Tag: short story

Writing Rammy Winner, 8-11 age group

I’m Jack, the World’s Number 1 Cow Rider!! Well maybe the only one! This is how I managed to ride my cow, who is called Cow, a classic name! Don’t you agree?

Initially I tried to get Cow to go forward slowly and then jump on. I told Cow to move slowly, but I think it was Opposite Day, as Cow decided to go forward cheetah style! She was so fast, faster than an aeroplane! Who knew cows had speed?

Next I tried to surprise her. I crept up and leaped on her back. You know how some people like surprises? Well, cows don’t. They think you are going to milk them for 2 pints of full fat!

Maybe I needed manners? So I tried asking Cow very politely to let me jump on her and ride into town! She said “Mooooooo” which must mean “Nooooooo” in cow language.

She bolted!

Come on Google! You always have the answers! I typed into the search, “How to ride a cow?” Google said, “Please check your spelling or refine your search.” Thank you very much Google. You’re no help at all!

I was just on the point of giving up when it struck me …….

Take Cow to riding lessons! Obvious right?!?! This worked like a dream! I’m so happy, we both are. To think I came so close to selling Cow for some magic beans and climbing up that stupid beanstalk. Now that would have been a completely different story altogether…

Writing Rammy Winner, 12-15 age group

Stories are everywhere: on your bookshelf, in a photograph, even in your head.

Some stories are told, some are written, read. And some are just forgotten. Blissfully floating in the air. Looking for somewhere else to go. Another head to fill.

There are different types of stories, a novel of course, a quickly made up adventure, and the ones that are forgotten.

My conception was the moment pen touched paper. When words and ideas were swirling through my Creators mind. Smiling as she composed paragraphs and paragraphs all about me. I was only just beginning. I had more to give. I thought she had further to write.

…the air. Looking for somewhere else to go…

“Evelyn, dinner!”

“Coming!” Answered my author.

It happened so quick. She didn’t come back. Didn’t finish me. I was left on her desk waiting, waiting, waiting. So I soared away seeking for writers, dreamers, as I wished to be on paper. For the world to see.

During this time, I went everywhere and waited months, maybe more, searching for someone to complete me. But no author seemed to fit, match. I waited more…

Until one bright, beautiful day I saw this little dark haired boy in a park. He was holding a pen and notepad.

“What are you doing, Seth?”

“I am writing a story.” The boy replied. He got up and showed his brother his work. Stories are everywhere. On your bookshelf, even in your head… some are forgotten but remembered once more.

Writing Rammy Winner, 15-17 age group

He found in his early years that no, he was not like the average man. He looked like one, he spoke like one, he drank like one, but he did not think like one. How many average men wanted to turn everything their fingers touched to ashes? Few. Perhaps one in seventeen. Yes, he knew well enough that many went through fazes of carnage – a deep urge inside them to revolt with a lighter as their lieutenant.

He had been one of them, but where the others had stopped their dangerous thoughts and had become a more civilised version of themselves, he fell deeper and deeper and deeper until he couldn’t explain why he saw embers wherever he went – embers just wishing, waiting, to be nurtured. He thought himself a nurturer of nightmares; one who created and helped them through his own desperate desire for…death?

Well, maybe. After all, flames led to death.

The image of hell in many a mind whispered of flames reaching the ceiling. That was not hell for him; Hell was waking up every morning and pretending he met society’s criteria. Hell was at his parent’s dinner table every Friday night and acting like he didn’t resent every pore in their skin, every bone in their body. As a child, their door locks and grand pillars has morphed into chains and metal bars. Hell was going to mass every Sunday and coming out, claiming he’d been cleansed only to return to his darkest desires the following day. He didn’t light up on God’s day – he wasn’t completely evil.

He was a murderer. Not always of people of ideas, memories, wishes and dreams. Sometimes of people, but not always; they got in the way when they weren’t supposed to and that wasn’t his fault.

