Tag: writing

The One She Picked

~ Hugh Westbrook

(///overturned.strawberry.confinement – Aphrodite’s Rock, Cyprus)

Laura never forgot the moment when they had first locked eyes. They had been working along the same row from opposite ends and each had spied a particularly fine strawberry. They both grabbed for it and their fingers briefly brushed against each other. They looked up at one another, held each other’s gaze for what felt like an eternity, and then he had graciously stepped back and allowed her to place it into her punnet.

As they continued to work in the warm summer sunshine, they exchanged glances, but both seemed to lose their nerve when there was a chance to speak. And after a few short weeks, when the farm thanked them for their efforts and they went on their way, Laura found herself pacing up and down, determined to go and speak to him. But when she looked for him he was gone. And so that was that.

Except that it wasn’t. The memory of him lingered, always just on the periphery. And a couple of years later she was browsing online when his face suddenly popped out. The same wavy hair and those eyes which she had gazed into. But the expression was different. This was not him in the sunshine with a look of health and energy. This was him pallid. This was a mugshot.

She read with horror that one Sebastien Durand had been found guilty of murdering his brother in the garden of their home in the south of France, and he had been sentenced to life in prison. Laura found herself crying. She didn’t know this man, had never known this man. And yet she sensed this was wrong, that he couldn’t be guilty.

Her friends told her she was being ridiculous. She couldn’t possibly have known what was in this man’s heart when she had failed to get to know him two summers before. She should just forget about it. And she tried to. She went to pubs and clubs. She had a couple of dates with people her friends were certain were right for her. She tried to move on from something that she knew was a fantasy. But deep down she kept being tugged back, it seemed too real. She couldn’t have felt those deep and irrational feelings for someone with evil in their heart, she wouldn’t countenance it. And as she sat and imagined him in his confinement, sitting solemnly in a bare cell with no light and no hope, she determined to help him.

It became an obsession. She read all the background to the case. She did a crash course to revise her school French. And then she booked some time off work and travelled to southern France, to the area where the crime had happened.

Sebastien had been found guilty because he was holding the knife, over his brother Lucien’s body, when a neighbour saw him over the fence. His DNA was all over the scene. Nobody else’s was ever found. Nobody else had been seen in the vicinity. His story that he had discovered the body a few minutes before, had pulled the knife out and just stayed there in shock was never believed. ‘The obvious justification that all killers fall back on’, the prosecutor had said.

After a few days of toil, Laura sat in a café, nibbling on a pastry she barely tasted, and looked again over her notes. It was true that the brothers had been close growing up, always outside playing, thick as thieves. But the prosecution had claimed they had become more distant as adults and alluded to an overheard argument about caring for their mother’s health issues, claiming it represented some discord, a disagreement that might have led to murder. And the circumstantial evidence seemed to point to Sebastien as well. A scribbled note had been sent to Lucien urging him to return home, written unusually in green ink, the maverick colour known to have been favoured by Sebastien. And Lucien had apparently texted Sebastien to return, but prosecutors argued that Sebastien had done that himself to throw police off the scent.

Laura stared mournfully at her undrunk coffee. Her belief that he was innocent felt unshakeable. But feelings can wilt when faced with facts, and the more she stared at those facts, the more she knew that it was time to head back home and put this behind her.

But as she trudged back to her hotel, thinking about checking flight prices, she couldn’t escape the sense that she was being led to a conclusion that wasn’t true. The motive, such as it was, wasn’t enough. And it wasn’t proven, the argument had only been the word of the neighbour. The neighbour who had also alerted the police after seeing Sebastien in the garden. The neighbour who had apparently been furious with the brothers years before, when as children they had kicked a ball over the fence and shattered parts of his greenhouse, destroying his award-winning tomatoes.

What if this resentment had festered for years? She got back to her room and started to research once more. She knew his name and after an hour of so of searching she discovered that he hadn’t won prizes at the annual horticultural show for years, not since that incident in fact, while prior to that he had been a regular champion. Had he plotted revenge for years and finally sensed his chance? After all, he was the only witness to everything, and yet he had never been questioned. What if he had sent the note?

There had been a photograph published of the original. Everyone had focused on the colour rather than the handwriting itself. But what if she could somehow match the handwriting to the neighbour’s, then she could have a case. But how to get him to write something down. Well that proved the easy bit. She arrived at his door with a petition against the recent local decision to cut down some historic trees. It was straightforward to convince him to sign it and write a comment. It was enough.

She went to see a handwriting expert. The match was quickly confirmed. She went to see Sebastien’s lawyer to ask if it was sufficient evidence to appeal, to have the verdict rescinded. The lawyer spoke to the police. The police spoke to the neighbour. By all accounts, he sat down quietly, smiled ruefully, and said he thought the green ink would have been enough.

