Creative Writing Course

[Draken]

Ok here 'tis. I've agonised about whether it hangs together but sod it, has to be in this evening, I'm finished with it. Warning: it's quite a bit darker than anything above!

Memento Mori

It was the same dream. She was cold. She was always cold. Shouting and screaming had awoken her: a man’s shouting and a woman’s screaming. Even in her sleep she was aware there was a part of her that sat apart, rational and calm, knowing what was happening as it happened. She thought of it as the ‘now her’. But the person in the dream was the ‘then her’, scared and confused and trying to shut out the terrible knowledge the ‘now her’ held.

She woke, sheened with sweat. It was a proper waking this time, not the ‘then her’ emerging from a dream of sleep into a dream of wakefulness. She sat up in bed and ran a hand through her hair: she felt exhausted. The bedside telephone had stopped the dream before it ran its usual, inevitable course.

She shook her head and reached for the phone, glancing at the clock beside it. “Hello?”

“Hello, is that Natasha Browne? Hallelujah, you’re awake. It’s DCI Morrison.” As if anybody else would phone her at 10 am, just two hours after her shift ended. “We need you in, now. A bad one. Primary school. We’re pulling all the stops out. Get here as fast as you can.”

“Ok,” she muttered. “Give me half an hour.”

Hanging up, she got out of bed and set off for the maisonette’s tiny bathroom. On the way she passed a full length mirror hung on the door of her wardrobe. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of something in it that she should not have: a small figure instead of an adult: a flash of pink dressing gown instead of her grey flannelette pyjamas. She whirled round, her heart missing a beat. She only saw herself staring back, blonde hair tousled, brown eyes wide.

Again she shook her head, “You’re losing it girl,” she whispered to herself. She showered and dressed quickly before switching on the kettle and spilling some Alpen into a bowl. She only had just enough milk for the cereal so had to make do with black coffee. She stirred the spoon distractedly as her thoughts flitted between the dream and what might have happened that morning at the school. She sipped at her coffee and spat it out immediately. Never mind losing it, she thought. I’ve lost it. Stirring salt in my coffee!

She made another cup, found there was no sugar left in the brittle, long-opened bag and had to settle for a black coffee without. She stared out at the bleak, leaden December sky: the day was going badly, and something in Morrison’s tone warned her it would get worse.

*

She avoided the TV news and left her car radio turned off as she drove to the station: something made her want to avoid everything about this day. As she turned right into the station car park she did a double take: for an instant she thought she saw the small figure in the pink dressing gown again. But it was just a coat slung over the handles of a pushchair, swaying as a woman rocked it to and fro

She found out what was happening as she buckled on her body armour in the Tactical Firearm Unit’s storage pod area: a gunman had broken into a primary school brandishing at least one firearm. Shots had been fired, and there had been casualties, but with nobody sure where the assailant was the situation was very confused. There was a buzz among the authorized firearm officers as they laced up their chunky rubberised boots and checked the contents of their rucksacks. But Natasha, always on the edge of things as the only woman in the unit, felt more detached than ever today.

Morrison delivered the briefing: it was brief and vague, which only cranked up the tension further. One team had secured the perimeter of the school and another was working through it room by room. But with woodland backing onto the rear of the grounds there was every chance that the gunman had made off unseen, hence the desperate need to throw every available officer into as wide a cordon as could be maintained. Time was of the essence.

“We need to split up into pairs,” informed Morrison. “We’ve mapped out the most obvious routes through the woods, and we have just enough men…” He caught Natasha’s eye. “I mean, just enough officers to patrol them. If he stays off the paths he can avoid us, but his movement will be much slower: we have reserves from neighbouring forces on their way to help us flush him out in this eventuality.”

Natasha forced herself to concentrate, but couldn’t shake off the surreal distance she felt from events around her. She heard Morrison telling them which pairs would work where, and was faintly surprised that she was to accompany him along the pathway that ran closest to the school. She felt churlish for not feeling more grateful that she would be working with the boss in the thick of the action.

