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Thank you for indulging me with these entries and apologies once again for being so late with the results.

@Jill: you gave me exactly what I asked for – an insight into the mind of a killer – in this case, a victim of domestic abuse who was finally pushed too far. Your words paint a quiet picture of an unseen tempest.

@Sandra: Your words pai…[Read more]

Apologies, all. Just home from work and, while the mind is willing, the body is most definitely wrecked. It’ll be tomorrow before I get a chance to read the entries.

Read the others. Wow what hides under the surface!

Body of evidence.

It’s not as though this is the first body I’ve seen, and it’s not as though this is the first person I’ve killed. As a death it was unremarkable: quick, expected, and I imagine she knew nothing about it. A clean shot through the back of the head in mid-conversation. Only a few of my targets have been so lucky, but my intenti…[Read more]

Care Package

450 words

Her brother and she were the youngest of five, he the youngest of all.

‘Follow me!’ he called, pedalling hard. To keep up, when he was eight and she nine, stole her breath. Also, there were more interesting things to do: reading a book, doing piano practice. Soul-bolstering things. Becoming your own person.

Ahead, her…[Read more]

Episode from  long-running tale ‘The Blacksmith’s wife’

Kick a corpse to life and you’ll inevitably disturb carrion.

Tao knew this but only recalled it on attempting to leave his inn-room. The body that had earlier impeded his exit messenger for the man whose name Tao had evoked in hope of boosting his financial standing, believing those who…[Read more]

(Certainly stretched and apologies for one fleeting mention of blood!)

444 words excluding title

Behind Closed Doors

Neighbours stood around gawking.  I saw them from the window as I stood handcuffed to a policeman.

Our quiet cul de sac was a scene of mayhem with ambulance and police cars; blue lights flashing.

The paramedics stretchered him…[Read more]

Thank you, Athelstone.  It has come back to me now and I probably did enter the Word Cloud ones.  Wrathner was a lovely member, but it all seems so long ago…. Glad The Den took up the idea.

The original idea came from Harry Bingham on the WordCloud, who presented a bottle of something similar to Champagne as a prize each month. When it began to fall apart it was taken up by Wrathnar the Unreasonable (sans Champagne) and then by the winner of the competition each month.

It was adopted by the Den when the Cloud finally closed

Yes!  I did mean to say the medals included Libby who prompted us so well in the heat of 2026 August!   Encouragement…
For me, these monthly competitions have been ensuring those writerly muscles are kept in peak condition and other writing has emerged too, so thank you to whoever dreamt up the idea!

Great monthly comp, Libby. And a well-deserved win for Seagreen.

Thanks for the prompt Libby. It seems to have been an age since I  tested the writerly muscles…

And I second Jill’s call for virtual medals all round! 🙂

Congratulations, Seagreen ~ as Libby says it is an intriguing story.  Wonder what intriguing challenge you will be setting us for September…

As usual, I loved all the very different and well written entries which embraced the theme so well.  So virtual medals to all!

Thanks Libby for the prompt and your kind words. Only as I finished writing my entry did I recall the only holiday spent with my parents was in 1973 , after chld#3 born. It was NOT a success (and Dovercourt still feels like home)

@athelstone

I realised after I pressed send that the POVs of your three characters  responded to the three possible POVs I’d put in my comp task. Neat!

As befits pieces about holidays and sea, all this month’s entries evoked a sense of place and, in their different ways, the rituals of leaving home for time away.

@jillsted

A lovely interweaving of different memories focused on the annual seaside holiday. Your depictions are very atmospheric, such as, “We would stand in the corridor and e…[Read more]