Competition entries

Richard Diss

Bee

I was a man, I’m now a bee, lover and hoarder of honey. Our hive moved like cogs in a buzzing machine, fuelled by the obsession of earning our keep, and pleasing our queens.
I’ve been hungry for a long time. I made a mistake, spoke out about our hardships, our rights to the sweet nectar. The queens branded my words as evil, and I was cast out with an empty belly. Now, as I lie here with parched mouth and weak heart, I plead to you. Do not become a bee. Do not hoard the honey.

Zannatul Wara Fairuz

A whispered story, what a mother said to her child

Spread your wings and fly, my darling.

When I was 3, my parents split. They juggled me around.

But where do I go?

17, left high school with a barely passing grade.

Anywhere you want to. They cannot hold you back.

19 when the cops found me, a needle in my arm. I called a prison cell home for a while.

And what can I do?

40 when they set me free. No one would employ me, so I crashed on couches and lived on the government’s money.

Whatever you want. Make the world tremble. Make the stars shine brighter.

Elizabeth Lydon

Danse Macabre

I’d like to think it was the autumnal cold that caused me to involuntarily shudder...but I knew my nemesis had been spying on me for the past week. With all eight eyes.

I had him cornered now. He had toyed with me at vulnerable times; I had gone from *pro spider* to wanting to eliminate the threat in my sanctuary. Admittedly I made the first strike; an accidental destruction of his silken home. His audacity to rebuild was amazing and terrifying.

Now he had two choices. Join me in the Danse Macabre or accept my dustpan and ceasefire.

Sabian Wilde

Dismissal

Before the virus, we complained our society was deeply disconnected as a community. It disagreed. Violently.
It took the strong communities first: the volunteer groups, congregations of all faiths.
No one remaining missed the evangelicals, who went down screaming their defiance at an enemy that didn’t care about God, and even less about prayer.
We redistributed their homes to the homeless, but we couldn’t feed them. Free from oppression, they died anyway.
We send the sick to churches, where nothing good continues to happen.
We few who remain tend our gardens and won’t shake hands.
We don’t even wave.

Hannah Rose

Invisible

We are invisible. They do not hear our voices; they do not hear our pleas. If we hit a woman, we are villains, if a woman hits us we are weak. I cannot leave my house; she is always waiting at the door. Nobody believes me, they tell me to just dump her but they don’t know what she does when eyes are turned away. I call the police and they laugh. I am invisible. I am trapped. Just because men like me are small doesn’t mean that we are not there. I am calling from the shadows. Nobody listens.

Sabrina Swift

All I Can Do Now Is Hold You

Fate dealt you a trick hand, with motor skills you no longer have. Your eyes tell your story while you are left alone in your mind with memories of life. Those moments won’t betray you like the cells in your body have. Confined to your bed, focused on breath. You stare out the same window, another day, another month, another year. The value of speech when you no longer can use your tongue, to find the smallest of words that now dribble out in slurs. Incomprehensible. A soul trapped inside a shell. All I can do now is hold you.

Lorraine Lambert

The Face in the Window

The face in the window.

He didn't fit the bill. He was not who they thought he was. The picture they painted of him was warm. Bright and sunny, meaning to reflect his personality, which in reality was dark... full of shades and shadows.
Beads of red condensation slipped slowly mingling with vapours of breath and blood. Sliding like an adder down the weathered window pane. The heavy moisture of fear and death.
Goodbye to those who did not see him. Goodbye to those who did not listen. Remember this face in the window. The face of truth and terror. That face. That visible face. Never forget it.

Amanda Rostron

A Mother’s Love

Dad lies dead in the congealing blood that once gave him life. Mum is stood over him, not trying to save him, but cackling and gulping down more of the whiskey that fuelled her rage before she savagely sliced the knife across his neck. Davy and I are locked in the cupboard in the hallway where mum keeps us. Trembling inside, we watched through the gap but dare not make a sound, terror sealed my throat. “Jake, who’s going to help us now, sobbed Davy?”
I squeeze him tight as silent tears fall, hoping that dad got the message through.

W.J. Kite

Invisible Boys

One world disappearing, another revealing.

“Macular degeneration,” said the doctor, “common in the elderly,”.

I lay on my mattress in utter darkness. The boys are at the foot of the bed again. Dressed in red tracksuits, one with an ear stud, another smoking a cigarette I can’t smell. Hushed talk. Their eyes look at me, glassy and piercing blue.

My son enters, his blurred silhouette in the doorway. I tell him what I see.

“Ah, those invisible boys,” he smirks, “Charles Bonnet Syndrome, remember?”

I do not remember.

My eyes are watery, peeking from under the bedsheet. Long nights alone.

Aileen Boyer

The Rainbow

Change was in the air. Tension was mounting. It felt like being in a theme park full of primary colours and oversized things strung together like giant beads. The world took on a new look.
A fading vapour trail across the sky carried the sound of a distant highway, a sensuous illusion preceding thunder and lightning.
The sky darkened, reducing colour to greyscale, before splitting open to allow the cleansing rain to wash away the tension.
Shaken by the ugliness, the colours came to an agreement in the dark and formed a colour transversion to soften change. A hope offering.