Morgan Delaney

Dark, strange and fantastic fiction

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Market stall

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Photo by Allan So from Pexels

Hi all,

this is my last week of research before I get back into the next draft of my work in progress. I’m looking forward to it as writing feels slightly more like work than reading does.

Here’s another piece of writing prompt fiction. It turned out quite dark and there’s a swear word in it too so you might want to save it for later if you’re in a bad mood.

People streamed past. A grandmother in a pink t-shirt, dragging two girls bumped into him.
It was 5pm and stallholders had started to pack. The summer was still warm and heat emanated from the metal wall. His brother was inside waiting for him to come back.


Tell him.
His stomach clenched. Rob wouldn’t understand.

Tash was packing away her earphones, wrapping them around the stick from an ice-cream, packing the lot inside a knitted case. She started matching up knitting. Bags. Jumpers, scarves, hats. Multicoloured animals, mostly sea creatures. Her logo was an orange octopus with four sets of knitting needles in its eight legs. It wasn’t a cartoon, more like a tattoo. It gave Clive the creeps. She didn’t care. After this she was going to Uni, Industrial Design.

He had an aberrant thought: he could go to Uni too. Industrial Design. He shook himself out of it. He had never learned anything at school.

Nor outside it.


Tash was ignoring him. Knew he’d make a fuss.
She’d never forgive him.

The baby, Rob. It’s…

Tash stared at him for a moment then looked away. The octopus paused in its knitting. Did it matter whose it was? As long as she didn’t hang that creature over its crib and scare it senseless.

He walked over. “Tash.” He hated that name. “Natasha.” Tash put a dozen knitted pocket squares into a plastic bag.

Knitted pocket squares, for fuck’s sake. Industrial Design had no idea what was going to hit it.

“It’s not suitable for children. No octopus.” She looked at him. Looked down at him. It was easy to forget how tall she was.

“Too late.”

“You’ve told Rob?” He couldn’t believe it. “So…”

“Mr. Elbows didn’t want him. So don’t worry. And I’ve got Uni next month.”

Clive looked at the octopus, knitting.

The prompts were the picture at the top of the piece and the following words:

stream
rob
brother
learned
aberrant
ill

Clouded judgement

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Clouds by Morgan Delaney

Hi all,

here’s the latest piece of writing prompt fiction for you. I managed to completely miss one of my five prompts despite setting it up twice. Can you guess which word I wanted to include? Find out below!

The wing shook. Maggie’s stomach dropped with the plane. She squeezed the armrest, the blue vinyl damp under her palm. The night flight was approaching London. The sun was up, pale rose and sharp yellow rays of light shining off the reflective surfaces on the wing. So many different pieces of metal, joined or screwed together. The flaps didn’t look secure. She hated when they lifted: they let too much air through.
The guy beside her was large but didn’t try to hog both armrests. On the other side was his wife. They didn’t talk. Both read newspapers. The Financial Times for her, the Observer for him. The rest of the plane was dark. People slept, hugging themselves under the fleecy blankets that had been handed out. The stewardess in Business Class was visible as she moved around.
The seat in front of her jerked upright as the seat belt light dinged.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your seats. Fasten your seat belts and stow all tables.”
She tucked her notebook and plastic orange Garfield pen – a Mother’s Day present – into the seat beside her leg and clicked the table into position. The mechanism was stiff and she had to push hard.
The man turned around to stare at her. He had large blue eys and wild white hair. Grumpy because he’d just woken up. She smiled in apology. He smiled back then showed her his hand. Shaped into a gun, pointed at her.
Pow.
She hated flying.
On the ground she managed to get in front of him at the immigration queue. She pushed her passport under the safety glass to the officer. With a little note. She looked as scared as she could.
Help. The man behind me has a gun.
 The officer nodded, waved her through.
She saw him pick up his walkie-talkie as the grumpy man walked to the window, scowling impatiently.

The prompts were:

reflective
ray
hug
writing
gun

The word “writing” never made it into the piece. Despite the main character having their notebook and Garfield pen ready on the drop down tray on the plane. And having had written to the custom’s officer at the end. D’oh!

Greenodd

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Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Hi all,

enjoy the following piece of 20 minute writing prompt fiction. The prompts are below the piece.

I thought I knew Greenodd.
His leather doctor’s bag was open on the table, a tiny car tucked into one pocket, a plastic house in the main pouch.
My wife was upstairs dying. According to Greenodd.
“What is..?”
“A new therapy,” said Greenodd. “Quite the latest.”
“Play the disease away?”
He snapped the bag’s simple clasp closed and walked to the stairs where the wreckage of an invalid’s breakfast: grey oatmeal sodden with watery milk, tooth-white tea in a thin mug sat waiting to be disposed of.

