Just the Dust - A short story from Casting Shadows

This story is the opening one in Casting Shadows. I am publishing it here today because today's date, ten-ten-ten (10/10/10) features in the story, so it seemed appropriate.


Would anyone like to review Casting Shadows, by the way? If so, please send an email to

joleenkuyper (at) gmail (dot) com

I don't have any hard copies at the moment but you can have the PDF, I'd love to get another review for the collection especially as it's coming up to Halloween! It's a mixture of stories and poems, mostly horror-speculative-dark fantasy genres. By Joleen Kuyper (me!), E.J. Tett and Jo Robertson. If it sounds like the kind of thing you'd be interested in, send me an email!




Just the Dust

Ashes. Nothing left, just the dust swirling in the air. Too light to touch, but choking and dark. It blocked out the light.

Her voice was croaky, and it echoed as she called for help. There were no replies. Her mouth tasted funny. Blood mixed with the smoky taste of the dust. She swallowed. A wave of nausea came over her.

What happened? The question came to her mind suddenly. Immediately, others followed. She couldn’t remember anything else either. Who am I? She wondered. For some reason the terror of that thought made her shudder more than the situation she found herself in.

She tried to move her legs. They were trapped under something. Whatever it was, it was heavy. The air was still too thick for her to see. She coughed, her chest hurt. She called for help again and again until her throat hurt too. There was no answer. There was nothing; just her and whatever was pinning her down.

Her head hurt as well. A tear rolled down her cheek. I’m going to die here, she thought. She sobbed until her head felt it would burst and a mixture of tears and blood from her cuts rolled into her mouth. She wondered if her own blood and tears dribbling into her would save her from dying of thirst. She didn’t think it would.

Her throat was too raw now to even shout and she didn’t think she had the energy to cry. Strangely, as well as desperate and terrified, she felt bored.

Think! She told herself. I have a name, I have a life. I must have. No answers came. The air didn’t hurt her nostrils anymore but she still couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t be sure if it was dark or the air was still clogged up.

I’m bored. What would I like to be doing? She asked herself. Something with my hands. Maybe I’m an artist? She wondered, then frowned. No. That wasn’t right. Busy hands, always moving. Something to do with a computer, she realised. I type quickly. A hundred words per minute. How can I be so certain of that and not know my own name?

She felt like drifting off to sleep, tried to force herself to stay awake. Remember something else. Something that might help, she instructed herself firmly. There must be someone looking for me, missing me. I’ve been here hours, she thought. It must be hours. A mother or father, brother or sister, friend or lover? A child? She wondered. Am I gay or straight? How can I not know?

She tried to think of celebrities, which images turned her on. Angelina Jolie came to her mind. Lesbian? She wondered, but soon imagined both Angelina and Brad Pitt in bed, with her. In her mind they had faces, she did not. Bi, or bi-curious, she mused, forcing away the fear at not knowing what she looked like. “How can I know who they are and not myself,” she muttered in a coarse whisper.

She tried touching her face to figure out what her features were. All she could feel was the dust and scrapes. Her nose felt big, she realised after she poked and prodded at herself more. And her lips were narrow. She felt down. Large chest, medium waist. Her legs were still painful, though it was more a dull ache now. She thought they were long but she wasn’t sure. “Quite tall,” she muttered. She still couldn’t picture what she looked like. Her hair was dry with dust and matted with blood, and she couldn’t remember what colour it was.

“What day is it? What year?” she asked herself aloud. Hearing her voice helped her concentrate. “What accent am I speaking in? Where am I from?”

“Ten, ten, ten,” she said suddenly. “October tenth, two thousand and ten. That must be the date, today’s date. Or maybe a date important to me.” She could see her hands suddenly, inputting the date into a computer. Slim fingers. Today’s date, she thought.

“Seven, seven, eighty-two,” she said after a moment. My date of birth, she thought, something told her she was right. “I’m twenty eight,” she said aloud, gravity in her voice, as if it would unlock the puzzle and set her free. Nothing happened.

I’m getting somewhere, she thought. If I can just work out who I am and why I’m here, maybe I can get out of here. She knew that she couldn’t afford to go to sleep. Knew that could mean never waking up again.

