Stories, just because

I write every day, some days a line or two (beyond a shopping list or 'don't forget' list) and other days I can't stop until I have a story. Something will happen, I will see something, visit a place, watch people or read about an event... and a trigger will go off in my head and I have to write it down.

This is where I will share these rambled writings...


Murder in the Chatroom

Writing out of my style, out of my comfort zone, is something I love - creating unnecessary stress on my creative senses to fuel new ideas, new ways of thinking and to open up my mind and my penmanship.

It's not like I don't have a million things I am meant to be working on (and actually finishing), but if I don't stir things up a bit, push myself that little bit differently, then I fall in to ruts, get bogged down in my safe place of my own style and thinking. Nothing wrong with having your own style and thoughts, but what if they could be even better, even broader, even more tantalising? That's where randomness is fabulous, just for-no-particular-reason I will sit at my keyboard and let the keys jabber away in an area I either don't know or a style I have not tried.

Sometimes laughter is the best medicine, with plenty of chortles born from my experimental ramblings, but sometimes, just sometimes, there's something that is a little like 'potential' sneaking out. A million light years from perfection or actual credibility, but just that little scent of something worth trying again...

So here's a one that has caught my creative attention, and got a whole lot of whirring occurring in my head. So much so I even mocked up a cover for the story below:






















Hello Purplecat10. Missed you yesterday.

Hi Boosh24.

Are you having a good day?

Not really.

What’s up?

Just some bitches at school. Fucking hate them.

What have they done? Are you ok?

Photoshopped some pictures of me and posted them for everyone to see.

Facebook?

Yeah and Instagram. They’re not even any good at photoshopping, but they made me look like a hooker.

But you’re nothing like that.

I know, but what does that matter. Now everyone’s calling me a slut and the lads are pretending to offer me money for me to blow them off. Dicks.

Purplecat, you’re better than that. So much better than them. You’re my Purplecat and I know you’re not like that. I know you, I really know you, and you know me. You are special, remember that. We are special.

I know Boosh. It still feels shit though.

Oh my Purplecat, I wish I was there to give you a cuddle.

Me too Boosh.

Maybe one day...
  
Maybe.

Jean Atticker took a deep breath and opened the first file. This was not going to be pleasant, she knew it would turn her stomach, but this would only make her more vigilant. Every little piece of evidence was vital to a conviction. Nothing could be missed, overlooked or misinterpreted. That bastard was going to get life. Life for a life. And it was up to her to make sure that the evidence was watertight.

The case had repulsed the nation and led the headlines for months, with the search, the suspicions and pointing of media fingers and then the discovery. The awful discovery, which many had felt inevitable, but that left no one untouched by tragedy.

And then the arrest.

Jean stared down at the papers in the file, a photo paper-clipped to the front of the first document. Cara Evelyn smiled back at her, eyes bright and mischievous, her long hair falling across her cheeks and shoulders. 14 and full of hope. 14 and full of life. 14 and dead.



I started with an A.

I have no name yet, but my journey has begun.

Every day, in the light of the big bay window, upon the old, scratched wooden desk, I grow. Letter by letter, word by word, characters entwining and vistas stretching as far as the imagination can see. I feel pain, I feel love, I feel loss and I feel adventure. My story is unravelling with every strike of the key, every burst of ink on the paper and every adjective, comma, speech mark and new page.

Born in an idea sparked from an impressionable moment in life, I have become a book. A story of words jumbled into scenes and tales of lives in places of descriptions. I stand proudly in the bookshop window, my jacket adorned with illustrations of beauty and allure. Watching, waiting for my covers to be parted and my pages turned.

The cash register rings out and I slide into a crisp, card bag, the handles shadowing across the sheen of my cover. Sounds of the street mirror the words inside me, the city a part of the story I am going to share. For days I captivate her, curled on the sofa wrapped in her warmth and firing her imagination, taking her to a world she yearns for, but fears. Night falls and I rest next to her as she sleeps, her dreams filled with the lust of my characters, the depths of their deceit and the heart of betrayal.

Finished. A silent pause as my revelation sinks in, robbing her of the anticipation and greed for more. She smiles.

I sit now on my shelf, my story out there but I am stuck. Read me. Take me. Touch me and despise me.

