Faithless Falling Flower

Why? Because it's just sitting here dammit. 

My writing has taken a turn lately. Well lately being starting late August, and unfortunately it's dried up again.

It's a lot more personal, a lot more raw and emotional than it used to be.

Which is always good.

************************************

You say that your favourite flower was the sunflower. When I laugh lightly and ask why, you say sadly with your eyes that it reminds you of your mother. 

 You were a troublesome kid. Or at least your father tells you. Your relatives used to agree and tut in unison while your mother tried to make you sit straight as you squirmed uncomfortably on the chair, tugging at the pretty lace they put on you. They called you the mischievous one you tell me and I can't help but smile. You still are.

Childhood is a paradox for you. That particular shade of nostalgia surrounds it, because you know, it's childhood, yet it's dirty. Dirty with the sounds of beatings and shoutings; punishments of mirrors, lectures of fidelity and the like. You were happy, but it doesn't make you happy to know now. It's all tinged for you, with the hintings of the invisible, hidden motives and meanings, and hidden powers threatening to encroach on your life. 

 Hidden strings that you still have to try to bat away. It's a childhood that you still long for though, because it didn't slip away through the years. She died didn't she? The childhood you, somewhere amidst the death, the confusion, the tenderness and the lack of it. Maybe it was when everyone became a lot nicer out of sympathy, and never stopped. Maybe it was the way no one spoke a word of Chinese again. Maybe it was when your father, tried to pick himself up and uprooted the family to another land with another woman. 

 If that wasn't it, maybe it was where you lost your first kiss, to someone who didn't treasure it as much as you did. Or maybe it was when you realised you didn't care that much about it anyway. Maybe it was when you darkly gave yourself to someone who everyone blamed, and refused to believe that it was your fault at all. It was gone by the time you found yourself alone in your room, day after day, writing powerful missives of hurt to no one in particular. Mutilated when your father, always so strong, broke down and tried to find in you a confidante, because maybe to him, you reminded him of her too much. All before you were fifteen.

You call her stupid. The earlier you. It does puzzle me because when I see a father burst into the bathroom and find his little girl sitting there with a dull metal blade, it's not stupidity I see. 

And that's the thing I guess you're looking for, that time far away where you were once, as your mother wrote in a diary you attacked voraciously, "not very bright". Before the flows of hurt came and swept everything away. And maybe, they still linger around. I've seen the flash of hurt in your eyes when nothing you do is ever enough. I see that same flash in the eyes of the girl who struggled to master her ABCs by the age of 1 while her mother threatened and administered beatings. But you still miss her. 

 I guess in the same way, it's what I look back on too. You don't really understand, but maybe you will like this. I choose to look back to the time before everything was swept away, when there still is a you in the present. A time where you say, and not where you have said. 

 That's why my favourite flower is the sunflower, it reminds me of you.

It's been a trying few months for me. Not really writing wise. But things have been happening that really took my mind off everything.

Still. I wrote for a period again before when and for a short while after I attended a writer's camp.

I've been digging for the pieces for awhile and I've finally found the one I wanted to post here.

I've been dabbling a little into poetry writing, which many of you might be aware I am rubbish at. But who knows, I may get better.

Don't expect anything much in the meantime.

Anyhow. Here it is.

I never knew I could write with prompts before, but I was forced to during the camp and it didn't turn out so bad.

**************************************

They stared awkwardly out at him from the photo. It was obvious that they were all trying to smile. Out of the five, only three were successful, and out of the three, only two seemed to smile with ease.

The photo was set in Sepia, though naturally the age of sepia had long passed. Perhaps they were a young strapping bunch of musicians, chasing their another record deal, or their first. Failing and fading into obscurity with no impression but the one he had rescued from the studio floor. They sat, or stood; a rock band without instruments.

He coughed as the dust within the old musty place got into his throat, stirring up more swirls of matter that rose up from the ancient amplifiers and once completely soundproof walls. The studio was his now, and would be where dreams would be grown, and made. Some of them, as the photo reminded him, only like fruit growing from a tree to an immense size, ultimately falling to the ground and bursting, with even the seeds being eaten by the disrespectful wild.