She tried to focus on the image of herself tapping away on the computer keys, remember what data apart from the date she was inputting. Am I at work, she wondered, was there an accident? A terrorist attack maybe? There must be someone looking for me! “Help!” she shouted, her throat raspy and sore. No response, no sound, nothing. Just dark emptiness.

“Six-o-six,” she said aloud then. A train, a train home? What route? What line? Victoria? “I’m in London,” she said, nodding to herself. “London,” she repeated. It felt good, to know where she was. The tube. Some kind of accident, I’m buried in a tunnel. They will come to dig me out. Why don’t I have a mobile phone? She wondered. She had nothing but the clothes on her back. No gadgets, no handbag, no purse or wallet.

Where is everyone else? If I was on the train it must have been crowded. There must have been other people. They can’t all be dead, surely? Panic gripped her as she started to fear being given up on, her breathing became fast and shallow and she felt her eyes grow watery again. Can’t cry, or I’ll get dehydrated, she told herself as she brought her breathing under control, forced herself to calm down. I have to figure out how to get the hell out of here, never mind who I am, that can come later in a nice clean hospital bed with a shrink or whatever.

She took a few slow, deep breaths and leaned forward as far as she could until the pain was too much to bear. Holding her breath helped a little. Whatever was on her legs was metallic and very heavy. She thought they were probably broken; she had some feeling in them but couldn’t manage to move her toes. A memory came back to her of having broken her leg at school; before being taken to casualty the teacher had taken off her shoe and sock and asked her to wiggle her toe. She could hear the teacher in her mind, speaking her name, but couldn’t make out the word.

“Never mind that,” she muttered to herself. “First things first.” She thought that maybe it was a part of the train carriage that was on her legs. It was heavy and though her legs were probably broken she couldn’t feel any wounds in them, no jagged shards poking out. She summoned up her strength and heaved, but she couldn’t get the right angle, couldn’t manage to shift it even the tiniest bit.

Spots appeared before her eyes as she exerted herself, and when they cleared as she took slow, deep breaths again she realised the air was clearing, there was a light in the distance somewhere. “Here! Please, help! I’m trapped!” she called as loudly as she could manage, which wasn’t as loudly as she would have liked. There was no response, no movement. No sound. Just a light in the tunnel, she thought.

She tried lifting again, then using her hands to tug at her legs but she couldn’t get anywhere. The silence disturbed her more with every minute that passed. The light down the tunnel blinked a few times, then went off. Complete darkness again.

There weren’t any animals either, she realised. There should be rats or something, surely, in the tunnels? There was nothing. Just her.

A wave of nausea came over her again as blood trickled down her throat from the back of her nostrils, and she gagged. Blood dribbled down her nose as well now, and she wiped it away with her sleeve. It too, was covered in dust.

She squirmed around some more, feeling for something that might be able to help her. A wedge of metal lay behind her head and she dragged it over her, little by little, and jammed it under the other piece, then rolled onto her side to push down on it with the weight of her body. She felt the pressure on her legs give way a little and once again reached for them with her hands, pulling them out. This time, she managed.

Which way? She wondered as she glanced around her. She wasn’t even certain anymore which direction the light had been in; the darkness was disorienting. She lay back down, her legs on top of the sheet of metal now rather than beneath it, to get her bearings. She started to crawl in the direction of the light, dragging her legs.

She was definitely in a tunnel, she thought as she made her way along a solid wall. It suddenly gave way, prodding with her hands she realised she’d reached a flight of stairs. She hauled herself up a couple, found it excruciatingly difficult. Her legs were a dead weight behind her.

A few at a time she made some progress. There was still no sign of anyone else, dead or alive. Just the dust.

She reached a plateau. A floor that was smooth beneath the coating of ashes, it was easier to move along. She wasn’t really thinking about anything but moving when the word iodine popped into her head. Iodine? She wondered. What’s that about?

It was still dark, though not as dark, but she still couldn’t see anything. The only difference was that now it was grey rather than black. A sickly kind of grey. She could just about see her hands, they were covered with sores, blood oozed out of her.

