@seagreen
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What an experience! I’m just glad you’re home and on the mend. Credit to you for maintaining a positive mindset and to Mrs Ath for being amazing!
Not sure if you know, Ath, but positive feedback for specific nurses ‘Natalie did this, Esme supported me with that’ can be used for their revalidation. Just saying. ☺️
The madness is all mine for thinking I could do this!
All words taken from Rod Judkins’ The Art of Creative Thinking.
DRIBBLES AND SPATTERS
Inner demons
chisel
creative confidence
Ideas so strange
wither.
Radiate defiance
Salvage mistakes with freedom
and
transform the message
Come alive!
Thank you for indulging my ‘tearful’ requirement and apologies again for being so late with the results.
@Jill – Good to see you back, and thank you for diving back into the monthly comp with your tale of Lucia. I confess to knowing nothing about Vestal Virgins, but your entry has definitely piqued my curiosity and I’m sure there’s a much larger tale here waiting to be told.There was a real mix of emotions here – I imagine loss, pride, fear, inevitability, and hope (to name a few). I love it when the writing is strong enough for me to watch a scene play out in my head and that last scene of yours was particularly poignant.
@Janette – Your story carries heart (as always), enriched by beautiful description. And ‘they were my rawest truth’ hooked me and refused to let go. Strength in vulnerability.@Sandra – I’m sorry if I coerced you into this, but I couldn’t let you swan off on some trip without trying to tease something out of you. And then this. Sometimes the least (and simplest) words paint the most profound picture.
@Ath – You brought out the big guns. Voice and Teabreak. I loved it. Enough said.
You are all treasures and I struggled to find one story that shone brighter than any other. In the end, I chose the image of Steve’s face as the ambulance drove off. Over to you, Sandra.
Foolishly, I thought I’d have time on my nightshift to absorb the stories and choose a winner. Ha! The salt mine overlords had other ideas.
I promise it’ll be done today…
As you know, Sandra, this prompt came about following the loss of one of our cardiologists and my subsequent inability to write anything meaningful in his Book of Condolences. Faced with Imposter Syndrome because I didn’t know him as well as some of the other nurses, I simply invalidated my feelings and wrote a stiff little sentence that had nothing to do with anything I wanted to say. To my shame, I summed him up as ‘unforgettable’.
The man was wise, funny and extremely knowledgeable. He smiled often, pranked the nurses, and turned up to overnight emergencies in tartan pyjamas (or so I am led to believe!) He was legendary for his story-telling abilities but, more than that, for his story-listening abilities. He would pull up a chair at a bedside and make his patients feel heard. They adored him. His colleagues in Cardiology and associated departments would have given anything to have been able to save him.
For me, this prompt is more about the honesty behind the tears. It’s about love, understanding, frailty, disappointment, joy, gratitude, beauty, anger, and the unfairness of life. If you still have the time (and the inclination 😊), before your break away, Sandra, write me that.
I won’t lie, I logged in last night to find out what the prompt for this month’s comp was going to be, little expecting – in the face of the other entries – that I would be setting it 😂
So thanks, Ath, for the comp and for that WTH!? moment when I got home from work 😃 and thanks to everyone else for inspiring me to try in the first place. I’ll post something tonight after my shift.
UNTITLED (149 WORDS)
Contains an obscenity
Today is the last day I will beat myself up over this.
It’s the last day I’ll say sorry for hurting you, as if I haven’t said sorry a million times already.
It’s the last time I’ll try to make amends for something you will never forgive me for.
It’s the last time I’ll go to bed and wonder how different things would be if that last flight home to Edinburgh hadn’t been cancelled due to bad weather.
It’s the last day I’ll reach for you and watch you turn from me in disgust.
It’s the last day I’ll allow myself to feel the emotional pain of your bitterness.
It’s the last day I will listen to the barbed lecture on trust and infidelity.
