Unexpected Attentions

Lucy Oliver

Mint Tea

The flowers were unexpected.

Phil never sent me flowers when I was his girlfriend, Amy thought, looking at the pink and white roses from her favourite florist. Smiling, she touched the blooms, brushing soft petals against her fingertips. Briefly, she was able to forget her tears of the last week; the hours spent on the sofa cuddling her mobile phone, willing it to ring.

Arranging the flowers in a vase, she picked up her mobile and typed a single word, THANKS. Her finger hovered over the send button, but the phone suddenly beeped and erased the message. Maybe it was too soon to call? She glanced at the cupboard that still held his books, at his coat hanging by the door. She hadn’t tried to return them. He would have to come back - then they could talk, sort out the argument that had started petty, but escalated into something far more damaging. Amy touched her phone, aware that she had been working too late, coming home irritable and expecting him to have cooked dinner.

Closing her eyes, she dozed.

The rattle of the letterbox woke her and as she moved, Amy looked down to see her phone nestled against her heart and realised she must have picked it up in her sleep.

An envelope lay on the hall floor. It held a ticket for a romance film- the type she loved, and Phil hated.

Well that hasn’t changed, she thought, looking at the single stub.

Amy sat in the dark cinema, wondering if she would find him behind her - smiling, saying he was sorry. Her phone beeped a couple of times, annoyingly at the romantic bits, but never rang. She put it on the chair beside her and it stopped beeping, seeming happier. She assumed Phil would be waiting in the foyer, but he wasn’t and she drove home feeling angry and a fool. Why had he left her sitting alone?

A card waited on the doormat when she got back - a special delivery envelope from an internet company. It had a picture of a blue teddy holding a mobile phone.

Inside, it was blank except for a single printed heart. Amy smiled, Phil had always joked she loved her phone more than she did him. Maybe he intended the cinema ticket as a gift; a film he thought she might like to see.

She took a deep breath and called his number. Oddly, her mobile switched off, remaining silent in her hand.

Battery, she thought, picking up her landline and dialling.

‘Amy!’ Phil said. ‘I wanted to call, but I was afraid of making things worse. I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ Amy said, looking at his coat hanging beside her, reaching out to touch it.

‘Do you fancy celebrating Valentine’s Day with me tomorrow?’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘I’ll pick you up at eight. Oh, and you might want to check with that florist you use, they’ve put a transaction on my credit card, but I haven’t ordered flowers since Mother’s Day.’

Amy put the phone down and then jumped as she heard a loud bang behind her. Smoke drifted up from the sofa and she gasped, staring at the charred remains of her mobile phone. The cover had exploded outwards, forming two flaps in the shape of a burned out heart. 

Bio:

Lucy Oliver is published in Take a Break and Stories for Children magazines, as well as various anthologies. She won Stylist magazine's Micro Fiction competition and is currently working on a historical novel. 

Love Letter

 Roger Noons

Cocktail Valentino - with paraquat

You sent me a notelet, it had a picture of red roses. It was in an envelope with a first class stamp. You addressed me as dear, in your best handwriting. Your perfume lingered on the paper. I was hesitant to read it, fearing the worst. But then you said you loved me and would do so forever. You added lots of kisses for your beloved Alan. But my name is Malcolm

My Darling

 Cocktail Valentino

When you walked from the shower, your hair, soft, wet, dark brown ringlets; I fell in love with you all over again. When you smiled and let the white, fluffy towel fall to the floor, I melted. I could not speak. You looked so beautiful and you told me you loved me. It was unbelievable. I was afraid to touch you, in case you weren’t real. Then you spoke my name, MY NAME.

BIO - Roger Noons began writing in 2006, when he completed a screenplay, for a friend who is an amateur film maker. After the film was made, he wrote further scripts, then began short stories and poems. He occasionally produces non fiction, particularly memoirs from his long career in Environmental Health.

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Still Water

    Leanne Bridgewater

          

             

          Alas. A bellowing. To the bragged, bridgend sends the river rushing blood flows
          Comes to surface, a shard of glass, cribbed between the ribs. One more right in the heart.

The centre of attention. Only the echo of a hollow expression can take up the offer. There's a rumbling sensation. Tries to shift from centerpiece but the ornamental may be instituted, into broken pieces. In downward motion, a collision. The heart splatters bats like cave(wo)men out of caves. For the breast shivers in sight, like a moth being attacked.
Move forth through rocky sands. These sands were all rocks once. Now, a mixture of elements. What's beneath is a blur. A movie picture. Tones of low, self esteem, motion, light beams into chemical pits. Strips of glass tease the body. Tear away in the skin. Mark a territory. Alas, a map. Yet no way home.