Suddenly she stopped; she heard something. Something scuttling, moving quickly toward her. She screamed as it passed over her hand. A huge beetle, maybe a cockroach. Just one. “Calm down, Lisa,” she said aloud suddenly. “Lisa! My name! I’m Lisa!” A wave of elation hit her. “It’s all coming back,” she thought.

“Calm down, Lisa,” she muttered again. Someone had said that to her. A man, older, her father perhaps? What had she been doing? She saw a newspaper article. Nuclear hostilities a possibility. She felt her panic on that day.

“Scaremongering,” her father had said. “They said that all during the cold war, we’re still here.” She took the iodine tablets anyway, the ones they sent out. Bought more on the internet, dosed herself with them.

Conspiracy theories. Ten, ten, ten. Today’s date. The end of the world. It was all over the internet. She looked at her hands again. The sores were getting worse, she thought. Even iodine couldn’t put off the inevitable forever. She’d run for the tunnels, not to catch a train. To hide from the blast. None of her friends had believed her.

She looked around again. Knew where she was. London, St. Pancras. Except there was nothing there. Just dust. She heard another cockroach scuttling around nearby. More of them, behind her now. They were coming for her. She pulled herself further along, but they came nearer. She winced as a piece of skin peeled off the palm of her hand. Heard the roaches eating it as she moved onward.

Misty Morning - A Short Story

A flash fiction. I wrote and revised this as part of Folded Word 24/7, in which participants wrote a piece a day for the month of August.

Enjoy!

Misty Morning

She climbed the tower as she did every morning. Today was different though. Usually the whole town was visible and she started her days by surveying it, and dreaming of what she would one day do. Now she couldn’t. Everything was hidden behind a shroud of mist. What little she could see was blurred and grey, and all the sounds were muffled. She felt like the only person left on earth. It left her feeling powerful and sad simultaneously as she climbed down. She could not do what she intended.

She went into the world as normal. Participated in the usual doing of job, paying of bills, answering of questions or whatever passed for dialogue. Pretended to be normal, as she did every day. She concealed the rage within her core, as before.

The mist did not burn off as the day progressed. The light remained the same shade of grey, only the movement of the clock indicated that time was passing at all. As evening arrived she climbed the tower once more and surveyed the valley. It was still hidden. Cloaked in mist.

They’re safe, she thought as she took the rifle apart again. They’re safe for at least one more day. If I can’t see them, I can’t shoot.

Darkness fell, and the mist remained.

Lucky Pen (Short Story)

Inspired by an idea I had when doing a Friday Flash Fiction piece for Lily Childs' Blog (which is well worth a visit, by the way).

Every Friday, Lily posts three words which readers are then invited to turn into a story of 100 words or less. You can scroll down the comments here to read my original 100 word piece (as well as pieces by other writers). I liked the idea, so I figured I could rewrite it a little longer - and without necessarily having to use the original three words.

So here is the newer draft of the story, now entitled Lucky Pen.

Comments welcome :-)

P.S. Thanks also to David Barber (whose blog is also worth a visit) for pointing out that it's much easier to maintain formatting when copying and pasting from MS Word if I use Edit HTML mode rather than Compose mode. Cheers!

Lucky Pen.

Olivia read the exam questions carefully and decided which one to answer. In her head, she composed the essence of her argument before she reached for her pen to begin writing it.

It was her favourite pen that she selected, the one she had picked up years ago in an odd old shop in a sleepy seaside village. She always seemed to do better in exams when she used that pen, though occasionally she would get mesmerised and distracted by the ornate, unusual designs on it.

Olivia read through her first paragraph before moving on, trying not to allow thoughts of her future to take her mind from the task at hand. This was her final exam, after all. Her last ever one. She could look forward now to the rest of her life, starting with the holiday her boyfriend was planning to take her on.

Just before she continued writing, something in the first paragraph caught Olivia’s eye. The colour of the ink was lighter than usual. Rather than black, it seemed to be a rusty brown. The most recent words, in fact, were almost red. Olivia touched the ink. It was warmer than she would have expected, and sticky.

