Writing Challenge ~ May 2014

WRITING CHALLENGE ~ MAY 2014​

It’s that time again. New month, new challenge! This challenge will run for the whole month and hopefully we’ll see lots more lovely pieces from all those exceedingly talented writers out there!

And so, without further ado, here are your prompts.



You can involve the prompts themselves in your piece and make your link to the prompts as obvious or as subtle as you like or use them simply as inspiration for something else. You can use part of the prompts, just one aspect of the images, or use them in their entirety.

As there are several prompts you can of course chose to use all of them in one piece or write one for each…again, it’s your writing, your challenge. You write whatever you’re inspired to write!

The word limit for this challenge is 1,800 words and your submission can take whatever form you desire – poetry or prose, complete story or a vignette. Erotic or not, serious or light hearted, it’s whatever you want it to be!!

Post only your submissions in this thread, constructive comments and reviews are to be posted in the appropriately named – Comment and Review Thread

The deadline for this month’s challenge is Saturday 31st May 2014, with June’s challenge hopefully going live the following week!

Previous challenges and reviews can be found here.

Happy writing!

Trigger warning: I don't even know what, specifically, to put here, so let's just call this a general trigger warning. Tread carefully.

"Body" is such a terrible term, don't you think? A way to disassociate the person from the physical manifestation of themselves. It can be used in the positive, of course. Emily, for example, has a wonderful body. So lithe and full of potential energy, curves of just the right shape that they fit the palms of your hands, raise perfectly into the curves of your fingers.

But "body" is also a thing they find when life, someone's life, has gone horribly wrong. But why can't they just say they found a person? I've always wondered this.

They'll never find Emily, though.

I love her, see. As much as any person can love any one person, and I'd never let any harm come to her. I can't even carry the weight of that thought now. Just letting it linger in my brain gives me a cluster headache behind my left eye, and so I don't let the idea sit in my brain. Hot potato, keep it moving, get rid of it as quickly as possible.

Usually, I replace it with something else. Like Emily's eyes. A perfect chocolate brown, but when the sunlight hit it - and only the sunlight, it never seemed to happen in artificial light - her eyes seemed to have flecks of honey suspended in them. You had to look closely, and not everyone got to see them, but I did. Not so often now, Emily doesn't see much sunlight and it makes me worry for her, but once upon a time I did.

She was working as a waitress when I first saw her, her dark hair working it's way out of the clip she'd pulled it up in, ebony curls framing her pretty face. She didn't even see me for a time, I was in her section, but it was a busy night and she worked in one of those lackadaisical places that let you see yourself. I wouldn't have gone back if it wasn't for her, the lack of organization drove me crazy (not crazy, it upset me, it irritated me, not crazy, it bothered me, but not crazy), but the moment I saw her I knew that she was the one. My one.

Her voice was like a symphony, God's own symphony, even in her rote recitation of greeting, specials, her can I get you something to drink?, even when I was just another face in a line of hundreds she'd seen that evening, her voice was magic. It made my heart beat faster, the sound filled my ears and I could feel the blood in my veins, I could feel as the oxygen was leeched out of it and pulled into my cells, into my tissue, and it was all recirculated back to my lungs to be enriched again, I could feel every fine hair on my body, I was embarrassingly aware of the way I started to get hard looking at her, and she smiled, and blinked at me, and asked her question again. She thought I didn't hear her, and maybe I did hear her but just didn't listen. I do that sometimes. Never to her, though. Never never never. She tells me all about things now, about her parents who love her very much, about the boyfriend that she thought would become a fiancee, she thinks he loves her but I love her, she tells me about her friends. I hear it all. I listen.

