12 Short Stories in 2019

This is the place where I post the pieces I’m writing in 2019 as good practice from prompts for the website writerswrite.za. These folks are such a lot of fun!

Reality Check
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Reality Check

The chatter subsides and a cacophony of brass hits the speakers. As the lights dim, two thousand attendees feel the hair on the back of their necks prickle. For many, more visceral senses tighten too.

The employee conference is the most heavily anticipated event of the year. Tickets are allocated on some random algorithm and are regarded as gold to the fortunate recipients. Unless you are C-suite royalty, you only ever get to go to one of these gigs.

And now it is about to begin.

All forms of digital communication have been confiscated at the door, using screening technology akin to the most sensitive of airport security. And they had gone through it twice.

Out of the pure darkness, a blistering light hits the stage. Huge gold gates as large as the room freeze shut for a few seconds—until they ease open and as if to give their size some context, a figure tiny in comparison emerges, all in black.

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Made by Me

He had a little light lunch before they came for him. A slice of his favourite hickory smoked ham, some mature self-levelling brie and a crunchy red apple—sliced thinly through the mandolin as he preferred it. He washed it down with a cup of tea, made with the choice of leaves his wife brought with her when they married; that he had come to love over the years. Not too much for him these days; he didn’t need the energy at his time of life.

The doorbell rang the same chime she’d chosen, the last time they remodelled. When he’d moved to the seniors’ complex, they had been kind enough to send a man round to disconnect it from the old place and fix it up for him. The electrician was kind and helpful. “Anything to make it comfortable for you,” he said, “We want to make it just like your real home.”

“Grandpa. Grandpa. Are you ready.” The little girl squealed at him. Excitement he could hear in her even before he opened up.

“Come on. Come on. Are you ready?”

She came through the door in a bluster, hurrying him along gathering the things he’d placed on the little chair by the door in readiness for their afternoon’s adventure.

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Margarita Mix

As we near the ground, the terrain speeds up, flashing over the occasional villa with a glittering blue pool alternating with agricultural land parched dry in the baking heat. I smooth my comfortable travelling trousers as I ready to leave the plane, usually slick at this small airport, though passport control can have its own ideas.

I’ve landed in so many places that I zone out and take my time as the process of arrival unfolds. Only worry about what you can control has become my mantra over recent years, so I am rarely frustrated or annoyed when there is nothing I can do to change things. I take care that I am seldom in that situation where it really matters.

I think back to why I’m here.

-~-

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Madame Mère

“Look. There it is. Right ahead of us.”

She is jumping up and down as she stares at what looks to me to be yet another random old building. The heavy heat of summer is already stifling, and I can feel the sweat running down my back as I take another draught from my water bottle.

“See. The green balcony that hangs out from the first floor?” She points way out over the people, traffic and general bustle of the vast piazza.

I peer over and make out a yellow-brick block, far away in the distance. The balcony sticks out incongruously and—as far as I can make out—uniquely, right around the angle of the building.

“Ah. OK. I see it now. What’s so special about it?”

“It’s not what’s so much special about ‘it’, but more about who.” She leaves this lingering in the air, and she is gone, me scurrying behind, trying to keep up.

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Turncoat

Warning: Do not try this at home.

There were fewer tourists around in winter. A few of his regulars would drift in throughout the day. But nothing like the old days. Before they all decamped to the cheaper presses down at Wapping.

Today’s yuppies wanted trendier haircuts than he provided. The refurbished antique barber chairs with their shiny chrome feet, pomade and ‘man-chat’ held little sway in the new world order.

On quiet days, he read the paper from front to back. Foreign wars; footballers’ salaries and more spouting by the Mayor of London, who hardly anyone liked. It could get even the most positive of men down.

The doorbell tinkled along with a draught of cold wind.

“Get out alive will I, Buddy?”

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Book Keeper

He moved it around every so often. When he found himself tripping over the pile of books on the floor one more time and he knew had to find some space. Books came, books went, that was his view. Some of them he even read. Some of them he didn’t, such was the obsession he had with his books. ‘One day I’ll read it’, he would say to himself and then a fad or fancy would wear off and some other passion would take its place.

Now and then Allan would do a charity shop run and amongst all the other trivia making that final journey out of his doors—stuff which had bubbled to the top of the discard pile—he’d have a ‘library’ clear out as well. Each time he found himself making a decision on the scruffy book, with the substantial brown paper covering (like no-one does any more, he told himself). He’d look at the last page of the story (without reading the ending of course, for that was a heinous crime) and see that it was over a thousand pages long and sigh, put it back on the shelf and tell himself that one day, he would make the time to do justice to ‘Gone with the Wind’.

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Passing Through

Topic: No One Can Know| Word Count: 1500| Genre: Thriller

Bedecked in black, she tiptoes across no-man’s land, barren ground she knows well. Rock and dust and debris soaked with the secrets of many happier days gone by.

The guards in the watchtowers are on their high alert, tension raised through the recent flare-ups. Male or female, if they catch her, they will not be tolerant. Whatever her cover story, she will be challenged to make them believe her. There are consequences for crossing into the walled city without permission, whoever you are.

Over time, she has listened to the people who know; the gaps she might exploit, but they come with no guarantees, for conditions change all the time, not least the shift patterns and state of alertness of the guards, her biggest concern in the exercise. With the night’s patchy cloud and partially shrouded moon, she knows where she can get through as safely as anywhere. And as she gets closer to this, the most vulnerable point in the trip, she feels herself tense. Her knowledge tells her to take a few, brief moments to breathe deeply to centre herself and keep calm.

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