As the realisation that it was not ink, but blood, came upon her, Olivia tried to drop the pen, but even when she released it from her grip, the pen did not fall to the small table. It clung on. When she looked at it, she realised it was already larger than it had been before, and it seemed to be pulsating. The designs which had captivated her before looked like veins now as they pumped her blood around the growing object.

Olivia tried to scream, but her throat failed her. When she tried to use her left hand to pry the sinister object from her right, it too was unable to help. The grip of the pen was too strong, it stuck to her like a leech.

Other students scribbled answers to the questions, oblivious to Olivia as the pen sucked the lifeblood out of her. Her fluid draining, she couldn’t even shed a tear for the tragic fact that her final moments were to occur in an exam.

***

The exam was over before anyone realised what had happened. The pen lay dormant once more, shrunken back to its normal size, its veins masquerading as beautiful symbols again. While some students screamed and others fainted as the invigilators tried to keep everyone calm until the police arrived, one young woman was not as interested in Olivia’s shrunken corpse as the pen which still lay in her hand. As she filed past, Maria slipped the pen out of Olivia’s grasp and into her own pocket. It was such a beautiful thing, after all. In spite of what had happened to Olivia, in fact, Maria felt it might even be lucky, and she had one more exam to do. 

Micro fiction - Almost

63 word story. Written as part of the 24/7 Folded Word thingy I participated in.

Almost

The place he died was a dirty, rotten, hovel. He took this as a personal affront. That the final smell he would ever experience in his existence would be that rancid odour. The last texture he would touch, the mouldy floor his face was pressed against. It made him so angry, it almost gave him the energy and coordination needed to escape. Almost.

Hope - A Short Story/ Flash Fiction

Here's another of the pieces I worked on for Folded Word's 24/7. A 250 word story, called "Hope".

Hope.

I was a idealist at first. I joined the police force to catch criminals. To make the world a safer place. To give people hope that they would not be raped or robbed or killed as they walked down the street some day.

I was naive. When I think of myself back then, I think of Pandora and her box. She too was naive. She opened that box and allowed all the evil in the world to escape. Hope was the only good thing to emerge.

For all that she assisted the escape of everything evil, at least Pandora did give hope a chance as well. I cannot even make that claim any longer. Tonight I must tell a parent that her child is dead. For months we have searched for the girl and her abductor. All that mother has had to cling to, was hope.

Tonight I shall take that away. As I anticipate the woman’s reaction, I feel more like the evil Pandora let out, than the girl herself, or a bringer of hope.

I try to think like a criminal in order to catch them, but all too often, like today, I fail. That failure ensures the death of innocents. It takes away any hope their loved ones have of seeing them again. And yet if I were to succeed in thinking like them – embracing evil in order to save a life – would I be the one for whom all hope would be lost? 

A twitter fiction - Beetroot

I have no energy at all today. Busy week ahead and I feel like I've been hit by a bus, or possibly a train (being hit by a train would in fact be quite an impressive achievement on my part, since there aren't any in this part of the country). So blog entries may be few and far between this week, or you may get lucky if I decide to put a few short fiction pieces up! Here is one to start anyway. A dark twitterfic! :-)

Beetroot.

He added beetroot to the juicer, loving how it resembled blood. Not mere speculation. He had used that juicer to dispose of body parts.

A Meeting ([very] Short Story)

Wrote this today as my piece for day 19 (today) of Folded Word 24/7. It's just under 100 words (99 to be precise) so it's a micro-fiction. Enjoy!

A Meeting.

You look well, she tells me, with a sneer that suggests by “well” she means she’s surprised I’m not dead, or a junkie. She speaks to me in that condescending tone that threatens to bring me straight back to the school where she was principal and I was always on detention. My phone rings. I answer it and arrange a meeting. She stands in front of me, oblivious to the fact that I am a high-class whore, and I shall see her husband later to relieve him of some of their shared pension funds, as I do every week.

A short story/flash fiction piece - Pink Robots

Pink Robots

It was white for a start, and had pink robots on it. Also, there was a valance sheet, with the same pattern, hanging over the edge of the bed; making it a place to shove things out of sight. Unfortunately they were poking out. Copies of the Beano alongside Playboys

“Thanks,” she said, taking the glass of vodka and coke he handed her when he came back in. She sat down on the bed. At least that let her take her eyes off the pattern on the duvet.