I went back there twice more that week. The food wasn't very good, they used too much salt and their water had too much chlorine that even ruined the taste of their tea, but I endured it for her. I watched her while she helped other people, looking around the restaurant occasionally so it seemed like I wasn't staring, one must never stare, but I only really saw her. The way her hips flared out from her waist, the flexing of her calves and thighs as she wound around the tables. She ran, I knew because I saw her once as I was waiting for the bus. I called in sick to work that day, Thomas was very unhappy with me, but I hung up on me because she was almost out of sight and she was more important than what Thomas thought, now.

Her hair was in a pony tail, and it bobbed back and forth like a pendulum as she ran, a metronome of expelled energy that got a song stuck in my head yo ho yo ho a pirate's life for me. And then I thought of people shouting at Emily as she ran in her form-fitting running clothes, shouting "Yo ho!" but not in a pirate way, shouting hurtful things at Emily, and I knew I had to protect her.

Emily has small breasts, and I think she's embarrassed that they're not bigger. She twists her body when I touch them, trying to stop me, trying to hide them even as the pale pink nipples respond to my fingers. I tell her they're beautiful, perfect for her body, but I think she doesn't believe me. Maybe her shame just runs too deep. Maybe her mother always told her she thought she'd fill out more. I don't think her mother really loves her, either. Not like me. She kicked me, once. Emily, not her mother. Kicked me when I was trying to touch her breasts. I think it was a reaction to her shame, her fear that I wouldn't like what I was touching. I had to hurt her, and it hurt me, and I cried later. But after I left her to sleep. I wouldn't let her see. She must not know. Please don't tell her.

Emily was reading a copy of Wuthering Heights the day she became mine. She had a little picnic basket that she'd packed some fruit in, and the sun had just come back for good after a long and cold winter. She was wearing a sundress, dark blue with little red flowers printed all over it, and she had her hair down. I watched her for a while, watched her read, watched her eat chunks of melon from a plastic container, her lips ripe and perfect like the fruit she held between them. The first thing I noticed were the freckles on her nose. It was the first new thing I learned about her that day: Emily gets freckles on her nose, and her shoulders, and little ones in the valley between her breasts when she's been out in the sun. I miss the freckles sometimes.

"Emily?" I said when I came to her blanket, because that is her name.

"Yes?" she said, folding the book closed and setting it on the corner of the wicker basket. She could recognize me, I could see her it in her eyes as she searched my face, and her smile told me that she was ready to be mine.

We didn't move, didn't talk, for what seemed like a long time. Maybe it was only a few seconds. A little breeze puffed past us, and only the sound of birds was carried on it. Midday during the week in a little park was a very quiet time, and no one seemed to be about. Maybe in that moment, no one else existed but Emily and I. Maybe the world knew this was meant to be, had been conspiring for decades to bring us together, and for just those few moments everyone else stepped off stage to give us this time. I'm probably just being overly romantic. I have a tendency to fantasize.

I swept her up in my arms and smelled her hair, a mix of lilac and lavender that made my head spin. I nearly dropped her, she could feel it and flailed her arms and legs, but I recovered in time to keep her safe. I protected her all the way to the car, although it meant the basket and book had to be left behind. But I told her I'd get her new books, I'd get Emily a whole library of books if she wanted. Anything for my beautiful Emily.

Sometimes, I go walking at night. The fresh air helps me organize my thoughts, and it gives me time to pick up things for Emily. Pretty dresses for when she isn't ashamed of her body anymore and I can let her wear clothes again. Clips for her long hair. It almost reaches her navel now, and I really should get some scissors and cut it for her. I take good care of Emily.

I see posters occasionally, an old picture of her smiling at the camera. She looks like the person I call Emily of Old, not like my Emily now. But I can see my Emily in her eyes, in the soft pillows of her lips, in the rise of her cheek bones. There are monsters in the world, terrible people that want to take Emily from me, and they offer rewards, promise money to anyone with information. I tear down the posters when I see them. I must protect Emily from the monsters.

