The washing up done, Tina drew a heart on the steamed up kitchen window. Her rubber glove squeaked as she wrote her lover’s name. A vegetable knife glinted from the bottom of the sink. Tina rinsed it and stared at the heart and the name. Then she opened the window so that the steam, and the name, disappeared. It was gone. Until Tina’s husband did the steamy washing up the next day.
http://www.paragraphplanet.com 25 November 2013
The wet tea towels balled up heavy on the drainer, the splashes of soaped water dribbling down the steamy window, the tea leaves and unidentifiable swilled around the plug hole.
It all started the day the BBC put out the appeal for listeners’ recordings of old radio programmes that the Corporation, under pressure to save money, had deleted in the 80s.
But we don’t yet know when it will end.
They asked listeners to send in original CDs, cassettes, even reel-to-reel tapes and thousands did. Most of what was sent in was duplicate of what the BBC already had in its archives, a little was new and useful and filled a gap. Only one CD had been – lovingly? no, not lovingly, but very carefully – filled with an old old radio comedy programme. Previously thought lost and very valuable. Halfway, more or less, through the comedy show, someone had added…. Something had been added. The Sound.
The Sound didn’t have a capital letter then: it was just a sound until you heard it, or met someone who had heard it. Then it had a capital letter and then sometimes, later, it was all capital letters because that’s how we who hadn’t heard it thought of it, thought of it sounding in someone else’s head.
And that’s how it all started. But we don’t yet know how it will end.
A steampunk Tudor house flies in, tilts and settles gently, steamily, next to the manor, nipping a corner from the tennis court. The dog howls and chases its tail. The door opens and the couple walk out, waving to the crowds they thought would be there throwing orange blossom. They soon realise their mistake.
Ring, ring. Stevie wasn’t thinking about the money any more; he’d even stopped fretting how such a good idea could have gone so bad. He was meant to be away somewhere, just him and Marcie. Ring, ring.
Not hung up on a meat hook wanting it all to stop.
Ring, ring. He was dying to hear that old-school tone on his phone again but there was silence. Five minutes until the man came back. And then nothing. Ring, ring.
http://www.paragraphplanet.com 06 November 2013
I shouldn’t have told Stefan I’d swapped blood for biscuits, or maybe not in those words. He went all twilighty on me, snarling and snapping and snapping at my throat. It took me all my strength to push him away and over and hold him down on the ground. I tried to explain that I just had a sweet, sharp, tooth – I hadn’t given up, no, of course not, but sometimes I just fancied a nice biscuit, washed down with a nice cup of tea – and off he went again, eyes all white, slathering and barking and making a hell of a noise. Tea and biscuits. Nice. Of course, as I told him, my foot on his neck, he’s old eastern empire, he wouldn’t have tea, but I’m sure he’d kill for a cream cake and a coff- You know, sometimes you just can’t say anything without someone going all mad wolf snarling and leaping out the window. He’ll be back when he’s killed horribly. Enough to put you off your biscuits. I’ll keep the whole vegetarian thing to myself for a while I think.
People with beautiful eyes are dangerous as fire.
People with dangerous eyes are beautiful as ice.
See me, follow me, take me with you.
The real terror only began the day after Hallowe’en, when the graves did not close again, and their occupants did not return. Tio thought the zombie lurching up the alley towards him was someone still in a Halloween costume. Until it tore his head off. Then the real terror began. Terror you can try to imagine.
It’s quiet, isn’t it?
Two people got on the train. One sat on either side of me. One smelled of the death of other people. The other smelled of mine. We got off the train together.
Kenny was stuck between two volume levels. Five was too soft and let the birdsong through; six was deafening. He shouldn’t have, but he threw the old brown teapot at the speaker.
What was all the noise? No, not the music that didn’t let the birdsong through, the noise of – oh, the teapot hitting the speaker and then the floor.
The volume level suddenly jumped to zero. The birds had stopped shouting and wailing, even the pretty-tune ones. The heavy curtains kept out too much light. Dusk indoors and the smell of hot tea and fresh urine.
The hands on the clock with no numbers stayed still, still telling the time before the tea on the floor. Kenny knew someone would have to clean up all that mess. Someone would be angry.
simonsalento 