Within weeks, Sebastien’s guilty verdict had been overturned. He clasped his lawyer and as bedlam ensured in the courtroom his parents rushed towards him, overwhelming him with hugs.

As the emotion subsided, the lawyer told Sebastien that he would never have been freed if it hadn’t been for a young English lady who had tirelessly striven to prove his innocence, her motivation unknown. Sebastien said he would like to meet her.

The lawyer guided Sebastien to a quiet room behind the courtroom and led Sebastien in. There stood Laura, holding a strawberry.

They locked eyes and didn’t look away.

_______________________________

Why This Location?

Our Survey Says

~ Hugh Westbrook

(///state.richer.bronze – Ipsos, London, UK)

Margaret was bored. Her boys were pretty self-sufficient now, teenagers who knew everything. Raymond was either at work or on the golf course. Her part-time job at the carpet company was undemanding and gave her spending money which she frittered on unnecessary clutter. Her life had metamorphosed into something perfectly pleasant but unutterably tedious, a conveyor belt of activity over which she had no real influence.

She only really filled in the online survey to kill a few minutes. She thought it unlikely she would win an Amazon voucher for sparing two minutes of her time to say what she thought of the water bottle she had recently purchased, but she did it anyway. Frankly it was nice to be asked what she thought of something, for a change.

But somewhere in the online world, answering one survey seemed to tell the survey gods that here was someone they could count on, and her inbox flooded with requests for multiple opinions. Soon she was describing her recent visit to the Golden Spot Café, her purchase of discounted super noodles from the local supermarket and even her view of the packaging her previously reviewed water bottle had arrived in.

Surveys bombarded her from every angle and she was happy to reply, enjoying being asked to state what she thought for a change, giving her renewed purpose. And unlike daily life, being critical was not seen as a fault, quite the reverse in fact. When she mentioned she had been disappointed with the speed of service at the florists, she was sent a gift voucher by way of apology. Rating the cleanliness of the local garage as bronze rather than gold meant that her next service would be half price. The more negative she was, the richer in reward she became.

Anonymity was more successful than real life though. Using the same approach with her sons’ attitude to chore completion or conversational engagement yielded nothing but arguments. Raymond didn’t appreciate her suggestions for how he improve his golf swing. But no matter. Her opinion mattered now, and she would no longer hold back.

It was that approach which led her to the bank that Thursday morning for a meeting with the manager, who wanted to discuss why his staff only rated two out of 10 for customer service and how they could perhaps “smile more and provide greater clarity on financial planning”. If she hadn’t been there then she wouldn’t have got caught up in the robbery, and if she hadn’t criticised the robber’s choice of balaclava and the technique he was using to hold his rifle then she probably wouldn’t have been shot in the head.

The world went black before it went white. Visions and confusion flashed in front of her but when all was calm and she could process what she had seen, she found herself sitting on a bench with a kindly looking gentleman next to her.

“Hello Margaret,” he said gently. “You’ve been through an ordeal. But now you are at peace. Welcome to Heaven.”

Margaret looked at him, looked around, and then back at him again. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks. I’m not sure what to say.”

“Of course, take your time, this takes much adjustment.” He smiled.

“Yes. Those gates, not as shiny as I thought the pearly gates would be. I think you could make them a little brighter, really get them to stand out more, greater impact for new arrivals. And this bench, I think it should be softer, more comfortable, this is heaven for goodness sake. Your wings, they’re a little small, if you want to impress your new visitors, bigger, more magnificent.

“Are you able to arrange a meeting with your manager?”  

_________________________________

Why this location?

The Last Things You’ll See

~ Hugh Westbrook

(///infirmary.deride.budgie – Island of Serifos, Greece)

She was going to be last up again. It wasn’t Miss Higgins’ fault, she knew that. But it was really annoying being called Zenia Zylyftari.

That was probably why she was going to do everything possible to make her appearance at the art expo one for the ages. Her fellow teens would be tired and bored when she came to speak. So give them something spectacular. People love a memorable dessert.

The art expo was the chance for the sixth form art class to show their work to their contemporaries. Everyone in her year would sit in the hall as the artists filed up one by one to wow them and try to take the top prize. It was the event all the art students looked forward to. More so than their audience, they imagined.

Zenia’s alphabetical dysfunction had caused her more than delay in the past. Schoolchildren could be merciless, and over the years had either feigned sleeping in front of her in tribute to her ZZ initials or had donned fake beards to reference some band of ageing rockers she had previously never heard of. Teen life was not easy for someone with a name over which she had no control.

So she had dived into her Greek background to find something which she could relate to, lighting on a misunderstood mythological figure, someone else who through no fault of her own was regarded as an outsider, someone who had developed to become a threat. Zenia hadn’t gone that far in people’s minds, but she felt a kinship as she worked on her masterpiece. 