Sergeant Jim Broadstone queried this. He was the most experienced of them all, as he never failed to point out, and had a swaggering matey manner that attracted a clique of the younger recruits to him. He was visibly put out at being told that he was needed as a vital last line of defence: in other words, furthest out from the school.

“This is ridiculous,” he grumbled to one of his acolytes as the team left the briefing room. Quietly enough that the DCI didn’t hear as he strode off ahead, but doubtless meant to be overheard by Natasha. “You know what it’s about don’t you? Browne’s a nice blonde bit of skirt and Morrison’s at that age, I think he wants to get in with her, give her a leg up at our bloody expense.”

“A leg over for a leg up, eh?” quipped someone further back. “I bet our Nat’s a dead cert for that.” The conversation dissolved into laughter.

She ignored them, but couldn’t help but cast her mind back to her final interview with Morrison…

[Draken]

“I need to ask a few more questions,” he had said solemnly. “I appreciate your honesty in the psychological survey. That must have been hard for you. But it means I need to dig deeper. I have to be certain before I recommend you join the unit.”

She had told him she understood. Here was where, she was certain, her application would fail.

Morrison had looked so grave it was almost comical. “I can’t imagine what it was like for you Natasha, finding your mother murdered like that. And you so young. You must have such anger for the man who did it: anybody would. What I need to be certain of is that anger won’t spill over into the job.”

She had been honest with him. “My anger is with myself,” she had answered. “I know I was only ten but I knew what he was like. Maybe I could have got my mum to leave him. I could have told a teacher, got social services involved. I could even have waited for him to fall into one of his drunken stupors, got the kitchen knife and killed the bastard. I honestly did consider it. But I said nothing, and I stayed my hand. So my mother died.”

Morrison had pursed his lips. “You were just ten, Natasha. You couldn’t know what would happen. And you were no killer.”

She had shrugged. “Either way, I suppose that’s me out of the running, sir.”

“Not at all,” he had said to her utmost surprise. “Evidence of a thoughtful nature and ability to self-analyse. That’s a tick in the box, for my money.”

When she emerged from her memories she was already sitting in the back of an Armed Response Vehicle – basically a Volvo estate with an armoured gun cabinet in the rear. In it was stored her weapon – a Heckler & Koch MP5 carbine, accurate to 100 metres. Dave Hansen was driving, which meant they were the first of the follow-up teams on site – Dave took pride in being the fastest pursuit driver in the nick.

They drove past a gaggle of TV news crews, through two police checkpoints to the car park of a grocery shop. Here a mobile incident unit – a large, boxy van – had been set up as a temporary HQ for the police operation. A senior officer wearing body armour over plain clothes clambered out of the rear. As Natasha got out of the car she saw the traces of wiped away tears on his ruddy cheeks.

“They’ve just cleared the school,” he said to Morrison, his voice clipped and gruff. “He’s not there. They’re bringing out the injured now. The injured and the dead.”

Morrison nodded and looked around. The school’s small playing field lay between the car park and the school itself. Across the road was the edge of a residential estate of pebble-dashed semis. Behind the school and the playing field was the start of the woodland.

“Do we know what he’s carrying?” asked Morrison.

The other officer shook his head. “Not really. We’ve managed to speak to a teacher and a classroom assistant so far. They were in the room furthest from where the shooting started. They caught a glimpse of him as they got their class out. They say he’s the caretaker – he was sacked a week or so ago. Two guns for sure they think, a pistol and a rifle. No idea if they’re automatics.”

Morrison looked back at the houses. “And you’re sure he hasn’t run into the estate?”

Again a shake of the head. “He took a shot at the classroom assistant so she crouched behind the wall at the front until we got here. She’d have seen him go past her if he’d left that way.”

Morrison did not look convinced. “He might have headed along the edge of the wood and then doubled back further up…”

Natasha looked the opposite direction, into the woodland. The trees were stark and bare. A confusing tangle of spiky bushes made the wood seem dense and furtive. For a brief instant she thought she saw something small and pink flit between the trees. She blinked and it was gone. Almost without realising it, she spoke aloud. “No. He’s in the trees.”

