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Apologies for the delay. As is my wont, I was attempting to find a line or two of poetry to act as opening line and/or prompt which took longer than anticipated. However, in Andrew McMillan’s ‘physical’, entitled ‘TODAY’, I found
“you will mistake the gulls
for the screaming of a girl
and run out of your flat
to an empty landing”
Tell me what happens next in 400 words or less, by no later than 23.00 on the 31st of March
‘you will mistake the gulls
for the screaming of a girl
and run out of your flat
to an empty landing’
No.
The landing is not empty.
You know what you see.
And the gulls, well, you should have remembered, they’re always there. Wheeling and calling, ghostly as Valkyries, looking for a better prize than picking at bleached bones of the long dead, littering your landing, the walkways and the open spaces beyond.
With a curl of recalled horror, you remember those crow-speckled places were the first ravaged by the outfall of unthinkable disaster your kind wrought upon themselves.
Now, in the twilight of existence, those gulls are the lure, the memorial promise of life lost to the reckless savagery of humanity. They have become the link to that dangled memory of time in sunshine and air. Their company is a stark souvenir that only magnifies the lost sense of time spent among bustling shopping malls, meandering with the fragrance of fresh bread and coffee.
Fool!
It was not the screaming of a girl you heard.
You should have remembered, the gulls are always there, temping you with recollections of country lanes, the fading remembrance of farmland scent and always, always, calling to you with the sound of the sea and the memory of its salty taste against your tongue.
Your thoughts, addled with loneliness and the rising understanding of what man has done, have betrayed you.
You should have remembered.
No one goes out onto the landing.
(227)
They’d Chosen Me for Being Good at Isolation
Those harbour houses had slope-ceilinged attics with dormer windows. I’d been instructed to stay in one garret, squint out between curtains, send situation reports every two hours. A reconnaissance man, a civilian thought to be steady, I watched the quay below, admired the yachts and motorboats moored side-on, monitored the bridge at the harbour’s inland end.
Under the bridge a river flowed into the harbour’s newly oily water. Beyond it rose a hill, the other half of the town. I watched deserted lanes, pretty cottages, white, pink and butter yellow, doors and windows shut. The town had endured firebombs and riots, but above it the gulls still called and wheeled.
Me, spying for the military. They’d questioned my politics and found them uninteresting; I was genuinely content with government authority. A quiet life. As men and women pushed cars into the harbour, and oil and petrol floated to the surface, I was sent to the garret. But when no soldiers came to detain the vandals everyone dispersed and I settled down to watching, wondering why people saw authority as an enemy.
But the town’s quietness began to oppress. The family who lived below my garret had left. On day four I jumped at footsteps on the stairs then realised they echoed from the homes either side. On day five real voices, chanting, came from streets behind the house. I could still hear the gulls, cawing is if my situation was amusing. I reassured myself I was safe, the rebels didn’t know anyone was here.
Outside, shouts rose, glass shattered. I looked down on civilians surging onto the quay, police following. An officer truncheoned a young woman, she fell, the riot bloomed. Fire leaped from the house next door and I, dry-mouthed, imagined burning to death. Or I could join the crowd which would grab me even though I’d nothing to do with their troubles. I trembled and dithered. When a message demanded extra sitreps, I wasn’t sure if they wanted reports on what I saw or how I was. I didn’t answer.
Beyond the garret door a girl screamed. Another police truncheon? If so, the police would look after me. But the landing was empty. I’d no choice now. I ran down the stairs, merged with the crowd, the fresh air making my bravery bracing. Soldiers would rescue me.
Military trucks flowed towards the riot like lava. Overhead, gulls laughed.
(400)
The Prophecy
You will mistake the gulls
for the screaming of a girl
and run out of your flat
to an empty landingThis dark prophecy will forever haunt me.
An old neighbour uttered it; a self-proclaimed psychic, who called by to pass on the warning. Such a pathetic attempt, I thought, to scare me from moving to the new flats offered to tempt us out of our homes. Didn’t need no carrots-on-strings, said I, to move from this rat-ridden slum. No made-up prophecies would change my mind either.Don’t you ever wish you could wind back time, given what you know, and try again?
I thought she was missing old friends when my girl grew silent. ‘Be patient, Em,’ I reassured her. ‘Your old friends will be able to visit, as can the new. Didn’t I see you talking to some this morning?’
‘Like you’d ever listen!’ Came the screaming reply as silences turned to swinging moods and I dared to ask why.
Foolish me put it down to teenage angst.Blind me saw nothing untoward in Em’s pallor when I invited these new girls inside: the ones who hung around her of late.
