Hiatus (again).

Ben is currently travelling around various parts of Europe and as he may not always have internet connection, we have decided to do another short hiatus until he returns!

On another note, we've received a few wonderful submissions, so we'll be posting them instead this week!
A big thank you to those that have sent us submissions, we've enjoyed reading all of them and seeing how you've interpreted the themes and obstructions.

- Andrew.

Week 4: "Biography" - Andrew

He was leaning down by the edge of the river and I knew instantly that I would look upon my right shoulder for guidance of my next move. Edging closer, I thanked the early afternoon weather for being as hopeless as my chances of winning the football tournament a had been in. We had travelled to Bournemouth about a week prior and had to bring him along. The heavens were a pallet full of monochromatic oil paint and the surroundings seemed to follow the sky's lead. As I stepped over to where he was hunched over, I grinned with every step that made me realise the light pattering of the overhead drizzle which nulled my footsteps on the undisturbed grass that protruded through the sticky, sucking, possessive mud.

                Stalking over him, remaining silent, I got within jumping distance and saw my own reflection in the flowing mirror of the stream. The waters were murky but I could clearly see the devil in my eyes and the innocence of an angel in his. When he was realised my intent I gave him no chance for reprieve and thrust him into the river.
                As soon as he hit the water he began flailing; the sight was sinfully appealing and one which should be savoured. He couldn’t swim well, but he was far from drowning. You could see the absolute concentration in his face at how hard he tried to stay afloat, and I had only wished to bring along a camera of sorts. He swam against the flow of the river and grasped at a low beam by the side, tears streaming down his face fast as the river’s flow increased due to the rain picking up. As he was about to pull himself out of the water, I grasped him arm and helped him out.

“I saved you!” I yelled; a grin still slathered across my face.

                He ran home crying, drenched in the foul, pungent smell of muddy waters. Later that night he gave his recollection of what happened to mother, his tongue serpentine as he told the absolute truth.

“...And he pushed me in!” he broke down in another batch of tears, his eyes sore and a vibrant red which stood out against his pallor.

“I did not! You must have fallen in; you know how clumsy you are.”

I maintained my story and received no punishment. Evading prosecution was the sweetest of fruits from the most plenteous of gardens.

Week 4: "Biography" - Ben

The second I asked it, his tears stopped and I began to sob regret.

            He had come over the previous evening (today and the night before had woven together, thick as rope). I met him at the station and together we’d bought cheap spirits and he mocked me for it and asked why I didn’t drink wine. I could tell he was uneasy and the alcohol fought to loosen him up. We swigged it as we walked and I longed to touch him but I was gripped by so much fear.

            When we got back to mine, the minutes waddled like a pack-mule up and up a steep hill. I wanted the right time (the night time), when I could take him to bed and not have him think me forward and I could take his fragile virgin wrists between my hands and pin them to my headboard and touch his own stigmata.

            We watched some television I loved and I noticed how urgently and fervently he kept moving his hands awkwardly over my body, like a child greedy for attention, discovering something that enraged the grown-ups. I kept drinking to blur everything and I think he had stopped because he was drunk on the anxiety and the anticipation.

            Then it was late enough to turn off the lights. I found his body- but he lay stiff with nerves, though he kept kissing and moving. It was like a smile through pain. I impressed him but I felt apathy to the whole thing and I think I just gnawed and played occasionally out of duty and not because I was really present in the moment. I came four times. I had not satisfied him once. We fell asleep.

            The next day I felt lost. We went in together and I ached and I felt as if wandering a vast desert. We didn’t speak all day, though we glanced at each other readily. I didn’t want anyone to know and the secret had an unpleasant taste to it.

            We spoke a little on the way home.

            “My friend is having a leaving party tonight. You’d be welcome to come.”

            “Okay,” I had mumbled.

            “I’d like you to meet my friends.”

            My stomach knotted with fright at this proposal.

           

            This time, he met me at the station and he walked me to the party. I felt manipulated- a great marionette. My feelings were a ribbon and the ribbon was tangled and the ends of the ribbon were tucked inside the knot- so I didn’t know where my feelings started and when they stopped. Really, I didn’t know what I felt at all.

