Chekhov's Gun

Ellis wasn't an unattractive kid, he was just awkward and quiet.  Like so many teenagers, he spent too much time thinking, his black thoughts turning inwards, constantly tormenting himself over trivial inadequacies.  As a consequence, he was sullen and avoided the other students at school as much as possible.  All apart from one.  She was a golden girl, popular and beautiful but gentle and 

open, completely the opposite of himself: Jessica.  It was as if she existed for him in a permanent halo.  When she walked past, along the buzzing corridor, his gaze, although covert, devoured every single fragment of her.  He had been watching her like this for years and he was exhausted by the hollowness of his adoration.  He needed recognition.  He felt compelled to make some sort of connexion, he didn't care how small, he just wanted her to notice him, to witness in his eyes the awe in which he held her.  Ultimately, he wanted her to love him like he did her. 

He hadn't planned it exactly but he took his chance.  As she walked past on her pilgrimage to class, he allowed his books to tumble from his hand.  They slid like a wave breaking at her feet.  She looked at him and down at the floor, looked back, cocked her eyebrow at him, without the the hint of the gentle smile she used so readily for others, nearly everyone, he thought, and walked on. 

Time up.

Inspiration:  from The Write Practice, they suggest: Practice foreshadowing by writing a scene, early in the first act of a story, and slip in Chekhov’s gun. Don’t fire it yet.  Just make it present somehow.

Change

There is a change coming, I can feel it.  It is the lightness off the air, the glow that lingers a fraction longer in the darkening sky.  Perhaps it started with the song of the robin in the hedge.  Perhaps it started when I felt suddenly overburdened with the layers of clothing I wore for the ritual Sunday walk.  I feel sure, though, that it was some internal kind of clock.  The same one that tells us when it is time to wake or sleep; the same that tells us that something is not quite as it should be and we need to be on our guard; the same that tells us that we have found someone that will make our life more comfortable than it has every been before.

Change is not always for the good, but more often than not it is.  In any case, we can't stop it, not this change, being in the hands of Nature and this change is always for the better, long anticipated and wished for, longed for, in fact, and when it starts to arrive it is like a deep sigh, a knowingness that everything will be alright. 



Time up.
Inspiration: was a bit lacking tonight.  I just wrote about how I felt about the change of the season.

Clock watching

Do you ever have that feeling that the clock beating inside you is permanently telling you that you're late for something? Well, that's me. Right now.

My skin is alive to every sensation but heightened to a ridiculous degree. Sounds, especially are abhorrent; loud sounds unbearable.  If there was a door that opened into my body you wouldn't find pulsing red organs, oh no.  There would be a sheen of metal and the black ooze of the oil needed to drive cogs, which would be grinding away relentlessly like some Victorian treadmill.

If my mind were personified it would resemble some snarling beast backed into a corner, froth hanging in ribbons from its yellow fangs, one front paw poised in front of it's body as defence or leaverage for it's next pounce.  The one thing that can barely be seen in the eyes of the creature there, muscles taught like spun steel, is not the rage but the fear.


Time up.
Inspiration: the anger at obliging myself to write every day.  I'm stressed and angry. I don't want to write this but I want to keep my promise to myself.

Void

Then, he felt the shattering inside and then the void.  There was nothing left.  He had no more inside him.  He didn't cry, those tears of bitterness and pain had dried up a long time ago.  And the nights spent embryoed, the nausea and the pain of the spasming stomach, the constant fear, had all melted away.  Now he lay in blank dryness.  At the bottom of everything he stared up at nothing.

He glanced at the laptop screen that had brought nothing into his world except agony, and wrenched the plug out of the wall by the lead.  He stared at his school books, the posters on the wall, the curtains.  His home; his prison.  He picked up his rucksack and stuffed the laptop lead inside it.  Without another backwards glance he walked out of the quiet house as silently as he could and into the night.

The pathway was familiar to him and he found his way without the need for much light.  There a small slice of moon, not enough to illuminated but enough to send a cold glow onto the trees.  He might have tripped, but if he had it wouldn't have hurt, his body was a numb as his mind.

When he reached the place, he squatted and wrenched open his rucksack.  He lifted the lead of his laptop out, thin and coiled, the moon allowing it the thinest blue sheen.  He slung the end of it over the sturdiest of the branches above him and looked at the free end hanging loosely in his hand.  He gave it a tender smile.  It was the only message he wanted to leave:  his torture and his relief.



Time up.
Inspiration: I heard a sad message on Twitter tonight.  I'm hoping it's clear what the topic of the tweet was.  I hope i dealt with the issue sensitively.

Not of Woman Born

Your tiny head nestles into the crook of my neck, my arm supports the bend of your spine and we share our warmth.  My spare hand strokes your front. I allow my fingers to trace paths down your chest, meandering along the length of your body, white, patches of black and brown and faintest glimpse of pink beneath sparser hairs.  Your eyes gaze directly into mine, you do not flinch or turn away, those deep, black pools reflecting my face, distorted.