Why the photo had been left behind by the previous owners he did not know. Probably simply forgotten in the clutter and chaos that must have marked the previous end. He straightened and pinned it up next to his treasured autographed poster of the Beatles that dominated the far wall. Maybe this time, some seeds would remain.

***********************

It's short, sorry.

I wish I could find the photo, it really is quite quaint.

I don't recognise the band, I assumed they must have been. 3 middle aged nerdy looking white guys, one 30+ chinese/japanese dude and perched on the couch that dominated the photo, an unmistakably japanese girl who couldn't have been more than twenty at max, giving an innocent smile.

Hmmmm.

Prom?

Caley watched the clock as she chatted with her friends. Only a few minutes left to lunch, she still hadn’t gone to her locker to grab her books for her next class. Her friends were talking about prom again. It seemed that was all anyone talked about at school this week.

“Hey, I’m going to go to my locker and get my books.” Caley said quickly as she hurried to the door. “I don’t want to be late again.” She raised her eyebrows at her friends.

They smiled at her and returned to their conversations. She hastily strode to the door. Upon reaching the door, she realized she was stuck in the door jam. Everyone was either trying to get in or out. Once out the door, Caley found that she was still stuck behind Damon. She struggled to get past him but couldn’t.

All of a sudden, the entire men’s acapella group appeared down the hallway. They began singing something as they paraded down the hall. She noticed John was leading them again as she made quick eye contact with him. So typical, they’re probably advertising again… Caley shrugged and resumed her futile attempts to get past Damon. They continued singing in perfect harmony, adding random dissonances. The hallway was crowded with people trying to see what was going on. As they drew closer to her lunchroom, she noticed that they were coming her way. Caley tried to get away as they came nearer.

Unexpectedly, they stopped in front of the door as John took the lead role and burst into trills. Damon stepped aside. It was then that Caley realized all eyes were on her. In shock, she backed away, into the wall. Blake cut them off; Caley noticed the added second as John stepped forward.

“Do you want to go to prom with me?” Her eyes grew wide as he held out his hand to her.

Unable to speak, she nodded her head and took his hand.

“Yeah…” Caley finally gasped when she had come to her senses.

John’s winning smile appeared as he stretched out his arms. Caley noticed Mia’s wide grin off to her side as she hugged John.

“Only if my dad says yes…” Caley whispered to him.

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Obviously this is the previous installment to the series Clio is working on. She realizes this probably isn't her best work, but it pretty much is 100% true for those of you who are wondering. She still is no good at making plots up, so we'll see where this goes. By the way, her dad did say yes, no matter how grudgingly. Do let Clio know if you would like her to continue this series or stop where it is. Comment or post on the tagboard please. 

Twenty Questions

Caley chatted casually with her friends as her date danced with another girl. Her eyes flicked over to Mia and Damon dancing together. She smiled to herself, remembering how she had successfully set that up. Her eyes roaming the dance floor, Caley saw many couples dancing to a fast tempo song. Looking around more, she briefly caught Camille’s eye and winked at her. Camille grinned back at her and continued dancing with Jace.

“Caley… Caley.”

Caley’s head snapped back toward her friends as she heard her name, several times.

“What were you saying? Sorry, I was watching Camille and Jace.” Everyone smiled at the mention of the names.

“Oh, I was just asking how you're enjoying your night.” One of Caley’s friends smirked at her. Caley rolled her eyes at her friend just as the song ended.

“I’m having a wonderful time.” She responded, shooting her friend a look.

Just then, she felt a familiar tap on her shoulder. Caley whirled around, perhaps a little too quickly, and came face-to-face with her date. One of her favorite songs had begun and couples were pairing up for slow dance. John smiled lightly as he offered Caley his hand.

“Care to dance?”

Caley took his hand and they walked out onto the dance floor. Once there, she placed her hands daintily around his neck as he placed his around her waist. Gazing into his eyes, she marveled at their greenish blue hue once again. A silent moment passed as they both searched for a conversation started.

“Hey, I have an idea,” Caley pronounced, “Let’s play twenty questions, or something like that.”