Sincere greed and needs to deal with. One may feel alone, and be washed ashore, naked and cold. Still, has a warm heart that is eager to have a whole world. Then, dangers it could all be put out. Some one or thing, whether wind or oral, of the sky or being may blow it out. Like a candle. Yet the wish may not be taken. The celebration is not equal. Does not come close. May not take up the offer of a dance? Might not we move and sway like sea creatures, but a'float dead bodied in a bracket trap - only to be caught in the sentence yet easily taken out as, not being a necessity. Scattered brain collapse, into amore. Pick up not the bad pieces, but bad apples.

Juice of life: is a cause for concern. Move further away from the addiction. To place a placebo in the emotion, which is thrown around the bends. Bruises be the water brigade. Any fire to put out?
When the wind blows, over drout. Thirst seizes, more yawns = a radical unwakening. No sense gallops into evolution, without succesion of a sad business occupator. Whether that be the accounts worker or the funeral direction.

Direction of the river is non-understandable, somewhat interesting. Having only lungs to breath in the rapid air. Gasping... for a brew. Sugar is the option. Is life sweet enough, or even the person in the shoes we can see if we look down. Or no shoes, may be the case. Came across two people in life that wear nothing on feet. They be a poet and a musician. Admirance goes out to them like a radio receiving signal. No fuzz on the TV.

Harvest's the bad thoughts. An acorn for every one upon the head. An abashment, laid the lumps upon the skull and skin. They will be the sugar.

When hyperventilating, the life lived so far flashes, with sweat that drips as if the memory's leaking out of you. By now, forth the saddest drown. It's as if your body's beat the guts out of a gymnasium. As we know, it is the unmechanical manual everyday that is the exercise.

Peers the ees lids and singe the lashes. Memories go in flashes. All are imagined as single boats. Which one to get upon. May one take self to a happy place? If not, combined thoughts soon run like steam out of kettle. The sound of a rocket, forcing you to choose. If not a rocket, then as piece, item be a timer. Time is running out. The alert has struck. They have called battleship.

Time lapse. Laser quests don't impress the stark that strikes. Flood lights.

Bio:
Leanne Bridgewater is 22  and is currently studying for her MA in Creative Writing. Her  work is very poetic, passionate about visuals and sounds.

Chubby Little Cheeks

Sarah Bakewell

Espresso

Here he is. He’s perfect. My little boy, my first child, my son. Here in my arms. I could hold him forever. All the pain I experienced bringing him into this world is now irrelevant, forgotten. I’m engulfed by love. I feel nothing other than love for my baby boy. My surroundings have faded into nothing; they do not matter. Nothing matters other than him now. Just my son.

He has a mop of thick, black hair, like his father. His small eyes are shut, but he has beautifully long eyelashes. I long to see his eyes, no doubt they will be as perfect as the rest of him, but I dare not disturb him simply to see whose eyes he has inherited; grey-green, like mine, or bright, sparkling blue, like his father? He has an adorable button nose with a tiny beauty spot just underneath his left nostril. His ears are quite dainty. He has a small closed mouth and chubby little cheeks. His baby skin is so new and fresh, so smooth. He smells delicious. I hold him close to me.

He has five perfect fingers on each squishy hand, and five tiny toes on each miniature foot. So delicate and fragile. His perfectly formed arms lay crossed on his rounded stomach underneath his blanket. He has inherited the long leg gene of the other males on my side of the family.

My baby is beautiful. He is perfect. His eyes remain shut.

My surroundings slowly begin to drift back into place as muttered conversation disturbs the peaceful world which only my son and I share. I want to look up and shout at whoever has interrupted such a precious moment but I cannot take my eyes away from my son. How can I look away? My anger is washed away in an instant; I continue to stare at him. His eyes do not flicker.

I steal away from thoughts of my son growing up and try to re-piece my scenery, although I do not remove my eyes from my baby. I am still in my hospital bed in a delivery room. It is dark outside - I cannot remember if it was light when I delivered my baby. I could have been sat here silently for hours, just holding my son. I recognise the hushed tones of my husband near the foot of my bed and a female voice I do not. Perhaps the midwife is still here? I can’t think why she would be.

I think of my son’s room waiting for him at home. My husband’s study is now barely identifiable; a shade of canary yellow occupies the previously cream walls, with an additional colourful border of farmyard animals. The small wooden cot situated against a wall adjacent to the window is filled with soft toys and blankets. A baby monitor is attached to one of the bars with its partner on my bedside table. The shelving unit opposite the cot, once home to my husband’s various work related files, folders and papers now stores nappies, dummies, clothes, bottles, bibs… Anything my baby could need. The room needs to have a baby in it.