What would you tell me, if you could? Would you repeat the loving words I murmur to you?  Would you chuckle when I bury my face into your chest and rub my nose against your cheek, whispering simple nothingsof love? Your look conveys nothing except your trust, binding.  A contract, everlasting between us.

You are more my child than anything I could produce with another of my species and when your paws fan the air near my lips, begging for more tangible affection, I would deny you nothing.



Time up
Inspiration: I wanted to write about my dog tonight.  So I did.

The Walrus

Jutting belly, under a glossy nylon shirt, his profile like an enormous D, he watched the screen with one hand gripping an amber brew. His hair was shorn (what was left of it) and speckled the rolls of fat with clustered where the nape of his neck should have been.  There was clear pitting on his cheeks: the result of acne as a youth - hormonal, or was it the result of poor nutrition self-indulged or otherwise indulged?  Probably the latter.

His clothes looked clean but there was a distinct smell of fermentation.  I could say cheese but that would not account for the squalid sourness of the sweat which must have oozed from between crevices despite the top notes of deodorant and a musky cologne. 

When he moved, witnesses might be hypnotised by the undulation.  there was a sinuosity to the flesh which moved independently to his core structure which was almost balletic.  But was female could possibly be drawn to this?

Time up:
Inspiration: I happened to be looking at the title of one of Lewis Carroll's poems, 'The Walrus and The Carpenter' and I used the title to start me off.

The Night Before

She was trying to piece together the events of the night before.  They were there, the memories, but in fragments, not in order.  More like a patchwork quilt, all over the place, a mess. 

Very clear, bright even, was the euphoria of getting ready.  Reflections in mirrors.  Singing along to tunes.  Chucking dresses, tops, skirts all ahoo over the bed until she'd got the picture that she'd made of herself in her head.  Teetering heels.  Slap, on.  Pouting and dropping an A-bomb of perfume.

The noise of pub was there in a pocket in her mind.  Bright but rippling like a shiny pebble dropped in a stream.  The movement of people jostling, rushing, slouching, gesticulating.  The sound. Those bits, they were in her mind, there or there abouts.

Drinks.  Yeah, there were plenty of those.  Chasers.  Laughing really loudly, scarlet mouth stretched in a permanent O.  Swearing and arguing was flitting about in there somewhere but the memory was getting darker, less secure.  Was there drink slicked? Sick? Why did her heart hurt?



Time up.
Inspiration:   It just came out tonight.  I just thought of an image and wrote.

As She Walked

It was that time of the morning when you're awake but you may as well not be.  Your eyes are still itchy from the adhesive of sleep that had been wrenched apart, your face is peachy and warm from the blankets and the blast of cold air as you open the front door is as rude as an unfounded insult.

Yes, it was that kind of morning. But dogs need to be walked and so that is why I set out with the frost still thick on the grass and sounds muffled by the cloying mist that fondled the earth.  I trudged along the road and up into the field.  My blood had started to charge my mind and I was sloughing off the drain of sleep just as the warming winter sun was beginning to wade through the fog.

I crested the hill into the sun which had crowned the top and it was then I saw it.  Lying flat on its
stomach as if asleep or waiting silently for its prey to be fooled by its prostrate form. It's enormous
head far out into the bay, it's back curving up between the cleft of the downs ; there was no doubt about what it was.   I turned desperately to check behind me, to the left of me, to my right; no one.  No one to witness or share this sight.  No one to believe me either.  Then I realised, my mobile phone had a camera. I fumbled in my pockets, letting tissues, poo bags and gloves fall incontinently as I searched.  I felt the hard case and flipped it open.  It was only then, when I aimed the lens at the shape, that it started to disappear.  Clearly it sensed that it was being watched, thought better of
appearing so obviously in daylight and had decided to leave no trace except the ghost of its presence.


Time up.
Inspiration: I took the photo at the top this morning.  When I showed my mother and said what I thought it looked like she didn't agree with me.  Hence the story of truth or imagination. 

An Empty Bench

She sat there as we drove past in the heat.  A few seconds worth of a brown patterned nylon dress and home knit cardigan stretched over her squat and square body as we peered through the back seat window.  Her face watched us back.  She sat slouched on a rickety bench, her thick legs splayed apart, showing a pink blush of knee length bloomers.  Her face was like a nut coloured boxing glove; her hair a disc of grey beneath a crushed cotton cap. 

The morning heat was stifling in the car as we headed out.   It was like that everyday of our holiday and everyday the car threw up dust from the road as we passed the old woman, sending a small cloud which exhausted itself around her plimsolled feet.  She was there, stationed on her bench, when we left and was still there when we returned in the evening, tired and ratty.  We sniggered to each other, squashed into the car, and she looked back at us, intruders into the calm and dusty silence of her village. 

She wasn't there on the bench the following year when we returned for more excursions along the dusty road.


Time up.
Inspiration.  I'm tired but I wanted to do a character study tonight and this woman came into my head yesterday as we reminisced about a holiday some years ago.

Pain

The silence was all around her like a fog.  He had gone.

A few moments only had past or perhaps hours, perhaps days, it didn't matter.  She sat with her hands cupped in front of her, on her lap, her eyes staring but seeing nothing, her mind was nothing, nothing at all, just burst, disabled, all in a moment.  Her breath had stopped with her heart and she was inanimate, devoid of all, except the burn in her throat. A mere portrait of loss.