The two men looked at her. “Hmm. He probably is,” concurred Morrison. “And we don’t have time to second guess ourselves. Keep your cordon tight around that estate, Bill. We’re going into the woods.”

The other ARVs had arrived now. All twelve officers stood in a circle. They donned helmets, checked weapons and looked at maps as Morrison ran through their dispositions one more time. Broadstone glared across at her. She stared back coolly: he didn’t scare her. The only emotion that men like him stirred in her was anger. Not teacher’s pet any more Jim? Not my problem.

They moved off in pairs, scrambling over the wall at the back of the car park and making for the woodland. Broadstone and his partner Blakeny, with furthest to go, set off first. As she waited her turn Natasha looked across to the school playground. Stretchers were being brought out to waiting ambulances: a dozen or so were lying in a row, shrouded with blankets. Two held adult figures, the rest were about half that size.

She had expected that setting off on the operation would snap her out of her strange somnambulance, but the adrenalin rush never happened. She simply nodded in response to Morrison’s queries and followed him over the wall, around the playing field fence and into the woods. Her training carried her through: eyes scanning, carbine held in the approved position, senses – disconnected from her conscious mind as they were – alert.

They picked up the path easily – it was broad, a muddy thoroughfare fringed by dead ferns. They moved along slowly, using ears as well as eyes. A snowflake drifted down from the cold grey sky. The trees loomed around them, muffling the few sounds of the day. Then with a crackle their radio handsets burst into life, shattering the silence.

“Boss, it’s Broadstone here.” The distorted voice sounded agitated.

“What is it Jim?”

“There’s a bloody school trip somewhere in the woods.”

“What?” Morrison instinctively wheeled to face the general direction he had sent Broadstone. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah pretty much. There’s a car park down this end, by the B-road. There’s an empty minibus from St Chad’s here.”

Morrison grimaced. “Damn…OK this doesn’t change anything. There was always a chance there would be civilians in here. But let’s get this bastard found, right? Everyone receive that?” Each pair acknowledged in turn.

“Right, Natasha….” He turned and then stopped mid-sentence, mouth agape. His partner was nowhere to be seen.

*

[Draken]

She couldn’t remember consciously deciding to leave Morrison. That familiar glimpse of pink had caught her attention and her feet had drawn her towards it almost against her volition, into the woodland, surely and quietly. The girl in the dressing gown was somewhere ahead of her, she knew. The dream-like sense deepened until she wondered if she had never awoken earlier that morning, if the phone call and all that followed had been part of her reverie. Perhaps, if this was a dream, the ‘now her’ would finally meet the ‘then her’.

The dressing gown flapped at the edge of her vision, off to the left. She turned, but there was nothing there. It didn’t matter. Her body seemed to instinctively know what to do: she slipped the M5’s safety catch off and stealthily picked her way over to a low tree-cloaked ridge that stood proud of the circling tangle of dead undergrowth. She crested it. A natural hollow lay beyond, ringed by thin young birch trees with peeling white bark.

The scene below seemed to wash over her in slow motion. A huddle, faces looking up at her, pale and frightened. A khaki clad figure beneath her, whirling around too slowly. She glanced down calmly, saw the assault rifle in his hands and fired two shots.

The figure cried out and fell, one hand a bloody mess, the gun sent spinning from his grip. Natasha jumped down into the hollow, landing squarely in front of him. He was in his twenties, podgy and unshaven, his face sweaty. He wore a baggy camouflage jacket over army style fatigues. With a strangled sound of panic he reached for the Browning pistol at his right hip: Natasha stamped on his hand, then bent down and languidly un-holstered the gun, tossing it away over the ridge.

She turned to the school party, looking calmly into the wide eyes of one of the teachers. “Get out of here,” she ordered quietly, then turned to look down at the gunman. He was cowering, the whites of his eyes showing.