And yet, as she viewed it the day before, and admired how good it was, she knew it was just that. Good. Not great. And great was what she had wanted.

A new idea came to her. She loved it, this was what would transform it. And she forgot about sleep as she worked feverishly throughout the night to bring it to life.

When the expo started it was hard to keep concentration. It was a hot day. Given that the work was produced by people studying art, she found it curiously bland and unexciting. She liked Melinda’s papier mâché budgie, she admired Charlie’s scale model of a hospital but was annoyed that he had labelled it as infirmary as it showed he had watched too much Netflix, and she wanted to deride Cecily’s oil painting of fruit because it was so old-fashioned, but she was forced to appreciate the brushstrokes.

By the time her turn came round, she could see that people’s focus had long since departed. Always the same for her. But she knew that what she was about to show people would take their breath away.

Zenia had prepared a lengthy preamble, an explanation of why she had chosen to create what she had created. But she could see that everyone just wanted to leave at this point. So why delay. After the briefest of pauses, she took hold of the cloth and with a dramatic flourish, pulled it off and announced: ‘Medusa’s Head’!

People sat up to attention immediately and strained to look at it. Even Miss Higgins could see the attention to detail. The facial expression, the mix of emotions she had captured to reinforce the complexity of the mythological creature. The piercing and sinister fixed stare of her eyes. And then there were the snakes, the scales and tongues of each one clear for all to see, the range of green tints she had used across them giving her hairs individuality.

Zenia paused again. Now for the piece de resistance, her late addition. She said nothing. She left out her reasons for creating her, she didn’t dwell on Medusa’s complex history. She simply reached for the switch on the motor which she had added only the day before, and switched it on.

All the effort paid off. The snakes now started to wriggle and writhe gently on the top of Medusa’s head. The class gasped.

But there was one more thing. One more button press and Medusa’s eyes started to glow, bright red light beaming out from them. And what a reaction. This stunned the hall into total silence. People sat frozen in open-mouthed awe. Miss Higgins was as speechless as the rest of them. It was a total triumph.

As Zenia switched the eyes off and recovered her Medusa, the bell rang for the end of the session. Still nobody moved. Well it wasn’t a surprise really, it was such an amazing piece of art she wasn’t at all shocked that people were still sitting silently, contemplating it. Zenia took Medusa, collected her bag and left the hall. The others would follow soon she was sure, once they had come to terms with her genius.

She couldn’t wait to go home and show her parents.

___________________________________

Why this location?

The Greatest Game in the World

~ Hugh Westbrook

(///squashes.unattached.sake – Socks Island, Maine)

Darren hated it when people mocked him for being a stereotype. But he couldn’t say it wasn’t true.

After all, he worked as a software developer. He spent his spare time playing computer games, writing more software, and living on Wotsits. He had a series of faded black T-shirts adorned with references to cult sci-fi shows or weak jokes like ‘For Fox Sake’, with appropriate images. He didn’t have a social life worth talking about.

But you know? He didn’t care. He liked his life just the way it was.

Except for one thing. He lived by himself. He did his own laundry. And yet he still kept finding odd socks at the bottom of the drawer.

How? How was this possible? It had been the bane of growing up in a big family, there always seemed to be a pile of socks without a friend, and you could tidy the whole house and never find the other one. It was as if there was an alternate reality inside his house in which all the unattached socks lived in peace. And now it was happening to him in his solitary life.

So he did what he always did. He wrote some software. He created a game where he had 10 pairs of socks jumbled together, and he had to sort them as quickly as possible. He upped the number, became more creative with the designs, colour nuances with different hex values, rabbits with slightly varied ear lengths. He added a washing machine to spin them in before the sorting began, he created wash loads where the colours ran to add complexity. His sock nightmare became a source of endless inspiration.

He would have shared it with his friends, if he had friends, so instead he created a website to see whether people would discover and enjoy ultimatesockmatch.com. It turned out they did. The traffic threatened to break the server at times. He ensured there was sufficient capacity, and then added some advertising banners.

He wrote an app and released it onto phones. It hit the top of the charts almost immediately. He quit his day job and produced updates day and night: more intricate socks, different washing machines. He introduced Socko, described as ‘A Monster Who Squashes and Eats Socks’, so people had to finish their matching before he finished his meal. He offered in-app purchases to fight Socko, created sock match leaderboards for people to compete, and offered a subscription so people didn’t have to sit through adverts. The money flooded in. Ultimate Sock Match was an international sensation.

Darren sat in his mansion, while the gardener cut his lawn and his chef asked him whether he wanted hand-cut chips with his Wotsits pie. Life was perfect.

The maid came in. “Everything is done, Mr Darren,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“But there is one thing,” she added. “I have these three gloves without a match. What would you like me to do with them?”

_____

Why this location?