It’s. The. Last. Day
Tomorrow, I will embrace the challenge of being a single, imperfect, compassionate human being.
And you?
You can go f**k yourself.
Congratulations, Ath. Delightfully creative tale!
Thanks to Janette for the prompt and to Sandra, Libby and Terrie for a selection of wonderful stories xPrinces Street, Edinburgh, in early May. The morning is bright, the sky opaque with a promise of blue, and there’s enough chill in the air to warrant the cardigan I left on the back of the chair in the kitchen. I’m walking on the sunny side of the street – the side across from the gardens – with measured, purposeful steps as I head to a training course in the council building next to Waverley Station.
It’s Thursday, barely eight o’clock, and the shops aren’t open yet. The street is fairly quiet. The flower sellers are setting up on the edge of the pedestrianized area, the window cleaner outside the phone shop is whistling discordantly, and the joggers who dart out from the Premier Inn, engrossed in setting their watches, weave to avoid me. There’s a homeless man wrapped like a burrito in the doorway of Ann Summers.
And yet… there is still only me.
I cross Hanover Street, angling left over the pedestrian crossing towards the National Gallery, and into the gardens.
Where my progress is abruptly halted by a small, white feather, hovering two feet off the ground, directly in front of me.
I scan my surroundings to see who might be responsible for this wayward item, but there is nobody either close enough to me or looking remotely interested in my astonishment. I move left to go round the obstruction.
Annoyingly, the feather moves too.
More annoyingly, a bee with an erratic flight path lands on top of the feather, like a red carder paddle boarder becalmed on a current of air.
I release an impatient sigh. My mind has wriggled free from its restraints again.
Fingertips brush my elbow. ‘Excuse me, miss,’ a male voice says, ‘do you need any help? You seem…lost.’
I am lost, I want to say, but don’t. ‘It’s this feather,’ I admit, without looking round. ‘It won’t let me past.’
‘Ah,’ the voice says, heavy with misunderstanding. I don’t need to hear him move away, I feel the hollow beside me as his presence disperses.
Or could it be that the hollow is inside of me?
I hunker down beside the feather and sense the energy involved in keeping it static. I feel the bee’s wingbeats displace the air by my cheek.
Perhaps it’s not just my mind that has wriggled free from its restraints. Perhaps it’s me, too.
Decision made. I slide the bag with my laptop and packed lunch from my shoulder and onto the path at my feet, and begin to think myself small.
‘Budge up a little, please,’ I say to the bee. ‘There’s room for one more on that feather.’
Congratulations, J! Well deserved ☺️
Thanks to Libby for challenging my poor sluggish brain cells with an extraordinary prompt, and to Sandra for an excellent read.
UNTITLED (357 WORDS)
Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C.
Scrub the parsnips thoroughly, top and tail, then cut in half lengthways.
It’s Mum’s old recipe. I’ve never used it before, but George’s parents are coming for dinner and his dad is especially fond of roast parsnips, apparently. Or so George would have me believe. Honestly? I think it’s him that wants the blasted things; he’s forever asking why I avoid buying them.
Prepare the marinade by whisking together Dijon mustard, maple syrup (honey would be an acceptable substitute for the maple syrup, if necessary), olive oil, and salt.
Oh, for heaven’s sake! What am I like? I haven’t even looked inside the veg box to make sure everything came. There might not be any parsnips to cook! Instead, I keep thinking of you, sitting on the window seat with your nose in a book and your hair stuck up like a toilet brush, while Mum fussed around the kitchen, wearing the purple flowery pinny, and scrubbing the veg under the tap with that old wooden brush of hers.
Toss the parsnips in the marinade and place in a single layer in the roasting tin.
I remember you reading my copy of Jo’s Boys – a bit old-fashioned even then, but you were so engrossed – with the sun warming your back through the window, and the blanket that Nanna Joan crocheted for you wrapped around your knees. I must have been feeling sorry for you or something – no way would I have lent you that book otherwise! It’s strange, now that I think about it. I have no idea what happened to that book… and I can’t remember if you actually finished it or not.
