This week's creative writing? A juicy love/hate relationship!

(Not my finest piece of writing but I had some accompanying photos handy on my hard drive to tart it up.)

“Flora”

I’ve only ever met one other girl called Flo. She took it as a sign that we would be life long friends

This new and dominating Flo was the same age as me with a curt, Sloan Square accent, unruly cave woman hair (that she was forever sweeping from her face) and an impressive collection of multicoloured ethic skirts of the drop-out-beach-bunny variety. She had latched onto the idea that I was as dissatisfied with high school and the modern world as she was. Perversely thrilled but unsure of how to proceed, she made a large show of how we had the same uncommon bra size and insisted that we were to share underwear over the coming weeks of our arts summer school.

 Her strange admiration towards me grew. I can only assume it was because I accompanied her for countless cigarettes and entertained her stories of flirting with grown men and her fantasies of loving a Rastafarian. Her eagerness to do everything with me as a witness was flattering but it was fairly clear we had little in common beyond our names and measurements. Her strong willed denial prevented my opinions from derailing what she was fashioning as a perfect friendship. My wiliness to talk to anyone often left her feeling neglected and caused a rampant jealousy to develop. Her mood swings became drastic and contradictory as possessiveness crept in.

It all came to a head when our student group took a day trip to the coast to end the month on a high. The beach was deserted and the pier was rotten but we’d pinned our hopes on the venture and even the increasing drizzle couldn’t dissuade us. Despite the water being cold enough to induce coma, I managed to swim out far enough to float and bob. Flo wasn’t far behind and when she drew along side promptly challenged me to swim even further.

When we were safely removed from the group and had covered an impressive distance, I found her arms snaking around me in a sinking embrace. She dappled my face with brief kisses in what I assumed was an adrenalin rush brought on the icy water. It wasn’t until Flo kissed me full on the mouth, with the taste of dirt and salt, that I realised the significance she was investing in the moment. She withdrew to gage my response with desperate eyes. Sensing the redundancy of the act spoke volumes I was too overwhelmed to address, we only felt numbness distinct from the freezing sea. I swam away towards the others and hoped what had just happened would wash into the Mediterranean.

As soon as we retuned to town, Flo withdrew and downed two bottles of vodka. Her wretched screams soon filled the third floor of our sleeping hotel. I was reduced to hiding in another student’s room to avoid what I could only assume would be violence. All the misunderstood rage an 18 year old could possibly hold turned the building into a terrifying prison with me lined up for its firing squad. Eventually, the course lecturer intervened and Flo was practically sedated.

We barely had a month to get aquatinted but in that time we’d managed to skim the bond of friendship and a warped sort of love only for it to nose-dive into a blazing hotel showdown, fuelled by God knows what kinds of damage. We parted ways at the end of our time in Italy brittle strangers who, for all they had shared, would remain estranged out of a mixture of emotion and necessity. 

(Better memories from Venice)

Also: Best script we've read so far this semester has been from this movie. I recommend tracking down a copy for yourself.

I couldn't care less about clobber

BUT

I feel I may have to wear red shoes exclusively some day

*****

Weekly creative writing time!

50 word mini-epic - 4 Foot Romance

Submerged in the cloakroom, hiding behind voyeuristic coats. After weeks of my nagging, we’re clutching hands. Clumsy kisses make me want more but I’m too young to fathom what follows. Playground swagger drains from him as I persist. Maybe I come on too strong. Our parents receive a phone call.

 

Impacted

 

The sterilised smell and lighting of hospitals put me on edge. As soon as I step inside I know rooms are filled with bad news and long stay patients. The very air stifles and numbs. It’s no comfort my mother’s health is at the mercy of this humourless environment.

Her room is too small for its massive, automated bed, and even that seems unable to support all the medical paraphernalia attached. She’s lost in a mess of wires and sweat-drenched bed sheets and for the first time in my adult life, I’m truly frightened. She’s out of her mind on morphine and starts to scream at my father for wearing bandages only she can see. In the agonising moments that follow, my dad tries his best to keep my mother calm. He adopts an unnaturally measured voice but his stress and strain are evident. Neither of us can recognise the woman in the bed. Watching my mother’s pained, hysterical out burst take the last ebb of energy she has, watching my father grow unnervingly quiet, faced with the room’s soulless décor and its view of a muddy, unremarkable car park, I suddenly understand what mortality might amount to -anonymous defeat.

"Berty"

A writing exercise for my screenwriting class, exploring reversed P.O.Vs. I wrote about a figure from my childhood. Imagine I'm six or seven in the first part.

Albert is ok I think. He lives next door in a grand old house, all alone but with lots of things. He’s always visiting us. He sits in my Da’s waiting room even though he doesn’t have a dog or a cat. He sits there for ages and talks to everyone like their friend. My Dad tells him to come back later but Albert only goes when he gets hungry or tired. He talks really loudly and for a really long time. He is always talking “with authority” about strange things like wooden tables and plates. He showed me these great tin solders that were really small and told me that I could have them one day when he’s old. He told me that he would take me to Italy one day too. It’s far away from Daddy so I just want the soldiers but mum says polite girls are more memorable, so I just smile when he starts to tell me things like that. Albert can pull some funny faces, he always has one eye half closed like he’s looking through a keyhole. I think I like Albert but he can smell like my mum’s diner parties after they’re over. It makes your nose wrinkle; I don’t like that at all. The waiting room smells like that too when he’s visits, even after he’s gone. He and Dad smoke cigars together when we visit him but they don’t talk much. Dad is always getting our coats. Albert makes my mum laugh like somebody’s tickling her. Mum likes Albert so he’s ok by me. We call him Uncle Albert, which he likes.

* * * * *

Ah! Such a joy to see myself reborn as a child, albeit with gender perversely switched. This precocious whippet has the looks of her mother and the charm of my own true self, thanks to my formative input since birth. God knows what the father has to offer – apparently he enjoys ironing. All the same, there’s promise for this one or at least I’ve decided to extend my hand to that end. As soon as I saw the fat little thing in the hospital blanket I knew this was my opportunity to start over. She’s at that difficult stage now when she asks questions that don’t add up to a hill of beans but education in the arts and classics should steer her on her way. When she becomes a woman at 16 I’ll take her to Venice where we’ll consider the painterly light, gaze enraptured at Rafael’s alter pieces and quash Bellinis like there’s no tomorrow worth waking for. It will be magnificent. There’s a glass eye maker there who hand paints his work in exquisite detail and has provided for numerous cultural figures  - you’d think of them all very differently if his work wasn’t so convincingly rendered. Florence may take a shine to Uncle Albert once he’s restored. She should do. By then, I will have invested years of hard work making her the finest little sophisticate in the northern hemisphere.

(My Dad and Albert suffering each other's company)