Category: Uncategorized (Page 32 of 44)

The teaspoon was smooth under his fingertip, as he idly ran it around the bowl and up and down the shaft. His eyes were glazed over, not even seeing into the distance that he was staring towards, out of the window.

“Dammit Roger, say something!”

He shook his head, trying to dismiss the fog in his head. As far as he was concerned her words were still hanging over her head, like a speech bubble;

‘It’s over, Roger. I’m leaving you.’

How was this the right time to do this? They were in Clacton, of all places. Why on earth had David decided to get married in Clacton? Why was she doing this to him now? He knew it had been bad for a while, he had thought about leaving her too, but he would never have done it like this; they were sharing a room, a bed for God’s sake!

“What do you want me to say, Darcy? I know it’s been bad, but I still want to make this work. Besides what are you going to do if you go through with this right here, right now? We’re away from home, we are sharing a hotel room that has only one bed. Tomorrow we are supposed to be going to my brother’s wedding; I’m the best man for crying out loud!”

He did not want to, or mean to, but he burst into tears;

“Why, Darcy? Why now?”

Her face did not even flinch. She stood up, shook her head and walked away.

—

This Ficlet was inspired by Spangle Kitten’s suggestions of a spoon, Clacton and breaking up with a long-term partner as item, place and activity from the Wednesday poll on my Livejournal.

I don’t know what to think. Mam says that being fired is what life is like; you get to liking something and then some other bugger takes it away from you. She were tryin’ to make us feel better, but thing is it din’t.

I know I ain’t smart, smart is our kid’s thing. Dunno where she gets it from, but there’s never any time t’ask ‘er when she breezes in for’t weekend from fancy London. Still I liked bein’ a plumber’s mate. Felt good to do sommat wi’ mi hands, pisses me off that teachers were right. There’s bloody maths in everythin’. Tom said it were n’owt personal, but he can’t afford the waste I’ve caused or some shit like that. I din’t mean to blow the pipe. ‘E says that copper is too costly to make ready and shape more than’t job needs.

I s’pose I can go back behind’t bar at’Bull, but Mam’s right, there’s n’ future in sellin’ scoops t’ drunks older’n Dad. S’not like I mean t’ judge, man’s got a right to a drink, but I’ll ne’er ger’out of ‘ere if all I am is a barman. For now, time for ‘nother beer I think.

—

This was written yesterday, but does not yet appear on ficlets.com due to a technical problem with that site and its OpenID login, i.e. I can’t get on the site, logged in.

This Ficlet was partly inspired by a suggestion / thought from Kt, but I am not sure that I have really done what she suggested…

Edgar was standing against the skyline, binoculars to his eyes when Christine got near to the top of the ridge. She could see the smoke snaking into the sky, and the heat was palpable.

“Fire’s movin’ away. The wind’s blowin’ to the South West. We’ll be fine if we hold tight here. ‘S gonna be a few days, but we have plenty of food besides. It’ll be fine.”

She let her shoulders relax and breathed a sigh of relief. She climbed the last few steps to stand by her uncle and then she saw the horror of it all. Away below them she knew that the trees were roughly one hundred and twenty feet tall and she could see flames that had to be another thirty feet above the trees. If it were not for the wind blowing away the thick black smoke the sky would have been black, but as it was there was an almost completely blue sky for as far as she could see to the north and east.

Edgar was right, the wind was moving the fire away from them, but winds could change. She had no idea how they could escape if it came back their way.

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

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This Ficlet was inspired by the front page of Wikipedia for the 8th of September 2008, in English. The Featured Article was about the 1988 Yellowstone Fires; you can fond out more here.

I looked again, trying to see something that in my heart I knew I would never see again. There is no way to describe the moment when you cannot be sure that the person you love is lying dead in front of you; just on the other side of a window, and just for a moment you cannot quite tell if it really is them. There is no spark there, no humanity left, all that is there is flesh and bone, no life at all.

Dwight had just popped out to meet an old friend from university at a bar, there had been nothing special about his plans. We had both gone out for similarly unremarkable evenings without one another. That is what couples do sometimes, no one can spend all of their time with another person.

As I stared at his body lying there, my hand cold against the glass, all I could think was that he might still have been alive if just that one time I had been a little more clingy, a little more needy and even a little jealous and had imposed my presence on the proceedings. I knew it and I could not forgive myself at all.

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

The fire was burned down to embers, just a soft orange glow that was barely heating the inch around it, let alone the three sleeping bags scattered around or the people in them. Scott pulled his knees in closer to his chest and cursed all three of them for sleeping.

The sky was lightening in the East, slowly shifting from black to a rich deep blue. If it had not been for the exhaustion that was starting to come to him he would have genuinely loved the view; with enough sleep behind him, dawn was his favourite time of the day. He padded his pockets one more time, looking for smokes that he knew were not there. Why had he only brought one pack with him?

