Careless

I could have sworn I closed that window. Damn. There’s wet all over the sill. Wouldn’t matter if it was the bathroom, but these nice wooden ones show marks. Should’ve stuck with the plastic if I’m going to be so careless…

Funny – there’s wet on the floor too. How’d it get so far into the room? It’s not been all that windy. Big blobs too. Mustn’t tell the children I’ve been forgetting things – have me in a home next …

Get a cloth. Don’t want to slip … another sure-fire way to the home …

Who’s there?

.. who….?

Next challenge as promised!

‘I could have sworn I closed that window.’  Include this sentence at any point in your 100 word story.

scrambled eggs

Before tackling a new challenge, let’s get up to speed on how to post a blog.  If you are a contributor, you can add your story as a blog post rather than as a comment.   When you receive an email inviting you as a contributor, you need to sign up to WordPress but you don’t have to set up your own blog.  You can just have a user account.

Some more competition news from Leaf books.  They’re running a ‘Tiny Weeny Writing and Drawing Competition’.  A reminder too that the micro-fiction comp closes on 30th September.

Watch out for the next challenge!

Transforming the moment

I stood under the trees like a horse, motionless, patient, waiting for the rainstorm to pass. Each added second was a blessing, and the scent of honeysuckle golden in my mouth. I had never realised how I loved this land, wanted to explore it, live in it. Now the living had to end with the strapped–on explosives I was so carefully keeping dry. There was no other way, was there? I would give my death for its transformation. The light played on the wet leaves. I longed for some other way.

Competition

Just had an email from Fish publishing in Ireland which runs prestigious writing competitions.  Their short story competition closes 30th November.  For writers of micro fiction aka flash fiction, a competition opens in January 2010.  We can get lots of practice before the deadline!

Watch this space for next challenge.

Forget the Horse

Helen posted this one as a comment!  Advice to anyone else keen to join us, post your story as a comment for moderation and then I can invite you as a contributor – or not!  Such is my scary power.   Which by the way I have wielded to give this a title. 

I stood under the trees like a horse, motionless, patient, waiting for the rainstorm to pass.

Patient?!

It may have looked that way. Inside, I was seething. How can my own sister be too cheap to hire a tent?

Shivering guests in soggy finery huddled together with the band, casually passing around bottles and plates they’d rescued from the picnic, while the photographer captured candid moments of camaraderie.

And all the time my cake – my cake! – was out there in the downpour. Sugar petals drooped, icing leaves fell, swags lost their swagger.

Forget the horse. My kingdom for a marquee.

It’s not a competition but this sets a standard!

I’m posting the following on behalf of abf101 who hasn’t worked out how to post yet!  Some of you have already appreciated its wit, having clocked it in the comments.

 I stood under the trees like a horse, motionless, patient, waiting for the rainstorm to pass. I’d never seen trees like a horse before; but at least they were shelter from the windy wetness. What could they be for? The high command had been very cagey. “Just build it,” they said. Ours but to hew and cry – and get skelfs everywhere. Now it’s to get wheels. I ask you! I ask everybody. Silence and the occasional wink, as if somebody has a crafty plan. Ten years’ battling away and we end up with a wooden horse. Very funny, Odysseus!

Waiting

Ok – a suitable challenge to take up on a day such as this! Bit rusty, I fear, but here goes:

I stood under the trees like a horse, motionless, patient, waiting for the rainstorm to pass.  But what did it matter if I was soaked? There would be an element of cleansing, surely, if I could offer myself to the deluge – allow the water to course over my hot eyes, to wash away the signs, to plaster my hair to my face and make my appearance at once remarkable and normal.

I was no longer normal. He was dead, and it wasn’t my place to be distraught. But I was, and the rain mocked my tears – and my waiting.

C.M.

Cooking again!

Horrified to discover that the frying pan has been cold since February.  My excuse is I’ve been doing a lot of living.  What’s yours?   I was intrigued to see in the Herald of Saturday 23rd Aug that  ‘An Old Woman Cooking Eggs’ by Velazquez was chosen by four famous Scots as their favourite work of art from the National Gallery of Scotland’s collection.   Now there’s an incentive to creative endeavour.

Here is a new challenge.  Write a mini story in 100 words beginning:

‘I stood under the trees like a horse, motionless, patient, waiting for the rainstorm to pass.’

Sliding

My attempt at the train story; it’s 16 words over and I can’t pare any more. What a discipline this is!

He had been following her. She was sure of it. She had felt those sliding eyes on her almost before she had seen him, but when she had actually looked at the man, he’d been looking over her head at the destination board.  And she’d begun to sweat, in the snaking draughts of the concourse.

She had five minutes to pelt off to platform 13; the train almost deserted at this late hour. She sat in the end of a carriage, gasping slightly. A skinny girl chewed gum obsessively at the other end. No-one else.

And then he was there. Sliding into the seat opposite her, just as the train pulled out of the station.