           

            Inside, his friends intimidated me with how rapidly they spoke and what they spoke about. I told him this.

            “They make me feel stupid,” I explained.

            He laughed it off and the flippancy of his regard for my comment angered me. It made the fracture between us more evident.

            I had bought the unfinished bottle from the night before. It had been a gesture- that I would drink my own and not take from the host, but he glared at me when I swigged from it and he turned his shoulder away from me and towards his friends. I noticed everybody else drinking grain or grape. The fracture grew larger now and darker.

            I tried to talk to him, tell him what I felt. I began to untangle the ribbon. At first I was repentant of what had passed between us.

            “We rushed into things,” I urged. “I didn’t want us to go so far.”

            He blinked and his eyes took on a pearly shine while the outdoor lights haloed his hair. Then blame was loosed from the knotted ribbon.

            “You forced me into it. I wanted your company.”

            Each word, I could see, was a lash to his body. He winced at each blow and I punished him. The ribbon was untangling between and yet none of my fears, my grievings felt assuaged. The ribbon was longer than ever and still unravelling and now tears curled from his eyes. His friends looked concerned and I winced with shame, like a dog that has soiled a new carpet in front of an angry crowd. His bottom lip jutted out and I hated him for this cliché.

            I realised then that the ribbon of tangled emotions I felt was the selfsame fracture I saw spreading between us. Now our fingertips scraped as our arms stretched desperately. The hellfire from beneath seared us, ablaze with the energy of severance. And then I saw the solution. Rather than stop grasping for his hand in the heat, I poured mud into the fracture- mounds of plaster and clay, tumbling into the rift.

            “Let’s make it official.” I smiled through the pain as he had with his body.

Week 4: "Biography"

Theme: Biography:- Re-tell a moment/event in your life from a different person's view point (i.e. you must not be the narrator but must be a "character"). All names can be changed, if desired. (400-1000 words)


The Three Obstructions

1. Religious imagery must be included.
2. The piece must be exaggerated for dramatic effect (especially speech).
3. You must include frequent use of simile and metaphor.

Theme chosen by Ben.

Obstructions chosen by Andrew.

Please feel free to suggest future themes or obstructions in the comments for consideration.

Week 3: "Negative Space" - Andrew

He stood by the entrance of the tent, that space of undefined territory of not being inside, yet not being expelled to the darkness. The tent was filled with no wood or stone. Soft surfaces of the now-skinless beasts were a luxury which he could afford. At the corner of the tent where she was laying, no darkness could be found. The lamps and luminous bottled insects had exorcised the darkness yet from where he stood, no light had graced his presence. He did not want to intrude, but he was still too worried to stand outside in the engulfing nothingness. Her screams had transcended the portrayal of pain; they had become grotesque. And rather than causing woe, her pain felt like a black hole at the centre of his being, right in the centre of his chest where she had rested her head the night before. As her wails continued, it emptied him of his soul, leaving only a pale membrane of skin and hope.

                Defying the orders of the midwife, he took a step inside. Just a step. Just enough to show he cares enough to be present, but not too much in case he hindered the process. The first signs of crowning became apparent as the midwife continued to command her, despite the profanities that she directed at everyone in the tent. The crowning continued and her handsome face was reduced to whimpering and a look of being hopelessly hopeful during the intervals of winces.
                The babe was delivered as the sixth moon eclipsed the fourth, at the hour of complete silence of the insects and beasts. The babe was loud, its cry breaking the rigid soundlessness of the tent. My eyes were open but they saw nothing. With each intake of breath my lungs felt no relief. Her pain had drained me and her death had emptied me.
                The babe was an ugly thing. She had told me to expect a phoenix, a beautiful bird full of fiery liveliness, but this creature entered the world in blood. The babe smelled of it, that pungent scent of the dead and the dying. How suitable, he thought. Removing his eyes from the now ugly, mangled corpse, his eyes drifted down as the midwife handed him the cleaned baby. Its fluorescent purple eyes were intoxicating to an addictive degree. The moons flew and the suns rose and all he had done was look at her, and all she had done was exist. Time was all he had in this respect; time had been taken from him in another.
                He foresaw a great huntress in her, for her skin was soft yet her grip was firm. He entertained thoughts of them hunting together for a while, until his stomach growled like a beast of his imagining. He closed his eyes for a minute and could imagine the soft, bloody meat covering his tongue; the rapids of salt-filled blood flowing throughout his mouth as he ground the meat between his teeth. He decided it was time to eat as the baby began to cry (from what he thought must be hunger) and realised...

