fiction

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October 23rd: Amateur Dramatics

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A bare bush, with a few rosehips at the end of some stalks. At least, I think they're rosehips. Their appearance is not unlike cherry tomatoes. Overlaid text: "#drabbletober".
 

Day 23 of my drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble:

Amateur Dramatics

The curtain fell, the crowd roared their approval. Later, in the bar, everyone clustered round the cast.

"That was amazing!"

"You were so good!"

"That scene in act two..."

Everyone agreed that it was the best production the company had ever done. The scenery, the costumes, the lighting... Everything had been perfect.

"I must admit," said Jim from behind the bar, "I was a bit worried at the start of the month. But it's amazing how it always comes together in time."

"Oh, Caroline always comes up trumps!"

"She lives for this place."

Backstage, Caroline slumped into a chair, exhausted.

Today, I’ve been down at my local amateur theatre all day, building the set for the upcoming production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. For the avoidance of doubt, I should state that I am 100% not the Caroline of this story - I am very much an occasional volunteer.

Whenever I go to help with a “get in” (setting up the stage and set for an upcoming production), I am staggered by the amount of work that goes into each show. I’m also usually vaguely terrified that it won’t all get done in time. Today, we built the basic outline of the set from flats - but there is more building to do, and one of the doors doesn’t currently fit in the doorframe, and nothing has been painted, and someone has to improvise some extra backing because the cyc* isn’t quite wide enough, and build a custom block to fill in that odd shape where the set extends off the stage, and locate some more 2-by-8s to fill in the gap above the French doors, and dress the doors with… I dunno, something, because they look a bit stark…

Caroline** will sort it all out. Somehow.

And this is all against the backdrop of leaks. During the pandemic, the theatre roof went from “we should probably…” to “we really should…” to “drop everything now, new roof!” It has been extremely wet in London this weekend, and despite professional roofers having already done quite a lot of work to make everything watertight, we are still at the “holy shit, more buckets” stage.

Now is not a great time for arts funding. Support your local theatre. Hell, if you don’t have one, support my local theatre. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens on 4th November.

*if nothing else, hanging out in theatres is great for your vocabulary. Todays’ new word: cyclorama.

**names changed to protect the guilty

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October 22nd: Spirit Levels

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Close-up a some tree braches absolutely laden with bunches of bright red berries. Overlaid text: "#drabbletober".
 

Day 22 of my drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble:

Spirit Levels

Joey read it again. And again. He was new to the industry. When Appendix E got mentioned on the trade forum, he'd assumed it was a joke.

"Malc, are you familiar with this?"

Malc fished for his reading glasses.

"Oh, aye, that's been in the book a while. One in a hundred, is it now?"

Joey tried to keep his voice steady.

"And how do I arrange that?"

"Contractors. Call Mrs Allpress, offer her a grand and a bottle of gin."

Joey shook his head. Why on earth did building regulations insist one percent of new-builds must be haunted?

I thought it was about time we had a drabble that sat a little further along the silly spectrum. I know it’s the time of year for ghosties and ghoulies, but no one wants a building inspector coming round to check you’ve installed them correctly.

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October 21st: Jack B. Not Greate

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Fuzzy foliage, turning autumnal brown, against a blue sky. Overlaid text: "#drabbletober".
 

Day 21 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today’s drabble:

Jack B. Not Greate

"I bumped into Jack yesterday."

"How's he doing?"

"We need to practise. Let's play Lightning Nation again."

"He's doing well, seems really happy."

"The new band's working out well?"

"Yeah, he's..."

"C'mon. Jack's wasting his life in his dad's covers band. We've got work to do."

"He's making good money."

"He's spaffing his life away playing the three-chord trick for drunk punters at weddings."

"That's not fair! The bassline for Johnny B. Goode..."

"Yeah, that's..."

"Guys! There's nothing creative in old songs. Jack missed his chance. This is fun. We're going to go places. Lighting Nation, one more time."

Well, that’s the first time I’ve attempted a super-short story entirely as a multi-person dialogue. Let me know how you think it went!

This evening, due to an unfortunate series of circumstances, I missed a play at my local theatre. Had I made it, I would have seen something celebrating the heyday of The Ealing Club in the 1960s. It’s a short play, so they’ve got a band on after every showing - and I just squeaked down in time to snaffle the pint that had kindly been bought for me and watch an absolutely blistering set from The Hornets.

I mean, honestly, the bassline from Johnny B. Goode really is amazing. And tonight was also the first time I’ve ever seen a live band perform Wipeout. Let’s just say… their drummer is up to the job. And then some.

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October 20th: The Puzzle Club

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Day 20 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today's drabble.