“Sure, that sounds good. You go first.”

“Let’s see, are you having a good time tonight?” Caley started with a simple question, so she hoped.

“Definitely! This is great! Are you?” Caley nodded as they swayed slowly to the music.

“Okay, I have a serious question. Why me?” John looked quizzically at her. “Why’d you ask me?” John pondered for a minute, trying to come up with the best response.

“You're one of my best friends, I knew we’d have a good time together. And…” John melodious voice trailed off, meanwhile taking on his more serious tone of voice.

“Oh…” Caley mused over the answer. She wondered what it meant and why John didn’t finish his thought. The next few seconds felt like a lifetime as the long moment elapsed.

“Well, there’s another thing, but…”

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Clio apologizes profusely for not writing in a long time, she has been busy and had no inspiration whatsoever. However, recently, some crazy occurrences have given her something to work with. This installment isn't much, but she hopes to continue this series soon. The series is out of order as well. She will compile and finish it all. See if you can find which post this matches with.

Didn't make a sound

My heart is stuck.

Let's go back to the years before.

**************************************************

Back then we had to earn our keep. I was only seventeen, and at the time, it wasn't too old an age to work. An education had to be earned, and earn it I did. My mother found me some employment in the city, a twenty minutes walk from my old village in the countryside; near enough, yet it was a different world from the one I grew up in.

In the village we had five households, sixty three people, and their names I could recite for you even today, though the place where it used to stand is graced by a road intersection and the forlorn privilege of perching myself on that very spot and looking around in nostalgic silence has been long taken from me.

You have to understand what it must have been like, a lanky wide-eyed country boy standing in the noisy rice shop as about fifty sweaty men bustled about with their rice sacks, struggling to listen to the instructions being shouted at me in Hokkien by the towkay. He shouted because there was no other way to be heard, not that I could hear him anyway, one moment I was peering into the dim mass of frenetically moving people, next thing I knew, a piece of paper with an address scrawled on it was thrust into my hand and I was shown the exit with a rice bag over my shoulder.

And so I set off on my journey across the cramped and foreign land. The city wasn't too big, but the roads certainly took some getting used to. The way people clustered themselves along the narrow walkways that lined the open streets, not walking straight down the middle like they always did in the countryside. No, the road was for the rich. The rich and their rickshaws and trishaws and the expensive Ford vehicles. The noise too, was something that kept at me, kept reminding me of the strangeness of the land.

I followed the directions the towkay had shouted at me with great difficulty, but after asking multiple strangers and flashing the address at them, I found myself in a cramped damp alley. For the first time in the town I heard silence; the occasional car engine echoed into that narrow space from what seemed an eternity away, and all was quiet save the dripping of water from the rooftops, forming themselves into shallow stagnant pools all around.

I made my way slowly down the alley, all too aware of the splashes my feet made in the puddles, doing my best to skip over them whenever I could, ignoring the load on my back. I was younger and stronger then you see. I came to a rusty plate in the wall. Number 17. The door next to it that served as the entrance into the building was broken, hanging off it's hinge, and I stepped in softly.

Everything on the inside was old too. The cobwebs were there in the corners if you looked, the sheets of calligraphy that hung on the walls, hinting at long gone opulence, were yellowed and stained. I was to go up to the second floor, and the wooden rotten stairs made no noise as I climbed upwards.

The door to the apartment, or room, or flat at 2B was red. At least it had been red once, now it was red, speckled with black, brown, white and brown where all the wood had come off in strips. I rapped on the door and I called out, the knock sounding unusually loud in the confined landing between the stairs and the door and it swung open almost immediately, as if I had been expected all along. Not simply expected, because I surely was, but as if I had been waited for.

The old man muttered as he let me in, pushing over pieces of junk on the floor to make way for me as I entered the room, I suppose he was scolding me for being late but I had been too busy staring at the glowing box in the corner of the dark room. That was the first time I had ever seen a television, the miracle picture machine and it's strange filtered way of delivering sounds. Distorted. Foreign.