‘I’d like to take him home now,’ I say quietly but firmly, still not taking my eyes off him. A heavy silence fills the room. I hear the slow, steady footsteps of my husband as he walks up to the head of the bed where I sit in my hospital gown, propped up by two pillows, holding his son. Our son. My son.

‘Darling…’ he struggles to find anymore words, so instead, places a hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. I painfully tear my gaze away from my son to look up at my husband. His usually bright blue eyes have lost their sparkle. They glisten with tears. They look sore, as if he’s been crying for some time. He looks distraught, exhausted, and apologetic.

‘I’d like to take my son home now, please,’ I say to him calmly, looking deep into his magnificent blue eyes before turning my attention back to my baby. He hasn’t moved.

‘I’m so sorry,’ whispers the midwife, ‘but you can’t take him home.’

I look up at her, suddenly furious, cradling my son tightly to my chest. Who is she to deny this simple wish? I study the woman who believes she can prevent me from taking my baby home. She is a plump woman, rather short, with tight mousey brown curls. She too looks as though she has been crying. A tell-tale tear escapes from one of her small puffy red eyes and glides silently down her rosy cheek. I am his mother. And I want to take him home.

‘He is my baby. My son. He’s coming home with me.’

‘Sweetheart…’ begins my husband, but again words fail him. He eventually settles with, ‘I’m so sorry.’

I look from my husband to the midwife and back again, then I look at my baby boy again. He lies in my arms perfectly still, in the same position as before. His eyes are shut.

I cannot let go of my son. How can anybody seriously suggest that I leave him here? I’m his mother. He is not staying here. I need him. I love him. He is mine. My perfect little boy.

They’ve given up. I have not. I can’t let him go. He is mine; he grew from nothing inside me. I felt him moving and wriggling and kicking. They don’t understand.

Since he was born, he has not opened his eyes, nor moved, nor cried. My newborn baby has not cried. He never will. I will never hear his cry. He will never look at his mother. He will never open his eyes. My perfectly formed, beautiful baby boy does not have a heartbeat anymore. His first breath will never come. I cannot let him go, because I’m afraid I will never hold him again.

I cradle my baby tightly and cry.

Bio: Sarah Bakewell is a 21 year old English and Creative Writing student at the University of Salford. She has had a passion for writing since childhood and enjoys reading and writing snappy, short pieces of fiction. 'Chubby Little Cheeks' is her first published short story.

William

WILLIAM

Roger Noons

Old-fashioned Lemonade

 

William visits us twice each week, on a Tuesday and a Friday. He brings milk, cream and cheese, from a dairy at a farm on the other side of the village. My mother says ‘he’s not quite the thing’, but he is always polite and respectful: touches his cap when he bids us good day and farewell. He is profuse with his thanks when my mother hands him the two shillings, and adds, ‘there’s a threepenny bit for yourself William.’

I have no idea how old he is, but I have never seen him near the school. He is taller than me, but exhibits no sign as yet, that he has begun to scrape a razor over his chin. On the rare occasions I catch sight of him in the village, he is alone, and seems intent on his mission: head down and walking at a brisk pace.

I encountered him one Saturday morning. Having been set a project by my teacher, I visited the lake, two meadows beyond the Hall. Walking slowly and quietly along the pathway, I looked up and there through the reeds and mace, saw William seated on a basket, fishing rod in his hands. I waved, but he was not distracted.

I made my way around to him and as I approached, spoke his name in little over a whisper. He looked up, smiled and cast his eyes back down to the bulbous, scarlet float which bobbed on the surface of the water, some five yards from where he sat.

‘Any luck?’ I asked, again quietly.

His head shook furiously, but he did not turn towards me.

‘What bait are you using?’

He proffered a tin containing a wriggling of white and cream maggots, red and brown pupae, amid a modicum of sawdust.

‘Well I hope it improves,’ I said and carefully slipped away to rejoin the path and continue my circumnavigation of the pool.

My task was to visit a ‘stretch’ of water - an apt description, as this morning the surface had an apparent elasticity - and write either a poem, or a composition, about what I saw, heard, smelled or touched. Taste had been steadfastly ignored, as no doubt Miss Robbins was nervous, lest one of her pupils ingest some poisonous plant material.

When I reached a point almost opposite William’s position, I sat on an old stump, took out my notebook and pencil, and screwed up my eyes, the better to contemplate the view. The sun was concentrating its rays on burning through a thin layer of cloud, creating a pale, but warming spotlight, on a clump of reeds to my left. As I wrote, I was distracted by a clumsy heron, who flew unconvincingly up to his ramshackle residence atop a swaying sycamore. In profile, I spied a fish without his beak, as he delivered the sustenance to his partner.