Said Greenodd: “You are the problem.”
“Don’t go near her!” I said.
“She asked for me. I will see her now.” He ran up the stairs. His black shoes were polished sloppily, the polish overlapped onto the lifts of the heel.

Angela broke up with him after we met and I knew she still felt sorry for him. It would have happened anyway. Greenodd was not easy to be around.
He slammed into the bedroom and the door closed in my face.
“Angela!” I saw her pale face before the door closed. I hammered on the door. Behind it I could hear Angela, quiet and patient. Greenodd was whispering but triumphant.
She was telling him that she had called him, not to heal her – had he ever healed anyone? – but to ask forgiveness. I could imagine it so well. But I was nervous about him being with her. She wasn’t well, wasn’t strong. And she was desperate: the baby was due next month. Who knew what Greenodd could talk her into.
I grabbed the chair from the nursery and banged on the door. The wood splintered. I put my arm through the hole. Burst into a bare plastic room.
Not completely bare, there was an upturned doctor’s bag.
A motor revved. Looking through the gap where the window pane should be I saw Greenodd and my wife in his little car. They drove off, growing smaller and smaller.
I clambered through the fake window, ran after them. The car was barely visible as it turned into the nursery. I dived onto my hands and knees. I could hear the whine of its engine but no longer see it, as it slipped between the fibres of the carpet. And Angela’s voice, patient, calm. Greenodd elated.
I had to move slowly so as not to crush them.

The prompts were:

elated

tiny

wreck

plastic

simple

“Greenodd” is the name of a village in the north east of England. I came across it in the book Nella Last’s War and liked the sound of it for a character. He seems interesting. I have a good feel for what he’s like. We might be seeing him again.

Apprenticeship

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Apprenticeship by Morgan Delaney

Hi all!

Another piece of 20 minute writing prompt fiction. I know that’s what you come here for! You can find the prompts below the piece.

Are these getting shorter, Morgan?

The last few stories have been shorter as I’m teaching myself to type properly: I just can’t write as many words in 20 minutes yet. Hopefully they’ll get longer again.

Enjoy!

He got up, bleeding. The prisoners watched.

“Keep moving,” said Dale.
Dale was in for life. Working for Zole.

Dale had shot up a bank in what should have been a simple robbery.

Nobody had died, he would have been out in a few years. But he’d taken to prison life. His sentence getting longer as he sorted things out for Zole.
Zole had ordered the attack. Joe had been one of the prosecutors. If he’d been a cop, he’d be dead already.
Joe sat at the bench. Guys left as he approached, pointless to get mixed up in another man’s fight. He knew better than to go to the guards. They were waiting for the hour to be up. He could go to the infirmary when it was over, not before. Zole ran the prison. The director just rubber-stamped the forms.

At the infirmary the doctor put out his cigarette, snapped on gloves, patched up the wound. Filled Joe with painkillers.
“You need more, come back,” he said.
Joe looked at him, unsure if it was a question or a statement.

Or a riddle:

My dog’s been shivved.
How does he feel?
He doesn’t. He’s on painkillers.

It was the opioid epidemic that had done for Joel. He’d switched to the lucrative side: defending the guilty. This is where he’d ended up, his rightful place.
His cellmate feigned indifference when he got back to his cell. Started humming. An advertising jingle for one of the pharmaceutical companies.

Be strong. He’d be out on good behaviour in no time.

The intercom crackled.
Cell inspection.
The warden went straight to Joe’s bunk and plunged his hand under the mattress. He pulled out a small bag of tablets. Painkillers.
“You can’t stop pushing, can you?” The warden whispered in Joe’s ear. “Zole’s sister woulda been 17 this week, if it wasn’t for the likes of you.”

The topic for this exercise was “justice.” The random words were:

pointless
riddle
glove
rightful
feigned

As with all my writing prompts I’m not allowed to make changes except for typos, punctuation and deletions. Never underestimate the Delete button. As well making the language tighter by removing fluff, it can get you out of more serious problems.

I gave two of the characters names which rhymed. It sounded very silly. Enter the Delete button!

Take a minute, see if you can guess which two characters.

…

Got it?

Well done, you! Originally two characters were named Zole and Joel.

Peck

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Photo by Eliška Motisová on Unsplash

Hi!

Another piece of twenty minute fiction. This one inspired by a tweet from Mark Stay (@markstay) about “watering the chickens.” I added five random words and here we are.

As usual I corrected typos and punctuation and deleted anything bad or unnecessary otherwise it is as I originally wrote it. Enjoy!