He is angry, the train is late. I am folded apart, strewn against his case. He hasn’t got lost inside me yet, drawn deeper and deeper in to my world of war and new lands of hope and isolation. The train rattles on, slow and purposeless, heated by the bodies trying not to touch, bump or glance. He picks me up and I take him away, take him far away, wrapping him in the world which will taint his mouth and arouse his sensations. His breath will quieten and his pulse will race. I have him. He is mine, my story all that surrounds him.

He took the climax hard. He was angry again. I had disappointed his loins, but I had lit his passion and fired ambition at him. He left the train, driven and determined. He left the train and he left me.

Kicked to the floor, I slide under the seats and dark in to the shadows. I have lost my sheen long ago, with every storytelling I lose a little outer lustre and allure. My story does not change, its power and its beauty, but I do not entice anymore, I do not glisten my secrets from my cover. I am creased. I am frayed. I am stained. I am soiled. My story hidden away inside.

He smells. Old tar, uncleansed and unkempt. He is young, but so grey he is not noticed, passed by, skirted round, avoided, unseen. His home is now my home. A crate, old papers and blankets envelope us from reality. He is a lost soul, lost in his own world. So I lose him in my world. I take him away from the cold and the hunger, the abuse and the despair, to a new world of bitter feuds and heated love, passion knotted to vistas of new moons in green skies, of angels and knights. Romance breeding death and death breeding new beginnings.

Our worlds collide. His world of no joy and my world of no limits. They collide and magic happens. Sparks flicker in his dry eyes, deep in the depths of the darkness comes light and energy. He puts me down, rummages in his crate, tossing aside the newspapers and styrofoam cups. He stops, picks it up and then opens me up. Just my cover, flattening me out. He pauses, a twitch of his lips then he writes. He fills me. New words. New imaginations. New beginnings and new directions.

He writes.

A new story is born. A new book to be.



The start of my new Short Story



An eye for an eye

“Too many turns.”

He kept shouting it again and again. “Too many turns.”

She wasn’t listening, she’d got this far despite his noise, his constant grating noise.

She winced at how pathetic he sounded, this once arrogant, mean, brash man, reduced to soiling himself right where he sat, tied to the guardrail. And still he couldn’t just shut up.

The waves were getting stronger in their impact, the tips of the waves falling down onto them. Visibility had long gone and the last of the daylight had vanished along with any hope of reaching the mainland before the storm took complete control.

Why had he not just left her alone, let her take the money and leave. None of this was part of her plan, none of this was what she had wanted, but he had not let her walk out of his life with or without the £2.2 million.

She’d always turned a blind eye to what was going on, what he was always trying to hide from her. She knew he was a crook, always skirting round the grey areas of the law and conducting muffled deals with suspect looking businessmen. She had turned a blind eye, jumped in her Range Rover and gone shopping, lunched with friends, whiled away hours at the spa. Diamonds twinkled from her fingers, arms, neck and ears and her platinum credit cards filled her purse.

But then he changed and she was no longer able to turn a blind eye, especially after he’d punched her in it.



Shocked, scared and with the pain burning through her face, she had simply ran out the door and into her car, hitting the central lock switch as she struggled to see through the swelling and pain. He had pounded at the driver’s window, pulling at the door and swearing at her. It was a minute or two before she’d realised that he was pointing a gun at her.




Tipi Shadows


The bat circled again, lower this time, braving the flames from the fire pit and darting away as the heat rose to meet it. As I watch it swoop and flicker past I notice how stunted its body is, like a fat moth, but faster and more calculated, not hypnotised by the bright light of the fire, but drawn to play in the rising thermals of the flames' heat. 

It swooped again and I actually sit back expecting it to fly at me, but it climbs and hides in the shadows of the trees draping the stream. The darkness is coming, thick, fast and silently, and I can only hear the never ending babbling of the ice cold mountain stream that borders our camp. The sheep are silent, the air is still and the crackle of the fire is muffled. Night is falling and covering the black mountains and our valley below.

Am I alone? I sense the others are nearby, but I don't hear or feel them.  Another shadow stretches across the ground and over my feet, the coldness giving me a shudder. I draw my knees up and tuck them under my chin, hugging my chins and burying my head. It's so still, so quiet.