Above the surface of the water, insects were dancing, St. Vitas style, to the hum of wasps and a distant tractor. I heard a ‘plop’ as no doubt a small mammal chose a watery pathway, to avoid a two footed creature who was trespassing on it’s beat. I closed my eyes, the best to use my nose, but little arrived, except the sweetness associated with warming grasses and accompanying vegetation. I changed to my ears, and on concentrating, located a myriad of birdsong. Alas, though I had been trained by Collins, it was my eyes only that afforded recognition.

I stood, meaning to continue my journey and observed William. He was now standing, his rod uplifted and the line taut, seemingly attempting to drag him from the bank. I ran back to where he was and grasped him, around the waist, as he teetered on the edge. The line broke and we fell, me on top, and we rolled into a bed of nettles. I scrambled to my feet.

‘Are you alright William?’

He looked dazed, his face bright red, his right hand still gripping the fishing rod. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘thank you Gloria.’

BIO - Roger Noons began writing in 2006, when he completed a screenplay, for a friend who is an amateur film maker. After the film was made, he wrote further scripts, then began short stories and poems. He occasionally produces non fiction, particularly memoirs from his long career in Environmental Health.

 

A Year of Rain

Lucy Oliver

Espresso

Alice stared at the porch, newly built and smelling of fresh wood shavings. Above it workmen had nailed bright red slates that gleamed in vivid crimson under the sunlight.

           The people who had bought the burnt out shell never saw the yellow-red flames that haunted Alice’s dreams.

She heard a thud and turned, seeing her husband kick a beam lying in the grass, his hand touching the pocket where he had once kept cigarettes.  

They had never returned, until today.

“It’s time,” she had told him and Phil nodded, understanding her.

 Resting a hand on her stomach, Alice wandered around the garden gazing intently at the flowerbeds she had tended. It seemed strange to her that the plants remained unchanged. Leaning down, she touched the grass, tracing her fingers through the wet spikes, touching where her hands last clutched. She drew a sharp breath hoping that the scent of talc and raspberry shampoo had somehow lingered through the year of rain.

 She remembered watching Ella riding her bike across the grass. It was past dinnertime and crossly opening the white framed window, she had shouted, “You’re late!”

 Ella threw her cycle to the ground.

 “Pick it up,” Alice said.

 “After dinner!” Ella said, jumping up the porch steps.

 They had shared a big dish of pasta, the family of three, before Alice tucked Ella into her bed.

 “Sleep well my darling,” she said.

 She and Phil dozed in the lounge.

 On the back porch, the cigarette must have started smouldering.

 The fire fighters pulled them out.

 “Just in time,” the man said, putting a plastic mask across her face.

 She formed the word, ‘Ella,’ with scorched lips, but her throat had swollen and no sound emerged.

 They found the child twenty minutes later, peaceful and asleep. Never to wake.  

            Ella, always late.  

Snowdrops now nestled in the grass, opening tiny white heads over the familiar earth. Minute springs of soft, pale new grass emerged. Alice felt a kick - hard and alive - against her belly, then a tightening under her abdomen. Pressing her lips together, she rubbed her stomach, winching as the sharp cramps clenched deep into her body, accepting them as both a penance and a gift. 

 Turning, she saw Phil looking at her and recognised the expression in his eyes; the look she knew filled her own. He was her emotional mirror image - the only one who hurt as she did, who could possibly understand how she felt.

 He came over and placed his warm hand against her midriff. Her womb contracted at his touch and she moaned. Rocking on her heels, she inhaled the sweet scent of flowers from the garden until the pain began to ease.

 “It’s time,” Phil said. “We have to go.”

 Alice wiped her cheeks and leant down to touch the ground once more.“Good bye, my darling,” she said. “We miss you.”

 

Bio:

Lucy Oliver is published in Take a Break and Stories for Children magazines, as well as various anthologies. She won Stylist magazine's Micro Fiction competition and is currently working on a historical novel.

Writer’s Block

Writer’s Block

 

Marie Fullerton

 

Strong black coffee (and plenty of it!)

 

 

 

Writer’s block, procrastination, what’s the difference?

Well I suppose one is deliberate or otherwise … yeah…. delaying tactics and the other is…. well, writer’s block!