Please don't think I am a bad person. I did go back for Emily's basket, and her book. I know it's bad to lose things that belong to other people, and I never want to lose anything that belongs to Emily and make her sad. I went back later that night, after Emily calmed down from all the excitement and had finally fallen asleep. I was going to surprise her with her book when she woke up in the morning, and maybe she would lay her head in my lap and I could read it to her. I don't know what Wuthering Heights is about, but I'm sure she'd catch me up. Or we'd start over, so we could find out together. Just one of many adventures we'd take together.

When I got back to the park, though, there were all kinds of police, and yellow tape surrounded the area, bobbing and bouncing in the chilly spring breeze. I tried to see if her book and basket were still near the tree where I'd met Emily earlier, but the red and blue lights were too bright and there were too many cars in the way, and so I couldn't tell. It made me sad, but I would just have to buy her a new copy to show her I was sorry for losing her book.

Those first few days with Emily were magical. I've never been happier, never been more in love with someone than I was then. I think I was her first, because she fought me and cried, and they say it always hurts for girls the first time. But I held her afterwards, kept her tight to my chest and told her everything would be okay. She fights me less, now, so I think maybe her body is getting used to it. I don't know how long it takes for girls, though.

I was so focused on Emily those first days that I forgot to check the paper and see what happened in the park that night. I was hoping they would mention Emily's book being left and I might be able to go pick it up for her. I'm sure it would've made her so happy. Too late now, I guess. Whatever it was, it must've been something terrible to make all those police surround the area.

Do you know what it was?

I wouldn't have wanted to remember that morning in colour, it seems better that the memory of it is in black and white. Like a dusty old movie that nobody remembers, that nobody wants to remember. It's strange, the things that you remember about something that you try to forget, something you make yourself not think about anymore.

Yet when I think about it now, when I remember, I don't see any colour. It's like the brightness is turned up, everything is a light shade of grey and I think about that Annie Lennox song, Whiter Shade of Pale, and it makes me feel bad. I don't know if it's guilt, if it's regret, whatever it is. I'll just fast forward past it until something comes on that makes me forget the way that song just cast frost over my heart for a minute, how it made me feel, how I had to build wall after wall after wall to keep myself from feeling.

Sometimes, when I think about other times, there's colour. Parties with friends, summer days, stuff like that. Always loads of colour. And dancing, drinking, eating. All the things that there are sins for. We did it all. The weird thing is, I don't even smile anymore whenever I think about those things. I know that every action in a human life, every decision we make brings us to this point, this moment, this person we are right now. But I don't think that means we have to be happy about the road we travelled to get here.

I wish I could say I would go back and change things, but that might make me different. Maybe it would make me better. But then, maybe, I wouldn't be as strong as I've grown to be.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not by any stretch of the imagination some kind of hard-ass super bitch. Well, not all the time. It took a long time for me to be able to feel again. It took a lot of love letters, a lot of patient phone calls.

It took three thousand nine hundred miles and some change.

Every life has little bits of darkness in it. Some shadows are small, some stretch a little longer, and some are your own, that you can't shake. That'll probably never leave you, but it's all about how you live with it. How you choose to see it, how you let it affect you and mould the person you're going to turn out to be.

It's silly, the things you remember. A piece of blue fluff, the way the lock of the door sounded. The way he touched my knee. His voice doesn't sound like his voice. It sounds old, like the words are coming from inside a metal case or something, from a long time ago. I'm starting to forget things. Like the exact words he said. What he was wearing. Things you'd think were important, like I should never forget them. They all just become the shades of grey, blurring away into the white, not stinging as much now as when they used to.

But there's some things I can't forget. How there was no curtain on the high window, and I could see the cross on the wall and I remember praying to God and all the saints that I was having a bad dream and this wasn't really happening because he wouldn't do something like this really he's not like this, he just has a temper sometimes, he doesn't mean it. But this time wasn't like the others. It was the last time.

