Harry’s Table

“I told him it wasn’t on the menu but he said I should speak to you.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry. He’s been coming here for as long as I can remember.”

Harry Shaw didn’t hear the conversation from the kitchen but he was confident of the outcome. His starter portion of veal tonnato on a Thursday evening was the ballast that held the unravelling of his life firm and steady. He was as much a part of the A Tavola furniture as the black and white shots of spaghetti-eating celebrities that filled most of the walls. For Harry, Thursday nights offered up the perfect mix of ambience and peace. Enough noise for him to bask in the warm, familial murmur of a well run machine but not the overt harshness of a full house weekend.

An Ode To The Humble Prompt

The net is a world wide web wonder

Where many fine stories are born

Not to mention the sparks of ideas

In amongst all the HD-shot porn

 

Imagine you’ve landed on Saturn

Prompts a site with a sciencey slant

Your oxygen’s low, and your heart rate is slow

and your co-pilot’s cat is your aunt

The Triple Speed Wednesday Failure Train

It’s comforting to know that in an ever-changing world some things remain the same…

After several weeks of abstinence the lure of THREE winning stories in the weekly adhoc-fiction 150 word prompt competition was too much for me to avoid.

The prompt was calm, the inspiration, my local running routes.

The resultant failure of Chasing The Sky to entice the voting public was inevitable and strangely joyous…

Consequence

Welcome one and all to the third instalment of my new regular feature, Stories That Have Failed To Win The Weekly AdHoc Fiction 150 Word Competition!

In this week’s adventure (word prompt: Stone) we begin with a man digging a hole…

*

“That’s deep enough.”

Ray kept digging anyway and got a gun-butt between the shoulder blades for his trouble.

“I said that’s deep enough. Get on your knees.”

“Please. I’ve got money. I can double anything they’re paying you. I…”

The laughter that followed suited the pig mask but not the situation. “Come on Ray. Seriously? You’ve been in this game so long you’re starting to sound like a contract. You must have known it was going to end like this? The only thing further off limits than Jimmy’s money is his wife and you put your hands on both. And so here we are. You know the rules.”

Ray nodded. “Shallow and n…”

The gunshot choked the word before it could be released.

“And no stone,” muttered pig-mask and picked up the shovel. “Shallow and no stone.”

*

Join us again next week kids for a brand new failure!

 

Header image: By Carlos Schwabe – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2054522

Dystopian Mueurrggh

I couldn’t think of anything to write tonight. This is different from yesterday inasmuch as today is not the same day as yesterday.

Whoop.

And furthermore, whoop.

In an act of desperation I crossed the lego strewn rubicon separating the spare bedroom (where I write) from my bedroom (where my wife is relaxing like normal humans do on a school night at ten thirty instead of staring at a computer screen with the kind of loathing normally reserved for things of a highly loathsome nature. I bet there’s not even a modicum of self-hate or the slightest feeling of inadequacy worming its way into her psyche as we speak. She’s such a loser. Unlike me).

Freewriting

I’ve just found that word on the internet. It’s all about writing without stopping or censoring, which I’ve taken to mean editing. Censoring would probably involve me laying out carefully aligned black blocks over the best parts of my blog (assuming I can find any black blocks or indeed best parts) and only publishing the redacted version.

Redacted. That’s a word I’ve always wanted to get into a story. This doesn’t count as a story so it only gets a half-tick in pencil. I’ve also always wanted to write a character who says things like secure the perimeter.

But that’s another story.