Deaf me took their utterances to be light-hearted quips – the kind her father and she once traded. If Dan were still here, naïve me insisted, he would agree that she needed to offer more back in this new game of banter.
So blinkered was I; so desperate for this move to work, that I condemned my daughter to her terrible fate.
And me to mine, ceaselessly replaying the prophecy; evermore cursing my ignorance.New friends indeed.
So keen to see theirs that they would wait on the landing to greet …
… their enemy, that’s who: the one with large, glassy eyes.Those beautiful eyes, they had stared lifeless from the floor of the stairwell, their last appeal for help still glistening. And her last utterances, those piercing screams, were mimicked from dawn ‘til dusk by the council-tip gulls.
They had sneered from the dock, those girls, once their mischief was dismissed as misadventure; the court as believing of their tears as their false accounts. While their minds closed, mine opened …
… except Em wasn’t around for ‘I told you so’s’.
Nor was my old neighbour.Forevermore I would hear her screams; race to the door, only to find an empty landing.
396 words.
Promise Landing
(409 words*)
The screams tear Seth like cheap paper from shallow, disturbing dreams, and he gasps awake, eyes on the living darkness that writhes, malevolent with secrets, in the corners of the room. His gut can tell it’s way beyond midmorning, though the blackout curtain over the window could convince him it’s the witching hour if he lets it. Marjorie-Joi. That is the name of the presence in the back of his mind, the one he feels crawling, tingling beneath his skin, every time he lets his fingers slip down his grey sweats, brush against the ignoble hardness to be found there. Every night he gets pulled under—disoriented and lost—that is the name of the absence in the inner chamber of his heart; loving her is like living in some kind of parallel world. He desperately wants to wake up.
Peeling himself from the sheets, eyes pinched tight with rheum, he rushes best he can to fling open the door on the opposite side of his tiny apartment. The flapping and fluttering of feathered wings, like an emboldened dance partner, invites his heart to mirror their movements. The sight of tens of gulls taking flight just outside his door, a shock he inhales as he blinks rapidly darting eyes. He supposes that’s what he gets for renting a flat near the boardwalk. Not lady screams then. And not even gulls now, the landing beyond his door suddenly abandoned by every winged thing but his groundless, wretched desire for . . .
Pulling the door in, his pulse pirouettes once again when his eyes catch on a shadow moving past the building’s periphery, its slow glide trapped in the door’s quick close. The shadow’s walk is ambling and takes her to the apartment next door. She knocks while he watches—suspicious, piqued and, were he to be caught doing it, feeling creepy—and meets his eyes as she waits for her knock to be answered.
“Hi—uh, sorry. There was a noise. Birds,” Seth said by way of explanation. At this time of day, he wasn’t pretending to be articulate in the slightest.
“Hullo.” She watches him back as he smiles—suspicious, piqued and, was she to admit why she is there, feeling creepy—and returns his wave.
“I uh—don’t suppose your name is Marjorie?”
There are no feathers on the landing.
“Could be.” Her smile is hesitant. Thoughtful. Mischievous. “Could be you can call me whatever you like.”
*totes didn’t make the word count this time, haha. It’s okay if the entry doesn’t qualify. It was a wild, pantsy ride and refused to relinquish those final 9 words. We fought. I lost, lol.
Of course, I felt stupid when I realised. There I was standing on the landing in shorts and tee-shirt with my apron on. “World’s Best Chef” it said on the font. Katya bought it for me for Christmas—oh—must be ten years ago. Mrs. Hardcastle from number seventy was out there as well. I wonder if she thought…
‘Morning Mrs. Hardcastle. It was the gulls. I thought…’
But she just stared at me blankly. Not blankly. There was a resolute hatred in her eyes. She turned and entered her flat, shutting herself in and the sight of me out. I understood. She wanted her son and his wife to have the flat they gave to me and Katya. I sympathise. I never wanted to live in this place. We were never at home here. But it was necessary. Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time. We had nothing, and we needed somewhere stable for Katya. I blame myself. Of course.
I looked up and down the empty landing and then went back into my flat. It was odd that I should hear gulls. We’re not that near the sea. I know that seagull is a misnomer. If anything, most species are coastal birds. They can fly miles out to sea, happily drinking seawater, but they’re just as happy inland if there’s food. Still, I always think of the seaside when I hear them. That’s not quite right, though. Today one woke me from my stupor and thought I heard Katya cry out.
I made coffee and wondered about lunch. It was just starting to rain, so I didn’t fancy dragging myself up and down fourteen flights of stairs to get soaked for some bread and a box of eggs. Besides, I wasn’t hungry. People get tired and hungry but when the fatigue has entered into your soul, it takes away your appetite. From the window I could see Canary Wharf off in the distance. It faded in an out with the mist of rain. How did I ever think we could live here?
