This was my first entry to The Clarity of Night* 'Halo' short story contest

The Knowledge

Barefoot, I run from the warmth of the bonfire party. I do love my clumpy, platform boots, but I also love to feel the freedom without them. I glance over my shoulder as I leave my family and reach the edge of the woods; I know Spike will follow me. How could he not?

From the corner of my eye I see the moonlight reflecting off a white rock and I quickly shrug off my biker jacket, flinging it down on to it, so Spike will know which way I’ve gone this time.

Behind me now in the distance, the fireworks electrify the air with their sparking and fizzing. As I make my way to ‘our place’ the brambles snap at my leather mini-skirt and fishnet leggings, but I laugh, out loud. I don’t care as Spike will soon take them all off me, anyway.

I shiver, deliciously, but then find myself blushing. Like a little girl, I’ve only allowed him to kiss me and feel me up so far, and not gone all the way.

It is a bit creepy in the dark, so I stop to get my bearings. The shadows begin to make sense and I move on more easily.

If I allow him to make me a woman tonight, we will be together forever, he told me. And, when I’m sixteen, he will leave his wife. And Spike will marry me.

(c) Karen Philpott

* Find the site under 'Read this ...' in my margin, my entry is no. 76

A (too) late entry for The Clarity of Night * 'Restless Dawn' short story contest

knocked over

they never came to tell us til late afternoon having seen sophie first believing he still lived with her and been told to come here to his mum and dads he died in the early hours but there was nothing on him to say who he was I do not see it coming and I am thumped in the head as they said the man my boy was killed in a hit and run and I wretch as I topple over keening and vomit over my knees my man reaches for me weeping a towered deck of cards collapsing I gulp air like a thrashing fish except I don’t care if I die hours tick by rocking my chair backwards forwards on my island but yet my heart still beats cradling the memory of when he was born big blue eyes and blond hair didnt everyone love him didnt that driver know this this question makes my head a spinning top dont notice yet another cigarette or tea peoples faces contort wildly into whooshing sounds deaf to them I spiral into delicious madness a comforting delirious fantasy time tocks on the dark nights garb envelops me through the window as I and the blackness singularly amalgamate but no peace I hold my breath for the first time in this long nights vigil as the orange mist of morning is about to detonate and blind me I can no longer stave it off and raise my head to howl a dirge

(c) Karen Philpott

* Find the site under 'Read This...' in the margin.