Bake the glazed parsnips for 30 minutes, turning once, until golden brown and caramelized.
You hated parsnips, didn’t you? Almost as much as I did. Horrible things. But Mum laughed and told you that if you were good, and ate all your vegetables, you’d grow up to be big and strong.
She lied, didn’t she? Although I don’t think she meant to.
You never got the chance to grow up at all.
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.
“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.
I was mooching around the bookstore with my daughter when I read the dedication in Onyx Storm, and it immediately brought to mind my eleven-year-old self – pink, NHS framed glasses, front teeth that I still had to grow into, and a passion for escaping into some book or other, looking for adventure. I posted the dedication as the monthly comp in the hope that it would connect with some of you the way it connected with me.
Be honest now, if someone had said, ‘Get your leathers. We have dragons to ride.’ would you have gone?
@Sandra – I know that fantasy isn’t really your thing, so I was surprised and delighted by your entry. Wimps, Warrior scripts, eyes the flame of conflict, and an enhanced dragon-breeding programme. Ooh, yes, please! Curious to know more about the history between Frey and your MC and where they go from here.
@ Terrie – Excited by this and would love to see more of it! ‘…forgetful little fire-snout…’ sold it to me, along with the setting, solid characterization, and the promise to come. I really hope this develops into something amazing.
@Knicks – your writing is so intense, so full of wonderful expression, I can feel the roar into the void. I am both motivated by it and reminded that I must dig deeper. And what a line to finish with.
@Athelstone – I commend you for taking something as simple as ‘Katherine is typing…’ to the dizzying heights of a call to adventure. In Bolivia, no less. I suspect JohnG91 is going to have a lot more to talk about than grasping nettles when he gets back from the Tiwanaku city.
@Libby – Not daft or murderous at all. I’m keen to try it for myself! Maybe it’s something to put forward for the Den as a whole, (a bit of a challenge while we wait for Ath’s next winter comp, if you see what I mean…) Anyway, I’d never read The Big Sleep so had to check it out. I think you captured the complex simplicity (simple complexity?) beautifully.
@Janette – Your stories always have heart and this is no exception. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a Tylwith Teg, but I do now, and I wonder if there isn’t room for some Snuffle and Tylwith Teg adventures for young readers?Thank you all for entering. Each of you brought something different to the ask and it’s been a tiny bit problematic trying to choose only one of you. In the end, I gave Sandra an extra point for stepping outside her comfort zone and, with more than a little relief, I pass the baton to her.
Apologies for being late back to this.
Richard, thank you for the comp and for your kind words. I did try to steer clear of that particular subject matter but, ultimately, it was the only thing that remained front and centre when all the other ideas had scarpered.
Strong field this month and all so marvellously different! 🙂
UNTITLED – 350 words
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Lumpy pillows in torn, unidentifiable protective fabric, stuffed into too-small pillow cases. A saggy, foam mattress, plastic-coated and marinated in dilute bleach. A side-room with a window looking onto the whitewashed wall on the other side of the hospital and a door that opens directly opposite the nurses’ station. The rattle of beds and trolleys; the incessant ring of a never-answered telephone and the strident alarms of the central monitoring system. Nurses with sympathetic smiles and too-loud voices. A cocktail of Alfentanil and Midazolam trickling into your system through a subcutaneous needle in your abdomen.
No, my love. It definitely wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Nor will it be.
Today, we will close the door to the ward – and to regrets – and infuse the room with the sound of the ocean kissing the shore. The nurse and I will ditch the baby bath in your disposable cardboard basin and gently wash you in soapy water with the scent of papaya. We will leave the Zerobase and its paraffin foundation in the bedside locker and smooth Hawaiian Tropic after-sun onto your skin. I will blow fine play sand onto the moisturized skin of your feet so you might imagine the feeling of sand between your toes. Beneath your body, as we change the sheets, we will unfurl a beach towel infused with the scent of Lenor’s Citrus and White Verbena, and your head will rest on a soft pillow from home. We will swap your lemon and glycerin mouth-care swabs for ones dipped in rum punch – or mojito, sharp with lime.