“They made me do it…” he mumbled. “Making up stories about me, they made me, you see that don’t you? They act so innocent, don’t they? You’re in the police, you must deal with them and their lies all the time, you know what I mean, don’t you?” His voice took a wheedling tone.

Natasha looked around once more and saw that the teachers and children had done as she had told and made good their escape. Only one child stood there now: a young girl with tousled blonde hair, wearing just a pink dressing gown over her thin pyjamas yet not seeming to notice the cold. Her face was pale to the point of translucent, her dark brown eyes deep and knowing.

Natasha nodded to her and stepped a pace back from the man. She looked back down at him and without a flicker of emotion emptied the carbine’s remaining 13 rounds of ammunition into him.

*

Morrison leant awkwardly against the frame of the door as Natasha cleared her desk into a green plastic crate. He bit his lip, pondering his words. “I’m sorry it ended like this,” he said at length. “I feel to blame.”

Natasha emptied a drawer onto the desk and looked up at him. “You shouldn’t,” she replied.

He looked down at his shoes. “Yes I should. It was my call to let you join the unit.” He sighed. “And I’m sorry I’ve left it to now to speak with you. I had to get in a full report by the end of the week…especially after what you said in your statement.”

She gave a tired smile. “I wanted to tell the truth. Even if it was uncomfortable.”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “At least the CPS won’t take it any further. When all’s said and done it was a hostage situation and he was turning a gun on you. And of course there was the concealed .22 in his sleeve: who knows what might have happened if you hadn’t…well…played it safe.”

Natasha looked down and started sifting through the documents strewn across her desk.

“This time I knew not to stay my hand,” she said quietly as she moved an envelope and uncovered an old, creased photograph.

Morrison cleared his throat. “What do you mean you knew? How could you know?”

Natasha picked up the photo. “Someone told me,” she whispered.

She looked down at the last picture her mother had ever taken of her: ten years old that day, blonde hair unkempt, just out of bed and still wrapped in her pink dressing gown.

[Draken]

Well THAT shut everyone up!

I missed week of the course so now I'm playing catch up. The owed work is to be a poem incorporating dissonance, assonance, alliteration and onomatopoeia (sp?).

Plus I need to do a haiku AND a piece based on a painting by Magritte - preferably that reflects the ideas of the Surrealists. Hmmm!

[Earniel]

Actually I meant to reply earlier, but I forgot. Your last story quite impressed me. It has a very smooth build-up until the final climax in the woods. And it held me captivated until the last sentence. And it was quite interesting to look up just where you used the skeleton phrases.

[Nurvingiel]

Yeah that was a very cool story. At first I thought Natasha was a soldier. But at the end I thought she was a police officer.

But since she saved her past self and therefore her own life... one can never be sure...

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

my god, that was brilliant, man!

eerie, and yet cold, i smell an A!!

[Draken]

Earniel - thanks! The phrases didn't help, as a lot of them were quite light hearted - but I was DETERMINED to do something serious for a change. Thanks for your comments - actually I think I oversold the pink dressing gown thing early on, I did a slight rewrite later that I think handled it a little more subtly.

Nurv - yeah sorry, was written with a British reader in mind, introducing her boss as a DCI would have identified this as a police story to most Brits (I hope!). Was more her past self (either as a dream, or a sortof ghost, or just a manifestation of her own troubled mind, you choose!) saving her future self.

LCoU - ta! I wanted a sort of distance and coldness to both Natasha and the feel of the story, glad it worked. I think I seized on that "snowflake" phrase!

[Draken]

Trying to catch up: here's a poem which I'm hoping has alliteration, assonance, dissonance and onomatopeia in it...

November Waves

.Near us the sea was playful
................Chuckling past pebbles
..............................Skittering across the sand,
.........................................But over Roker way
.................................................It surged against the seafront,
.................................................. .Waves reflecting and recoiling,
.................................................Crashing into those behind,
.........................................Crests high-fiving to the sky.
..............................The kids wowed and oohed,
................Made giddy by the tumult,
.And capered off to kiss the spray.