The Puzzle Club

They grabbed me and bundled me off the street and into a pitch black room.

Again.

Gas light hissed on, showing a figure in front of a book shelf: curly blonde hair, green suit, a ridged brown-leather corset over an impossibly narrow torso.

Her artificial voice hummed in my ears.

"Welcome..."

"Sophie, I want out."

She smiled. "I don't."

It had sounded fun, an antidote to life's mundanity. I'd signed up immediately, wanting to be plunged into a world of adventure and mystery. Intrigue. Immersive, high-stakes games.

"I lost two fingers last week!"

"I know."

The door slammed behind me.

I love the idea of bargains made, and regretted. Deals sealed before you realise they were a terrible idea. Contracts that must be honoured, even though they are now unwelcome.

When I say “love”, I do of course mean for narrative purpose. They're a right old nightmare in real life!

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October 19th: Saccades

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A tree trunk with a few dry orange leaves clinging to spindly branches. Overlaid text: "#drabbletober".
 

Day 19 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today’s drabble:

Saccades

You do know the human eye can't see in video, don't you? No? It can't. Your eyes jump rapidly from one point to another, sending still images so your brain can build up a picture.

Did you think you saw something from the corner of your eye? By the time you look there, it's gone.

Anything that can movely quickly can slip right past you. It could be close enough to touch you, close enough to steal your breath, but you'd never see it.

Saw something in the corner of your eye?

By the time you look, I'm gone.

Today’s drabble has been a massive fight. There was a lot of staring blankly at a screen. The I wrote a story that was… what is the writer’s technical term again? Ah, yes. It was rubbish.

So here is take two, on a totally different topic. Saccades are a real thing, by the way.

A useful - but dangerous - mechanism for hunting down a story is to search for something cool and interesting (in today’s case, what is the effect that makes your face look distorted in a darkened mirror) and then following links around until inspiration strikes. The downside is, of course, that you can get horribly distracted…

(I think the effect I was after was Troxler’s fading, but boy are there some…. hysterical forum posts out there about perceived facial distortion.)

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October 18th: Johnny

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Close-up of a tree, whose green leaves are just beginning to turn yellow. A couple of prominent leaves have made it to bright pink. Overlaid text: "#drabbletober"
 

Day 18 of my drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble:

Johnny

I used to come here every Friday.

I was sixteen, he was twenty. I drank Pernod and black, thinking it made me look sophisticated. I listened to his stories, and hoped he'd ask me to go home with him. He never did.

A figure hunches over the bar, just like he did, leaning forwards on his elbows. Beside him, a girl clutches an Aperol Spritz.

It's him. Still the same, still twenty, despite the decades.

I pause, and rub my eyes until he's no longer there.

The girl laughs, and flicks her hair, as if she's listening to a story.

When I was 18, I moved away from the town I’d grown up in. Many of my friends did the same. For a few years we’d all be back over the summer, or at Christmas, but slowly people built up lives elsewhere.

My favourite teenage haunt is no longer hauntable (it’s in the process of being converted into flats). Pubs we used to frequent have changed hands, changed decor, or just changed.

Occasionally I’ll see someone, and think: is that….? And no, it usually isn’t. It’s just someone of the same height or build, but twenty-five years younger.

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October 17th: The Fallen Angel

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A collection of small, ornamental bushes trimmed into rounded shapes, in a concrete-edged flowerbed. Most of the trees are green; a few are a dead-looking yellow. Overlaid along the road alongside: green text reading "#drabbletober".
 

Day 17 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today’s drabble:

The Fallen Angel

Denzil said there was a fallen angel on the school playing field. Denzil was always saying stuff like that.

"No, really! You have to see it!"

He shuffled his feet in agitation.

Everyone rolled their eyes, and turned away. I knew it would have to be me. Again.

"All right, Denzil. Let's see it."

There was a pile of feathers on the grass. Probably pigeon.

He pressed one into my hand. "Keep it, it'll bless you." There were tears in his eyes as he stared at his angel.

Years later, I still find the feather unexpectedly in my coat pocket.

During autumn, I am an incurable picker-up of oddments. I find it incredibly difficult to walk past shiny conkers without picking one or two up and putting them in my pockets.

Often, when I put on a different coat, it will have a conker or an acorn in the pocket. Even when I’m convinced that I cleared them all out.

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October 16th: There's Always One

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Green leaves, with clusters of bright orange-red berries. Overlaid orange-red text: "#drabbletober".
 

Day 16 of my drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble:

There’s Always One

As kids we were told never to open the chest. Opening it would unleash something terrible.