He had once written down somewhere that he preferred to obliterate other people’s dreams and wishes because he hadn’t been allowed them. Dreaming was for the gullible, and to survive in this world you had to be the predator of your own dreams, not the prey. He wasn’t just the predator of his dreams, but the predator of other’s dreams as well.

He was a powerful human being. He felt powerful when he had a matchstick between his fingertips and a matchbox in his other palm. Some people looked to different forms of release – each to their own. His release prepared itself when he was bouncing on the balls of his feet, anticipation fluttering around in his stomach, his breath quickening and his heart pounding in his chest; threatening to act like his stomach, grow wings and leave it’s cage. He could feel it building up in his body, his bloodstream being set alight with an invisible fire of ecstasy that threatened to consume him.

And then, it struck.

His release made a path through his bones, shaking him to his core as heat fanned his skin and the flames in front of his warmed his cells. It was something akin to euphoria, weightlessness as he heaved in a gulp of the sweet smell of burning wood. His eyes were attached to the bellowing curls of smoke rising before him.

And for one moment, a moment he would recreate often, he felt alive.

Writing Rammy Winner, 18+ age group

The teenagers swung on the last three park swings. The fourth swing was just a sundered chain, as rusty and broken as the slide and the roundabout.

“There’s nothing,” Half-Phil moaned. “Nothing at aw to dae in this ugly dump.”

“Here’s som’hing noo.” Kit-Kat announced as a painful squeal broke the silence. “Pramface Carousel’s daing her roonds.”

“Dae ye ken whit pram means?”

“Naw Weirds,” Kit-Kat conceded. “But a ken that pramfaces ur young mums fi cooncil estates.”

“Pram is short fir perambulator,” Weirdsworth explained. “As in sum’hing that perambulates, i.e. wanders aroond.”

“Roond and aroond.” Half-Phil swung back and forward, eyes locked on the path.

“Dae ye ken whit the diff’rence is tween a pram an a stroller Kat?”

“Aye, a pram is fer wee babbies Weirds, an a stroller is fer bigger weans thit can sit-up.”

“Well, Carousel’s pushed that pram fer yonks noo so her sprog must be ault enough tae sit-up if,” Weirdsworth hesitated. “It’s still alive.”

“I heard there’s jist a baby skull inside.” Kit-Kat whispered.

“I hear it’s a s-s-snake.” Weirdsworth hissed. “It bit Primark’s napper oan his pramface-off, and he wis foond deed in his hut the next day.”

Half-Phil watched the shadow of the approaching, protesting pram advance down the path.

“Mary Mein hid a pramface-off a’naw.” Kit-Kat claimed. “Jist afore her face plant wi the Larbert circular last-“

The teenager fell silent as Carousel arrived, shuffling along the path on mud-encrusted trainers. Her shabby, grey wool coat was hunched across her scored, antique olive pram. Her head was bowed. Matted red tresses hung over her face, and the arched pram hood.

Half-Phil fixed his eyes on the wheels. They were all different. Some wobbled, others screeched, but round and round they spun, going nowhere. He took a deep breath and then he announced.

“Pramface-off!”

“Phil, don’t-” Kit-Kat reached out to her short friend but he pulled away and marched forward to stand beside the pram. He tapped the roof. The perambulator halted, the screeching stopped.

“I want to see yir wean.”

Carousel’s head tilted towards Phil and he saw one eye peer at him through her lank tresses. It was as hard and rusty red as the broken chain. She nodded.

Phil turned slowly towards the pram and looked under the hood. It was so dark in there. He bent down and pressed his face under the pitch-black arch.

The darkness pounced. The yawning maw engulfed him and he plunged down into a vast, ebony void. Half-Phil sensed a presence there in the abyss, a great leviathan intellect that gazed up at him from the cosmic depths.

“Yeuch!” He was stricken by the entity’s abject revulsion. “What an ugly, pathetic baby.”
Half-Phil was repelled, discarded back into the daylight. He felt warm hands on his trembling arms, and heard receding squeals in his throbbing ears.

“What did ye see?”

“Nothing,” Phil stared at the short chain that hung there, broken and useless.
“Nothing at aw.”