“Cheers,” he said, sitting beside her and putting his free hand on her thigh as he sipped his own drink.

>She nodded, not sure what else to say. The room had ruined the mood. Changed her perception of him; in the club he had seemed handsome. Sophisticated. She sipped her drink again as he pushed her skirt up and let his hands wander more.

“And you work in the hospital?” she asked again, trying to distract him with conversation while she worked out what to do.

“Night porter,” he nodded. “But not tonight, so that’s good!” he said with a grin that now seemed leery rather than cheekily flirtatious. His hand wandered further as he threw the rest of his drink into him and laid the glass on the floor, where it rolled under the bed, the pink robots on the valance sheet flapping for a few seconds. She thought longingly of her own bed, the satin sheets, the Chinese print bedspread. Wished she’d suggested her place rather than coming here with him.

“It’s not really what I expected, your room,” she commented as he started kissing her neck.

“Been like this for years, I don’t see the point in changing anything, it’d be too much hassle,” he replied, his voice muffled.

“Years?” she asked, shocked, then it dawned on her. “Is this your parents’ house?” she asked.

“Mmm,” he replied, undoing the buttons on her shirt. “And hard as it’ll be once I get started on you, try not to make too much noise, they don’t like it if I wake them.”

She coughed and spluttered and moved away from him, putting her glass on the nightstand and redoing her buttons. “Sorry, I can’t do this,” she muttered.

His face fell. “Well, that’s up to you,” he said, his tone despondent. “We can still lie here, if you want, just kiss and stuff. We don’t have to do anything.”

“I don’t just mean sex!” she hissed as she grabbed her coat. “I mean anything, here, with you! Look around, do you really think a woman would be turned on by a room like this?”

“Never met one before who cared,” he shrugged. “You’re awfully full of yourself – I get plenty of women back here that don’t go all frigid!”

“Frigid?” she spluttered. “You’re a loser who still lives at home with his parents, whose bedroom hasn’t changed in years!” she pulled on her coat and threw one of the Beano comics at him. “Don’t bother calling me a taxi, I’ll make my own way home!” She flounced out the door and stomped down the stairs, not caring if she woke the parents up.

“No more picking up men in clubs,” she muttered as she slammed the front door behind her, the thought of doing anything on a duvet with pink robots on it making her shudder.



An old piece, just a bit of a funny/silly one, thought I would share it here! Also, another scheduled post - so hope it appears at all! 

Mirror - A short story

Yes, yes. She is so pretty, because I am so pretty. She thinks it’s the other way around.

I watch her as she stands there, preening herself. Fixing her hair. My hair. Styling it the way she wants it. Yes, she has power over me. I admit that. But I have power too. I am everywhere, watching her. Every mirror, every piece of glass. Everything shiny. She only sees me when she looks at me, when she thinks she is looking at herself. But I see her all the time. There is never a time she is not reflected in something.

I exist. She exists. Her advantage is that she can move freely in a world I only every catch glimpses of. My advantage is she does not know I exist. If she was gone then I too would be gone. And yet if I was gone, she too would be no longer. We are tied to each other.

I hate her. I desire her life. And yet even if I could kill her, destroy her, make it so she did not exist…then I too would not exist. So I must find another way.

Sometimes she stares at me so deeply I wonder if she does not understand there is more to me. And then I realise she is not staring at me. She sees only herself. Perhaps that is the key. She is vulnerable in these moments. She wants to be different. Perhaps there is a way I could make her me.

Mirrors are the key. I can observe her in sunglasses and the glint off jewellery and all those things. But mirrors, when I am complete – that is when she looks deepest. She opens herself up. She believes she is alone, in those moments. I can take advantage of that opening. I can step inside her. I will. I must. I must be more than I am. I wish to do, not only to see. When she touches, I touch, but there is nothing there. All I can do is imagine what that is like for her. To be corporeal, to exist in senses and not only consciousness. I imagine it is good. I desire it.