"Ah Kim ah!" He bellowed at the top of his lungs, startling me. City folk are strange people. Nowadays they, you all I mean speak so fast. Back then, they would shout for nothing. The living room was cramped, almost claustrophobic, and he had a need to shout. But yes, for the first time I noticed the old woman who lay in a massive foreign chair facing the tv. Her eyes closed. She did not stir.

"The rice is finally here, we can eat soon." He brayed, ignorant to the fact that Ah Kim didn't quite seem to care. Or move actually. A chill started at the tip of my fingers.

He grabbed the rice bag from me, his sinewy limbs deceptively strong and clattered his way across the room. He stood by the chair and regarded her. "Ah Kim ah, are you cooking today?"

"No?"

He paused as I stood there in silence. I wondered if I should say something. But didn't.

The old man bustled off into the kitchen, swinging in the rice sack as he did. "Hang on, I'll get the money. You stay right there." A moment later, I heard a great crashing sound of pots and cymbals. "Just hang in a bit" he shouted.

I leaned over as the ringing faded into emptiness again. The old woman was still lying there, completely motionless. She wasn't breathing, and her leathery speckled skin was cold to the touch.

A sudden fanfare from the television startled me, and I jumped back as a man in a suit appeared on the screen to synthesised applause and the old man creaked back into the room, shuffling notes in his hand and peering at them with thick squarish glasses. The type that you see nowadays occasionally, in joke shops.

He looked up after counting the money and caught me staring at her. Rolling his eyes he said, "I know she's a little weird at times, excuse her." Flashing a look towards the chair he raised his voice again. "Ah Kim ah, this is the last time I'm cooking this week. I swear."

"She's been sitting there for days, lazy pig. Kim ah, please send our visitor off."

I backed out of that strange place with the money, leaving him behind by himself, only letting myself shed a tear once I was out of the building, out of the alley where he wouldn't hear me. That affection in his voice you see, was and is to this day the plainest purest love I've ever heard.

********************************************

I paid a lot of attention to the sounds I used in this story. I don't know why. I just did it halfway through and I played it up once I realised what I was doing. Don't know if you noticed.

As with a lot of my stories, I started with the ending, made a long start and somehow worked my way there. At the same time, the protagonist doesn't speak. He doesn't say something, not til years later. I didn't realise it until now.

I wonder what it could mean.

(;

And with that I've broken my four month long creative drought. Thank you all.

Just Maybe...

“Happy New Year!” Caley was greeted with the exclamations of her friends, “Are you glad to be back here? I sure am not.”

The New Year had come and gone, and Caley was back in school – New Year, blank slate, and a fresh start, exactly what she wanted.

Caley chatted with her friends for a few minutes, catching up on what they had done over their break. The first bell rang, indicating that she had only five minutes to being late. Not an auspicious start… Hurriedly going to her locker, Caley keyed in her combination and rummaged through her stuff to find the books she needed. Suddenly, she felt a tap on her left shoulder. Looking around, Caley did a 360° and found John standing to her right, smiling at her. She raised her eyebrows.

“Hey, how was your break? I have something for you.”

Caley looked inquisitively at John. “What is it?”

“A slightly delayed Christmas present.”

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Clio knows she hasn't written in a long time. That is because she has not had any inspiration or time to. This is the first unfinished part to a new installment of stories. Thanks for reading.

Cinderella 2.0

And so Charming held out his hand and the horse-drawn carriage with which he was to carry his new bride away screeched to a halt.

"You imbecile, I distinctly remember telling you that you were to stop just before the ratty little cobblestones outside that run-down house!"

Without waiting for his snotty little driver to reply, he flicked his shoulder-length, perfectly-coiffed hair over his tailored shoulder piece and descended daintily onto the filthy streets of the district.

"Lay out your coat for me to walk on, my shoes are new today."

His aforementioned "imbecile driver" (otherwise known as Ivan) sighed mentally.

"Well, aren't they new every day..."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I meant to say, 'Right away, Sire'."

Ivan bent forward and mentally told him to shove off, all while smiling as pleasantly as he could and laying out his best coat on the floor. Charming tossed his hair again and strode across Ivan's coat, making sure to grind it further into the cobblestone dirt with each step. Flinging open the doors of the cottage dramatically, he stood arms akimbo, all the while smiling Charmingly™ at the astounded residents of the house.

