Category / Half Hour Challenge

by marleylilith

Time Was Standing Still

Has time ever stood still for you?

Written by Lost in a Dream

Frozen in that moment,
Time was standing still

The foreign familiarity of an old song
Forges a link
Between then and now.

The lyrics were hardly profound;
Yet, they seemed perfect at the time.

Now, the individual words are insignificant.

They didn’t sum up how I was feeling,
I doubt I entirely understood them
Five years ago.

But I remember singing them out
With conviction.

Time locked in lyrics and
Memories trapped in chords were free.
I had the privilege of indulging in the past.
Just for a moment, that memory came alive again.

It was as though nothing had changed.

by Colette

Alex

Written by Dice

multiverse_2-660x266

Time. A tricky topic for sure, but incredibly intriguing.

Alex was your average mid-twenties young professional. He was tall, slim with short brown hair and blue eyes. He worked nine to five every weekday before returning home to his one bedroom flat to watch TV or browse the internet.

Today was different, lo and behold he had turned off the TV, finally bored of watching the same old rubbish. He sat for a while staring at the black screen, glancing occasionally at the remote which sat within easy grasping distance. He glanced at his watch: 9:58pm, that new comedy would be starting soon…

Alex was brought out of his battle of will by a knock on the door. Confused at who would visit at this hour, but glad of the distraction, Alex peeled himself from the sofa and made his way to the door. He stopped at the sound of another knock. The knocking wasn’t coming from the front door, but the door to his bathroom. He sighed, clearly he’d left bathroom window open.

“Come in,” called Alex joking to himself. His laughter was cut short when the bathroom door opened and a man who, in nearly every way, looked exactly like him. Apart from the clothes, the Alex doppelgänger wore an expensive grey suit which fitted to this man’s clearly more toned body.

“Thanks,” replied the doppelgänger whose voice was also exactly the same as Alex’s. Alex stood perfectly stunned, after a short silence the new Alex held out his hand and spoke, “I’m Alexander, good to meet me again.”

Alex fainted. Continue reading →

by Colette

Bernard the Dormouse

Written by Silver

Just havin’ a kip. Image Courtesy of Telegraph.co.uk

Comfortable in my teacup house – that’s me;
sleeping and breathing,
breathing and sleeping.
Comfortable in my teacup house – that’s me:
The Dormouse.

On my left sits the fidgeting March Hare;
clawing and gnawing
gnawing and clawing.
On my left sits the fidgeting March Hare,
terribly adoring the tea-party air.
Continue reading →

by marleylilith

It Was a Rainy March Day

Written by lost in a dream.

This beautiful rainy day in Paris is very different from lost in a dream’s rainy garden! Image courtesy of visualise.us.

It was a rainy March day when I found him.

The first time I saw him, he was looking up at me from the floor. His unruly white hair soaked with rain, his eyes darting from side to side. Someone must be missing him, he needed to go home. I didn’t know what to do.

I walked back towards the house, I would ring the police, yes, that’s what I would do. I made it to the patio, then I got the biggest shock of my life. There he was staring at me from patio door. How did he overtake me? Never mind how, he was coming straight towards me. He looked terrified. His eyes were wide and childlike in aged face and his body was shaking. He kept coming towards me until we were centimetres apart. That’s when I saw it.

Continue reading →

by Colette

Sophie in Wonderland

Written by Fantasy Girl 

It’s not Alice, it’s Sophie.
Image Courtesy of http://www.fanpop.com

Alice was her name – my great-aunt on my mother’s side. There are no pictures any more, no paintings like there used to be, not that I was alive when they were there… forty years ago, maybe? Fifty?

She was insane, that’s what they said. She had strange dreams, claimed they were true. She would say they sat at a table, and drank out of old tea cups with broken handles, with a rabbit, and a door mouse, and a man in a green hat. And sometimes there would be a cat too, who would always smile. And a caterpillar that would blow rings and words out of the smoke from his pipe. She was insane, I get it, but…

I never got to meet her. Mum and Dad would visit her in the mental asylum, with my nanna and granddad. They wouldn’t let me go too. I was ‘too young’, I was ‘too impressionable’. In other words, they were ashamed of her. They didn’t want me to be tarred with the same brush and they didn’t want me to have any connection with her.  Continue reading →

by marleylilith

Welcome to April (and its showers)!