I will lie on the bed beside you, holding you close. I will smooth your hair back and kiss your forehead and we will both inhale the warm, diffused scent of Sex on the Beach essential oil, which you laughed at and said it smelt of no such thing. I will smile as I remind you of tangled limbs under a blanket of stars, and you will slide your hand out of my grip and walk purposefully into the dawn.
Sorry for being so late with this…
Sandra and Ath, thanks for entering – and both with a hair-related topic! ???? Alex, no worries. I’ll catch you next time.
Sandra – your chosen article left me gobsmacked. Clearly, I have been a victim of this. Brainwashed into keeping my hair short because my good looks are a threat to other women. I’ll be on the lookout for that in the future.
Ath – always interested in seeing how your mind works. You made me laugh with this one. For that reason, more than any other, I hand the setting of next month’s comp to you.
Thanks, Knicky, for the challenge and for seeing something in my effort I wasn’t sure was there.
Thanks also to Terrie, Libby and Alex. I would have been more than happy to say I’d written any one of yours ☺️
Fiercely reaching yet afraid of letting go. (756 words)
He wakes. Slowly. Reluctantly. To a feeling of being underground. Air heavy and thick with dust. Throat dry and aching. Eyes full of grit.
He is pinned, lying sideways on a surface, twisted and unforgiving, one arm beneath his hip and the other across his chest. He cannot feel his feet, or his legs. But there is no pain.
How long has he been lying there? Is it dark outside? It must be dark, otherwise why is it so cold?
He should not have been there. His mother had warned him to stay away from this part of town, but his uncle had scoffed and told him his mother was scared of all the wrong things and he would keep him safe.
Had he been with his uncle when the building collapsed? Is he here somewhere, trapped in this underground prison, with a mouth full of dust like his own?
Water. He would give anything for a mouthful of water right now. Was it yesterday he played with the boys and their super-soaker – the boys from the narrow block of apartments to the left of his own – filling the giant plastic water pistol with water from the tank on the roof? The water had been hot, not cool, warmed by the sun. Bitter tasting.
Are they looking for him? The rescuers? Will they be allowed to come to him, or will they be told to stay away? Will he still be alive when they find him?
In the darkness, he imagines the colours in his uncle’s garden. The purple flowers that look like butterflies. The white snowball flowers that his uncle is so proud of and won’t let anyone pick. He has never seen snow and it is on his list of things to see when he gets a job and moves to a country where he can send money home to his mother, so she won’t have to work at the hospital. He is the man of the house now.
He smells warm bread from the bakery on the corner and is reminded of the time the shopkeeper scolded him and told him he didn’t have enough money for today’s bread, but that he would give him a loaf from yesterday for the money he had. Returning home and his mother taking the bread from his hands, wearily, and returning it to the shop. And scolding the shopkeeper for cheating her son.
He promised his mother that he would do better and that he would teach his sister to ride a bike. But he was mean. Cruel. When his sister cried as she fell off, he called her a baby and told her he wished she had been a boy. A boy wouldn’t have cried like that. A boy would have been brave.
But she was brave. She had stood up to those boys who had bullied him. Determinedly. Hands on hips, lips pursed and her little face set. They had laughed at her, not unkindly, scolded him for hiding behind his sister, then pulled her hair and made her cry before they ran off. And he had been angry with her for embarrassing him by making him look small. He had pushed her away, watched the hurt ripple across her face. She had not spoken to him for the rest of the day, even when he tried to apologise.
Where is she now?