And waited.

And waited.

After about three seconds, his patience had worn thin.

"IMBECILE, WHERE'S THE WIND?!"

"Right away, Sire."

The weary Ivan ran forward and fanned Charming furiously, causing his ridiculously unnecessary cape to flutter gorgeously in the "wind".

All natural handsomeness, you see.

And Charming was pleased.

Satisfied, he strode snobbishly along the dusty ground of the house, loudly declaring a desire to meet with the "fair maiden who was able to fit into the glass slippers".

An awkwardly beautiful young lady stepped forward, and Charming's heart fluttered like a teenager's. This was her. He'd know her anywhere.

Her shiny hair resembled spun gold, and her complexion was as fair as fresh cream. Her nose, delicate and adorable, provided a lovely balance to the unabashed fullness of her lightly flushed lips. He sighed appreciatively, eyes trailing down to her tiny waist. The tight bodice she wore accentuated her beautiful shapeliness delightfully, and he delighted at the perkiness of her ample bosom.

His tone softened almost immediately. "Beauty, whatever is your name?"

"Ella," she replied, too shy to meet his eye.

At this moment, Ivan came rushing in, glass slipper in hand.

"Sire..."

However, Ella looked up at the sudden intrusion, and Ivan caught her eye. Their breaths hitched simultaneously, and Ivan nearly dropped the shoe.

"Ivan, pass me the shoe," Charming declared pompously, annoyed at the constant eye contact between the two.

In a flash, Charming had slipped the glass shoe onto Ella's foot, and was making eyes at her. "Oh, my fair lady, your foot is truly a perfect fit. You must come back to my palace and be my lawful wedded wife!"

She blanched. "I'm sorry, Your Highness. I...can't. There is another man."

His heart sank. "Who, pray ask, is this man so unworthy of your honorable love?"

Bashfully, she sidled over to Ivan. This time, it was Charming's turn to go completely pale.

"Him?!"

Ivan shrugged. "Well, you could always fire me, Sire, I'm getting too old to work anyway."

Combined with Ella's torturingly pleading eyes, Charming couldn't help but give in.

"Very well."

Dejected, Charming turned around and left, leaving Ella and Ivan in privacy. Just as Ivan was about to carry Ella off into the romantic sunset, a booming voice spoke for the last time from the doorway.

"Just one kiss, though?"

"No, Sire."

Charming pouted. "Fine, then I want the shoe back."

Strategy #1056

She plops down beside me; I inwardly groan. Once again, she makes the unwise decision of starting a conversation when I am busy.

"Are you busy?"

I look sideways at her, raise an eyebrow, and continue writing, hoping the answer will be evident.

She stares at me expectantly and blinks.

Apparently not evident, then.

She abruptly decides my answer is taking too long to arrive, and continues anyway. "Do you like my hair?"

Not once do I take my eyes off my pencil, but I nod once curtly in a futile attempt to satisfy her vanity.

She frowns and tilts her head to the side. "Why do you never talk?"

My pencil stops moving on the sheet of paper. She is making me very cross.

"Are you shy?" she offers hopefully.

I place my pencil down and turn to face her. "Why do you never shut up?"

She gasps in an offended manner (causing a twisted sort of amusement to slice through me), and it appears to be effective, because she tosses her hair and leaves in a huff.

I mentally file my question away for future use.

03:00

*****************************************

Midnight in the city. He shifted in his seat on the back of the bus. His hands digging into the subtly grime covered pseudo cushions he sat upon, he stared out the window.

They said the city never sleeps, the unearthly orange glow of the streetlights confirmed it, forming a highway in the darkness where the shadows fled. Still, there was a quiet about the night and a strange way where every single sound made by the creaking vehicle which was carrying him onwards echoed out beneath the starless grey sky.

He found his body pressed slightly uncomfortably against the left window as the bus turned, off the highway and onto another long straight road. The lights were dimmer, the blackness closer and endless, broken only by the occasional hanging branch or overgrown leaf hanging out from behind its veil.

