Hello, it's been a while but here is 'The Son'

I’m walking up James Street, fresh out of the office and trying to pull a cigarette from its packet when someone tugs at my sleeve.

‘Excuse me.’ I utter. I try to brush them away but their hand refuses to move. I turn my head to focus on my sleeve and see the stranger’s fingers hooked round my arm.

“Get off me.” I say, this time fixing my gaze into her grey eyes, hidden behind slack bands of skin. The woman in front of me looks about sixty-five but is probably nearer fifty or so. Her fingernails are yellowed and the musky smell of stale tobacco seeping out from her swathes of clothing indicates what bought her these extra years. My stride snaps faster as I try to get away from her, but now another clawed hand circles round my wrist, making the metal of my watchstrap bite into my skin.

‘My child, my child,’ she croaks at me. The woman is small; no more than five foot six but her grip is strong. I manage to release of her hands from my arm but as soon as I try to disengage the other, the first is back and pinching hard into my wrist with those yellowed nails.

‘Oh sir, please sir,’ she begs again, pulling down on my arm with such fervour that any attempt to move away is rendered practically impossible with her clinging onto me so fiercely. A woman walking past in a navy trouser suit with her briefcase wedged under her arm steps carefully round me, curling her lip in horror at me and my human sidecar. I don’t know why this lady who is still attached to my arm has chosen me, but she has and she’s still there and still not letting go. I’m growing fast aware that this is becoming a scene so I stop sharply on the spot, and the woman comes stumbling to a halt in front of me. A black shawl covers her head, and the bristly, grey hair poking out from underneath it muddles itself with the ragged fringing on the shawl. As the slit of her mouth opens to speak again I look at her yellowed but straight teeth.

‘My child, won’t you help me?’

Looking at her face covered in fault lines of wrinkles, I start to think that by logic this woman’s child, if there was one, would have to be about forty at best.

‘I-I’m sorry.’ I stammer, and offer her to help herself from my packet of cigarettes by means of appeasement. She looks at me blankly. I nudge the packet in her direction again with my free arm and wait. We’re locked in a stalemate. If she frees an arm to reach for the packet, I could get free; if she doesn’t I will still be stuck. Her right hand grips me tighter as she frees up her left hand to reach towards the cigarettes. She quickly takes one, but at a loss for how to light it clamps it between her teeth in the meantime.

‘I need to go.’ I say. I’m firm, but polite. Or at least this is what I am aiming for. ‘I need to leave now.’ Her hands fall away from my arm to stop in front of her and she weaves her fingers in and out of each other. ‘Here.’ I say, taking my lighter from my jacket pocket and holding it towards her. ‘Take it.’ And she does. I nod my head to her slightly and start to walk back down the street, inadvertently trying to straighten out my sleeve.

Five hundred yards down the road, my brow still knotted from the semi-altercation, I decide to step into a newsagents to pick up a replacement for my lighter and something else to take my mind off the woman. I stand at the counter waiting to pay but the mid-thirties shopkeeper is busy watching something on the television. I draw my nails back and forth along the counter at an increasing pace as though this will produce enough energy to animate the guy who’s meant to be serving me. Instead he’s still tipping his head backwards to watch the formula one cars dodge over tarmac, his head slightly bobbing as the cars take the curves. I clear my throat. He doesn’t look at me, but balls his fist and lifts a solitary finger as if to say ‘hang on, just one minute.’ First the old woman and now this, I start to feel the heat prick in my face and my shirt collar grow tighter with renewed frustration. I push the paper and chocolate bar I’ve picked up across the counter and make to walk out. The guy at the till seems to wake up at this point and rings up my items, although his eyes try to gravitate back towards the screen.

‘Two thirty-four.’

‘You’re a fan, huh?’ I say, by means of politeness as I hand over the money.

‘Hmm?’ he’s stretching his neck up to the screen again.

‘A fan, of racing.’ I should have guessed that even this would be hard work.

‘No.’ he replies. I take my change and walk back out, shaking my head as I go.

I’m in the middle of balancing my briefcase, newspaper and unwrapping a chocolate bar when I feel something pulling on the back of my jacket. I turn round quickly to find myself greeted again by those steely eyes. Before I can even think ‘Oh God,’ to myself her rasping voice pleads,

‘My child, my son.’

Her face is ripped in torment and tears are starting to moisten her eyes. By now I am confused and angry, trying to figure out what this woman wants from me and in exasperation thrust my Snickers towards her, stopping just short of those to teeth all lined up like tombstones. She reaches up, I think she is going to take the bait again, but instead her hand closes round my fist and lowers it to in front of me and doesn’t let go.