I remember what I wore. It was a navy blue skirt with yellow and white flowers and a yellow t shirt. The day before had been my birthday. We'd had a party. I got really drunk and stoned and was so hungover that I slept in my clothes. I'd started seeing someone else, and he hadn't liked that. That's why he came into the room I slept in. Told me not to say anything don't tell anyone they'd never believe you anyway. Locked the door. The stupid things you remember... The way I kept saying no, we aren't together anymore, I don't want to, no, no no no no no NO please stop it this isn't right, please... but he just. wouldn't. listen. The way he didn't even take off my underwear, just pushed it to the side, I obsessed over that for years for no reason I could think of. Maybe I could have pushed him away, maybe I could have yelled at him, maybe I could have been stronger, braver, maybe I could have just kept my legs closed harder and kept saying no...

The way he said I know you want to, I know you don't mean it. The way that for six months I couldn't tell another human being. I couldn't admit it to myself. The way that now, even eleven years later, I still find it hard to say that word. The way it's easier to say how he used to hit me and break me and throw me into doors than it is to say that one word, that one tiny, tiny word. The way it felt the first time I called those crisis people on my walk to my new job. Just tell me it wasn't what it was. Tell me I was wrong, tell me I did want it, that it was all okay, that it was just a misunderstanding that it wasn't that word, I don't want to be that girl, I don't want to live that life I didn't want it I said no I said no I asked him not to just tell me it wasn't what it was-

Sorry.

It gets easier. It does. I stopped feeling the need to scream at the sight of him after about three years. It's been twice that since I saw him and I honestly think I could cope now. Even remembering this, making myself remember, I've stopped hating myself because of it. I know, that's pretty cliched. But it happened. I've accepted that. I've accepted the dark part of me that it belongs to. The part that thinks about that day and realises that it was that word. The part that was confused and terrified and disgusted when years later I found myself enjoying the idea of being dominated. It just made that horrible strangled feeling in my chest and I was so afraid what kind of monster have I become what kind of sick depraved slut have I become what kind of fucked up mess have I become what kind of person will ever want you now...

And you know what's funny? Even after being prepared to settle for an unhappy marriage, even after that night, even after not believing myself capable or worthy of love, and it still found me. Unconventionally. But that's what life is, right? That's the beauty of the universe. It's full of darkness, full of little idiosyncrasies that make you wake up at four in the morning crying or call someone in the middle of the day just because you need to hear their voice.

I spent years not knowing who I was, not knowing who I'd become. I stumbled around in the dark, blindly, holding on to things I thought would sustain me but were weaker than I am. Because I'm not weak. It just took a lot of miles for me to figure that out.

I survived what I thought was love. Maybe now the truth is my reward.

Sonnets and Sunshine


It was far too hot.

Spring had come unseasonably early and now it seemed summer was following suit, the sun already high in the sky making it difficult to enjoy it’s rays with any degree of comfort. What should have been a pleasant afternoon out in the sunshine had turned into a scrambling search for shade. Conveniently the spot they had spied from the road as they sped along the country lane had been close to the edge of a wood. Grassy meadow morphing into trees and shadows and so it was into the trees they’d headed. Picnic blanket over her arm, basket full of delicious treats swinging from his, their free hands joined together. Fingers laced. Lips curved into smiles.

Time together was rare these days, the pace of the world was a permanent run. They each had jobs they loved, jobs they worked hard to attain, jobs that kept them from one another all too often. All of which meant that stolen afternoons like this were so important, a few hours where there was nothing to think of but each other.

Stepping into the relative cool of the trees she shivered, he released her hand only to wrap his arm around her shoulders, her sundress suddenly seeming a little unsuitable despite the glaring heat just beyond the tree line. She wasn’t that cold, but his arm felt so wonderful where it was that she didn’t say anything. She could feel his skin against hers, the thin straps of her dress the only barrier between them.

Before too long they found the perfect spot. A clearing in the trees where the canopy above caused dappled light to shine down and illuminate the spot while keeping much of the burning heat away. Smiling excitedly they spread out their modest feast. A blanket lain over the ground, the basket opened to reveal juice, ham sandwiches and some fruit. Hardly the fare of romantic novels but then, they hadn’t come for the food.