There must slowly have built a roar from somewhere, from her very toes perhaps, but she was aware of the grip it had only when it was within her stomach.  The sound of crashing waves, the tearing heat of fire inside her, moving to her arms and into her head and her mouth opened to scream.  No scream came.  Just a silent rush of air.  The exhalation of her dreams  and hopes, the very essence of her life, all out, all in one long breath.

He had betrayed her and her mind had fractured at that moment, a shattered mirror, distorting what she saw from then on.

A Taste of Honey

Bees, mellowness, plenty.  The warmth of the sun on your skin after the dark of winter.  Watching the  sabre-like shoots of the plants as they birth themselves from the damp earth.  Bare branches of the trees budding after sleep and the song of birds.  As long as there is always the song of birds, there is beauty in the world.

The first sight of the face of a loved one after their absence, whether short or long.  The plumpness of an child's apple cheek and their continued breath after the pause; their weight on a mother's chest.  The wrinkled skin of your lover and friend as they share life's twighlight hand in hand; their returned smile for yours; their white hair on the pillow beside you; their scent pervading the very clothes you wear.

The taste of clean water; the feel of it running over hot skin.  The tide shifting out, dragged across the pebbles, the beauty and the rage in that sound.

That rare autumn warmth in early spring. The taste of honey.



Time up.
Inspiration: I stumbled on the song, A Taste of Honey, covered by the Beatles and took inspiration from the title.

First Love

The clock hand lingers over each minute, unwilling to take it's leave like a frightened child clinging to his mother's skirts.  So slowly passes the time, until you see that precious face or hear that voice, the voice on which lies the very wing beat of your existence. It could not be called comfort when your mind is so very deeply enmeshed in another, as if you could breath in their very life force, watching out for every sign, a look or casual phrase, that will either be torture or exquisite pleasure. 

Yet there's the threat of what may be.  The future: such a dark place.  Does it hold images of a dove's wing or a flickering street light extinguished by the grey dawn of a sleepless night? Such a dire fear of having one's heart punched out whole.  A pain too great to be imagined.



Time up
Goodness that was hard, tonight. The inspiration came from the Write Practice, again.  I didn't want to do it tonight because it sounded such a trite idea.  It was hard trying to make it NOT trite.  I hope I managed it.

Shame

It was the white trousers.  I had put them on in the morning with such pride - a size smaller than I'd been wearing for years.  I'd customized the festival t-shirt as well - trying to look original.  Honestly, it did look good and, unlike most of the other times I'd thought this, I was confident I wasn't fooling myself.  My hair was doing the right thing for once and I turned up to do my shift hoping I would turn heads.

I walked up to the staff office to clock on and get my I.D pass.  One of the girls behind the desk (always perfectly turned out) actually did a double take and deigned to comment on how great I'd made the t-shirt look.  I flicked my hair and said a cool, "Thanks,"  like it was just an every day thing.  Still smiling at her I bent to write my name on the log when I felt a brush of lips on my exposed shoulder and stared into the brown eyes of one of the competitors.  He was handsome but I wasn't about to play the part of a blushing teenager and I raised my eyebrow at his impertinence and flounced off.  I couldn't deny, though, that he'd made me feel good.  It had created a fluttery feeling in my stomach.

As I walked down the track towards my stand, a handful of men, the bloom of exertion on their cheeks and the sheen of water still on their hair, strode to pass me.  Normally, I'd have been self-conscious and would have studiously ignored them; this time I was going to meet them eye-to-eye.  It was then that I felt the sharp pain in my lower abdomen and the bud of wetness seep from between my legs.  The jolt of horror must have shown on my face as they covered the remaining distance between us and stared full at me, while the fan of scarlet threaded its way across the pristine front of my pure, white trousers.


Time up.
Inspiration tonight:
is thanks again to the Write Practice website.
 'Write for fifteen minutes about a something that really happened to you, without revealing any of the people or places involved. Try to keep all other details the same.'

I've been posting in their comments section and getting feedback, which is nice but that challenge was not comfortable for me.  I clearly don't do well in the first person.  All my creativity went.

The ring

She gazed down at her finger, still bound by the thin band of gold.  She tilted her palm up and flexed her fingers as if admiring it.  She was not.  She was trying to picture it gone and wondering if the memory of it, a phantom, if you will, would still remain.  It had been there for so many years and in it she had found pride and the security of belonging.

She moved her right hand over and allowed her middle finger and thumb to twist the ring in its place and then over the groves that it had created, up and down, twisting round and round all the time as if she were winding a clock.

Then she pulled and it slipped over her knuckles and she let it clang onto the floor beneath her.  She didn't look at the ring, she held her left hand up into the light and let her liberated finger feel the unaccustomed coolness of the air.  She stretched each finger in turn, easing them back and forth, exercising them as if rehabilitating after a lengthy illness.

It really didn't signify, after all.




Time up.
Inspiration tonight: just a reflection on the nature of marriage and its effects.