‘My son.’ she says. Her other hand moves up towards my face and grazes my cheek as she pronounces these words. The tips of her fingers catch themselves in the stubble pricking over my face. I’m too stunned to say anything or to move away from so we stand there, one of her hands still clasped over mine.

‘Your eyes. Like my son’s.’ A tear spills from her eye and I start to imagine why I had been chosen, why she followed me after I thought I’d got away the first time. I push her hand away from my face and tell her,

‘I can’t help you. I’m sorry. I can’t help you.’ This woman standing in front of me looks confused and her mouth stutters as though her words can’t quite work out which is the most important to come out first.

‘Your face is my son’s.’

But it’s not. Maybe to her but to me I’m another commuter trying to get down James Street and make my way home. It could have been another one of the faces in the rush, but she had chosen me.

‘I’m sorry. But I’m going. ‘ I say finally, and add, ‘I’m sorry for your son.’ I push her arms back towards her sides and hold them there for a second to make sure they’ll stay put. I try to look her in the eyes but don’t quite manage it so instead look down at her battered black loafers with the leather peeling off before trying to get home again. I walk about twenty paces and turn my head over my shoulder. She is still standing there, arms where I left them, tucked by her sides, looking at me.

Write from the point of view of a clean sock that was mistakenly placed in the hamper

someone had daft creative writing tasks, I stole one for a 5min brainworkout:

These fucking scum. Look at them, lounging around in their own filth, drunk on their own vile stench. I feel their grime soaking through my fibres and inside of me. Oh god. This is what they call “dealing” with the problem. Just because we can’t see them hanging around lost and lonely anymore, didn’t mean they had disappeared forever. Ha. How stupid of me. How stupidly someone grouped me with these sickening layabouts oblivious or even happy with their own state of self-neglect. Jesus. I can feel them sneering at my perfume, they can tell I’m not one of them.

A light comes from above. It’s…it’s…an air strike. I watch in horror as more of the cotton paratroopers swirl down to smother me in their stench.

Makerel on my mind

She Burns

She felt the sun pricking on her arms. The stale air pressed against her lips already cracking against the heat. She groped for the glass of water next to her, tilted it towards her face and felt the water warm in her mouth. The more she poured into herself, the more she expelled. Wedged a hand into the small of her back. It bathed in the sweat collected in the shallow hollow of her skin. She pushed it down her legs, water fighting oil; water fighting heat. Splaying her hands she stretched the skin already shrinking against her bones under the heavy rays.

Somewhat distracted

Tock, tock, tock tock that lulling clock is the sound of hooves. I see myself at home. The pages grazing my fingers are now grass. My eyes hurt from stark bulbs rather than dim sunlight. I blink myself back to my desk and away from the fields. My eyes are rooted to books but my minds off walking elsewhere..