[inked]

Draken,

I enjoyed that. One point I would make is the transitions between past and active present tenses in the action verbs tend in my mind to break the sense of the action. I would suggest as follows (forgive my gall!).


.Near us the sea was playful
................Chuckling past pebbles
..............................Skittering across the sand,
.........................................But over Roker way
.................................................( It surged) Surging against the seafront,
.................................................. .Waves reflecting and recoiling,
.................................................( Crashing into) Battling those behind,
.........................................Crests high-fiving (to the) sky.
..............................(The) kids (wowed) wowing and (oohed) oohing,
................(Made giddy by) Giddying in the tumult,
.(And capered) Capering off (to kiss) kissing the spray.

I would omit the parenthesized words and employ the active paticiples.
See what I mean?

[Draken]

Ta inked, that's just the sort of thing I'm looking for.

I see the poem as being in three parts - (they would have been separate verses but that would have spoiled my sine wave!)

1. How the sea was where we were, at the shallow end of the bay
2. How totally different the sea was just a couple of hundred yards along the seafront
3. The kids' reaction to it.

So I used that discontinuity in tense to try to heighten that feeling - there was a discontinuity about the sea that day, if you see what I mean.

'Crashing' is there largely for its onomatopeiac effect - I wanted a 'sh' sound in that section!

I thought long and hard about adding 'to the' after high fiving, so I can see your point. Will reconsider this before handing it in tomorrow.

Many thanks!

[Draken]

Ok, first part of this week's exercise: write one or more haiku. I think I'm right in saying that traditionally the Japanese use haiku's to reflect on aspects of nature, which gave me the idea of using some to tell a story, with nature as a metaphor, reflecting a cycle of four seasons.


Fragile Bloom

Weak winter sunshine
Lit her pale fragility
A pretty snowdrop

Night scented springtime
She sparkled in the lamplight
My belladonna

Hot summer parkland
Her languid as an orchid
White against the green

Grey autumn bleakness
She slipped between my fingers
Like a wind-blown leaf

[inked]

Draken,

More gall from me!

Fragile Bloom

Weak winter sunshine
(Lit her) Lighting pale fragility
(A) Her pretty snowdrop

Night scented springtime
(She) Her (sparkled) sparkling in (the) (lamplight) moonlight
My belladonna

Hot summer parkland
Her (languid) languishing, (as) an orchid
White against the green

Grey autumn bleakness
(She) Her (slipped) slipping between (my) fingers
(Like a) Turning, wind-blown leaf

Yes, I do favor active participles which catch the fleeting evanescence of the moments captured in syllabillic reflection(s). Note to that I turned the connecting metaphorical expressions - as, Like a - into unlinked ones. Also, I found lamplight jarring in an otherwise nature poem and went for the obvious nature image, but considered starlight or silvan (in which case it would have read "Her sparkling silvan gleam").

I think this effort quite good in the original. A poet's goal is to capture the gleam of beauty encountered in the world they experience and you captured the sense of sight and tactile impressions very movingly. Chasing it through the seasons in a very delightful and yet slightly melancholic mode which works well as a round (as in music) conveying the sense of change with the permanence of each winter/spring/summer/fall cycle.

I'd mark this one very high if it were to me. Congratulations!

I got your intended sense of discontinuity in the first one, but I didn't connect it the way you explained it. That fault lay in my perceptions of the scene to which I attached my experience. Not every reader will encounter your expression as you intended, but don't let that stop you. Just be prepared for the alternate explications adduced by your readers!

[Draken]

Thanks again!

Yes, the change in tense works extremely well. Might have got there myself if I'd obeyed my usual rule of putting it in a drawer for at least a week then revisiting - but time is against me!

Lamplight would stay in no matter what though - she was most definitely a city flower.

[Draken]

And here's the last task for the week - something inspired by Surrealism in general and a painting my Magritte in particular. The painting is at http://www.abcgallery.com/M/magritte/magritte23.JPG if you're interested.

On the Nature of Reality

Retirement do. His. Driving back on a wet night in a sour mood. Took his mood out on the accelerator. Missed the bend. Big brick wall. Blackness.