On and on the bus travelled, the seats swaying up and down in an almost rhythmic fashion, down that long winding road. Its two headlights forming two ovalish pools of brightness before the slow moving vehicle. A spot of brightness in a world of nothing. The darkness closed in on the bus, and so did time.

He awoke to find himself alone on the bus. He was the only passenger. Rubbing his bleary eyes he checked his watch. 3:00 a.m. He looked beyond the glass and saw the moon in the sky, but nothing else.

The moon. The road. The bus. The constant lights.

The bus no longer bobbed up and down, but he could feel the hum of the engine, and could see the streetlamps passing by. He looked through the windscreen of the bus and saw the road stretching out into forever, disappearing as the gloom swallowed it up, the edge of darkness never closer than it was before though the bus steadily travelled forwards.

It isn't, his mind whispered to him.

Something was definitely wrong, bus services didn't run at this time anyway, and though he had probably missed his stop, he was sure that he would have at least picked something familiar out in the landscape.

The landscape. There was none, none that he could see. Just the moon, the streetlamps and the road; the latter two long blended and blurred into insignificance, till they became as constant as the moon itself. Unchanging.

He rose unsurely from his seat, tottering as he stood more from uncertainty than the fresh tingling sensation of cramped limbs. Pushing past two empty seats and a pole, he paused halfway down the aisle, his footsteps sounding hollowly against the floor, dominating the relative silence of the bus.

"Hello...?" he called out to the bus driver hidden from his view and got no reply. He stood there, straining for any sound beyond the by now all too familiar. The engine kept humming as panic and fear slowly began to grow within him.

Hesitantly he took another step forward, and his foot impacted the floor like an anvil. His heart beat furiously in his chest, and he waited. Silence.

As he crept his way forward very soon he began to make out a figure hunched over the steering wheel. It didn't move, but only kept it's eyes forward, staring straight into the road ahead. He couldn't make anything out in the distance either.

He would've called out, but again his mind screamed at him that something was wrong. Even so, he found himself right behind it and reached out a hand. He stopped short of it's shoulder and paused. He stood there, almost as if in a trance, caught between his fear of what would happen, and struggling against his need to end his predicament. Suddenly it became very clear in his mind that his situation was certainly very out of the ordinary.

Uncertainty and trepidation blossomed into fear and full blown panic as he stumbled away. Away from that thing which he was certain was not human, as far away as he could. Back, back to where he had been, the seat at the back. He shivered as he settled back into the cramped space, sitting upright in his seat he watched the unchanging nothing beyond the window and the moon far and beyond, ever changing but still the same. And as the cold descended on him, he found his eyes tiring, the dread and gloom creeping up on him ever so slowly. He huddled up in his sweater, pulling the folds tighter around him.

Five minutes, ten minutes, an hour, it did not matter. His watch had stopped working at 3:01 a.m. and there was no one to tell him how much time had passed. The moon would not. The sun would not. He reached to scratch his back, but then realised that his arm could not move, and so he closed his eyes and went to sleep, surrendering to the dark even as he felt the chilling numbness spread throughout his limbs.

********************************

So I cheated, hah wrote this quite some time back.

Maybe it's because I haven't been writing for too long, but what came so easily to me and looked not very good seems a lot better I suppose.

I wrote this story after being inspired by a half remembered legend of a "twilight zone" where travellers on random highways in australia or malaysia ended up driving on a road that never ended.

My hero doesn't face his monster, partly because he isn't a hero. He's just a poor soul, like you or me. Sadly, most of us aren't hero material. Deal with it. :D

Mundane Horrors

This story is 90% true.

And my goodness did I encounter a lot of strange people on public transport that day.

If only it ended where the story did.

**********************************************

So our precocious hero once again found himself on his way to the bus stop, not knowing what horrors lay ahead of him.

As he would later find out, much.

Too much.

He slid past the slow-moving couple, the kind that you see, walk behind and curse at on every pavement and couldn't help but crack a wry smile when he saw the big bold words in electric blue font on the back of the guy's sports shirt :

Breast stroker

Tanjong Katong Swimming Club

He slid his way onto the bench at the stop, nestling himself tightly on the only available space in between the aunties and their huge bags of vegetables when his danger sense began to tingle.