The Man, The Siamese

There is a man. Standing on the corner. Sipping a cup of coffee. Not a take-away cup, but one from his kitchen. His lip rasping on the chipped rim each time he raises it to suck on the smooth, dark liquid. Next to him is a cat. A Siamese. Its blue collar matches the man’s blue cotton trousers. They are both disinterested in each other and in their surroundings. The man is calm, seeming as if it’s completely normal for him to be standing there away from an entrance to any house, but not seeming to be waiting for anything, anyone. The Siamese sits. Raises her paw in time with the man lifting his coffee cup. They both lick. Him, his coffee; her, her paw. They are still looking for nothing. A car rolls by. The man, the Siamese, follow it with their eyes. Their heads slowly moving from left to right as the man’s shirt flutters lightly across his turgid belly. Once the car has passed they resume their positions of staring blankly ahead of themselves.
A woman comes out of the house nearest to where the man, the Siamese are standing. She leans her twisted frame against the rusty bricks of her porch. She is now watching the man and the Siamese, who are still watching nothing. She squints as the sunlight burns harshly onto her retina, tries to scratch it away with her gnarled hands. They used to be smooth and dark like fine leather, but have now aged and resemble an old satchel, battered from years of use. Her lined face is a map although she herself has never left the city. The old woman wonders where the pair on the corner may end up going, instead of questioning why it is that she has never left.
The children kicking a yellow ball back and forth, back and forth down the street have not yet thought of where they will end up. Nor have they noticed the odd trio of observers a short distance away from them. They are too busy pretending to boot the sun around amongst the cars, pretending the apocalypse will come if their miniature sun happens to slide under one of the many vehicles that line the street. The ill-fitting shirts draped over their tiny frames billow like parachutes behind them as their feet dart around after the ball in too-big shoes. Tripping over themselves to save the earth, they let out a fierce shriek and simultaneously drop to the floor as the ball disappears underneath a cobalt Volvo and the apocalypse arrives. When a skinny arm fumbles blind under the sooty car, catches the ball, the world and the game start up again.
The house opposite from the old woman breathes out muggy spices, pricking the air. Inside the kitchen is one of the children’s mothers. She draws the back of her hand across her forehead, wiping away the oppressive air and replacing it with a thin film of oil. The ghee starting to hiss and spit at her in the battered pan snakes up and coils into her nostrils, licking the insides of them. She winces slightly as it deposits a chilli venom and reaches for a glass of water. Picking up her knife she starts cutting the pile of vegetables in front of her. The dull thud of the knife against the wooden board echoes her boy tap tapping his feet against the ball in the road.
Her husband in the room next to her is flicking through the paper. His glasses peering slightly more over his left eye than his right grasp onto the end of his nose, saving themselves from toppling off. He prods at them with a single, squat finger and catches the lingering smell of curry on his skin. Like trees gaining a ring to every year of their lives, the man in the armchair seems to gain another layer of this warm scent to each of his. From when he was the age of his child, who is still booting the sun around in the street, his hands have not only thickened with bark-like skin, but have soaked up the years of spices, damp in the air. It reassures him in a strange way how the smell of home has wrapped itself around his skin. Breathing them in deep this time, his fingers and their smell paint an image of his wife bludgeoning vegetables in the kitchen.
The husband can hear a child crying next door. Its wails filter through the red bricks and raised patterned wallpaper. He turns the pages faster hoping the slice of paper through air will help cut through the screams. He cannot see the new mother next door with her fingers grabbing at her hair in fistfuls of rope trying to climb up and away from her relentlessly shrieking child. The child goes on and on, its cries getting faster, higher, shriller. The husband’s paper is whirring through pages as though it were a flick book; parliament, death, cricket blurring before his eyes. He turns back to the beginning and relays the action. The new mother is also on repeat. She clutches the child once again, tries to negotiate the bottle and its mouth. Its red fists clawing at the air the mother dodges the swipes from the ball of anger. She sinks herself, still with the baby tucked like a package under her arm, deep into the sofa and joins its cries with her own. There is now nothing where the man next door was sitting. Just the failed flick book fanned out on the floor where his feet were not long ago.
The children are still skimming the ball back and forth along the tarmac. A bit away from them is a group of three youths. One leans against a wall tilting his head back toward the sun, heating himself up like a lizard, his skin slowly turning into caramel in the light. The other two are laughing, their voices fighting with the music coming from their friend’s car which is teetering on the pavement beside them. The young mother drags herself up and curls her fingers round the net curtains, spying on the noise that set off the screaming ball of nerves in its crib. Frustrated, she starts cursing at them through the glass, her pitch getting higher and higher as her breath starts condensing in front of her on the window. One of the youths turns his head and spots the frantic mother silently shouting. Her mouth opens and shuts, whirring away like an irate ventriloquist’s dummy. The youth nudges his friends and they turn to watch the woman gesticulating wildly in front of them, caged behind the glass. They laugh again and the bass from the car resonates harder down the street. Tears are streaming from the young mother’s eyes. She feels the anger strangling in her throat as her cries try to push through the window, the bass pushing it back into her. She feels her face turning hot as the blood beats its way to the surface of her skin. The youths continue to watch the molten mother who has become a scarlet flurry of emotion.
The twisted woman who was propped up against her porch has been watching. She hears the fights between the increasing bass thudding away, the silent screams crashing in the muddy air. Grappling for the doorframe to steady herself, she forces the handle down and edges herself behind the safety of her door. She spies from her window the youths rolling about with laughter as they finally tumble into the car which is still shaking with beats. It thuds down from the pavement and sends the children playing in the street scattering like pigeons. The young mother crumples on the floor, her chest heavy with sobs whilst her child’s plaints become less and less with the gradual distancing of the car’s basslines. The wife next door is still knocking back the beads of sweat forming on her brow. The smell from her kitchen is still weaving its way out of her open window and into the hot air outside. The man, the Siamese, are still looking for nothing on the corner.

Zeus

She felt it hammering down on her. The sodden screws driving through her clothes and her temples. Tipping her face back and parting her lips let it slam into her eyelids, her teeth. It pushed against her forceful as he did. She gasped and winced as she felt its power, remembered his. Pummelling her through her clothes and seeming to push her to the ground as her breathing hastened; fighting against it, him. Staccato breaths matching the rain, sucking in the water slivers between her bruised lips. She flung her head forwards again and stared ahead of herself through the rain and the tears.