*

He woke up. He was on his back, looking straight up at a bright fluorescent light surrounded by speckled polystyrene ceiling tiles. He looked around: ah yes, a hospital room, that made sense. To his surprise there were no tubes sticking into him, no machines beeping and pinging. He wondered why he was surprised and then remembered: the accident. Yes, he remembered that. And his name: he was Stephen. He was called Stephen and had been in a bad accident. That was all he could recollect for now, but it was a start.

Cautiously he sat up. All his limbs responded as they should. He touched his face, then ran his fingers over his bald head. No bandages, no jagged stitches, no lumps or scars. My God, how long had he been here? He looked around but could see no calendar.

“Ah you’re with us,” came a deep, amused-sounding male voice in his ear. He jumped, startled: he had definitely been alone in the room. But now, right beside him, stood a tall, gaunt man. He was dressed in white, like a hospital orderly, but there were two perturbing details: a bowler hat was perched on his head and a lit candle was in his hand.

“Erm…yes I’m back,” said Stephen uncertainly. “And I feel fine.”

The bowler-hatted orderly nodded. “Of course you do. Why ever should you not?” He smiled politely, evidently not intending to say anything else.

Questions crowded into Stephen’s mind, but it was a trivial one that popped out first.

“Why the candle? Are you expecting a power cut or something?”

The man’s cadaverous face continued to smile. “You’re really asking the wrong person. I imagine it symbolises hope. Or maybe comfort. Such a comforting little light you get from a candle isn’t it? Bobbing about like it’s alive, warm and illuminating, yet so small. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Er…suppose so,” replied Stephen. “But what do you mean, asking the wrong person? You’re stood there holding a lit candle and you don’t really know why?”

The orderly looked down at the candle, head tipped slightly to one side. “What you need to do, Stephen, is ask yourself why you NEED to see the candle. Or this very fetching hat. Or indeed myself, dressed in this attire.”

Stephen did not know what to say. Had he suffered a bad head injury? Was he in a mental hospital talking to a wandering patient?

The orderly paused and looked him in the eye. “Let me help you,” he offered gently. “You’re seeing this room and me wearing this clothing because your conscious mind tells you that’s what you SHOULD see when waking after an accident. But you’re seeing this candle and this hat because your subconscious is starting to assert itself. Indirectly for now: a candle for comfort, a bowler hat for some form of solid authority, I would imagine: you’re of that generation.”

“My subconscious?” exclaimed Stephen. “Are you saying I’m going mad?”

The orderly chortled. “Quite the opposite. I’m saying you are leaving the world of your consciousness, perhaps for ever.”

Stephen felt himself go cold, staring up at the orderly aghast. “You – you mean I’m dying?”

The other man grinned. “Or being born. So hard to tell the difference.”

His levity shook Stephen from bewilderment to anger.

“I don’t believe a word of this! I want to see a doctor! No, forget that, I feel fine – I’m discharging myself!”

The orderly shrugged. “As you wish, but first, look into this.” He held out his hand.

He wasn’t holding a candle any more. In its place was a small antique hand mirror, the sort a Jane Austen heroine might have used. Frowning, Stephen took the mirror by the smooth wooden handle and looked into the oval glass. To his relief he saw himself frowning back, unscarred and intact.

The relief dissipated when the reflection stopped frowning, raised its eyebrows and winked. “Let it go, mate”, it said to him in his own voice. “You’ve been keeping the lid on me for too long. No don’t say anything, arguing with yourself IS a sign of madness. I’m your subconscious you and it’s my turn now, OK? And if you think you’re still in your boring boring BORING conscious world, why have you been talking to a giant jackdaw, hmm?”

Stephen dropped the mirror like it was hot and looked up at the orderly. Who, though still with the body and clothing of a hospital orderly, did indeed now have the head of a giant jackdaw. The feathered head tilted and looked down at him with its penetrating black eye.

