Writing prompt: Caruso

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“Hey Maestro!”

“What?”

“You’re late with your payments again.”

“Yeah, guys, I know. These phonographs are starting to sell like the hot cakes but I’ve just been so unlucky on the tables….”

“Yeah, right. Now, Maestro, this is nothing personal. But money is money and a debt is a debt. And Signor F is getting just the little bit impatient. Now, you know he would never hurt such a beautiful voice, the voice of the angels, you know that right? But what about your family? What about your wife’s little cagnolino, her little puppy? You wouldn’t want anything to happ-”

“OK. Stop it right there. What is this? A prompt with an Italian and suddenly we’re all Padrino? What next? Spaghetti and meatballs and sleeping with the fishes?”

The writer lifted her fingers from the keyboard and the voice in her head fell silent. Every time. Every time she thought she could get started again, the writer’s block descended.

Please don’t leave

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“Please don’t leave. Please don’t go.” Gemma stared straight ahead as Martin drove her to the station. “Please don’t go, please don’t leave”, he repeated, looking round at her pale profile, shadowed against the low winter sun. Beyond the hills the train that would take her away pulled out of a station.

Shoulders tensed, she turned and got out of the car. Her eyes were red but dry now. Martin’s words hit her like sharp stones. “Please don’t, please don’t leave me.” As they walked into the ticket office, she let him take her hand. A few miles north, her train sped through fields.

She waited next to the ticket machine as Martin put in the exact money. “I’ve got you a return. I know you say you’ve got to go but I’ve got you a return. Then you’ve got it.” She took the tickets from him and slipped them in her pocket. She picked up her suitcase and they walked out onto the platform. Martin took her hand again. The train was due in a minute exactly. They would see it soon.

Martin had stopped talking now. They stood at the platform edge in silence. They knew where the doors would open and then close. She put her suitcase down. The train came into sight around the bend, slowing, ready to take her away.

“Listen, please, Gemma”, he said. She turned her head and let go of his hand. “Goodbye Martin”, she said and stepped off the platform.

A theist and an agnostic look at the sky

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– It’s called a starry sky, that’s what it’s called.
– I know, but it should be a starred sky, not starry. They didn’t get there on their own, did they? Someone – something – put them there.
– Look, one’s falling, shooting across the sky, make a wish, make a wish.
– So someone’s pushed it. Imagine it, a huge finger with a huge manicured fingernail flicking the star so it skeets across the sky.
– Aye, that’s maybe. But now look at me, look at me wide eyed, so I can see where the stars have fallen to, see the diamond light in your black black eyes.
– Babe?
– Yes, babe?
– The sky’s enough, isn’t it?
– Yes. Yes, the sky’s enough.

The map

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Alexei spread out the map on the boxcar floor. It looked to be part black ink, part charcoal, with hatchings and smudgings and punctuated arrows. But in the centre, right in the centre of that tattered old parchment, was a blood red cross. He jammed his finger down on it. “This is where we’ll find it, right here!” His face twisted in surprised pain, and he fell back, eyes closed.

Sasha looked out at the mountains jagging snow upwards to the perfect sky, at the reflected clouds scudding across the crystal lake. Slowly, he screwed the parchment into a ball and threw it out of the door. It was gone.

That was the story my grandfather told me anyway, about his grandfather Sasha. And so here I am, spending my life on the Khabarovsk line, looking out over the taiga for that tattered piece of parchment that will change my life.

She used to say ‘Oh, stop it’

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She used to say ‘Oh, stop it’ and smiley frown hit his chest with the side of her fist, sometimes thumping it once as if to open a stuck shut suitcase, sometimes drumming on his sternum to shock his heart back to life. He would laugh and the clouds would darken then clear from her face and she would turn and walk away, he hoped hiding a smile.

The one day she turned a corner and when he got there she was gone, not hiding behind the hedges or disappearing on a bus. Just gone.

Stand smiling like an idiot.
Think about calling.
Turn around in circles, both ways.
Call quietly.
Go back to the corner and look up to the sky.
Perch on the low brick wall where the hedge ends and check your phone for messages.
Look around again.
Let time pass.
Look at the pavement, look around the corner, look at the sky.
Walk home and close the door quietly.

Years later, after the tears, the police, the almost forgetting then the sudden remembering like lightning cracking the sky, years later, he wrote his story and put it on his blog.

Days later, when the story had been and gone and there had been only one click, there was a single sharp knock at his door. In the silence it knocked at his heart like a small clenched fist. He went to the door and listened.

When Mr Axe met Mr Door

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“When Mr Axe met Mr Cellar Door, there wasn’t much of a fight. Sure, Mr Door did his best to stand up for himself, but Mr Axe was angry. ANGRY!

Then Mr Axe walked along the hall and slowly, slowly, came up the wooden hill towards the land of nod. He was calmer now, he’d calmed down, everything would be ok, he’s calmed down, it’ll all be ok, he’s calm -”

The bedroom door swung inwards and the words of the fairy story dried in her mouth. She covered the children’s eyes. “Bye byes now”, she whispered.

Face your fears

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Face your fears, John repeated to himself. Every time you have one of those dying dreams, you have to stand up to what was scaring you. It was the stairs down from the flat this time. He had dreamed he was dying. Again.

He had to face his fears. He had done everything the counsellor had said – he had even typed up the stories that stayed in his head when he opened his eyes in the morning. She was right; in the light they were ridiculous.

But he could not face the stairs. He pressed the button and, when the doors opened, he stepped in. There was no lift.