Red ribbons floating on the water. A hand sticking up from the deep. A cold plunge into nothingness. The sky so large, and he so small upon the summer lake. The rise and fall of a voice calling out for help…
The dark descending; too little comfort in the night…
When the willow fell it swept to the surface of the engorged torrent in a graceful swoon. The roots wrenched from the ground flinging mud, pebbles, small boulders and the moss and grass of the bank skywards. The whipping branches flew across the water to be grabbed and hurled downstream till their anchorage on the great trunk stayed them. They streamed in the flood, tempestuous ribbons squirming and writhing in the wild water.
She said ‘Don’t leave me alone. I can’t cope on my own.’
I promised to stay. We drink tea, converse about nothing. She says she’d like to sleep.
I watch over her.
Professor Tomlinson was a disappointed man. He had recently achieved his life’s ambition, and already he could see it beginning to crumble.
He turned in his seat, and shouted across the laboratory to his assistant. “Hargreaves! Give me those figures again.”
Hargreaves was sitting in front of a luminous screen, looking at a series of diagrams that were filled with information. He was checking through each one in turn, collecting and collating the data. He pushed his spectacles back into place on the bridge of his nose, and repeated exactly the same numbers that he had read out a few minutes earlier.
She knew that when it came time to count the money she’d be found out. The afternoon had wound on interminably and the first crime had been followed by the next and the next and the next. Now she was so heavily committed to the misdeed that there was no way out.
Of course, as with so many of these things, it wasn’t her fault. If you really thought about it the one to blame, the one who should be standing here now on the brink of disaster, his stomach churning and heart flip-flopping was Mr Stevens. Her old boss, Stinky Stevens, he of the underarm white stains and the halitosis from hell. If he hadn’t been such a stupid, incompetent business man then his little caravan re-fitting business wouldn’t have folded. If the firm hadn’t folded then she, Lorraine, would still have a job as book-keeper, a proper job with a wage, a coffee mug and a finishing time.
It’s Sunday afternoon. There’s lots of time before the game. My husband gets up and turns off the TV. ‘Let’s go for a ride.’
‘Yeah! It’s stuffy in here. Take me to the ocean, honey. Let’s catch some breezes.’ I will take a drive to the ocean any day to get out of our dreary rental. Its gray color, both inside and outside, makes it cheerless to say the least.
I was still sweating the beer out and already paying for the pains of the night before. Ten men together. Add beer. Square the testosterone levels and what you’re left with is three broken ribs, no medical insurance and an urgent care facility that looked as though its better days had not been seen by anyone still top-side of God’s green one.
Since we started Literally Stories last year we have been having a wonderful time. Adam, Hugh, Nik, Tobias and myself have spent hours, days, actually probably weeks, not only setting up our pretty website – which incidentally we are very proud of, but reading and discussing the stories submitted for consideration.
There have been some that we have loved, immediately and without question and all we have had to do is a quick re-format to make them work on our pages and choose a fun and relevant header image. There have been some that we have felt were not right for us for various reasons and then sadly we have had to send the horrible rejection emails (sorry). Then there are the ones, and no I’m not going to tell you which ones they were, which caused, debate, discussion, dissection and now and again just a bit of pouting!!!
I was fifteen, it was April and the summer had started early. My mother gave me ten pounds to run to the parade of shops at the bottom of the Oldpark Road to buy two steaks and some mince to fry into burgers for the dog’s dinner. Dragging myself away from the television I threw on my trainers, laced up, pocketed the banknote and walked down to the bottom of The Bone. I passed many people, they all knew me. I said hello to them all before suddenly someone was calling my name from outside the Suicide Inn.
Continue reading “The Greatest Cock that Ever Lived by David Louden”
I had an artist friend, described creativity as a need to get back to the point of origin; tie up loose ends. He lived with a woman hooked on heroin. She despised me without knowing who I was, described me as the type of man she detested. In slack moments she’d smile.
“I see you now. You can’t hide.”
