Another first: today I’m sharing a post by a guest author, Craig Carey, who I met through online writing competitions. I didn’t participate in furious fiction in May, but Craig did, so for something different, I’m presenting his entry instead of mine.
These were the criteria for May:
- Your story must include a character who is BEING CHASED or doing the CHASING.
- Your story must include the words BOIL, FRINGE and JUMP. (You can use longer words – e.g. BOILING or JUMPED – as long as they retain the original spelling within them.)
- Your story must contain at least THREE CREATIVE SIMILES.
Here is Craig’s story…
Mongoose
Barry, hands trembling, stares across the bedroom of his sparsely decorated, grotty flat just outside the city fringe. He’s expecting a guest any minute. Sweat trickles from his underarms, and he wheezes asthmatically, acutely aware this visit will involve some broken bones and bruises … or worse.
Barry, or ‘Mongoose’ as he’s known around the inner circles for the Mongoose BMX brand he rode with such flair in his youth, slumps on his bed, which sags so badly it looks more like a giant banana.
He stuffs his few possessions into his backpack, including his only picture of his daughter Rosie as a little girl; faded and slightly blurry, it was taken the single time he took her to the zoo. She’s fully grown now, and he has no idea of her whereabouts since he divorced her mother many years ago following bitter disputes over his gambling debts, and they went their separate ways .
Someone pounds on the front door. Mr Jelly Thwaites. About as welcome as an iceberg to the Titanic. Mongoose gets up, stashes his backpack, then greets the uninvited caller with a limp handshake and a forced smile.
“You know why I’m here, Mongoose. It’s midday. I gave you a week, so where’s my cash?”
“Sure, Jelly, I mean Mr Thwaites. I was about to come see you. I got a plan to pay you every cent, but I need the weekend to make good on my promise if ya let me.”
Jelly stood still, arms by his sides, fists clenched. “Shut up. I don’t want promises. I want my money. Now!”
Mongoose, nervous as a puppy circling for a safe place to relive itself, says he needs the bathroom. Thwaites glowers but nods.
Locked in the bathroom, Mongoose studies his reflection in the mirror. What happened to the man who once had everything?
He flushes the toilet, grabs his backpack off the floor, opens the frosted window, throws himself through it, and falls to the ground. The overstuffed backpack rolls like a boiled egg down the grassy, sloping courtyard before crashing into the back fence. Mongoose retrieves it and scales the fence.
Jelly’s minder, Lofty Prentice, is waiting at the end of the rear laneway.
Mongoose races to the neighbour’s fence and clambers up the palings to heave himself over, but gains as much traction as a frog trying to escape the side of an oily bathtub.
Prentice charges towards him, but, by dumb luck, as he barrels along the cobblestones, he trips and falls flat on his face. Mongoose jumps right over him and heads for the streets.
Next time: an interview with debut novelist, Donna Carbone on the evolving nature of friendship.
Brightside Story Studio 
One thought on “Short Fiction: Mongoose”