I remembered the leaflet that lay inside the tipi. Beyond the carefully selected words depicting tranquillity, beauty and nature there was a section on Native American Indians, their lifestyles and beliefs. It described how many felt the spirit world seeped in to the physical world, producing symbols and deeper, often hidden, meanings that connected all things in both worlds.

There had been a list of creatures that symbolised the connections of these two worlds, the bat representing intuition, dreaming and vision. The embodiment of change, the end of one way of life and the start of another. Rebirth.

The bat swooped again, the beat of its wings pulsing against the cold dusk mountain air and onto my cheeks. Ice runs through me and I can no longer feel the heat from the fire. Where is everybody? 

All day I have sat by our tipi and watched the joyful flurry of activity in the camp; children running and splashing in the stream; mothers mopping up spills and laughing to each other as they pour cold flutes of champagne; the dads clutch cans and joke to each other by the smoking barbeque. The sun is shining on this Indian Summer and the sounds from this luxurious camp climb the mountains on either side.

The Tipi stands proud in its neatly mown clearing, a soaring eagle stretching out across its sides. I am at home here, so comfortable and so connected to the land around and to the beautiful structure that will keep us warm and protected when the moonlight elongates the shadows and we fall asleep.

I am filled with happiness to be a part of this, to be here, to be unrushed. I feel the past worries and sadness drain away in to haziness as I fill myself with the warm energies of my surroundings. Peace creeps in and change lies ahead.

The bat is back. I am so cold now that I sit crossed leg by the fire pit to get as close to the flames as I can. The fire is fading, no one has topped up the logs. I glance over to the log shelter and there are just two more logs. Why hasn’t anyone been watching the fire, keeping it stoked?

I get up to fetch the last two logs when the bat swoops again. Right at me.

I freeze, rooted to the spot.

Why didn’t I feel it? It flew right at me and I didn’t feel it. It flew through me and I didn’t feel it.

Soft low chanting starts to rise from the embers of the fading fire. A drum beats and I can feel it pulsing inside me. The spirits are at work. I left my time, my body, my tribe, but I never left my home.

I sit up in front of my Tipi, the eagle soaring above me. I am awake now, I have faced death and been reborn. I am Abeque, a Chippewa Indian and my name means ‘stays at home’.


Dreaming. Again.

"Hurry up, you'll be late for school."

Mum is shouting again from the bottom of the stairs, exasperation filling the air.

"ALRIGHT. I heard you the first time."

I can feel myself getting wound up. It's only been 5 minutes and I can't smell the toast yet.

"Victoria, you are going to be so late. What are you doing up there?"

Seriously, she's only just called me. What's wrong with her. I'm going as fast as I can, at least... I am, I don't want to be late, but... where are my tights, I had them on a minute ago when I put my skirt on. Where's my skirt... where's my shirt and I'd brushed my hair, I remember looking in the mirror and noticing another spot, but I haven't even cleaned my teeth yet.

"Victoria. I'm losing my patience."

There she goes again, hassling me when I'm already dressed and ready to go. I've been ready for ages... my bed feels so warm, I don't want to get out. Just five more minutes then I'll turn the light on and get up. No, I'm already up and dressed... why is it dark, why does it say 3am on the clock by my bed.

Who's that. I saw something, something moved.

There it is again.

I need to see, I need the light on.

There it goes again.

"Mum."

"Muuuum."

"MUUUUUUM."

Where is she, she's been shouting up the stairs for the past hour. No she hasn't, she can't have, it's too early. But I heard her, she was calling me again and again. She didn't stop, she was really worried, why was she worried, was she crying. I heard her crying, she was hurt, I could tell, but I didn't go to her. I wanted to, but I couldn't. I was getting ready for school.

No. No, that is not it. I was trapped, I couldn't get to her. I couldn't help her. I wanted to help her, I wanted to help my mum. Why couldn't I help her, she was hurt and crying and I left her.

"MUUUUUUM."

It's too dark, really dark, and cold too. I'm shivering, but we have the heating on, we always have it on low in winter to keep the ice from getting in. The blue ice that comes from the north, the ice that cracks our bones and breaks our hearts. I can feel it now, scratching at the door, searching for a way in. It's so cold.

"Morning darling, time to wake up. You've got your field trip today so you can't be late. Do you want me to put some toast on?"

"Mmmmmmm, maybe. I'm still tired, is it cold out?"