There she is. A crisis. So she thinks. It is something mundane. Pathetic even. When I take her place, she will take mine. Then she will know crisis. To exist only in pieces, when light hits a surface. That is a crisis. To know nothing but thoughts. To be trapped in a world of another’s choosing. To not know touch or smell or taste. Crisis. Perhaps it will be even more difficult for her. As I move this way and that, as my eyes bleed water that does not exist as anything but a trick of the light, I wonder if it will be worse for her, when she is me.

She has known what it is to live a life filled with sensory stimulation. I have only ever imagined it. She will suffer the loss of it. She will know precisely what it is she is missing out on.

She will watch me touch her boyfriend. She will watch as I eat her mother’s Sunday dinner. She will suffer. Then she will know crisis.

There she is again. She rows with a friend. In a shop window my ethereal self does the same with that of her friend. I sense nothing from this other. No consciousness. Perhaps one exists. Perhaps there is one for everyone in the world. Every thing even. And yet we cannot communicate with each other as they do. Perhaps there is no other. I could be an accident, an experiment. A nothing. For all the paradox that lies therein.

Now she comes to me again. To herself. I wait for it. I wait for her eyes. There they are. Glistening with tears. She leans forward. She is presenting me with an opportunity I cannot decline. I sense her weakness. My consciousness moves toward her as if it already has a physical presence.

She resists but it comes too late. I push myself forward. There is no room in here for anyone but me. I planned it so I was prepared, she was caught unawares. She is gone. One second I am looking at her, the next I am her. Looking at what used to be me. I smile and she is unable to do anything but smile with me. The feeling of it is strange, using muscles and bones. I will get used to it. I like it.

I stare a moment longer, wondering if she can sense my triumph. I will never know. I don’t care to. The world and all its experiences are open to me. I wish to taste garlic, listen to music, smell coffee, have an orgasm. I will do all those things. They are in my future, her past.

I turn away. I know she can see me in many things, but I don’t care. She will soon be forgotten. After all, I have a life to lead. Hers to begin, but not to take forward.

She may think she can become herself again. She may think I will be vulnerable in the same way she was.

She is wrong. What would I care to stare at her for? I do not care if my hair is straight. I can touch it. To know it is there is enough. Let her rot in the mirror. She is nothing. Her life is mine. I have her body, and yet I am still me.

I wrote this about a year ago, for a competition over on the ninjavideo.net forum (now here).

Twitter fiction

One of my twitter stories was selected as the picfic of the week - click here to read it - it'll only take a few seconds, literally, as the story is less than 140 characters!

Always nice to get a little validation and if you're reading this because you got the link to the blog from picfic's twitter stream, welcome, thanks for stopping by and please have a read & comment!

Pristine - A flash fiction piece

Pristine. That was his first thought when he saw the snow. He had opened the curtains without much enthusiasm, but the sight that greeted him brought an awed look to his still-sleepy eyes. He scanned the landscape, taking it all in, until something caught his eye.

Red. Blood red. There was no mistaking it. A bloody blot on the landscape. His eyes narrowed and he reached for his dressing gown, slid his feet into his slippers, without taking his eyes off it. A bright red swirl in the midst of the clean snowy scene.

He made for the door. The handle was cold, slightly stiff from the frost. He wrenched it open, curiosity driving him to investigate.

His footprints were the only ones. Nothing else had disturbed the snow, so far. No sign as he approached the red patch of anything that had created it. He began to doubt his earlier surety that it was blood. How could it be?

It was still warm and sticky when he bent down and touched it. “Blood, definitely,” he muttered aloud, disturbing the silence. His feet were already going numb with the cold, so he knew it couldn’t have been out here much longer than he had been aware of it.

There were no other footprints, he double checked, casting his gaze over the land. Not even the little twiggy ones the birds usually left. The morning was silent and still.
A scream pierced it. His heart quickened; he held his breath.

Not terror, he realised. The scream was one of rage. It carried echoes of destruction. He stayed still. Didn’t dare to move or breathe.

A snowflake landed on his nose. Melted, slid down, made his face itch. He tried to resist but couldn’t prevent the sneeze.

