More to Me Than HIV

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More to Me Than HIV

First published in Gscene July 2020 For last years World AIDS Day I put together a public project of work joining other people living with an HIV+ diagnoses at Jubilee library.For last years World AIDS Day I put together a public project of work joining other people living with an HIV+ diagnoses at Jubilee library. For the project I spoke openly about my journey having being           Read more

More to Me Than HIV: GScene post Aug 2020

More to Me Than HIV is a project that aims to breakdown the stigma that has historically been attached to this virus.  When I saw my piece in last months Gscene to promote the More to Me Than HIV project, I was extremely proud, but a small part of me was filled with anxiety; but why should I feel this way? I have been on effective antiretroviral therapy since the Read more

More to Me Than HIV: first published in GScene July 2020

For last years World AIDS Day I put together a public project of work joining other people living with an HIV+ diagnoses at Jubilee library. For the project I spoke openly about my journey having being             diagnosed HIV+ 32 years previous. Back then there was no treatment and a lot of fear and misinformation concerning how HIV was transmitted. As such stigma was rife, Read more

revenge

Bystander: a horror story.

Bystander: A Horror Story.

Spilt milk
As Megan opened the back door, her mother’s voice boomed out from the lounge, “Don’t blame me, blame the cat.”

Negotiating the minefield of saucers of souring milk, Megan mumbled to herself that the damn cat had been dead for years. Stepping into the back room, she looked around at the fading floral wallpaper, marked out with bright squares where pictures had once made the place a home. Back then Lilly had been very keen to present to the world a well maintained home, with everything in its place. However, that was a long time ago, now the house was practically an empty shell. The front room was the only place in the house that was barely hanging on to its former memories.

Megan had had the room converted into a bed-sit after her mother had suffered a small stroke and could no longer manage the stairs. That day had been a test of everyone’s patience; with her younger sister, Gloria complaining that she had little time to spare, as she still hadn’t found the perfect outfit for Charle’s and Di’s wedding. The fact that she would be sitting at home watching the event on the television did not seem absurd to her at all. In the end, Gloria got her husband Nigel to help shift the furniture around downstairs to accommodate a single bed. Lilly had wanted her double bed, but even she had to agree it would leave little room for her wing-backed armchair and precious sideboard. In the end the single bed was wedged against the front door, allowing Lilly to see through the middle room and the kitchen at the back. Her armchair was placed by the window while the sideboard took pride of place against the far wall.

In the centre of the sideboard stood a faded black and white snapshot of Lilly and her husband Joe on their wedding day, to the left, a photo of Gloria, aged fifteen wearing a light pink sash declaring her, ‘Little Miss Brighton, Seaside Queen 1969’. A year later Gloria had married Nigel, a man seven years her senior. Their collection of brightly coloured nuptials dominated the other side of the sideboard alongside a stash of memorabilia from Gloria and Nigel’s various holidays abroad, including: a conk shell from the Maldives, a ship in the bottle from the Caribbean and a Micky Mouse letter rack declaring Florida, ‘The Sunshine State’. Megan had thought her sister had married too young, but now she saw that her sister had been more than canny in getting away with caring for their mother.

The only photo Lilly had of Megan had been tucked behind the other memories. It had been taken the year before she had left school. She hated the face that stared from the frame, all teeth and hair; harking back to the time when she was openly known as the ugly sister; a label Megan had never quite been able to let go off. On numerous occasions Megan had asked her mother to get rid of it, only for Lilly to snap back, “If you’d got someone to marry you, or done something important with your life, then I would have had that framed instead.”

With a deep breath, Megan stepped into the front room and once again the stale smell of her mother and the state of the room reminded her that things could not carry on like this for much longer.

“Is that you Meg?” boomed Lilly.

“Yes Mum, replied Megan, “you’ve lost your teeth again?”
* * *

Like to read more? pop on over to blanchestreet.co.uk for info on all ten tales and how to get your hands on the e-book

 

Posted on by admin in Brighton, creative writing, fiction, Horror, short story Leave a comment

Writing everyday in October Part 3, Ronny’s comeuppance!

Writing everyday in October: Hate, Part 3, Ronny’s comeuppance:

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Ronny squatted over the bucket and roared as the fermenting concoction brewed and spewed from both ends: one in the bucket the other in the sink. Ronny’s groans quickly turned to screams as his insides tensed tighter and tighter in their desperate bid to rid themselves of the poisonous prawns Ronny had so greedy gulped all in pointless pursuit of getting revenge on a neighbour he had never met.

Ronny had not anticipated his plan to backfire (quite literally dear reader) with the force of a huge ‘wet shot avalanche’. On and on went the evacuation with such force that Ronny thought he was going to be turned inside out. After what felt like a life time, Ronny’s guts took a breather, allowing Ronny to catch his breath and thank his lucky stars that the worse was over, but unbeknown to Ronny, that first explosion was the first of many more to come. Ronny gingerly lifted himself off the bucket but this just allowed the gas inside him to shift and expand as once again his whole insides contracted and forced what they could through every single orifice. At one point Ronny thought his eyes were going to pop out, such was velocity of his body trying to survivor its poisoners assault.

After an hour of constant extraction, Ronny was left crawling around the floor, covered in array of bodily fluids with every inch of his body racked in pain, and still his innards continued to contract.

Meanwhile, unbeknown to Ronny, after helping transport the soul of Ronny’s last victim, Death had decided to stop in the flat below, knowing that Ronny was next on his list. Unfortunately for Ronny, his attempts at trying to piss his new neighbour off had not gone unnoticed.

Death had tried blocking out the disruption during the hourly news reports, but was constantly distracted by Ronny stomping around in his boots. This, Death had tolerated up to a point, as he knew there would sure to be another death and destruction story within the hour of the previous one. But when Derrick’s dirty tricks had caused Death to lose all concentration during Only Connect’s, missing vowels round, well, Death was not happy. But it was when Ronny had gone all out with his bombardment of noise the next day when Death, guessed wrongly who the murderer was in Miss Marple’s, A Murder is Announced: that for Death was the last straw.

With just Death living below Ronny’s flat and no one above him No one heard Ronny’s please for help as over the next twelve months Ronny slowly began to decompose, feeling every single pin prick of pain, every nibble from the maggots, every drip of blood congealing diamond sharp in his veins.
Ronny begged for death to come, but the one thing you never want to do is piss Death off.
You see, Death was pleased to make Ronny wait as she took a break, slipped on some earphones and worked her way through box set after box set of crime, comedy and horror dramas that she had been wanting to catch up for a very long time.

Posted on by admin in Gothic horror, short, short story, Writing everyday in October Leave a comment