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.