“Some cultures were closer to their subconscious worlds than others,” said the jackdaw orderly. “If I stand sideways on I look like an ancient Egyptian god, don’t you think? Think of me as Thoth, God of Wisdom.”

Stephen felt his mind gradually losing its grip on the situation, like he was holding onto sanity but having each finger prised loose in turn. “Thoth had the head of an ibis, not a jackdaw,” he said weakly.

The orderly shrugged his human shoulders and ruffed up the feathers on his avian head. “It’s my day off,” he explained, the great grey beak clacking with each syllable.

Stephen felt light headed. He lay back on the pillow. The room seemed to be becoming blurred at the edges. He felt a battle raging in his head. One part of his mind – the familiar part that he lived with every waking hour – was protesting and fearful, churning out rational explanations: it’s a medical student in a mask playing a prank…or a bad dream as you lie on the operating table…or maybe you’re just a little concussed. The other part of his mind, ignoring this tumult, was thinking for some reason of an –

“Apple?” said the orderly. “A good choice.”

Stephen looked up. The jackdaw head was gone. But he could not see if the figure had its original face again, for in front of it was a large red apple. It simply hung there in mid air, with no visible means of support.

“The apple is laden with symbolism,” said the orderly. “Paris awarded a golden one to Aphrodite, you will recall from your Greek mythology. The Bible doesn’t say what the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was, but everyone just assumes it was an apple. And even in more enlightened times the apple was still credited with inspiring the theory of gravitation.”

The orderly plucked the apple from the air and held it out to Stephen. “A tribute? A curse? An inspiration? Maybe it’s all three.”

As the apple dropped into Stephen’s hand a blue ribbon appeared around it, tied in a neat bow.

“Whatever it is, regard it as a gift,” said the orderly. “A gift from your subconscious. A resolution to all this confusion.”

Stephen looked down at it. Within him the battle in his mind had now stopped, as if the two sides were watching and awaiting what he would do next. He clung to the apple as if his life depended on it. Amid all this weirdness it alone felt firm and solid. It looked like an apple. It smelled like an apple.

“It seems so real doesn’t it?” said the orderly quietly. “But what is reality? What you think back on as your life – school, work, marriage, divorce, retirement, the crash – was that the REAL world that happened when your conscious mind was switched on? Or was it just a construct to fill the time when your unconsciousness was switched off? It’s time to make a choice Stephen. I’m not here to make it for you: just to show you how.” He pointed a long, pale finger at the apple.

Stephen took a deep breath. He bit into the apple.

[Draken]

*

Bright light. Sitting up gasping. Sitting up in a hospital room, in bed, with tubes tugging at his arms. Disappointment.

“Don’t worry!” It’s that orderly. That same one. Stephen blinks.

“Don’t worry! You’ve still not shaken off the construct. This is your consciousness saying goodbye.”

He transforms into a giant jackdaw, not just his head this time, all of him. With a brush of his wings the tubes, the bed, the room dissolve.

“There’s an escalator to the Shepherd Moons,” says the jackdaw. “Most days it’s free but today they pay you in nectar. Shall we go? We can walk or take the neon fish.”

“Neither,” says Stephen, changing into a humming bird. “Let’s fly!”

[Draken]

And finally (thank God you say) - the last exercise for the last session of the course is to write a Christmas ghost story.

[inked]

Ohhh, do be beastly and write something obviously patterned on Dickens .

Good providence to you!

I like the surrealist.

EDIT: when you have a mo' check out #48 and #50 on the INSTANT POETRY thread and give me a criticism of two back, if you have a mind! Thanks.

[Draken]

Nah, the two rules of world domination: don't march on Moscow and don't take on Dickens at Xmas time!

I've come up with an ok little story I think, given the constraints of time. Will post it in a bit.

Will be happy to look over the poems when I get a minute, ta for the invite!

[Draken]

Here it is then, the last exercise of the course: a Christmas ghost story.

Hope you've found some of the exercises useful. I've enjoyed the course and it has certainly got me writing again and trying out storylines and techniques I wouldn't have attempted otherwise.

So, worthwhile from my point of view!