Tiny Yellow Kites

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Twenty little extracts from my new blog.

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She awoke, realising she’d drifted off. The room was dark and cold, the fire almost out. The radio was hissing loudly. Against the hiss a voice was speaking, faint, distant in time and space, as though from another planet. – Voices from the Ether (1000 words)

An enormous crash jolted me awake. My heart pounded. Otherwise deathly silence. Surely I hadn’t imagined it?
With apprehension I took a carving knife from the bedside cabinet drawer. – Mirror Man (200 words)
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Howie stood transfixed, unable to move as the demure young lady standing next to him at the zoo put down her handbag and started to climb calmly into the tiger enclosure. – Tiger Tiger (200 words)
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Something silver flashed and for the first, and only, time in my life I saw the glint of a Fokker Eindekker. I felt my guts emptying. –  A Design for Death  (200 words)

She wished she were on the street corner in the slums, becoming one with the other percussionists in a giant rhythm, uncaring of social status for that glorious moment! – A Friend in Need (200 words)

It was a dull claustrophobic December day and flakes of grey-white snow were settling on the terrace behind King’s Antiquarian Booksellers. Maggie Swann, matriarch of Swann’s Rare Books, crossed it to enter an annex. Inside, in eerie silence, anonymous leather-bound volumes filled dusty bookcases. –  A Merry Dance (1000 words)

She gazed down on the mangled wreckage of two cars and a decapitated woman, bloody and spread-eagled on the empty carriageway. She could hear creaking metal and smell leaking petrol. In one vehicle she saw herself, intact but lifeless – Ad Pacem (200 words)

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Ibrahim is like a tiger in a cage. He must be fed on a diet of violence to keep him under control, to keep him of use to us.” –  Bound in Morocco (7224 words)

We came upon an ancient shrine with a small stone horse. I stroked its weathered features and whispered, “we need water… Dhanybhaad!” I imagined it standing under the cold stars, desolate, longing to live and breath. –  Dream of a Stone Horse (100 words)
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Entering the library, she selected an ancient volume, résumé du diets, showing me illustrations of impossibly thin Elizabethan women. Juxtaposed were strange recipes – samphire stew, starling fricassee, fox meat in aspic, others stranger still. – Fox Meat in Aspic (200 words)
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Through Lincs’ fair wolds, did roam at large
the evil Sprogge, oh loathsome beast!
Half plant, half man, half monstrous thing
on teeny tods did feast.
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Past Tetford Church the Sprogge did lurch,
its eyes did mulder and burn.
It munched upon a teeny tod
then tavern-wards did journ.
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– Legend of the Sprogge (poem)–
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I’d scarcely known her before she moved in with me. She appeared out of nowhere one day with just a bagful of possessions: a mirror, toiletries and the like. She was so beautiful though, that I couldn’t turn her away. – My Name is Ian Z. McPhee (627 words)
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A hush fell and a neat, grey suited man appeared. “Ladies and Gentlemen, a star known as Nibiru and its four planets are approaching Earth. This is being suppressed!”
A murmur of surprise swept the room. – Nibiru (200 words)
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Two butterflies flying high above trees
Like tiny yellow kites
Drifting far apart
Coming together miraculously
To kiss again.

– The Roaring Sun (poems)
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She thought of her little village, Saltby St. Mary’s, recalling balmy summer evenings at the cricket pitch, sipping champagne by the walls of the ancient church, only the occasional ‘thwack’ of willow on leather breaking the peaceful silence. – The Saltby St. Mary’s Murders (200 words)
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Faster than the speed of sound, he flew on a November afternoon. He wasn’t malicious, but he had a mission. He’d heard it said that his kind had killed untold millions of people and animals…-  The Story of a Bullet (200 words)
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It was July 2008 and we were flying into remote Sierra Leone.
“Not long Bwana,” said Emmanuel, my Tanzanian pilot.
“OK Mani. D’you know the area?”
“Yes. It’s dangerous.”
Ten long years of civil war; Everywhere was dangerous. – The War and Starvation Diet (200 words)
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Jason Christopher Smith regarded the text message. ‘Jason, please to come EXACTLY 30 minutes early for a special preview! Lucifer.’
His phone indicated 7.29 p.m. Perfect! He pressed the lift button. – Lucifer’s Kitchen (500 words)

If you are interested in joining a fortnightly 300 word story group please contact me and I’ll send details.

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