That was all our father ever said. It says lot about him, and our relationship with him, that we never so much as touched it.

Even now, with our parents dead, and the house condemned by subsidence, we stand - grown women in our forties - and can't bring ourselves to lift the lid.

Jackson breezes in, laughing. "You superstitious pussycats! It's empty. I looked a couple of years ago.

Helena gasps. "Two years ago?"

"Around the time Mum got ill?"

"And the house started cracking?"

Day 16 means I’ve officially passed the halfway point!

You may be interested to know that, until thirty seconds ago, it was a wooden chest. Then I realised that I’d straight up missed a word out of a sentence earlier, and in order to restore sense I needed to lose a word. Hence the chest now being of non-specific material. I mean, really… what are chests ever made of, other than wood?

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October 15th: Literature

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Reddish acer leaves silhouetted against a cloudy blue sky. Up one side of the picture is the text "#drabbletober".
 

Day 15 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today's drabble:

Literature

It was beautiful: blue leather binding, shiny gold edges. I'd never read Dickens - never wanted to - but I said thank you, nicely, and set it on the shelf.

Did I imagine that it drew its pages in, to avoid touching the other books?

The next day, my copy of Obama's memoir was missing. Surely it was right there? Did the Dickens look... fatter?

I moved the blue book, wedging it between worn paperbacks.

The following day was carnage. Katie Fforde had pages missing, Brother Cadfael was crushed sideways, John Wyndham was on the floor...

Literature was clearly not for me.

Good evening! Today appears to be a tour of my psyche.

Firstly: I do not shelve my books coherently. They are all wedged in anyhow, based on size, order of acquisition, and whimsy. I sometimes worry that the spontaneous hatred engendered by shelving (say) Dennis Wheatley next to Oliver Sacks, or Anthony à Wood next to a book of Matt Pritchett’s cartoons, might cause some sort of explosion. (Yes, they are real examples from my shelves.) I worry about it a lot.

Secondly: I am not that fond of Dickens. He and I met under unfortunate circumstances in school. I have, I concede, since read and enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities, and can deal with A Christmas Carol at an appropriate season. I don’t mind a dated writing style (I wellied cheerfully through Harrison Ainsworth and H. V Morton as a teenager), but I find Dickens very hard going as a rule. He can write a funny line, but boy do you have to wade through the pages to find them.

Thirdly: I have quite a bee in my bonnet about the idea of some books being more worthy than others. Katie Fforde, Ellis Peters and John Wyndham are all up there as authors I have read and re-read, but who don’t necessarily command respect. But they are every bit as welcome to their shelf-space, here, as anyone with a perma-place on the national curriculum.

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October 14th: Just Like Cats

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Day 14 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today’s drabble:

Just Like Cats

Martha's dining room was unbelievable: huge fireplace, minstrels’ gallery, ancestral portraits, the lot. After dinner, an unholy wailing started up outside. Martha rolled her eyes, and opened the window.

"Come on, then. Either come in, or stay out. Make your mind up."

A grey shape slid in. Human, with wild hair and staring eyes.

Martha shrugged. "Banshees are like cats."

"Aren't they omens of death?"

The banshee grew taller, and showed its teeth.

"You have to define your own reality, dear," said Martha. "They're just like cats."

The banshee closed its mouth, and went to curl up on the hearthrug.

I don’t know why I have a persistent desire to make banshees unscary, but apparently I do. I find something very enjoyable in the idea of a spectral being that can be a screaming terror, but can also be kind of domestic and friendly.

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October 13th: The Lovers' Ring

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Sparse grass, dead leaves, and a luxuriant crop of mushrooms (or maybe toadstools). Overlaid text: "#drabbletober".
 

Day 13 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today’s drabble:

The Lovers’ Ring

Nick and I always felt like two halves of a whole. We thought the same, felt the same. No-one noticed that we loved each other.

We found a gold ring, once. We couldn't marry, but we spoke our vows and hid the ring under a stone behind the church.

That was before the war.

I don't know where Nick is, now, and we need money. I told the guys I'd fetch the ring, and sell it. Nick would understand, I knew he would.

When I moved the stone, I found a crumpled scrap of paper.

"I know you'll understand, N"

I don’t have a good origin story for this. There I was, sitting innocently in a pub with a pint of beer, listening to a nice acoustic set from Pete Green, and the idea just popped into my head.

I had expected that today’s drabble might be about music, and community, and old friends long unseen… but apparently not.

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October 12th: Mamie Counts Planes

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Three maple-shaped leaves lying on the ground: one yellow, one red, one green. Overlaid text: "#drabbletober".
 

Day 12 of my drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble:

Mamie Counts Planes

Mamie counts. Every night.

