I suck at blogs.
Big time.
University has completely ruined whatever dedication (even if minimal!) I ever had to part-time writing. Bah!
And I kinda feel bad, because I can see by my viewings that there are people out there (somewhere!) who are reading the drivel I (occasionally) write. So obviously I'm a bad person. I know. Therefore, as an apology I dug up some old writing of mine.
I found some short stories I wrote quite a while back that make me chuckle every time I read them back. There are so many things I would change but, to be honest, I like being able to look back and say "I wrote that when I was X years old, and haven't tampered with it at all" because then I can see the progress of my writing style as I get older.
Anyway, this short is from the 2008-9 World Book Day Short Story Competition I entered. The stupid thing had a word limit and so that's why it ends pretty abruptly, sorry about that. I know I had loads of fun writing this so I hope you lot enjoy it!
Voila!...
“Better start running,” he said with an evil grin,
patting the shrouded cage beside him. “You’ve got a thirty second head start
and then I let it out.”
He wasn’t fair. He didn’t give me thirty seconds. I
counted in my head.
I turned then he let it loose. It bounded after me,
looking even more deformed as the sun shot through the leaves above, leaving
shadows dancing merrily across its evil face.
I ran
at full pelt, until my feet felt like they were bleeding, though there was no
way possible they could be, but I wasn’t quick enough. It had shortened the gap
between us almost immediately. I could almost feel its warm sweet breath on my ankles, it made me
shudder. There was no way I could outrun it, unless…
I reached
the edge of town and took a sharp left down an alley. But it had been expecting
that, or else it was just a quick mover, and it followed me flawlessly.
I
ran, throwing everything dotted along the edge of the alley, into its path, only
for it to jump skilfully over them, having years of practice in the… I couldn’t
even bring myself to say it.
Five
metres or so ahead was a crossroads where the alley went through a main street.
Left or right. Right or left. Three metres. At the last possible second I
decided left, only to find myself yanked backwards down the right. Unaware of
me changing direction, the…creature
carried on down the left.
I stumbled,
grasping at the strong hold on my hood. “Leave off!” I turned, snapping the
grip on my hood away, to see my friend’s puzzled face.
“What’s
all that about? You look like you’ve seen an angel,” Aimee laughed.
When
I didn’t laugh along, like usual, she stopped, abruptly, and put on her serious
face. “What’s wrong?” She followed my gaze as I glanced back, shuddering. Her
face paled, more pale than it usually was. “Oh, god…” she murmured. “You didn’t…oh,
god…what did you do?” She looked back at my face. “You aggravated him, didn’t
you? I told you to leave it but you couldn’t resist, you just had to. Now look
what you’ve done.” She shook her head, her face still more-than-deathly pale
and scared stiff. “What are you going to do?” She shook her head again. “No way
would you be able to sort this out yourself. What are we
going to do?”
“I…he…” I tried to explain but
couldn’t find the words.
“Stop mumbling.” She frowned,
concentrating. “Jacob,” she finally said. “We need Jacob.” She turned, marching
off towards the butchers, without looking back.
Just as she got to the door,
Jacob leisurely trotted out, carrying a large bloody carcass in his grubby
hands, which he placed on an equally grubby wooden table.
“Jacob,” she moaned at him, as he
hacked at the large heads of the carcass with an axe.
He turned, he hand still slicing
at one of the necks. “Yeah?” he replied, turning back to his work and smearing one
of his bloody hands on his dirt-grey apron. “What d’ya want?”
“He’s done it, you said he would
and he has,” she groaned, slumping down onto a rickety wooden chair and absentmindedly
playing with the carcass’ floppy tail.
The chopping stopped. Jacob
turned around. He gulped.
“Yeah, well, what do you want me
to do about it?” he said, returning back to his work, though his face was rigid
with shock.
“Obviously, what we want you to
do is help us. We can’t get rid of this thing on our own, we-”
He cut her off by sharply turning
and pointing his bloody axe in my direction. The deep coloured blood ran down
the axe’s dirty surface and started dripping off onto my robe and shoes. I
stepped back, just missing another drop.
“He,”
Jacob angrily jabbed the axe my way, spraying little droplets of blood over me,
“did this, he should fix-” He stopped
short when he saw the stern glare Aimee was giving him over the decaying thing,
you hear me? I just wanna get that straight,” he finished, gruffly.
“Fine,” she replied. “You’d probably
only get in the way anyhow.”
“So, where do you think we could
corner it?” I chimed in, curious as to how this would resolve, though I was as petrified
as both Aimee and Jacob put together. They turned and glared at me, blaming me
completely for their involvement. I swiftly sunk back into my silent
observation.
“The cliff,” Jacob answered my
question, though never looked at me. He scratched his horns inattentively. “I
think that would be the best place. Or you could run it through the woods,
though that might take too long. You really need to get it out of the way
quickly.”
“Yeah, I think the cliff is the
best bet. Thanks Jacob.” She got up and turned to go as he reached out and
placed the axe lightly on her shoulder. She turned around; a hopeful expression
on her face.
He took the axe off her shoulder
and placed it on the table next to the reeking remains. He looked down, embarrassed,
and smeared the blood off his fingers onto the apron, trying to give his hands
something to do.
“Well you see, I was wondering
if…y’know, maybe if you catch this thing you could, y’know…” He trailed off.
“Bring it back for you?” guessed
Aimee.
Jacob looked up eagerly. “Would
you? It’s just I’ve never got my hands on one of these before,” he rubbed his
hands together, “and y’know, I’d just like to…well…”
“I understand. You want to
experiment with the corpse because it’s something new. Yeah, sure, we’ll bring
it back but only if its free spleens for a month,” she replied cleverly.
His face went sour, then beaten.
“Yeah, sure, but only if you bring it back whole.”
We turned, waving, and jogged towards
where the creature had gone. It wasn’t hard finding it. We headed towards where
people were screeching and cowering. Once we got there we pushed to the front
of the quivering crowd, and then cowered ourselves. It was just so…hideous.
We needed something to tempt it
with. The vegetable stand had been toppled over as people had rushed away.
Aimee grabbed a carrot, which was rolling around our feet, and waved it in
front of the creature. It looked up and bounded towards us. We backed away, and
started running uphill, up the narrow path, towards the precarious point of the
cliff. We turned. It was right there. Only a few feet away. We had hoped it
would have been slower and left us a little time to place the bait and set up a
trap. We couldn’t get round it. It slowly, intimidatingly, cornered us. I’d
always wondered how I’d, well, end. But I never thought it would be Aimee, my
vampire friend, and me, a trainee reaper, hazardously suspended on the edge of
the cliff, cornered by our deadly enemy. The bunny rabbit.