What do babies eat?

Week 3: "Negative Space" - Ben

      The skylarks were missing. Charlie heard it in the quiet field, emptied of the woodland sound of his youth. Following the ribbon of hills in the distance, he counted the trees. Two- no, three were gone- all elms; old men with sad, thin trunks brushing past the horizon and upwards to inky branches blushing with leaves. The asymmetry was apparent.
      Pushing open the window above the butler sink, he called in the spring air. He soured at the stench of ash. Even here, miles away, the Blitz burned in the raindrops that fell overnight, carrying soot like tiny messages of bereavement.            
      He stepped into the expanse of garden. Charlie registered the crouching figure of his mother, tending to early-blooming peonies. This was an exercise in routine, for the flowers, she felt, were beyond her control. Charlie’s absent father was by now in France, or Germany, or God-knows-where (Charlie was not allowed to read his letters, but heard them paraphrased to saccharine-sweetness by his mother).            
      Walking towards the tree line, the grass grew up to his knees. Charlie placed his hands on the tips of the blades as he walked and felt the alternating brush and prickle as the jade stalks swept off his palm. Wild grass grew tall here. Where once this lawn had been cropped short in stiff regiment, it now seemed to lollop in the breeze, falling awkwardly like unkempt hair. He spent a few moments picking the worst of the wild grass and breaking the chaff from their stalks. They felt like sickly strands of grain in his hands.            
      A strengthening wind startled him, crackling the branches. He stared greedily at the blackberry bush, which seemed to heave and tumble onto the lawn, too large for its own network of thorns and twigs. The fruit shone like purpled bruises and seemed to roll round on their stalks as the clouds moved before the sun. Blackberries had always reminded him of spiders’ eyes- their beady gloss and the way they bulged and spilled and appeared to grow from one another tumorously. He picked one and broke apart the fruit on his tongue. It was bitter with no relief and he swallowed it with some haste. The sun was hidden now and the world was thrown into shadow.
      He stopped at the back of the garden from where the house sat, stone and detached, like a postcard. The grass didn’t grow here and the ground took on the texture of brown, cracked cement. His father had tried to seed it, spent desperate summers ploughing and sowing in turn, knees to the ground and squinting to find green in the monotone. Some nights he had stayed outside till the sky blackened and then blued again, blinking through dusk and dawn, till he came inside with tears in his eyes, cursing the soil. Charlie knew the soil was a sorry scapegoat.
      He rested against the white fence that separated their house from the field and beyond. It seemed a futile symbol, needless, as the flowers grew round and over the fence in summer. From here, Charlie could see the parish and the sunlight coming through in the distance where the clouds bloomed white and not grey, pouring off the church eaves and into the graveyard. He imagined his father standing here, staring at this very spot, trowel and all abandoned, as Charlie and his mother slept. Charlie had seen his sister buried, he was told, though he didn’t remember. He only knew the imprint she had left (his mother’s weariness, his father’s temper and Charlie’s own isolation that he didn’t understand).
      Rain began to fall on the cracked ground and Charlie looked at his hands and wrists where the drops collected. The cinders in the rainfall left grey streaks on his skin- like overturning a water glass on a charcoal drawing. Charlie turned to see if his mother had gone inside. He saw her stoop in the kitchen window and he was overcome by a feeling of grief he could not attribute. He wondered what he was to do if his father never returned home.

Week 3: "Negative Space"

Theme: Negative space:- Describe a setting by what's not there (500-1000 words)

The Three Obstructions:

1. All five senses must be utilised in the description
2. All clichés must be avoided. That is to say, you (the author) must avoid using commonly used turns-of-phrase, imagery etc.
3. The piece cannot be set in the present day (i.e. the 21st Century). It must be set in another era. (suggested by Simon Curtis)

Theme chosen by Andrew.
Obstructions chosen by Ben.

Please feel free to suggest future themes or obstructions in the comments for consideration.