STORY COMP
know... constrained.
Yes OK, OK, no need to get antsy. I’ll look at your skeleton now.
What? You want me to read it out loud?
Sure... I guess. OK here we go, let’s see if you’ve been paying
attention.
Factor one; the Victim. The victim is a female, mid-forties but
looks much older. Overweight, dresses badly, smells. In the back
pocket of her tatty, elastic-waisted jeans is a stainless-steel hiplask,
half full of bourbon. She lies on a cold concrete loor, her graying
shoulder length hair, which was matted and smelly due to infre-
quent washing to begin with, is now sticky with blood due to her
skull being bashed in.
Hey, um... that’s not bad, but do you think I could have that
drink before we go any further...?
Fine, no need to shit in a shovel, I’m reading, I’m reading.
Scene is inside the garage of a magniicent Cotswolds home.
Victim is found lying on her side on the loor... hands cufed, feet
bound. Four books have been arranged to form a pillow under her
head. All murder mysteries, written by the victim herself. To add a
gruesome factor, some pages from a ifth book have been torn out,
crumpled and stufed down the victim’s throat.
Oh, Christ in a rocking chair – please could I use the bathroom
now. I’ll keep reading – I’ll do anything you want – if you just let me
pee. Please don’t do this.
All right, all right...
Factor two. The motive for this murder is recognition. Attention
and acknowledgement for what the murderer sees as an act of pureChristian charity. And after posting unkind comments on her
Facebook writing group about the murderer’s stories, the murderer
decides to rid the world of a fat, smart-arse, loud-mouthed alco-
holic hack, whose boring, second-rate murder novels reek worse
than she does.
Oh please. I’m begging you. Please I’m going to wet myself.
There’ll be a mess to clean up. What do you mean that’s why we’re
in the garage? Oh no, please that hurts – yes I’ll inish reading...
Factor three; the murder weapon. Lesson learned. The quirkier
the murder method, the more interesting your murderer... there-
fore the more fascinating your story will be. The victim is forced to
die by the book. In a triumphant act of irony, the murderer bludg-
eons the victim, using the hardcover version of her very last book.
This book is a non-iction tome called It’s All in the Plotting and is
most deinitely her only book worth reading. When the victim
refuses to stop begging for her miserable life... she’s made to choke
on the pages of her very own last words. A itting end indeed.
Oh God please don’t do this...
‘Factor four. The Murderer. When the plotting is perfect, the
murder will just happen. The story begins with a skeleton – and
ends with one. And inally – the murderer becomes the most
important element after all.About the author Dora Bona has had several poems and
stories published in literary magazines and anthologies, and a
highly commended in the Scottish Arts Trust lash iction comp.
This is her third story to be published in Writers’ Forum.THIRD PRIZE £100
The Complexity of Simple
Russell Day
E
amon needed glasses for reading. His eyes were still good
enough for day-to-day things, but close work required the
extra lens. He’d never thought of checking Liam’s pupils as
close work before. Never thought of it at all, really. It was one
of those odd chores that had crept into his routine and somehow
become mundane. A list of tasks not worth thinking about:
checking emails, putting a mobile on charge and not leaving cash
lying around. Necessities that hadn’t existed while he was walking
up a spiral staircase with Liam.
Without his reading glasses, all he could tell was that Liam still
had his mother’s eyes. And that, like hers, they’d saddened with
age. Cow eyes, deep and soulful. They were dark brown, and that
made it hard to judge the size of the pupils. People had always said
Liam would be a heart breaker; said it before he could even walk.
By twenty-one, he’d proved them right.
Liam’s smell was the musk of someone too long without sleep.
Nothing worse than that; no sour tang of stimulants leaking
through skin. He’d inhaled as he leaned over to put a mug on the
table. Discretely he’d thought, but Liam said, ‘It’s all right, Dad, I’m
clean.’ He didn’t sound ofended, and false denials tended to be
outraged. Was that a good sign? He’d lost the knack of looking for
them.
‘How long for?’
The question was open at both ends. How long have you been
clean, how long are you staying clean? Liam addressed the latter.‘For good this time.’
He felt his face twitch; muscles resisting the impulse to say, again.
It didn’t need saying, so instead he asked, ‘Do you need money?’
The cow eyes bounced of the pieces of his heart without efect.
‘I just came to see you.’ Liam dropped his gaze and then tried to
ind a place to settle. The top of the table seemed to interest him.
‘You look well.’
‘Two years and that’s the best you can do?’
‘Has it been two years?’
‘What have you been doing?’
He waited for the lies and the half-truths. Business deals, missedContinued overleafIt’s All in the Plotting continued