"Cold? Not at all. The sun is out and I've put suncream by your bag."

"Mum?"

"Yes darling."

"Were you crying last night?"

"Crying? What made you say that? No darling, I went to bed just after you."

"Oh, it must have been a dream. Never mind. I'll get up now."

"Ok darling, I'll go and put that toast on."

My clothes are all ready for me on the chair. I wash slowly, my thoughts stuck on my dream. Why do we have such weird dreams. I didn't like it, I could still feel its lingering presence like a shadow in my mind. I spit and rinse and brush my hair. Oh, another spot.

All dressed, but I've forgotten something. Something I have to do.

"Hurry up, you'll be late for school."

Mum is shouting again from the bottom of the stairs, exasperation filling the air.

"ALRIGHT. I heard you the first time."

I can feel myself getting wound up. It's only been 5 minutes and I can't smell the toast yet.

"Victoria, you are going to be so late. What are you doing up there?"

It's getting darker.

It's getting colder.

It's happening again, I've been here before. 

I can't stop it. And I can't find my tights.





The Birthday Cake

A snippet from a short story I am working on - the entire piece is fictional, though inspired by a brief meeting I once had with a young lady like Mary...


The Birthday Cake

This is not my story. It’s Mary’s story.

Mary was born with a number of complications that caused damage to her brain and impairing her mental and physical development, reducing her life expectancy. She died shortly before her 19th birthday.

I didn’t meet Mary until the year she died. I was at her 18th birthday party and she sat down next to me and started chatting. She’d never seen me before, I was there making a video of the event, yet she spoke to me like an old friend.

She spoke so innocently, thoughts almost popping into her head as she talked. But behind the simple child-like chatter was a sad complex life that, for the most part, Mary was unaware.

Why am I writing Mary’s story? Because she can’t and because I saw something so beautifully unaffected within her.

This is her conversation that day. This is Mary’s story.

"It’s over there, the gooey pink one covered in a hundred zillion little sparkles and there’s jam squidging out the middle. My birthday cake.

I know that you’ve probably had lots of cakes, but this isn’t just any cake. I know it doesn’t have pretty fairies or princesses on, but it didn’t come in a box or have a wrapper to take off. No, my cake, MY cake, is special and it will be the best, most tastiest cake I’ve ever eaten.

Do you know why? Because I made it. Me. All by myself. My first ever cake.

I followed a recipe: sieve-fulls of flour and sugar, dollops of butter, I cracked the eggs, broke up bits of chocolate, splashed pink stuff in and I put on a lot of sprinkles. I was even allowed to rub butter all over the cake tin and I turned the oven on by myself. I could see the gooey cake mixture get bigger in the oven and go browny colour. My cake, me a baker.

I can remember the first time I ate cake. I thought I wouldn’t be allowed any, I’d never been allowed before. It was different to my normal days because I’d been given a bath, someone brushed my hair and put pretty clips on each side, I had a new dress and I’d been given a dolly, my very own dolly. I liked her yellow shiny hair and I pretended my hair was gold too and it was really, really long down my back so I could sit on it with my bottom. That made me giggle.

There were lots of people, ladies who kept smiling at me and a man with a really big book that he kept looking at and reading out bits. I don’t know what the words were about, I don’t think it was a story for me. Then one lady, in a pretty blue skirt, brought out a cake.

I’d seen lots of cakes before, but I’d never had any. I thought maybe it would make me poorly, like the time I ate sausages I found behind the bin when I was hungry. But the cake didn’t make me poorly. 

It looked like a jam sandwich with snow on the top. I like snow. I like my footprints going crunch and leaving a shoe shape on the white floor. I like snow, though it once made me really cold and then I had to go to hospital. The nurse said I needed to wear a coat, but I told her I didn't have a coat. There were lots of noises and people I didn't know. I was scared in hospital.

But the lady with the pretty blue skirt didn’t scare me, she cut the cake with a great big knife and put the pieces onto little tissues with pink flowers on. Everyone got a bit and then she gave one to me. Yes, me. I remember the room went quiet, everyone had stopped talking and they were looking at me. I don’t know why, I was just sitting looking at my bit of cake on the pink flowery tissue. I know I can sometimes be a bit noisy, but this was my first ever bit of cake and I think I just got a little too excited. But that’s ok really, everyone loves cake and I think everyone gets excited about it too.

