Cold and alone… Can this really be home?
Written by Blue-Eyed Devil
No home for you there, little boy.
Just keep on walking by.
No point looking in, little boy,
Just avert your eyes.
The day is dark and cold, little boy.
But ’tis warmer still
Than the warmth of a lie, little boy,
And no lie hides the chill.
Truth will sell you short, little boy.
Leave you sad and alone.
You may shiver and cry, little boy,
But the truth is, you’re home.
Written by Rob
The couple’s weekend: wine, romance and sex. What can possibly go wrong?
“What are you grinning at?” Karen snaps at me. I should be used to this. She has a beautiful face but it’s screwed up enough to frighten a pitbull. I’m confused. Sure, we’ve not been getting on too well of recent, but last night, as soon as I slipped between the sheets, she was all over me like a rash. Such passion and surrender; so giving, so inventive: I thought all my Christmasses had come at once. This morning she seems to be back in the doldrums again.
“Didn’t you enjoy last night?” I try.
“I slept well, if that’s what you mean.” I give up. I’ll never understand women. I was feeling full of beans. I was up with the lark and out for a brisk constitutional. Now I can feel her sapping the positivity out of me again. I’m so glad I sneaked out of the dark room without waking her.
We’re away for the weekend. Karen’s pal Julia and her partner Derek invited us to watch the rowing regatta at Holme Pierpont. They found a quaint little hotel just a few miles down the road from the regatta venue and booked for all four of us. Now Karen and I are waiting for them in the lobby, ready to share breakfast.
The lounge door opens and Derek staggers out, looking like he’s near to death.
“What’s up with you?” I ask, though I’m fairly sure that I know. I left him in the lounge with a bottle of brandy at around midnight. It looks like he didn’t make it up to bed.
“I think I must have dozed off on in the chair last night,” he croaks. “I’ve got a mouth like the sole of a limeburner’s clog. Where’s Julia?” Continue reading →
Written by Dice
N.B This short piece was written on behalf of the author’s recurring writer’s block.
Uh-oh, looks like this writer is suffering from that horrible Writer’s disease: The Writer’s Block.
“A tale, a tale write, a tale to write?” cried the Swedish lady. Why is she Swedish? Who knows? They felt it to be right.
Should she not speak in Swedish? På svenska hon ska tala. An English-speaking community this is, to write ‘In Swedish she should speak,’ would achieve little but to confuse them as they attempt the pronunciation. And maybe now they would learn it and sound… uncool at school.
“A tale to write?” enquired the balding fellow, with the LIMP, pronounced L-imp. “Why a tale to write?”
“I feel that I must, since it is my hobby and my joy.”
“Then write dear lady, if you are indeed expensive.”
“I would, but for my life I fear that I have that dreaded thing that I cannot name.”
“Name it blonde woman, name it, you must not fear what’s in the name. Name it quickly as the backing music is becoming more sinister, and the room has become colder.”
A convenient breeze passes through causing the man, woman, and the scurrying shrew to shudder as the pitch from the violins increase.
“I can’t name it, to name it would be to admit it!”
The woman shrieked in horror and placed her white-gloved hand upon her reddening cheek. A strange action to take, but less strange when you considered the balding man with the big, strong, firm, and attractive belt had slapped the blue-eyed lady with his moisturised hand. Continue reading →
Written by Bobartles
Image Courtesy of Royal Berkshire NHS website.
Just down the street, at the edge of the town,
there’s a jumble of buildings, old and run-down.
Behind steel-plated doors a full three inches thick,
lies Ward Number One,
where the sick heal the sick.
There’s a man dressed in white with a comforting stance,
whose father disowned him for being a nurse,
and a sister in blue with a phone in her hand,
and twenty-five packets of pills in her purse.
The man with the clipboard and half-hearted smile,
whose girlfriend bled out after something he said;
the cleaner who sweeps down the halls all day long
to drown out the sound of the voice in his head.
The day’s rounds are done, but still it is known
that only the patients will truly go home.
For this huddle of boxes of slate and red brick
is Ward Number One,
where the sick heal the sick.
Written By Dice
The Chennai Mathematical Institute in India looks quite suitable for time travel. Which door will you choose?
“It’s this door,” declared Alexander gesturing to a white-wood moulded door, one of many in a seamlessly ending corridor which repeated in the same pattern of doors, plant pots and portraits of old men.
“I think you’ll find it is this door,” disagreed Zander demonstrating towards an identical door three doors down. Every door in the endless corridor was identical in every way. Having been led through a maze of identical, inter-crossing corridors full of identical white doors, Alex had no idea why these two should be different from any of the others. He decided it was best to ask Jennifer.
“This one is closer.”
“Who invented the room?”
“Who discovered its potential for inter-universal travel?”
Jennifer was the woman who he had met in the Impossible Room, which in turn had transformed into a replica of Number 10 Downing Street with this endless maze of corridors. Jennifer was the only one in the Impossible Room who wasn’t a parallel universe version of himself. She was slim with brown hair and a pretty face. She wore little make-up and had her hair drawn back into a low ponytail.
“What are they arguing about?”
“Which door leads to where we want to go,” she replied simply.
“But I thought we were, you know, travelling into the past.” Continue reading →
Doesn’t it just look scrumptious?
Hey Inkblotters,
It’s a wonderful time of the year at the moment as Inkblots and Typing Spots Magazine has officially been publishing content for one whole year! Although we did have a sneaky two months publishing breather, we have been organising content on a weekly basis for all our lovely readers for the past year, and we’d like to thank you for sticking by us, as well as our writers. So if you’ve been following our magazine from day one, week one or just yesterday, we’d like to personally thank you. It means a lot to us that we can publish our fabulous writers’ work, but it’s even better knowing that we have people who read their lovingly crafted poetry or fiction too. We’ll celebrate in style later, but you’re probably interested in what we’ve got in store for you to read this month.