It’s probably a good thing that most trees don’t grow like this, but it would be interesting…

Happy Easter Inkblotters, and we hope you’ve been as busy stuffing your faces full of chocolate as we have! Mm, delicious Easter Eggs…

Last month we gave our writers the theme “Mad as a March Hare” and they didn’t disappoint us with their responses, so you can expect some really entertaining reading this month, including the intriguing tale “Sophie in Wonderland” and a short but terribly sad tale about a rainy March day. We also discovered in our writing archives a lovely poem about a dormouse by our very own Silver, and much much more! The brand new Half Hour Challenge theme this month is “Idiocy”, and we’re hoping for a few April Fools stories to put a cheeky smile on all our faces.

Continue reading →

by Colette

Black Mirror

Written by Fantasy Girl

Mirror, mirror: In a silver landscape of ice-covered trees, a mirror stands on its own, out-of-place, lonely.
Image Courtesy of lets-not-be-perfect.blogspot.co.uk

‘A dream is a wish the heart makes!’ that’s what she always told me – my mother that is. She said, ‘we dream of the things we wish for but know will never come true.’ But my dreams do, and they always have done… she just never listened.

A mirror. That’s how it always starts. In a silver landscape of ice-covered trees, a mirror stands on its own, out-of-place, lonely. I walk up to it. It’s just a mirror, right, how much harm can it do?

It changes.

Ripples come from the centre, like when you drop a pebble into a still lake. The reflection, it’s still me, but it’s moving. She smiles at me, her eyes, my eyes, silver like the forest around me; around us. She curls her index finger, slowly and deliberately with a wry smile on her face, beckoning me to follow her, and turns her back and walks away from me, her hand-held out behind her, albeit when your lover is walking behind you. I follow. Just like I always do, but I don’t know why, yet I know how this will end – A terrorist attack, a tsunami, they’ve all come true. So, I follow. But this time it’s different.  Continue reading →

by Colette

Umbra

Written By Terrestris Veritas

Yesterday you fell.
Image Courtesy of http://www.reuters.com

Yesterday you fell.

An abnormality. Desperate to create a correlation between gravity and standing still. It failed. The ground broke away in sections of block, brick and chunk; causing you to fall deep down, further from all you knew but closer to purity of an undiscovered aspect. Yet you broke through the sky in fright, towering upwards into a void of deceit and hurt, throwing off the blanket of safety and obliviousness.

Yesterday you fell. Today you hang.  Continue reading →

by marleylilith

Careful Driving

Written by Ricardo

Drive safely, and always wear a seatbelt.
Image courtesy of lovetoknow.com.

The moon nestled high in the clear black sky as Alexander’s watch hit eleven o’clock. The especially bright light from the full moon illuminated the deserted car park as he made his way across to his car, barely holding five loaded bags and a bunch of assorted flowers wrapped in plastic in his left hand while he fumbled for his keys with his right hand. He got to the scrap heap he called a car; faded blue paint, rust along the skirt and windows, the usual mess, as he retrieved his keys from his pocket. The old thing could at least lock and unlock with one of those wireless key things. Probably the first one they ever made. He opened the door and threw everything into the back, only taking care with the flowers.
Continue reading →

by Colette

Smile

Written by Rob

Bell’s Palsy: Something for us all to think about.
Image Courtesy of http://www.patient.co.uk, where more information about the disease can be found.

A smile or a grimace? Ted Jones isn’t renown for his happy disposition, yet he seems pleased to see us. “Who are you and what have you done with the real Ted?” I think, though I don’t dare say it. The last three times Claire and I came to the warehouse to deliver training, Ted had been conspicuous only by his growl and then his absence.
“Oh, it’s you pair of plonkers again, is it? Well, you’d better set up in the meeting room like last time and stay out of my way. Some of us have got work to do.” Ted’s disposition hasn’t changed to match his new-found demeanour.
“You’re supposed to be managing this warehouse Ted. I’d like to know what work you consider to be more important than improving it.”
“We’ve got spare orders to pick, pack and ship. I’m bloody certain our customers prefer my lads doing that than sitting in your training sessions.”
“Your lads sent three parcels to the wrong place last month. What do those customers think about your attitude to training, I wonder?”
“Yeah, well the only folk who don’t make mistakes are the ones who do nowt. I’ll bet you don’t make many.”
“So do you think we should carry on as we are or should we try to improve?”
“I haven’t time for this. Deliver your training!” and he spins on his heel and marches out the door.
Claire rolls her eyes at me, “same old Ted,” and unpacks the projector. Continue reading →