 

****

 

‘Here she goes again. I just get excited and, well I mean, how often do you get written? Let me tell you, it’s a once in a lifetime thing. And after all, it isn’t as if there’s a shortage of storylines, is there? I do my best to shove things under her nose then something just drifts into her head and I’m history… again! Totally unreasonable I say, and before you start harping on about writer’s block spare a thought for me for a change. I mean, I’m the story, have you any idea what it’s like not to make it to thought level?

 

****

 

Now this is a new challenge for me, bit of an oxymoronic situation here – me?  Write about writer’s block when I am the queen of it. Thank you to those that made the suggestion.

OK, I’m gonna get serious. Take an image …say… a bath…. ask questions. Is it full, empty, new, old, plastic, ceramic, chipped?  Who is running it? Why? Is she going to pamper herself soaking in hot bubbles with candles around the bath? Or is he planning to drown the kittens? What if the floor gives way and the bath is upstairs? What if…. he wants to be romantic and share the bath… but she slams his head against the tiles and knocks him unconscious before letting him slip, or pushing him, under the water – ‘ He slipped when we were, you know ….. I couldn’t hold him, sob, by the time the water had drained (and I had put my robe on and smoked a cigarette.) he wasn’t breathing, I tried to hold him above water but I …. I feel so awful, I killed him didn’t I? I couldn’t help him!

                                                                       

****

 

‘Hooray! She’s got one, now I am real! In existence! I can relax while she gets on with it.’

 

****

Hmmm, trouble is that’s been done before …. There is one thing that has always fascinated me though. Where do all the shoes on the motorway come from? They always seem to be men’s, you know, trainers. There must be a story there. He he, that reminds me of a time when I was scrounging a lift from a neighbour, her small son decided he didn’t want to go to school that day and so proceeded to extricate himself from his clothes and attempt to sling them out of the window. Until his mother closed the window that is. By the time he had arrived at this posh public school, he was down to his underpants. Don’t know how I didn’t laugh. We managed to retrieve the majority of them, well minus his cap and I left them to go and explain why they were late to the ….

 

****

 

‘What! What the hell is this? I turn my back thinking I am going to be a delightful murder mystery and she starts rambling on about some delinquent kid next door… Sheesh!’

 

****

 

This is hopeless. My head is buzzing trying to conjure up this story, I can’t decide.

‘Mum!’ a voice escalates from downstairs.

‘What’s for breakfast?’

At seventeen, Tabitha is old enough to sort herself out. I take a deep breath and let out a long sigh before I answer.

‘I am getting ready for work, you’ll have to get your own.’

‘I’m gonna be late, I have to be at Hannah’s or I’ll have to walk.’

The cupboard door slams and a cup falls off the rack smashing into tiny fragments on the tiled floor.

‘Now look what you made me do!’

I resist yelling, refusing to be dragged into her mood.

‘Just sweep it into the corner and I’ll sort it out later – you look in the fridge and decide for yourself what you want for breakfast.’

I finish my make-up and join my daughter downstairs, not daring to look at the state of the kitchen. It will still be there when I get home, I am sure.

‘Did you find something?’ I ask.

I really cannot believe this child - rice pudding on toast! Ah well, at least she’s eaten something and seems happy. By seven am we have left the house and she’s on her way to college and I am waiting to catch the ferry across the harbour.

People are bustling and rushing around, I wonder if they have even noticed the sunrise behind the tower? Two or three gulls silhouette against the bright pink streaks that melt across the last of the night sky. The ferry is rocky this morning and the sea is rising and falling with some force but every so often it stills. The wind whips the waves and the surface looks as if a million cats are lapping at the surface. Oh look, there in the middle of it all, a solitary leaf. What on earth is a sycamore leaf doing floating in the ocean?

 

****

 

Well, that’s it! She’s lost it now – let me get this straight. I start out as a bath, right? Then a murder in the bath, then somehow I end up as an abandoned trainer on a motorway followed by a brat child that de-robes in a car on the way to school. Then, she’s off on one of her daydreams to escape from the breakfast carry on and I end up as a soggy end of some rice pudding on toast in a sea of lapping cats round part of a bloody tree in the ocean! Great! Writer’s block! Where does that leave me? I mean, I just want to be a story.

 

 

Bio:

 

Marie Fullerton is a retired lecturer, she has eight grown up children and she has wanted to be a writer forever.  She also started painting 21 years ago and is completely self-taught. At 50 she was proud of her 2.1 BA degree for English language, literary history and creative writing at UCC and has since had several poems published in anthologies and short stories in E-zines. She is currently working on two novels. Although she has sold many paintings she has only recently tried her hand at illustrating. You can see her artwork on her Facebook page using the following link here

Blog pages:        http://wordangell.wordpress.com/

                         http://mariesimaginings.blogspot.com/