Short Stories

CREATIVE WRITING COMPILED AND EDITED BY EMMA HARDY

Linda Houlton has been involved with writers' groups throughout Liverpool and the Wirral for the last 9 years and is a member of the University of Liverpool Writer's group.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Gold balloons, this year’s trendy colour floated from their restraining net cascading on the revellers. They closed around me, suffocating in their nearness. Drowning in an ocean of balloons, I had to escape.

A burst balloon. Fearing gunfire, I ducked automatically, hands clutching my head. One perfect pearl Christmas present spilled from my ear and merged into a darkness of feet, crushed peanuts and silly string.

I scrabbled on the floor among the irregular circles chanting ‘Auld Lang Syne’ – the same morons who had bawled the ‘Birdie Song’ at our wedding.

I spotted my earring under the table. Fighting my way through kicking legs (New York, New York) I clasped it in my hand. I felt safe. There was no need to crawl back out again. I curled into a ball and fell asleep.

I awoke when I heard my name mentioned, ‘Helen? She’s been a bit odd since that Singapore Airport siege,’ the female said, ‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘It’s Paul I feel sorry for. It’s been six months now…’

‘Helen, Good God!’ the glare of electric light
– a paper tablecloth lifted. How long I had been there?
‘Come out!’ – concern now tinged with impatience.
I held out my pearl, ‘It dropped on the floor,’
‘Let’s go home,’ Paul said.

Ade Jackson is currently studying for a BA in Imaginative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University.

ON THE BEACH

Another dawn waiting for the chop of helicopter blades. The shoreline’s got the ragged edge of something too slowly torn, the sky’s a dove grey tent fastened down by the static of the waves.

Finally I’d done it. What was I supposed to do now? Dance across the beach and expect the sea to applaud me?
The sand’s all seeped away between the stones; the water hasn’t got any hands.

Still, I’d spat it out. Like the hero I am, I’d said what needed to be said.
And she took it so well I’d immediately wanted to unsay it all. She absorbed my sudden outburst like the shoreline accepts the relentless damage of the waves and we’d sat out the rest of night like two semi-survivors of a shipwreck – too exhausted to signal for help, too blown away to switch on the light.

Now, beyond the spooked music of the coastline, I can hear her slam the car door behind me. Then she’s gone.

I’ll never have to explain away the fourteen Kalashnikovs in the basement or the little cache of plastic explosive that’s been throbbing away beneath our heated long weekend on the edge of the Irish Sea. Or why I’m still waiting here for an unmarked helicopter to swoop down out of the sky and get me out of the other big mess in my life.

Anselm Burke is 23 years old, originally from Derry in Ireland and is currently working on a short film as cinematographer and storyboarder.
www.zoomcitta.co.uk

SIT STILL

As a community we were all obliged to pay our respects ‘C’ most of us had none. Well maybe some did, but I resent not having the choice to express respect honestly, or to conceal resentment out of courtesy.
I was not long in the neighbourhood when the dead man’s son, along with two associates, forced entry to my house and explained why I was going to be hospitable to them. After that, in the street, I’d have to smile and say ‘how are you?’ They’d just smile and let their Pitbull say ‘hello’.
So at the wake I’m looking to get seen by everyone really quick and get the hell away. I’m the type that doesn’t get approached for chat, so I took the only free armchair and sipped a very deep glass of whisky.
From that position I could see an extraordinary sight. The dead man’s grandchildren were swarming the room and picking the pockets of all the mourners. Not just that, I could also see how openly it was done ¨C visitors’ hands twitching away from their sides to accommodate the little thieves, conversations forced and distracted with glances at the ceiling.
Suddenly I yelped as a drop of whisky splashed in my eye ¨C the Pitbull had licked my free hand. I decided to move on without seeing the corpse, expressed my condolences at the funeral and relocated soon after that.

Graeme Cole is the director and writer of a forthcoming short film from L’Institute Zoom.
For more information, visit www.zoomzitta.co.uk.

JEALOUS

She’s looking at it again. That painting. She’s analysing it. Sitting on my sofa, admiring it, lost in it. On my sofa.
She won’t talk to me.
She’ll talk, but she’ll be thinking about the painting. I’d take it down, but she might stop coming round. So we sit like this, night after night. She’s so absorbed in that painting, she doesn’t even sense how I feel.
She admires its brush strokes. She admires its depth. She doesn’t admire my depth. She dreams of the hand that painted it. I am holding her hand. It is cold. She scratches her wrist.
That picture freaks me out, she says. Won’t you take it down, she says, and I’ll take it along to Oxfam in the morning.
She must think I’m stupid.