He tells himself he can be brave too. Like his sister. He will not be scared. Even though it is hard to breath and air is being dragged into his lungs through a filter of grit. He cannot lick his lips, there is no moisture in his mouth. Just dust.
He wants very much to have a tiny piece of chicken the way his mother cooks it – with butter and spices from the market. Melting in his mouth like chocolate.
Something crawls down his spine.
He imagines he can hear boys laughing but that can’t be true, can it? Nobody will laugh if a boy is missing, except, perhaps, those boys who had pulled his sister’s hair.
There. Does he see light? Yes! Yes! It is light! Too bright for his eyes but he refuses to close them. He wants to shout and reach out toward the light, but his voice is like a starter motor full of sand – it will not turn over – and, still, he cannot move. Dare not move.
The light will need to come to him.
Congratulations, Knicky, a most excellent story!
Thank you, Sandra, for the comp, and for allowing me to imagine another Piety/Freedom Jones episode.
And thanks to all the entrants for being amazing writers and keeping me inspired 🙂
UNTITLED (600 WORDS)
‘Seriously, Dom, you’re going to want to know about this.’
Virgil’s words tumbled out with enough agitation to stir, not only my curiosity, but something in the darker recesses of my mind.
‘Piety’s back.’
***
Piety – Prototype 1: Experimental Transcendent Interface. An engineered being of such incredible power, I had labelled her ‘dangerous and unpredictable’ moments before she fried my synapses with an experience of such immense beauty and energy, she left me in a state of mental shutdown for two days.
‘What does she want? Do we know?’ I dressed. Threw basic essentials in a bag. I had to be there.
‘She says she wants her freedom. She’s prepared to barter Orcadian – with all its modifications – in exchange for a free pass to anywhere, and the promise that the Federation will stop hunting her.’
‘It’ll never happen. You know it and so do I. She’s much too volatile to roam around the galaxy unfettered and unchallenged.’ I felt a sudden rush of emotion… Pity? Anger?… for what had been, at one time, a highly sophisticated computer program. ‘Look, can you wangle me passage to wherever it is you are?’
‘No need. Transport is already on its way. You made such a lasting impression on Piety last time you met that she’s asked if you might be allowed to negotiate terms on her behalf. I guess The Federation are hoping you can persuade her to be reasonable.’
‘I doubt Piety’s requests will ever be reasonable enough. The Federation view her as their property. Why would they settle for Orcadian – however advanced the modifications – when, if they could find a way to restrain Piety, they would have access to almost unlimited potential?’
***
‘Freedom Jones.’
Her voice is a featherlight caress across the velvet of my mind.
Piety. My dark self is both amused and awed. We’re light years away from the rendezvous point. How are you communicating across such a distance?
Piety’s sigh is a mix of self-satisfaction, inevitability and something I can’t put my finger on.
‘I want to ask a favour. I think I know a way to find peace, at least for a little while. Will you help me?’
***
‘They’re saying the loss of Orcadian was the result of Piety’s modifications, but I can’t help thinking she planned it. How else could there have been an explosion of that magnitude without a single loss of life?’
I closed the audio-link with Virgil and turned to the being beside me. The being who became a passenger in my mind moments before Orcadian exploded. I have carried her here at her request – a down-sized version of herself but, in my opinion, no less dangerous.
Piety.
She is autumn after a rain-storm and the rush of wind through pine forests. She is a fiery golden sunrise and the dark, moody depths of the North Sea. She is wild raspberries and heather honey… She is John’s memories of his birthplace. John’s Piety.
‘When I discovered that they had refused to repatriate John because of his fugitive status, I was very cross. Cross enough to become the being John always worried I might. I tapped into the computer system on one of the unmanned outposts to find out who had dared deny him his last request. That’s when I discovered that you had taken delivery of soil samples from Earth, and I knew that you had found a way. I needed to find a way to bring you closer to me, so I sacrificed Orcadian. He’s here, isn’t he? You buried my John on Scottish soil, here on Terra II.’