At first, she hated them roaring overhead.

"That's the seventeenth tonight," she'd mutter as she brewed her evening cocoa.

She'd try to read.

"Eighteenth."

She'd stuff her head under her pillow, and still start awake.

Now, she sits in her chair, blanket round her shoulders, and counts them both ways. Thirty three went out tonight, thirty have come back.

The cocoa is cold.

"Thirty one," she whispers, as a coughing engine limps home.

Mamie waits. She waits until sunrise.

Then she slips down to the church, and lights candles for the crews which didn't make it.

My mum was born during the Second World War. Her father, my grandfather, was away in the navy fighting.

Although she was just a small child, she has a very strong memory of lying in her cot and hearing the bombers fly out every night from the nearby airbase - and fly back. It made me wonder how the adults felt, hearing the planes leave and return each night.

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October 11th: The Little Girl Who Loved Yellow

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A tangle of autumnal foliage. Overlaid with the text "#drabbletober".
 

Day 11 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today’s drabble:

The Little Girl Who Loved Yellow

My hand hovered over the bottle of pink food colouring.

"Yellow," whispered my mum, voice shaking. "She loves yellow."

"I loved orange when I was six. People change."

Mum looked me over, top-to-toe black and bleached hair. "She loves yellow."

I sighed, tinted the icing yellow, and spread it on the cake. Cake for the birthday after Pippa's sixth birthday, the birthday we celebrate every year. Cake she would never eat.

The framed photo of me changes: new school, graduation, engagement party.

The matching photo of Pippa stays the same. Yellow dress, yellow ribbons. Trapped forever at six.

This is another idea that has been rattling around for a while, but which never seemed to have quite enough substance for a short story. Clearly the answer is that I just need to write shorter stories.

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October 10th: Immortal Glory

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A row of autumnal trees, with a landscape spread out behind them. Blue sky, fluffy white clouds, overlaid with the text "#drabbletober".
 

Day 10 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today’s drabble:

Immortal Glory

Yes, your majesty. I'm afraid your body could not be repaired. The bullets hit too many organs.

Oh, naturally. Justice was served immediately. I'm told the screams could be heard as far as the library.

I visited the slave markets this morning, and...

No, of course not, your majesty. Obviously you must choose your own vessel. However, I saw an excellent opportunity. If you wish, they can be brought here immediately.

Yes, them. Athletic, tall, very imposing - and identical twins. You could...

Indeed, majesty. Think of the versatility - body double, spare...

Of course, majesty. I'll arrange the transfer this afternoon.

OK, OK, I admit it. I’m sucker for brain-in-a-jar narratives. Although, in reality, I find it very hard to see past the problems we’d land ourselves with by perfecting the art of transferring a consciousness into or out of its original body.

Still, good for a story :-)

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October 9th: The Taste of Paint

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Slim tree branches with green, red and gold foliage against a blue sky. Overlaid text: "drabbletober".
 

Day 9 of the drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today’s drabble:

The Taste of Paint

We threw ourselves into it. We were adults, we'd owned the flat for years.

How hard could it be?

We watched YouTube. We read the booklet the local DIY store produced. We even, feeling like children, asked our parents for advice.

And we started, mugs of tea in hand, laughing, radio turned up.

The first effort didn't go well. We had to strip it and start again. The second was worse: more YouTube, more Googling, more phone calls. More advice we couldn't follow.

We are three days in. Widening cracks, plaster dust in our hair and the taste of paint.

There is not much subtlety today: decorating is going on in my home. There is Grand Disarray. Furniture has been moved from its usual locations to clear space (and now it is impossible to walk along the hall without tripping over a bedside table or a curtain pole).

As with all household jobs, the work has expanded as it is examined. Unexpected tasks have revealed themselves, and minor difficulties are queueing up for attention. In other words, it is a totally normal DIY project.

So far, nothing dreadfully untoward has happened. But I fear it is only a matter of time…

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October 8th: Sleepover

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A sunken path, covered in dead leaves, leads away into trees whose leaves are still green. Text overlaid in black: "#drabbletober"
 

Day 8 of my drabble-a-day challenge, now entering its second week! Here is today’s drabble:

Sleepover

Mum came to check we were in bed. She turned out the light, but the streetlamp outside meant we could still more or less see each other.

I waited until Laura was nearly asleep before I told her.

"Uncle Michael died in that bed you're in."

You should have seen her! Talk about vertical take-off, it was hilarious.

Uncle Michael was our mum's brother, an ex-army man who loved pranks and jokes. He didn't really die in that bed.

He died in this one. I feel his fingers on my neck. Scaring my sister hadn't been my idea.