It had seemed like such a good idea to get out of town for the weekend when David had suggested it, and until the others had crashed after all the beer and guy-talk he had enjoyed it; it had taken his mind off Erica, as David had planned all along. He had not had as much to drink as the others and once there was no one to talk to, his mind went into overdrive.

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

There it was, suddenly, in the darkness. The flame appeared with its attendant rushing sound, not unlike fast moving water, as it flared into existence and then was gone.

Victor strained one more time against the ropes that were tied tightly around his wrists and ankles. He could not make anything out in the blackness, even though he had returned to consciousness and opened his eyes several minutes before. He had never been in complete darkness before, and he was starting to wonder where he could be that not even the tiniest amount of light could find its way to his eyes, apart from that flame. He decided that as he could not work out where he could be or how he could have got there that he had nothing to lose by trying to make contact with whoever was in control of the flame.

“Hello? Who’s there?”

Again the flame burst into life, for nearly a second and then was gone.

“Come on, tell me what you want if not who you are. Okay?”

A low laugh came out of the void.

“What makes you think I want anything?”

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

—

This Ficlet was inspired by the following image:

Photo by Samuelraj (on Flickr) you can see the photo’s page here.

Andrea was completely silhouetted in the lights from the squad car, stood over the corpse whose coming to rest on that corner, on that night had dragged them from their beds at three in the morning.

In that moment it was easy for Dan to forget the dead person lying in the street, and marvel at how impressive she was. Only out of bed only ten minutes and she was already ten times more focused than he would be until the rest of the coffee in his hand had been taken on board, like fuel for his brain. How did she do that? Maybe she did not sleep.

He knocked back another slug of the bad, convenience store drip and placed the box on the deck. He started getting the camera ready to shoot the scene, looking up from time to time to watch her taking notes and moving in a slow spiral towards the body, noting the placement of shell casings and other detritus before she even reached the body. He clipped the adapter from the ring flash onto the hot shoe and checked that there was a card loaded.

“Ready for the pictures?”

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

We were walking down Chandos Place heading for the Maple Leaf, which is one of my favourite places in Covent Garden, hell even the West End, when Jake turned to me and dropped the bombshell.

“I mean, how fucking cold is this; she told me while we were fighting that the thing that finally made her want to divorce me was mi haircut!”

I nodded, and desperately sought within myself a way to agree with him while resisting the temptation to agree with her as well. No one has ever looked quite so ridiculous with a mohican as Jake. He was my best friend, but the man had ears that would not have looked out of place on Prince Charles. His tiny, pin head denuded of all but a floppy crest of his thin hair that had then been dyed a dodgy shade of red, he did look a mite ridiculous.

I was pretty sure that Katie really wanted to divorce him because he quit his lucrative sales job and become a bicycle courier, at twenty-nine, without talking to his wife about the decision. Well and then there was that she was shagging me.

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

—

This Ficlet was inspired by Hepstar’s suggestions of a bad haircut, Covent Garden and His Best Friend’s Divorce as item, place and activity from the Wednesday poll on my Livejournal.

“YOU can kiss me if you like.”

I nearly choked on my coke. Sure I wanted to kiss her, pretty badly in fact, but that was pretty forward even for Pip. There we were, sitting on the barrier at the top of the cliff above Orange Peel Corner, stealing thirty minutes before we were both expected in different holiday homes for tea. This was our only time, until maybe next year when we might be allowed to go out after tea, though not to the Tuds. We would have gone then if we thought we could get away with it; we each knew other fourteen year olds who would be there later on that evening.

I smiled at her and without saying anything I moved my mouth towards her, extending my whole body behind my face, to reach and kiss her without our bodies touching at all. Her lips were soft, warm and wet and just a little apprehensive, like mine. I was about to pull away when I felt her fingers in my hair pulling me closer; our bodies touched. In the back of my mind I started to hope fervently that I was going to be late for tea.

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

“Hey Jimmy! Phone!”

He put the beer back on the bar – was he ever going to get to drink it? He had just got rid of Newton, who talked so much and so fast that Jimmy had felt like he was caught on the interstate without a windshield. He levered himself down off the stool and ambled to the end of the bar where the phone’s receiver had been thoughtlessly placed in a pool of beer. He rolled his eyes at no one in particular, wiped it off with a spare napkin from the pile on the bar and put the receiver to his ear;

“Jimmy Lancaster here. Who is this?”

“Jimmy, get your ass back to the White House right now! Something unbelievable just came over the wires and when I tried to call Gergen for confirmation the switch was jammed! It’s for real, man, so get back there before you miss the briefing that is no doubt about to occur.”

Jimmy’s mind was swimming, first off Nate almost never screamed at him down the phone, plus Brady’s deputy had already called a full lid. It had been a quiet Labour Day. What had happened?

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

—

This Ficlet was inspired by the front page of Wikipedia for the 1st of September 2008, in English. Amongst other articles was the mention that today was the 25th anniversary of the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 by the Soviet Air Force / Air Commnad. You can read about the incident here.