Still Life

It had not put up much of a fight before it died, but then, it was so tiny.  It wasn't a wren; it was a trifle bigger and the tail wasn't the stubby exclamation that is the wren's trademark but it had the same colouring. 

It was almost over before I'd had a chance to intervene.  My little Jack Russle had starled it from a patch of mottled undergrowth and it must have been too shocked to have got enough momentum to burst into flight.  She pawed at it and then, like a cat, toyed with it for some moments before I'd even realised what it was.  I shouted and ran towards them both.  The dog stood back to let me approach.  The bird cowered by a clump of grass.  I could see its chest rising and falling very lightly and slowly.  As I bent towards it, the chest stopped half way before rising fully and the tiny pointed beak slowly opened, as did the eyes, taking it's last look at the world before darkness fell.

I picked up the creature and, although it was all in the run of the wild, I felt choaked and angry that this timy life was taken so suddenly and violently.  It made me think about the arbitrary nature of all life and I felt the awfulness of the injustice that I mean very little in the scheme of things not better than the buddle of feathers in my hand. 

Looking back at my dog, she was ashamed.  I left her to feel the weight of what she had done.  I put the bird back very gently on the grass and pushed a tuft of the sweet green fronds over the dun feathers.


Time up.
Inspration:  I thought of an incident about a year ago. It happenend exactly as above and it has stuck in my mind and will do for some time.

Golden bubbles.

"Alright, Hels? How's the heart today?"
That's her nick-name, Hels.  Her real name is Helen.  So, I suppose it's not really a nick-name, just an abbreviation.  She is my sister.  We both know, too, that there's nothing wrong with her heart; it's a euphemism for her mind.  She's always been quite a ebullient person but there has always been the slight hint that the effervescence is the tiniest bit forced and that the golden bubbles on the surface are an attempt to hide a certain cloudiness below, even from herself.

For few months she has not acknowledged problems, she has surrounded herself with people that don't discuss important things with her or challenge her opinion, at all.  There have been massive family issues that we've all been trying the cope with and she just won't talk, just cuts the conversation off or leaves the room or cries so that we are forced to change the subject.  So much burying.

It didn't come to any good, avoiding things.  She had a panic attack at work, thought she was having some kind of seizure and now she can't stop shaking.  I know there is a clawing in the pit of her stomach, night and day, and the fear will not give her a moment's peace.  That is how it works, the fear: the feeling that she has lost control and can't see a way out of the void.



Time up.
Inspiration: I forgot to post this yesterday.  So this is my instalment for yesterday.  I hoped to capture the idea that bottling up problems is not good and the effect it can have on the mind.

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.

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 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.

Through his eyes

He watched her chestnut hair lay smooth on the pillow next to his. He let his lips drift over the apricot flesh.  He listened to her breathe and allowed his soul to wallow in it.  For a moment he was at peace. 
Her eyes flicked open and she flipped herself over like a fish on a hook. 
"What?" she barked.  Her eyes narrowed.  "You woke me up.  So, what is it?"
He began to stutter; mumbled something about just wanting to be as close to her as he could; enjoying watching her sleep.  It was the wrong thing to say.  It always was.
"Jesus, John," she hissed.  She swung her legs over the side of the bed.  Her dressing gown was hastily wrapped around her shoulders.  Then, with a glance which spat venom, she yanked the light in the bathroom and slammed the door.



Time Up.

Inspiration:  The Write Practice website provided the inspiration today.  They suggested trying beige prose.  They instructed to base it on the aftermath of Valentine's day.

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.

London

If it's not the place of hackneyed pearly kings and queens any more (pun not intended but acknowledged) then what is it?  Can it be found in the braying voices of upper-middle class financiers and P.R. reps who are doing a couple of years 'graft' in town before marrying someone wealthy enough to keep them in Hunter Wellies and au pairs with out lifting a finger for the next fifty years except to tilt the Gin bottle? Can it be found in mockney cackle of the middle class journos and ad men who went to public school but are desperate to be taken as a bit tasty by their legitimately working class colleagues who can barely contain their resentment.  Is it in the myriad accents, dialects and languages spoken in the offices as the lights dim and when the last suited wage-slave has pushed through the door to make his way to a bar to self-medicate his anxiety disorder, his eye-twitch slowing the emptier his glass gets? 

London.  Can it ever, has it ever been defined? 

Time up.

Inspiration: I'm in London. 

Hot skin

She rounded the corner and immediately wished she could jump back the way she'd come. It was too late, though, she'd already taken a few paces round the shop door on the corner of the high street and, although the group on the bench weren't aware of her yet, she knew a flustered retreat would have drawn more attention to her than just keeping her head down and shuffling on. She felt the blush riding up her neck, clawing at her cheeks.

She tried not to look at them and made a effort to look absorbed in the passing shop windows. Her pace increased but she could still see their reflections blurred in the dark glass. All the popular girls from school were there. They seemed so much more knowing, so much more mature than her, that she would have done anything to avoid their notice; she feared them too: They were loud, they showed no respect for their elders, authority, the rules and she couldn't understand why or indeed how young women could be so lawless, so wild. They revolted her with their coarseness and yet there was something strangely attractive about them. Why did she long for their approval? Why did she want to be part of their tribe? Was it because, deep down, she longed to be free from the constraints of her own safe upbringing? Perhaps it was merely the vaguest atavistic stirrings in their last throws before the responsibilities of adulthood eclipsed them completely.