All Stories

The ducks were a quack with one question.

Geese honked. The songbirds tweeted. Foxes slunk from their dens, badgers wandered in the empty woods, moles popped up and rabbits, well rabbits, just carried on doing what rabbits do. But the same question echoed round all creatures, “Where did the human’s go?”

The answer stalked from the past, from the depths of the forest.

“Love locks them up,” growls the lone Wolf. “Love for their old and vulnerable. Weakness!”

But the others disagreed, they squawked and squeaked that to keep the all-mighty humans locked down Love must be most powerful indeed.

The bulging, pink suitcase wobbles, as Susie yanks it across the uneven road. Imagining the contents spilling out, she eases her grip.

She’d never live it down if her granny pants landed on a stranger’s face, or her size 16 labels were exposed. Worse would be, the stash of chocolate or bursting makeup bag. Both used to cover cracks in her self-esteem.

Reaching her platform, Susie turns to lift her overweight luggage and finds a smiling face and helping hands.

“I come with a lot of baggage,” she jokes.

“Don’t we all,” he says, even though he carries no visible luggage.

At school Louise had a crush on popular Ben. Everything she did, she did for him.

She came to school for him, she practiced dance for him and passed her exams for him.

At college it was good-looking, unattainable Farha.

At university is was handsome, older Kit.

Now, it’s the beautiful man, who smiles at her every morning, on the way to work.

Leaping from bed, her heart quickens with the hope that today they’ll speak. But her head hopes not. He could never match the illusion. The summit can never be reached, or their would be no more motivation.

In a darkened room, lie two strangers.

The transparent door, both exit and entrance, is shut, but not locked.

The strangers occupy two of eight beds, which slope up and down, like gentle ocean waves. Cotton towels, the colour of wet sand, cover the beds. Hushed sea music shushes the occupants into a slumber.

Soft yellow lamps, glow in the dark. But it’s the tiny LEDs, dotted across the black ceiling, that catch the eyes. Like twinkling stars.

Despite the unknown identity of the other, the strangers, aren’t alone. They share a similar purpose, to rest in the darkened room.

Finished with education Sarah-Jane decides she is now an adult.

Googling local vacancies, Sarah-Jane finds jobs and rentals to apply for. She learns how to fill in forms but doesn’t get any offers.

She searches again and again. Applying for positions and lettings she learns how to deal with rejection, until one day she’s offered a job and a flat.

But her education has only just begun. Now she has to learn how to make adult friends, talk about adult things, make adult decisions, and pay adult bills. Sarah-Jane realises she still needs lots more training to be an adult.

Mum wears a white top, emblazoned with horizontal stripes the colour of sunflowers. She accepts receipt of a little, green watering can from her two-year-old daughter.

The daughter, wearing a poppy-red t-shirt, then takes a large jug and drops it in a bucket of water with a splash, and a squeal. Little hands lift the full jug to the soil and tip the contents on the dirt, making a small lake. 

Scrunching up her face, the girl scrutinises the earth and frowning says, “Not grow up.”

“They will,” says Mum, sighing with the knowledge that all flowers eventually grow up.

A girl grew up knowing only a small part of the world and speaking her small world language.

Then someone showed her a door to another world. Shoving it open, the girl saw many possibilities and striding through left her small world behind.

The girl saw, heard and tasted many unimagined wonders, but also overcame struggles and disappointments.

The girl was now a lady.

Changed, she returned to the door. Hearing voices on the other side, she tried to go through. But like an adult squeezing into shoes worn as a child, she no longer fit in that small world.

Neville’s neighbour Shelia is the devil. She has horns and a tail; he can hear them every time she complains.

Her husband revs his car at 3am and she squawks about Neville vacuuming at a normal time.

Neville’s Dad is eighty-eight, he doesn’t get out much and his hearings’ not good. He needs the volume on the telly up but it’s not loud. He’s told his friends to close doors gently, but it’s ridiculous tiptoeing round his own house.

It’s not Neville’s fault the walls are so thin.

He just wants to be left in peace; to live his life.