We could never stop Grandad watering the chickens.
He started one summer. It was warm. Seemed like a good idea at the time. The chickens were at the bottom of the garden. Granny didn’t like them. She said they smelled like Grandad’s trousers when he had them on too long. So the herb garden grew to encompass tomatoes, salads, strawberries and rhubarb in beds, the herbs in hanging boxes creating a verdant backdrop when you looked out the kitchen window.


Whenever Grandad was missing we’d find him hidden behind the foliage; the hiss and platsch of water from the blue hosepipe a giveaway. He’d be standing close to the tall cage he kept the chickens in, leaning in to make sure that each got its fair share. There were three. Two auburn-coloured, one white with brown spots along her wings.


“Grandad! Granny wants you to light the fire.”

He’d give us one of his trite responses and shamble in. He’d do what was required but before you’d know it he’d be gone. Granny would purse her purple lips.
There was always some pretext: the rubbish needed to be taken out; the car should be filled up in case she wanted to use it; the jar was stiff and she wanted him to open it. We’d find him spraying water over the chickens. Leaning in, like he was listening.

Sometimes we hid in the garden, the chickens gackering. If we got too close there’d be a hush. The kind when you walk into a room and people stop talking about you. Grandad leaning in.
It did them good, too. They kept growing. First they were up to my knee. Then up to my waist. Too big for the enclosure. Granny was thankful when there was a drought one year: there was a ban on the hosepipe.

Grandad looked uncomfortable. We’d find him leaning against the backdoor to catch what the chickens might be saying.
“You talk more to the birds than you do to me!” said Granny. We offered to have her stay with us. The chickens were so big they were scary. Their orange eyes stared at us in the garden. We’d pluck herbs – Granny refused to enter the garden at all – as the chickens conferred. We’d race inside and lock the door.

One night she woke and found him watering the chickens. He leaned in, at eye level with the three ladies, one hand pushed through the chicken wire fence.

Needless to say she moved in with us after that.

Grandad insisted we call in advance before visiting. The floors were always damp when we arrived. The chickens watched us from the good couch in the sitting room.

The random words were:

verdant
trite
needless
thankful
offer

I really dislike the line “So the herb garden grew to encompass tomatoes, salads, strawberries and rhubarb in beds, the herbs in hanging boxes creating a verdant backdrop when you looked out the kitchen window. “

It needs to stop after “…hanging boxes.” but then I would lose my “verdant” prompt.

On the other hand I think “We’d find him spraying water over the chickens. Leaning in, like he was listening.” works very well.

The original was “We’d always find him spraying water over the chickens, leaning in to them, almost like he was listening.” I got rid of fill-words but making two lines out of it is the real special sauce: both lines have more room to resonate.

When in Rome

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Photo by Ran Berkovich on Unsplash

Here’s another piece of 20 minute fiction. As usual the only changes are typo correction, punctuation changes and deletions.

Enjoy!

Laughter drifted up from the street. Men’s voices, a woman’s; a small group. The same group every night. Outside his hotel window. He breathed out. “Keep calm,” he told himself, heart thumping.


The stupid bray again. Loud. Ignorant. The curly-headed one. He talked and talked, and then laughed. His friends joined in, fattening the sound. Every night drinking and laughing.


He went to his window, pushed the thin pane open. Stared at them with dislike. Caught another buffet of the irritating noise. Felt the taste of coffee rise. He shouldn’t drink so much this late.


The young woman sat opposite the Horse. The one with the terrible, awful laugh. She looked up, caught him. He ducked back inside the room.


The hotel was expensive, the room small. With the view of rooftops, made famous by generations of cheap postcards. But if he couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t finish his report.


Again! That maddening laugh.
Was there anything he could do?


One thing perhaps. If he dared. He pulled his shirt on, it clung to his belly. Despite the evening air it was hot.

He went to the table.
They must have seen him coming, turned. He cleared his throat.


“Excuse me, please. Signori, signora,” he said. “Could I join you?”
“Please!” The Horse jumped up, cleared his seat. Indicated he should sit.
“We wondered when you would,” said Horse.
“I was working. A report…,” said Bill. Signora smiled at him. “…it can wait,” he said.

This one is based on a random first line prompt. I also wanted every line to have the same amount of words (7).

So this gives you a glimpse “behind the scenes.”

Most sentences are shorter as I deleted boring or irrelevant fluff, tightening the language. Even the original prompt got cut from 7 to 6 words. It originally ended with the word “…below,” which is neither interesting to end on, nor necessary as the words “up from” make it redundant.

A few sentences are longer. In a couple of cases I cut adjacent sentences to bits. It then made sense to get rid of a little bit more and make one sentence out of the remains. Insert “It’s alive! it’s alive!” film quote here.

The original prompt was “Laughter drifted up from the street below.”