He gagged when he heard the scream again. Above him. He looked up, but couldn’t see; suddenly the snow was falling heavily. He couldn’t see his house. Fighting the terror and disorientation, he began to run.

The scream was closer now. He could hear something moving through the air, heavier and faster than the snow. The beauty of it that had so entranced him earlier was lost to him. It slowed him down as he ran for the house. His left slipper got caught on something, he tugged his foot free of it and ran on, ignoring the cold.

He could see the door when he felt the talons pierce his sides. It was sure of itself, he dithered in the struggle, trying to fight and also to simply wriggle free.

Pristine, he thought as he looked over the snowy scene from above while it faded to grey. He was still conscious as the creature began its descent again. Still alive as it dumped him on virgin snow, face down. It was the pain that eventually allowed him to pass out, as the hideous beast he had not seen but knew must be worse than he could imagine tore strips of warm flesh from his body. The sound of it gnawing was the last he heard.

I wrote this to submit to an anthology, but I was so busy with exams and things that I forgot about it and missed the deadline. If I was sending it off I'd probably give it another rewrite/edit, but I thought I might as well share another piece here on the blog. Enjoy!

A short story

I've posted this online before so I thought I would share it here. It's a short story. Enjoy! :)


Silk Gloves and a Single Cigarette

The heady, cloying atmosphere of the function room was too much for her. Carol held up the bottom of her skirt with her gloved hands as she navigated her way over and around the muddy puddles that had formed on the ground from the morning’s rain.

As she reached the alcove she glanced around her surreptitiously before reaching into her handbag and pulling out the solitary cigarette that was stashed away inside, stolen from her sister’s pack early that morning. Seven months had passed since she’d given up, but she considered that this was an occasion that allowed, even merited, a slight stumble from the path of self-discipline.

She lit it with a lighter she’d also stolen, off one of the tables as she’d gone around greeting everyone, thanking them for coming, making the same inane small talk, waiting while they all milled around hoping to get a look at her while they shook her hand and kissed her cheek.

The timid flame flickered in the breeze but Carol shielded it with her cupped hand until she was able to draw deeply on the feisty tingling smoke, sucked it down to the bottom of her lungs as her throat rejoiced with the scratching sensation it created. The past seven months evaporated; addiction returned at once.

I’ve wanted this for so long, she thought as she flicked the grey ash and let it be blown off in smithereens in the wind. I’ve waited so long for this day, I’ve prayed for it.

She inhaled again, wishing she’d taken a whole packet; if she had she would have smoked them all. The relaxation that had kicked in after the first drag was already dissipating.

Better get back to it, she thought with a sigh as she dropped the butt into one of the puddles, wondering if her dress would smell of smoke now, or the greasy chip scent coming from the vent a few feet away. She walked slowly, once again holding the bottom of her precious dress so the mud would not stain it, more because it would only draw yet more attention that she didn’t feel she could handle than because she really cared about a bit of mud.

She hoped to sneak in, relatively unnoticed, but of course that was impossible, as soon as she reached the door her sister was beside her, leading Carol toward a gaggle of his friends and family, dragging her into the centre of things once again. She forced her face into a brave smile. It’s just for one day, she reminded herself. Then the rest of my life can begin.

She cast her eyes across the room and saw him, looking pristine in his best suit, handsome as the first day she’d met him. The outfit brought out the delicate skin tone, the shadows of the room highlighted the arch of his nose and the dimples in his cheeks.

He looked calm and serene, and Carol had to force herself to hold the smile on her face, not to wilt, to crumple and go weak at the knees.

She tuned in once again to the racket of people chit-chatting, commenting on how well he looked, how it had been such a lovely service, how the priest had done such a nice job. She nodded and agreed and tried to say as little as possible in case her voice betrayed her emotional state.

She shook people’s hands, her silk gloves hiding the last bruises he’d given her, the final ones he’d ever give her she reminded herself.

Just the funeral to get through, the oversized photo of him watching over her, then she could burn the rest if she wanted to. Just another few hours, she might need to sneak around the back for another smoke to get through it, but he’d never stub one out on her wrist ever again, never make her scream, destroy her self esteem.