Music started up from the flat next door. James and Curtis. They run a pirate radio station. Curtis told me that they hardly get any trouble from the authorities now, even though they don’t have a licence to broadcast.
‘It’s all going online,’ he said, ‘and radio is all digital. Nobody cares about FM no more. But we like it. We still got demand.’
I’ll miss them. I don’t know why, but I like them both in spite of the noise into the night. They were decent to me when—when Katya took the quick way down, as Curtis put it. The flat is for two people, so I have to move. Mrs. Hardcastle will be pleased, even though her Brian and his Tess have found somewhere else.
The rain hit the window like stones and from somewhere gulls screeched. I wondered if one of them was Katya, out there in the rain.
Disqualify me too. I should have checked again; thought we had 500 🙁
“you will mistake the gulls
for the screaming of a girl
and run out of your flat
to an empty landing”
you will turn your head this way and that and peer over the railing to the stairwell below,
seeing no-one, hearing nothing, not even an echo of the sound you followed in the first place. You will grasp the red-painted railing with both hands – fingers long and thin, and nails bitten to the quick – and edge, sock-footed and silent, to the top of the stairs, where you will descend first one step, then another, still listening, hands still clinging to the railing, and heart still hammering in your chest. You darted out of your flat in once-white cotton boxers with a pattern of faded red lips, and a button – maybe two – missing from the fly. But you are not a Marvel super-hero, and you are not dressed for heroics.
Nevertheless, you move down another step.
Cool air drifts in through the open window behind you and you shiver, scrunching down into a smaller version of yourself and grasping the edges of the gap in your fly to ward off the chill. As if that will make a difference.
Still you stand. And still you listen.
Against the backdrop of mismatched grey paint on the stairwell wall, you are a mixed media Study of Inelegance and Uncertainty. What are you doing here? Realism nudges bravado and vulnerability surfaces. Awkwardly, you retreat to the top of the stairs, the hard rubber edge of the top step unforgiving beneath the soles of your feet. You stand for the time it takes relief to wash over you then beat a hasty retreat along the landing and into your open doorway.
You close the door and tell yourself there’s no need to feel foolish.
No-one saw you anyway.
And, at close of play, I confess I find myself reeling at the richness of the offerings sparked by this ptompt, and rather than daunted by the necessity of choosing a winner, feeling well rewarded by the pleasures of reading them – thank you all.
Terrie>’s single word of denial sparked instant interest, and maintained it with phrases such as ‘a curl of recalled horror’ and ’dangled memory of time’ before delivering a crash-landing of an ending.
Libby’s ‘They’d Chosen Me for Being Good at Isolation’ set up intrigue, delivered an ill-briefed spy justifiably scared and in hiding from bloody and a vividly described situation of riot and violence; teetering on uncertainty as it gets out of hand before coming full-circle to the gulls.
Janette’s ‘The Prophecy’, a tale of mother manipulating daughter’s friends in a misguided effort to salve her conscience held uncomfortable echoes for me, but proceeded much, much more vividly and with a far more tragic ending – an excellent, painful fusion of the opening lines.
Knick’s self-declared disqualification for breaking the word limit with her superb, ‘Promise Landing’ does ease my decision=making a little, because this is yet another mind-fizzing, knock-out entry.
Athelstone’s opening sentence instantly demands attention, sending my mind wondering exactly … what? Then answering – wrapping the reader in a wealth of story which gives place and situation, neighbours good and bad; facts and hints of sorrows and ending with a final tug of heartbreak. (Not to say a second self-declared disqualification.)
and lastly, Seagreen, whose continuation of the prompt’s future tense made a first impact and the tale itself continued to supply tension, emotion and location, as well as a snappy end. Which leaves me with four from which to declare a single winner. So … I’ve read and re-read each at least three times and declare … Libby this month’s winner, albeit, as I’m sure you’ll all agree, it’s only by the merest whisker, because I thought every one more than brilliantly filled the brief – thank you all so very much.
Thank you, @sandradavies I really didn’t expect that. The other entries were so good.
I’ll be back later with a comp for April.
You may not have expected it, but you should believe it, Libby. Really sharp story there.
Thanks, Sandra. I enjoyed that prompt. And thanks to all the other entrants; I enjoyed reading through them this month.
Thanks, Sandra, for the prompt, which I did find somewhat challenging (not a bad thing).
Fantastic entries from everyone else! You motivated me to (try to!) do better.
Thanks for the kind words, @sandradavies! I appreciate it. And congratulations to you, Libby! I enjoyed yours and every other entry coming out of this prompt. It was a good one 🙂
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