You’re smoking now too, leaning against our tree, our connection as natural as thunder and lightning. I can’t believe you’re there. In the place we said we’d meet in twenty years’ time if things hadn’t worked out.
Continue reading
We wait, biding our time.
Such patience tests us, but this interlude is worth it, especially considering the prize on offer.
You barely even acknowledge us; we are the passing glance in the morning, the image used to check that makeup is applied correctly, or your necktie is straight, before you head out of the door to your dreary, coffee-fuelled, miserable, worthless lives.
We are your reflection in more than just the shallow sense of the word; we mark the passing of your years, day by day, second by second. Yet it is only in moments of occasional lucidity that you see us, shake your head critically and wonder where the twenty-eight-year-old that still lives in your head has disappeared to.
Continue reading
We’re ‘familiar strangers’, you and me. Each morning, we board the 6.28 to Paddington at Swansea train station but never interact. Have you noticed me?
Familiar strangers don’t speak. If you wanted to double-check what the announcement just said, you’d ask that guy over there, who’s not a regular.
The reverse is true out of context. Say I saw you in a bar, you’d be more likely to talk to me than you would a perfect stranger.
Continue reading
You wake up, tied to a tree in the middle of the woods.
Tugging at your restraints, figuring out that some bastard has bound you with a rope. You kick, you scream, and nothing happens.
Last thing you can recall was riding the school bus back home, looking forward to wading the night out curled up on the couch, high on paracetamol, on account of one motherfucker of a migraine.
You’re trying not to panic over the fact you’re totally powerless, so if you starve, freeze or a wondering bear decides you’d make a good snack then Christ, there’s not a lot you can do.
Continue reading
Your two-up two-down is in a row of terraces on a scratch of land between Manchester and Stockport: a molehill overlooked by high-rise concrete. A secret pleasure is flicking through channels while he’s out at his club. A hundred stations yet nothing on. Then you are held by a figure, grey hair, less a face than a tombstone resting on a neck. An air of gravitas in that stony apparition. You pay attention.
The figure, well-spoken, a smoker’s cough like brown smog, is talking about his ‘artistic evolution’. The Slade, the teachers and influencers, the bohemian friends: names are dropped like Pollock paint splashes. A commitment all his years to art and sculpture; up at six a.m., seven days a week. He mentions the well-off family he’d rebelled against. They’d come round when fame’s sprig had bedecked him. He could afford to rebel, of course. Opportunities in his palm like a purse of ducats.
Continue reading
These two had been at school together and never roamed far beyond the town. They were content and deeply appreciated the familiarity and depth of one another’s friendship. It was unusual, therefore, to watch them fizzing like a herd of ants imitating a headless chicken. I’m no eavesdropper but I couldn’t help overhearing…
‘You mean you nicked it?’
‘I did, yeah. You have a problem with that?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, yes, I do have several problems with that. And the first is that you forgot to tell me about it.’
‘ Well, sorry about that, mate, but it’s something that’s been bothering me for a while. 30 years at least. It’s an old score I had to settle. You should be glad I still care about honour and dignity.’
‘Go on then. How did you do it?’
Continue reading
Roscoe Manning’s rounded Devon drawl faltered. He gasped as burning sand trickled down his windpipe. Standard issue military full -face visor was powerless against the inexorable seepage of desert dust.
Not a good idea this open- air presentation, he thought.
Hawking an ochre flume of spittle, he re-placed his face- mask and resumed.
“Imagine….. I didn’t know what a Hesco was before this deployment and now I’m training you.”
Experience had taught Roscoe that modelling his own learning curve built trust with the trainees. So necessary in the field where operational success and minimum casualties depended on orders being instantly obeyed.
Continue readingYvonne opened her eyes to a blackness and silence that caused her breath to stop and her heart to stutter. She lifted her hands up to feel her face, OK, I seem to be alive at any rate!
Putting her hands down she felt around, perceiving a slightly scratchy covering, probably a blanket, and a cool stiff fabric, a sheet. I can’t be in that much danger if they’ve put me in a bed!
Yvonne turned and put her feet down until they touched the floor. It was warm and slightly slippery. She stood up and, waving her hands in front of her, tried to find a wall in what she hoped was a bedroom.
Continue reading“Your numbers up” said Gypsy Rose, “if you want to know more you have to cross my palm with silver, or in your case, make it a twenty.” I’d heard enough, I knew exactly what she meant. I collected my belongings and hurried out of the caravan.
How much time did I actually have? Word on the street was that Mac the knife was out and trying to find me. He had had his sentence reduced. That must have been some bribe as it could never have been for good behaviour. I’d left the neighbourhood as soon as he was sent down, now it would seem that it would be best to move again, just in case. Mac was not known for giving up.
Continue reading