August’s schedule brings many pieces from opposite ends of the scale. Readers will be pleased to know that Dice has written a sequel to Alex, so make sure to look out for “This One! An Alexander Episode” on the 5th. And since he’s such a great writer, Dice is featured twice this month with a piece about Writer’s Block – it’s comedic gold. We’ve also got some great poetry for you to get all teary-eyed over; one from our regular Haiku hero Blue-Eyed Devil called “You’re Home”, a touching story of a little boy, and another from writer Bobartles about a medical ward.
The Half Hour Challenge last month was ‘Serendipity‘ which proved to be quite popular among our writers, so we’ve got some stellar choices on the way for you reflecting that theme. But if you’re looking to write this month in our HHC, then make sure you submit a piece on the cute-as-a-button theme ‘Wishes‘. I’ve got something tucked away for this theme that I’ve been meaning to write for quite some time and, of course, we’re looking forward to receiving all your responses. Remember, you can send your entries into creativewritinginkwell@hotmail.com.
Thanks again to all our followers and have a lovely August!
– Silver, Inkblots Editor
Written by Terrestris Veritas
We think these misfits would fit in quite well at The Clot.
Image Courtesy of E4.com
The following was extracted from media records in accordance to reviewing the actions of The Clot – dates have been marked in chronological order above each extract for easy viewing.
Wed, 9th May 1990
Today marks the grand opening of The Clot: Mark Howser’s Child and Youth Correctional and Detention Facility. Three years in the making, it is expected that this centre shall calm the streets of the unwanted crime specific to…
Sat, 12th May 1990
Capable of housing over one hundred thousand wrong-doers at a time from birth all the way up to eighteen years, the challenge of creating a space of justice for young people has surely met its match.
Wed, 21st Oct. 1992
The first youth who was released from The Clot has gone the last six months without resorting to her former self. It is reported that she has acquired a job and is of working class status. Originally sent there for a series of petty theft, The Clot is acclaimed for her remarkable turnaround in this climate of…
Fri, 30th Oct. 1992
Since the successful release of Clara Hawkers, a former petty thief, parents have been sending their children to The Clot in droves. From babes to adolescents, it’s clear…
Sun, 9th May 1993
In the three years since The Clot has opened, the crime rate on the street has dropped to an all-time low and has been that way for the last four months. The Voice of the Law himself applauded their statistics and proclaimed that The Clot has been a turning point for society. He also stated that, despite certain policies within The Clot, it has proven to be an effective measure against…
Wed, 24th Aug. 1994
This morning it was discovered that a suicide has taken place within The Clot. The sixteen-year-old male attendant was discovered in his bed having taken his own life. The Clot is a hive of activity trying to uncover the reason behind his death. Mark Howser has yet to comment on this tragic…
Thurs, 26th Aug.1994
…uproar within the city about the suicide. The identity of the youth has not yet been released but his initial crime was stealing domestic animals and killing them in mad rituals. Officials are now starting to question the attendant’s state of mind at the time of the suicide rather than suspecting the policies employed by the staff in The Clot. Continue reading →
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.
Written by Moonflower
Moonflower’s Paper Bag leaves us feeling all crumpled up.
I’m just a paper bag.
Given to you by hands of fate,
unrecognisable, indistinct.
You were the kind of stranger,
who flashed me a sincere smile,
when I passed on by.
I blended in the background of thousands,
carrying nothing but emptiness.
I met you again.
Drenched under the bus stop,
our conversation slow and awkward,
like the rain dripping off the metal shelter.
You didn’t let on much,
you only offered your sweet voice.
Written by Lumberjacktom
Destruction in many forms.
Image courtesy of: http://www.crazy-ivory.de
A little silvery trickle of water began to run from the bent pipe. It was surprisingly tough; the dull, stained copper was standing up to all the force Tack could put on it. He held the pipe by the brass tap on its top. Thinking about it, Tack saw that whoever had put this in was a terrible engineer. How they had expected a fairly flimsy, half-inch pipe to stand up to everyday use without so much as a bracket to support its length against the wall was a mystery compounded by the fact that they had evidently expected it to stand indefinitely, since, most of its length was buried in concrete making any repair an undertaking not worth the effort.
Needless to say, it would not stand indefinitely. Tack wrenched the pipe back and forth through fully a quarter of a turn by its length, levering against the concrete which collared it at the base. As he did so the trickle became a gently arcing thread glittering in the streetlight.
There was a visceral satisfaction in destroying something; some piece of public infrastructure, be it wrenching off a tap or dropping a mattress from the overpass, or watching thick, smoky petroleum flames begin to lick from the top of a litter bin. Pointless destruction of pointless things. For nothing had a reason, nothing had a goal which stretched beyond the void which was the end of all things. People abhorred destruction because they had been told to. Society constructs, it builds, moving toward a greater goal, went the mantra. Freedom is consumption, and labour, in a perfect balance. The freedom to work. The right to a mortgage. A neat lawn. A tidy funeral.
The thread became a spray, a mirror plane of clear glassy water, rent apart by surface tension into a thousand droplets soaking Tack’s shin.
Dab and Fen had finished smashing the lock from the cemented shell of a bin and the plastic inner container now lay bent and crippled on the ground, trails of stinking rubbish strewn along the sea defense. They turned their attention to Tack’s tap. Tack braced against the wall with one foot, and wrenched the pipe as Dab and Fen beat and kicked on the anchored end. Slowly, reluctantly, the pipe twisted and sheared free, a metallic crunch heralding its defeat. Foamy, pure white water ejaculated from the ground in a knee-high column, then ran down the concrete slope to the beach, muddied by dust and sand and grit.
Entropy, Tack smiled.
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