Frowning, he looked up and saw nothing. The bus stop was crowded, but there was nothing interesting of note, no-one interesting of note. Then he noticed her. Stoned out expression, super thick plastic nerdy kiddy looking red glasses, messy hair and buck teeth. She plonked herself on the far end of the bench for all of two seconds.

Then she got up and stretched, as those super slim, super tanned fitness instructors in skimpy outfits tend to do on "fitness" channels where most of the audience had to be male, staring vapidly to the left, paying no attention whatsoever to the right, which incidentally, happened to be the direction the buses were all coming from.

In any case, she was harmless he thought. A little weird but harmless. That feeling soon changed when she stretched again, upwards this time, lifting her danky looking black top, which he suspected was the only reason why he could not see stains of uncontemplatable nature on it, to reveal her wrinkly pale stomach.

Just then, a bus pulled up; not his. He watched in horror as almost everyone in the stop promptly rose to their feet and queued up to get into the bus, leaving three people in the stop. Him, exercise lady, and an excessively pretty girl on his left, who seemed oblivious to the danger about to befall her.

Most honestly its not like he liked to stare at her and observe the unnatural colour of her belly, however if he was going to catch his bus, he would have to look to his right, and hopefully past her, and not at her.

Empty bus-stops however, rarely stay empty, much to the consternation of our now endangered hero. He could only watch and scream silently in his head as exercise lady, despite her heavy exertions, which now led her to point her head at the ceiling and gape like a fish trying to breathe air every ten seconds or so, seemed to develop a sense of civic consciousness and consideration for others, leading her to move in from the edge of the bench. Towards him.

As he moved closer to the left of the bench, inching ever so slightly away from exercise lady who seemed to take every inch just as he vacated it, he realised for the first time that he had a problem. Towering over the excessively pretty girl was a man who seemed to have sawn off both his arms and grafted two massive trucks in their places. She had a boyfriend.

Caught between the invisible boundaries that boyfriends place around their girlfriends and exercise lady's intimidating flab, our hero now had a life threatening decision to make.

It was at this moment that a bus zoomed into view. Instead of a number, the electronic display on the front obnoxiously proclaimed in block letters "GONG XI FA CAI"

Thinking quick, with lightning quick reflexes our hero leapt to his feet, congratulating himself on his easy escape. Not to be thwarted, exercise lady broke her stretch and strode forward with him.

Panic seized him, what was he to do? For a second his mind conjured up images of an hour long bus ride with the wrinkly expanses of exercise lady's stomach filling half his vision. He shivered and squeezed his eyes to rid himself of the ghastly vision.

Just as the side display of the bus displaying the number came into view, his drama training took over. Feigning disappointment, he paused delicately in his step and reversed his direction, resting lightly on the seat as exercise lady obliviously sauntered over to the entrance of the bus, not noticing the hordes of people scrambling to avoid her.

As he breathed a sigh of relief, he saw the hulking cyborg step onto the bus as well, he was the only one brave enough to stand directly behind exercise lady. Looking down, he realised he was within touching distance of the girl, who was tapping away at her phone in half-excitement, utterly ignoring his presence.

Double-score.

Gothic Story

Clio was told to write a gothic story in class on the spot and this is what she came up with. She doesn’t know if it’s any good, but her teacher did read it to the class… so it should be…

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The stranger leaned toward Isobel. He grinned, showing his not- so pearly whites. He reached into his pocket and took out a small knife, slightly smaller than a kitchen knife. Waving it under her nose, the stranger examined her. Already shaking uncontrollably, Isobel now began weeping with terror. He lifted her chin with his finger and placed the blade against her throat. She whimpered, likening to the sound a lost puppy makes. Curling a lock of her golden hair on his finger, he pulled her head backward.

“Please don’t hurt me!” Isobel pleaded with the stranger. “I’ll do anything you want.”

In one swift move, the stranger whipped his knife around and sliced that lock of hair.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook quite yet, love.” Sneering at Isobel, the stranger let go of her lock of hair, which drifted slowly to the grimy, dirty floor.