Everything was different after the cake day. I got a new mummy in a new house and I got my own bed in my very own bedroom. I’d never had that before, my own bed. It had soft squishy pillows and a snugly blanket with pink squares on. There was a little lamp next to my bed and the lamp had a picture of a cat and a dog on it. They looked very happy and that made me even happier. I liked it in this new house with my new mummy.

I don’t really know what happened to my old mummy. Sometimes I think about her and wonder why she didn’t want me to stay with her. But then I get sad and then I get cross and shout. Once I threw a toy car at my bedroom window and it broke the window. Then I was really scared and my new mummy had to get the man and lady from the house next door to help her hold me. They weren’t trying to hurt me, I know that. It’s just that sometimes I forget what I am doing and I get confused and frightened. I think I sometimes hurt people, but I don’t mean to, and sometimes I hurt myself.

Then Annie came to live with us. I liked Annie, she smelt of flowers and she would take me to the park or to the library. She had her own little bedroom right next to mine and she would help my new mummy with the cooking and if mummy was tired she would sit with me at night.

I find it hard to sleep, bad things happen when I close my eyes. I remember my old mummy screaming and she hurt my arm. It hurt so much that only the hospital could make it better. If I rub my arm I can feel a funny bump, I don’t remember if it has always been there.

Annie used to bring back books from the library and we would sit and look at them. Pictures of pretty fairies and princesses; puppies and kittens playing; boys and girls wearing wellies; and letters and numbers. I liked numbers, I could look at numbers all day and they made me feel happy. I could count the numbers really quickly and that made my new mummy smile. Annie said I was a clever girl.

Then one day, Annie wasn’t there any more. Her room was empty and my new mummy seemed sad. I don’t know where Annie went. We had been to the park and played eye spy, then a ball hit me and it made me shout and I got angry. I remember Annie put her arms round me, but I was really angry and Annie fell over and didn’t get up for a while. There was so much noise and so many people shouting and running over. I wanted Annie to get up. Two policeman came to help me and I knew I shouldn’t be scared. They took me to their car and drove me home. 

I haven't ever seen Annie again. I miss Annie."



Political Suicide - a very short whodunnit

The blood had trickled across the wet mud, round the sunken footprints and merged with the dirty puddle. Moonlight reflected in the reddened water, along with the worn face of Detective Rominus Badger. 2am and he had just begun to shake off his last brandy from a sobering wake in Harringate. Wet and grey, the coffin had been as unassuming as its occupant and had slipped into the ground just as Morgan Elliot had slipped into the backgrounds of everyone’s lives for the past 5 decades. 50 and dead. Prostate.

The corpse in front of him now was as recognisable as Badger’s own reflection. He had read and watched the events of the past 72 hours unfold in a media fuelled frenzy of rage and political suicide. The Deputy Prime Minister lifeless now, wouldn’t be making any more shocking and inexplicable speeches on women as weak, feminists who have destroyed family values and why mothers are only fit to mother. How someone so sexist, so prehistoric, so influential, so educated, had risen to such office without these beliefs ever being voiced or unearthed before had dumbfounded the nation and almost bought the current government to their knees.

Women across the world had taken to the streets with placards and anger. Student bodies had brought down social media sites with outraged traffic. Families had attacked the government’s morals and agendas. The media had gone to town, near demolishing the PM and all who had supported this prehistoric nut. The news of the death of the deputy PM would no doubt bring cries of rapture from many, but there were those who would not cheer, the ones that lurk in shadows and hide behind usernames , too cowardly to stand up for their twisted beliefs, who cheered as women were slated and who egged on the sexist rift that was being torn.

The victim’s family were all sat inside, a few crying, no one inconsolable. Badger went in, stamping the mud off his boots in the doorway. He knew who had pulled the trigger, people are so feckless yet think they are so smart. His brandy head was beginning to grind so he dug around his pockets for some painkillers. Tissues and gum, poor nicotine substitute flavour. No headache pills. Pissed off he opened the door to the large drawing room. The fire was blazing and he immediately felt the wave of heat hit his thick head. He was going to make this quick.

“Maxwell Farringball, I am arresting you for the murder of Margaret Dallington. 

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