While on the motorway the other day, I passed a lorry full of mattresses. At least, the outside of the lorry was decorated with the logos of a mattress company. I noted that their slogan includes the recommendation that you replace your mattress every 8 years.

Which, to be fair, I’d probably also say if I sold mattresses.

As it is, I just regard it as another attempt to remove ghosts from our modern era.

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October 7th: Dark Fashion

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A cottage, almost hidden by a huge red creeper. Text overlay: "#drabbletober".
 

Day 7 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today’s drabble:

Dark Fashion

My lady's shadow lay discarded on the chair. The shadows the seller pulled from his sack shuddered and twisted, but my lady shrugged.

"Too boring. Too tame."

"A bear?"

"Too bulky."

"A lion?"

"The Viscountess has a lion."

When my lady finally left, the shadow of a northern moonwolf flowed unwillingly behind her. She scurried to display it at the salons.

This winter, the fashion is visiting the Ice Palaces.

That is my country. I will show my lady the ice path, oh yes. Somewhere out there is a moonwolf without a shadow. And it is angry, so angry...

Today I have been out hiking in the trackless wilds of the Chilterns. It’s an area of the country I always think of as being quite flat: this is unfair, there are definite hills to be had.

I stood on a chalk edge, watching the shadows of clouds racing across the farmland below me. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that in south-east England before.

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October 6th: Run

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Two pale pink roses, growing on a bush. Against the colour of the soil, is overlaid the text "#drabbletober".
 

Day six of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here’s is today’s drabble:

Run

It was an odd little place, tucked down a side-road. Half a dozen rickety tables, a laminated picture-menu and stacks of cheap, wooden chopsticks.

The food was good - we ate dumplings, and a chilli-soaked dish of aubergine and ground lamb - but the constant gaze of the waiters made me nervous. Was every whispered conversation about us?

"Let's get out of here."

When I returned from the bathroom, my sister was gone. Her chair was overturned, the restaurant door open. On the table were the crumbs of a fortune cookie, and a scrap of paper.

It read: RUN.

This is an idea that’s been lurking about in the back of my head for years. It was just an isolated plotpoint: someone opens a fortune cookie, finds the fortune inside just says “run”, and acts on it. I could never come up with quite why this happened, or what happened next.

But I think, for a drabble, that’s OK.

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October 5th: What Care I For Beans?

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A pile of conkers, in and out of their shells. Overlaid text: "#drabbletober", in pale green.
 

Day 5 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today's drabble:

What Care I For Beans?

Bodies lay broken among the green leaves, and blood soaked into the earth with the late, golden sunshine.

One man stood, silent, a tear running down his face.

"Victory!" boomed a voice above him. The knight swayed in his saddle, light-headed with wounds. "The Queen is safe!"

He stared down at the man. "Aren't you happy? Are you another traitor?"

"This was my field. My crop of beans."

"Ha!" The knight threw back his head, laughing. "We save kingdoms, and you talk of beans!"

The knight rode off, leaving the man to wonder how to feed his family come winter.

There is controversy this evening. I wrote this on my phone, on the tube, on the way home from a comedy show (Leo Reich’s Literally Who Cares? which I highly recommend). Some random online word-count-y thing assured me it was 100 words.

Then I get home, and check with my trusty emacs M-x-count-words (shut up, shut up, I am a computer programmer from the past), and it says… 101. I think it boils down to whether you consider “light-headed” to be one word or two.

Anyway, I have written a very short story, in accordance with an arbitrary constraint. It just might not have been exactly the same arbitrary constraint as I’m usually working to. You’ve got to pick your battles.

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October 4th: Three Left Feet and a Dead Mouse

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A hydrangea bush, with green-to-blue flowers in the foreground and pink flowers further back. Overlaid with the text "#drabbletober" in pale purple.
 

Day four of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today’s drabble:

Three Left Feet and a Dead Mouse

She slammed the plastic crate down on the desk.

"Again! I'm fed up of clearing their mess out of the portals."

I flinched. "What is it this time?"

"Three feet!" She flipped the lid open. "Three left feet. And a dead mouse. All in portal one. It's not right."

"I'll call the professor..."

"And I don't want to know what's in portal two. If the prof wants to collect it, he'll need a bucket."

It was always the same after student parties. Someone would finish a crate of beer, and wonder if the teleporter really was limited to inorganic matter.

I don’t have a sensible origin story for today’s drabble. Having been sitting at a desk all day, I went for a walk this evening. Nothing glamorous, just a prowl round my local neighbourhood while trying to think of a tiny plot - and apparently failed teleportation is where it’s at today.