Collected lines #2
The random jottings and half-conceived ideas which come out at writing club
Twice a month, I attend an informal writing group at my local indie book store. It’s a chance for likeminded people to gather and write without pressure or deadlines, and I bloody love it. I meet interesting people from all walks of life who I would never ordinarily cross paths with. I always leave feeling inspired and fulfilled.
A lot of what I write is very random, based on prompts or activities set during the group. Some of it may feed into the novel I am trying to write, some of it may just languish in the notebook for eternity. I thought it would be good practise to share those scribblings here, as a way to get them out of the notebook and potentially into the minds of others. So here we go, issue one of Collected Lines.
For this piece, the prompt was to continue writing after a famous first line. I picked “It was the day my grandmother exploded.”
It started out like any other Tuesday. My alarm pierced the silence of my sleep at precisely 5.50am, interrupting a delicious dream I was having about the guy from that new BBC crime drama. We were just about to board his private jet to Mykonos when I was rudely interrupted by the shrill bleep of my iPhone. Why is it that no matter what tone you pick, you always grow to despite it?
I rubbed last night’s crusty mascara from my eyes, and scrabbled around on my bedside table for my glasses. Blearily, I started my morning ritual of checking my socials, hoping that a sudden influx of followers had come in overnight, meaning I could quit my day job and pursue every Gen Z’s dream of becoming an influencer. As I clicked on the notification icon, I was met with a paltry seven likes. It had taken HOURS to film, edit and craft the perfect caption and for what? Seven fucking likes, and one of those was from Aunty Julie, the other was from my Nan. Shit - Nan. I’d been so distracted by my disappointment I’d forgotten my other morning ritual; checking on Nan and bringing her a cuppa in bed. I lived with her in the same cramped terraced house my mum grew up in, which smells perpetually of burnt fish fingers and overcooked broccoli, with decor that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Changing Rooms.
Yanking my dressing gown off the back of the door, I shove my arms into its warm embrace, then wiggled my freezing feet into my slippers. I made my way down the short hall to my Nan’s bedroom, knocking gently on the door as I pushed it open.
“Morning Nan, I’ll go get the kettle on shall I?”
I flicked my eyes towards the bed, expecting to see Nan propped up against the pink, satin headboard, leafing through one of her beloved but battered Jilly Coopers. Instead, a scene of utter carnage met my eyes.
I blinked furiously, trying to dispel what I was seeing, but it stubbornly refused to disappear; vivid and visceral. Every surface was coated in a mist of sticky, congealing blood. Clots of fatty, gelatinous tissue hung like macabre decorations from the light fixture and curtain pole. As I stumbled backwards in my slippered feet, I felt the unmistakeable sharp crack of bone beneath them.
The next activity was to write something based on a three-word character. Mine was ‘runaway government spy’.
The heat of the midday sun seared the skin on the back of Josephine’s neck. Sweat was pooling between her breasts and she could feel the familiar prickling sensation of perspiration under her arms. The cheap polyester blouse she was wearing was amplifying the already stifling temperatures, turning her into a sweating chunk of flesh. She pushed her sunglasses up onto the bridge of her nose, only for them to promptly slide back down again to reside by her nostrils.
“Fuck it,” she thought, snatching them from her face and flinging them into her handbag, which she tugged further up her scorched shoulder. As she swerved ambling pedestrians on the packed pavements of Oxford Street, she continued to glance discreetly around her. She was safe. For now. She overtook a particularly sun-dazed swarm of Chinese tourists to duck into the cool embrace of a small, inconspicuous looking shop. Cheap, tacky paraphernalia was crammed onto the floor-to-ceiling shelves, red white and blue searing onto her eyelids. Ignoring the tat, she strode between the shelves to a barely noticeable door, concealed behind a tatty curtain at the back of the shop. Standing on tip-toes, she pressed her face against the door’s frame, at which point a laser beam emerged from the wood, sweeping over her eyes. A loud beep emitted, and the door opened with a rush of stale, hot air.
The final prompt was to complete this sentence: ‘The minute you entered, you could smell [blank]. Paired with the sound of [blank] it was unmistakably home.’
The minute you entered, you could smell burning fat. Paired with the sound of the The Archers theme tune, it was unmistakably home.
Shrugging off your coat, you sling it over the banister and bend down to untie your trainers. As you do, a force slams into you from behind, propelling you headfirst into the wall. The carefully hung frames threaten to tumble to the floor, but remain fixed in place, albeit now wildly askew.
“Hi Devon,” you say, turning as you right yourself to see the mischievous grin of your five-year-old nephew.
“Where’s your Nan?”
“She’s in the kitchen, cooking my tea. I’ve got fish fingers!” he replies, before thundering off into the lounge, where the opening tune of some mind-numbing kids cartoon blares out. It’s always turned up way too high to accommodate mum’s failing hearing, which she refuses to acknowledge, claiming that hearing aids are for “old biddies with blue rinses”.
Despite being the wrong side of 70, there wasn’t a hint of blue rinse about mum. Her peroxide hair, bleached to within an inch of its life, was always styled to perfection. Her crown, while the heavy gold hoops sagging in her earlobes and thick chains around her neck were her armour. Denise Wilkes was pure East-end glamour. Never seen without her trademark lippie (Chanel Rouge Allure) and leopard print handbag (off the back of Big Dave’s van) she was fiercely loved by their community and fiercely loathed by local law.
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