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I am waiting in a line of silent people.
Through the high-domed crystalline crown of windows, pale light, drifting like blossom in the air, reflects a gauzy veil of sleepy light and a comfort blanket of warm, mysterious, air coils softly with it.

There is a sense of waking on a limp summer morning coated in the scent of…[Read more]

Mishaping to fit

Only as he pushed open the door into Haugesund’s Folkepuben, his mind occupied not only with what he needed to establish with Lars Sigmundssen but also a slightly fearful curiosity as to how Lars would react to his having slept with Maja, Lars’ current woman, was Rick Thorssen reminded, by the roar of convivial con…[Read more]

My route.

Life’s not so bad. Not anymore. Not now that I’ve got a job and a place to live. The job’s easy enough. I have a route and a barrow. I wheel the barrow to the start of the route and then I clear the rubbish along the whole of it. Some people here don’t manage it for long. They say it’s too tiring, or too boring, or we’re expected to…[Read more]

Great prompt, Terrie. Well done, Sea, absolutely well deserved. For my part it was fun to relax with a bit of 1960s -style pulp sci-fi 🙂

Thank you for the prompt, Terrie, which served to oil those mental cogs I was beginning to think had seized.

@Ath and Sandra – both great stories 🙂 and I hope you’ll be equally inspired by April’s comp.

Thank you for this challenge Terrie, and your kind comments; I was glad of the opportunity to make best use of it. Well done Sea – and never doubt those who have read you KNOW full well you are indeed a talented and sparkling writer, and thank you Ath for evoking. albeit dimly, the challenges of childhood.

Thank you Sandra, Ath, and Sea for such excellent entries.

1. Sandra, what a ‘jump right in’ really thought-provoking opening statement then backtracking to give a well-crafted back story to the piece before we actually meet Vic Duncan. I especially liked the small almost throw away sentences that gives good insight into the main cha…[Read more]

As I drove home on Wednesday morning after a nightshift, I had the most amazing idea for the monthly comp. A sort of fantasy, supernatural, sci-fi thing that I was excited to start working on. I got home, made myself a cup of tea and promptly fell asleep on the sofa. By the time I woke, the idea was long gone, picked up and carried away – like s…[Read more]

The Leap

Before I knew what The Leap was, I thought it was magic. Like I thought magic was a real thing. Me and Cob and Dez and Piggy were all under ten years old. I mean, I didn’t know what a year was. That was an earth thing. Piggy was nine, and he said that a year was like four and a bit turns of the stars. Turns were an asteroid thing, a K…[Read more]

Cheeky leap into an attempt of an opener for ‘Snap is not a children’s game’ 

Vic Duncan. Did Lucy but know it, the first of three Duncan men she’d sleep with before she died, possibly dangerous, but an especially satisfying addition to her habitual  maintenance of a quartet of alphabetically consecutively-named lovers.

It began in the final yea…[Read more]

Well done, @purplewitch. That was an excellent return to the monthly competition 🙂

Liked that prompt @pinkbelt. Super bunch of entries this month.

Congratulations Terrie – a tale that got richer with every re-reading, as did those of Alex at Ath. And thank you Pinkbelt for the challenge.

First of all, thanks for allowing me to come back into the fold and do this. I’d forgotten how much fun these are, and I can’t believe just how much people can express in so few words. I loved all of them in different ways.

Sandra, I found your piece thoughtful and intriguing. I love the part of writing when you revisit a character to find out a…[Read more]

The Return

Brenda’s dad died in 1983, so when he returned forty years later, it was a bit of a nuisance. Brenda woke up and went down to make a cup of tea. She was rather surprised to see him sitting in the kitchen looking out of the window.

‘You’ve let the garden go,’ he said without looking round. Then he did look round, and he added, ‘Bloody…[Read more]

Retrieving memories

When on the Word Cloud, in 2014, Alan P proposed the challenge ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore’, I was in need of an explanation as to why Luke Darbyshere ( DI and main character in my ‘Love triangles with murder series) regularly sabotaged relationships at the point when they looked like becoming meaningful. His upbring…[Read more]