Within the basket was one item that harked back to a more elegant time. A book, one of their favourites, it was a classic collection of poetry.

It was the book that had brought them together all those years ago.

The pair had both been rifling through the boxes in a second hand bookstore and had spotted the old copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets in the same instant. It was a book that was available everywhere, printed and reprinted by the thousand every year for literature students to pore over and dissect. But there was something about the faded green cover that had caught both of their eyes and drawn them to it. Their fingers brushed when they tried to lift it from its resting place and as their eyes met ‘darling buds’ and ‘tongue-tied Muse’s faded from their thoughts.

Shy smiles and awkward giggles had given way to discussing their favourites of the age old verses. Both looked simultaneously shocked and excited to find they both avoided the over quoted Sonnet 18 and picked lesser known poems among the vast collection.

She said he should buy it, she had a couple of copies at home already. He said she should buy it, because her smile was gorgeous whenever she looked at the book.
She had blushed and said if she did buy it, he could always borrow it.

And so she bought it. And he came round to borrow it the following evening. They shared a bottle of wine and talked of almost every subject under the sun. By the time the morning came, the book hadn’t left her little apartment. And neither had he.

Now the book was like their talisman, their charm. It was almost always with them. She wasn’t sure they’d ever even read it together but that didn’t matter. They both know the love within its pages was but an echo of that which they felt for each other.

And so it rested upon the basket. Unopened and unread. The sunlight filtered by the leaves and branches above dancing over its cover just as it danced over their skin.
The picnic temporarily forgotten for other pleasures, their hunger for one another overtaking and eclipsing the need for food.

Soon the soft rustling of leaves brushing one another in the wind was joined by the soft sounds of love. The whispering of hands moving over skin, of lips moving against lips. The louder, more staccato, sounds of two bodies joining together again and again.

Her sundress danced in the breeze. Hanging by a strap from the branch that had found it when it had been tugged from her body and launched carelessly into the air, no longer needed, his shirt lying in a crumpled heap beneath it on the ground.

Kisses shared and limbs entwined, by the time their climax had noisily consumed and released them both they were laid in each other’s arms upon the blanket. Hazily happy gazes aimed towards the trees above.

They had lain like this before, in this precise spot. In spring with tightly closed buds allowing them to see through to the blue sky beyond the branches. In autumn when golden leaves had floated gracefully and silently to the ground to join hundreds of thousands of others. They would come here too, they were sure, when the branches were painted with frost and the ground blanketed in snow.
This place, like the book, was as much a part of them as they were. It was special.

“So, today?” He whispered, his lips never truly leaving their resting place against her brow, his thumb tracing back and forth against her shoulder.
“I think it has to be.” She replied softly, her face against the crook of his neck. “Summer dresses are fine for now but before long the sun will go and there’ll be no hiding it then.”

He smiled, she could feel the movement of his face against her hair and mirrored it with one of her own. Her hand shifting to lie on top of his where it rested upon her belly. Bigger now than it had been the last time they had laid here but a fraction of what the coming months would make it.
“Today, then.” He agreed.
“We tell them today.” She nodded, lifting her head to kiss his jaw.

Their child would be William Benedict or Anne Beatrice, after the great writer that brought them together or the woman that supposedly inspired him to write in the first place along with the names of their favourite characters he’d created.

Summer was upon them and by the time its heat returned the following year they would be parents. A brand new adventure would have begun and wherever it took them, their path would always bring them back to this clearing. Where he had proposed and she had accepted, where they had celebrated every milestone and sought solace during the darker times.

Through it all, the battered book of love would be with them.

A reminder of sorts that love, true love, burnt brighter and hotter than the sun. Even when clouds obscured its light, it was always there and when the wind changed it would come back into sight.

True love, a love like theirs, would last forever.