The Desperate Man

                        
'Tempt not a desperate man'

With a mind quivering like the tender leaves of the birch in a spring gale, he writhes there in his agony.  She cannot be his.  She will not be his.  He will never possess her.  His dreams and fantasies, tender and dramatic, domestic and passionate, that have supported his body and soul for so long, have been ripped away.  A huge cavern has appeared at his feet and now his mind turns to the temptation of flinging himself into the abyss.  His expressions of longing, of the justice of his claim over her, of the deep connexion that he could never break, now or ever, are as useless to her as the empty leaves of the memoir next to the corpse.

He cannot conceive the future, he flings his mind to the past, reliving the promises made and given, the two souls entwining to become one.  His incredulity that is was possible for one soul to break free from the commixture of the two.  How could it be possible that her vision of their future could possibly differ from his?

Who would he spend eternity with now?




Time Up.
Inspiration:  I saw this picture and the title reminded me of Romeo.  Naturally, it made me wonder why a man might become desperate and, like Romeo, my mind lead its way to love.

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.

One's own path

They had walked this path at least once a week for the past fifty years and more.  Ever since they were married, in fact.  It would have been lovely, looking back, to say that, as they strolled, their feet making barely any noise, muffled by the decaying leaves that mouldered in the damp moss growing there, that the sun was always an apricot glow behind the tree's charcoal bark. It wasn't, of course, but sometimes it was.


Walking side by side is normal but they always followed the tracks that the farm vehicles had imprinted over generations of continual use, it was if the tracks were made for the two of them so that they could walk comfortably alongside each other but slightly distant.

They often chatted as they walked, about life's trivialities and it's triumphs; about the most mundane of things and the most important.  But, more often than not, they walked together quietly, even in silence.  They thought their own thoughts, fought their own internal battles and poured privately over stored memories. 

If they stretched, they could hold hands and sometimes they did that too, and smiled.



Time up.
Inspiration:  I say this picture on Pinterest.  I can't find the original source other-wise I'd be happy to give credit.  The pinner said that it was Godolphin Wood in Cornwall.  Photographer unknown.

She Wants

She passed him everyday.  He had exactly what she wanted. 

Anne had long felt a hollowness inside her; it had been growing for many months now until she almost felt that the core of nothingness had taken up nearly all of her being.  She felt too light: light enough to float away. She had begun to think more about things too.  What did she really want?  Did this new path she was taking really fulfil her?  Was it going to take away the feelings of self-loathing that she had been living with for so long and re-ignite the exhuberence of her youth? 

The determination that she had had at the beginning of the new epocha that she had envisaged for herself, and was trying to implement, had slowly started to seep away like a leaking pipe.  She had felt herself faltering many times only to catch a brief snap-shot of herself in the mirror and, with the stark reminder of the disgust with which she held herself, she had managed to crawl through those times when she felt like breaking the promise she had made to herself.

Now, however, watching him, she stopped and boldly peered at him through the glass.  Would he notice her? Would he be as disgusted with her as she was of herself?  Frankly, she no longer cared, her desire had reached such a pitch that her mind screamed her greatest need.  She pushed through the door screening him from her and holding his face in her gaze she marched up to the counter. "How much for that Raspberry Mille Feuille?" she purred.


Time up.

Inspiration: 
The Write Practice suggestion tonight was: Take fifteen minutes and come up with a MacGuffin scenario. You can either make your characters play the MacGuffin straight, or turn it on its head and have them start questioning what the significance of the MacGuffin is.
I chose the former without exactly playing it straight.

The silence of a bird's wing

Although I am behind glass and metal, and I am moving at forty miles an hour, I am struck dumb and deaf for a moment that's lasts for the three beats of a buzzard's wing.

I saw it gripping the frail twigs of a hedge, the flimsy branch bowing under the weight of this creature of dark nights and fallen leaves, scanning the field for prey. It turned at the noise of the moving metal beast that hurtled towards it and for a moment I was close enough for our eyes to lock; it's golden, mine the colour of mud. For the briefest second it saw me. It looked into my eyes. What it saw there, I do not know but it did not make it stay. The bird didn't seem threatened, just disdained my proximity, even for the time that it would take for me to pass. It lurched its body upwards and proudly turned its head away as if I no longer held it's interest. It launched itself languidly into the grey sky, allowing me the merest flash of brown-speckled white of its underwing which it beat three times before drifting out of sight.