Tag: life

The System

Extract

What is it that pulls you off the beaten path? The path you’ve mapped so that each day follows the next in well-ordered progression. Where love is constant, unquestionable and as unassuming as the cup of tea you bring me before work, when my eyes are half open and the bed still warm on your side.

—–

What she means is that she will not work for me. I watch him at his desk. He is fast, efficient, he doesn’t ask her opinion but expects to receive it. He does his part, passes papers to her, she does her bit, brings them back, smooth as the Berlin Metro. He rewards her with quick little smiles. She beams; she shimmies past my desk on her click-clicking heels.

MVJ2015

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Get this

Extract:

There I was, dancing naked on the front lawn of suburbia, my heart pumping to the pulse of the sprinkler, spray-wet skin and diamonds beading my hair.

“Dance with me.” I screamed at you; at your bedroom window, no longer our bedroom window.

______

I saw you cowering behind the curtain. I felt your blood run cold. I saw you turn uncertainly to the woman, no girl, behind you. She is deranged, you would say, and pull a sheet around your nakedness, exposed by my nakedness, outside, not in. Mad bitch, mad, mad. I felt your fear as you saw your world come crashing down. I threw up my arms and laughed.

MVJ2014

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Love Locks

Extract:

“Excusez-moi, parlez-vous anglais?” I asked hopefully.

It was pretty much the only thing I could say in French. I stood  in the  police station and shifted from foot to foot. I was nervous, and my feet were hot.

“Mai-oui, but of course, how can I help you?” He looked me up and down, then looked back to his book where he recorded the time.

“Your name? You are staying where, and for how long? May I see your passport? Now, why are you here?”

“I have lost my wife.”

MVJ2014

 

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Gold

stop for lunch and eat my sandwich at my desk. I look out through grimy leaded panes and see a flash of gold; startling on a grey day. It is a girl in a yellow flamenco dress, doing a twirl outside the college gates. It is January and -4 outside. Her heavy snow boots and sheepskin jacket do not detract from the graceful execution of her dance. Is she dancing to keep warm? She hands out leaflets and from here I can’t see what they are. To save old horses in Spain perhaps for she prances after some students who take her leaflets and laugh. One returns, he takes the bundle from her and places it down. He blows on her hands, and rubs them in his. They laugh. Their breath hangs in the cold air. They raise their hands to the cloud, this is our cloud we made it together. They hand out the rest of the leaflets. Her yellow dress swirls. He struts a clumsy dance one hand on his hip, she stamps her feet and circles him. A gold mist envelopes them, is this love blooming on a grey street on a grey day? I check my screen. A Facebook friend posts that it is snowing in Barcelona. Who would believe it? My lunch is up. I leave them to canter home.

MVJ 2015

Chocolate Brownie

Extract:

There was a woman who walked her dog every day to the woods. She walked past an old man’s house. The man’s name was Alex. He watched her as she came out, and went back into her house. He watched her in her garden, and at night he watched her through her lit-up windows when she did not know he was watching. But she did know because he liked to complain to Fred from the social and Fred knew her friend Jean, but the old man did not know that she knew, so he talked and talked.

MVJ2014

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My Sister’s Life

Extract:

I was twelve years old when I first realised I was walking on water. Before that I was home-schooled and no-one had much hope for me. But I survived. My sister was at private school and would have stayed there had I not hung on. The cost of my tuition was sucking the funds from her education pot so our parents had no choice but to dismiss my tutor, and pull her from the posh school. That is how we ended up at the local academy where normal kids go, and that is when I saw how much her life differed from mine.

MVJ2014

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