The Chase
Lucy was staring into space at the graffiti-ridden street in front of her. She was a 23-year-old woman and was dealing with depression, living in her 3 room flat in East London. She was always thinking about if living was worth the hassle. She had a date with a 24-year-old called William at a rip-off of Nando’s. He wasn’t exactly a gentleman but he was a nice guy to be around. She met William round the back of the fake Nando’s, he was waiting for her sitting on the bonnet of his blue Ford Fiesta. He strutted over to Lucy. He was a tall man wearing a red hat, some ripped baggy jeans, a huge body-warmer and some chains round his neck. Lucy was wearing some ripped skinny jeans and a baggy T-shirt. They walked into the restaurant and sat down at a table for two. Lucy had the peri-peri chicken and William had the chicken wings.
William said to Lucy, “You know maybe we should stop coming here, it really shows on you ya cow!.”
“WHAT! excuse me but I thought you were the one who asked me to come here with you.” She was working up in a rage now, she was breathing heavily, her pulse speeding up and fists clenching. She grabbed her fork and stabbed William in the neck slowly twisting the fork to cause maximum pain. The blood was oozing out staining his white T-shirt turning it red, he struggled for a bit then fell limp and gurgled. she ran fork in hand covered in blood crying and screaming.
Meanwhile in the restaurant the waiter had called 999 and the police were already on their way. Lucy ran until she found an unlocked bike and was riding to her apartment. She brought the bike inside and locked the door behind her. She was freaking out. She had no idea what to do so she decided to call her friend Jake to ask what to do.
“I just killed William. What do I do.”
“Take deep breaths in and out in and out, then try to do something to take your mind off it like playing a game just don’t think about it.” and hung up. She decided to check her emails and there was a knocking at the door
“Open up! This is the police from New Scotland Yard.” said a gravelly voice on the other side. But Lucy did quite the opposite and blocked the door with most of her furniture pushed up against the thin wooden door. She had already planned her escape route and was lowering her bedsheets out of the living room window. Luckily she only lived on the second floor. It was a height of two storeys and was on the verge of being deadly.
Her phone rang when she was tying the bedsheets to the table which was the piece of furniture closest to the door she answered it “Hey Lucy.”
It was her friend Wayne. “I just saw there’s someone the news called Lucy and she looks like you too.”
“You idiot Wayne that is me!” Cried Lucy
“You killed William!”
“He called me a cow!”
“The police?”
“Yep right outside the door now.”
“Ah, well I’ll leave you to it” and he hung up. She slowly climbed down the wall clinging on to the sheets for dear life. The sheets suddenly dropped nearly throwing Lucy off of them. Death was inevitable as she plummeted towards the earth. ‘The table must have slipped’ thought Lucy as she plunged to her impending doom. At the last second Lucy stopped hanging upside-down about a metre from the ground. The table had pulled her barricade apart but was stopped by the windowsill. Lucy had escaped her drab flat and was running to the last place she could go. Her brothers flat. Again not the most luxurious flat available but it was safe.
Lucy lived in North-east London while her Brother Luke lived in south-east London. It was a long way but she got there by walking and hitchhiking. She knocked on the door Luke answered “hello who is it?” “it’s Lucy” he opened the door and let her in “hey sis whatcha doin in these parts” “well turn on the news and you’ll see” Luke walked over to his 20 inch TV and turned it on. The newsreader was in the middle of saying “so if you see this woman contact police immediately” “what did you do?!?” exclaimed Luke with a sense of outrage in his voice, Lucy began to stutter “d-da-dd-d-di-dibididab furgleyurgle” she had completely lost control of her voice. “Ssssshhh” uttered Luke pressing his forefinger on her lips “Do you want some tea or coffee Luce” said Luke in a calming tone. He knew that she had been through an emotional shock. “You can stay here for a few days if you want” “Yes please” she stayed for three days at her brothers house.
As she waved goodbye to her brother she thought “Why not visit William?”. It took her an hour to go to the graveyard where they buried William, but her oyster card surprisingly still worked. She wandered around for a while looking for William’s grave. At long last she found a grave marked ‘William Foster’ she felt sorry for him, she had not wanted this but there he was all alone. She started crying, the tears rolling down her cheeks as she dropped to her knees “I’m sorry” she muttered as she held the fork in front of her own neck and falling flat on her face. The fork penetrated her windpipe killing her in a matter of seconds. The gravekeeper was the first to find her six days later with the fork still protruding from the back of her neck.
Title
Notes:
Setting: East london, Summer of 2010
Characters: Lucy is average height with brown wavy hair. she has blue eyes and a pale white skin colour (23), Wayne lucy’s friend skinhead with a heavy london accent (24), Luke (25) lucy’s brother tall quiffed brown hair ice blue eyes, William her ex he is tall and thuggy wearing 5 gold (made of plastic) chains round his neck he has black mini afro hair (24).
Beginning: (Lucy kills william) using a fork in east london. Because the way he ate at the restaurant was disgusting. she showers to get the blood off
Middle: (on the run) she rode her bike to her apartment. Police catch her, she was under house arrest by the police. she was freaking out. she opened her computer to ask for help from her friend luke, and saw an email from wayne saying someone that looked like her was on the news for killing william foster with a fork.
End: (feels sorry) for william alone in the grave just rotting away. she kills herself with the same fork because of how savagely she killed him.
She killed a man with a fork.
She rode a bike into her room.
She opened the computer and saw an e-mail.
She felt sorry for it, she had not wanted this but there it was, abandoned and alone.
By: A.C.
Notes:
Beginning
Middle
End
“Anne, may I speak to you?”
She stops in her tracks, and reluctantly turns to face her literature teacher as the rest of the class files out.
The teacher shuffles some papers and looks into her eyes, causing Anne to avert her gaze.
“I’d like to speak to you about the tests I handed back today. I see that you have a few areas you may need to work on...”
The young girl sighs inwardly and tunes out as the teacher offers extra help, and reminds her that she needs to work harder than the other students, due to her “troubles in comprehending written text”. She’s had this conversation countless times.
As the teacher dismisses her, Anne ducks out of the classroom quickly and stops by the girl’s bed chamber to drop off her school bag, and jogs down the stairs to the first floor, then out the door onto the orphanage’s back lawn. Rounding the corner, she slows her pace and smiles.
The dog lies in the alcove between the garden shed and some trees, well hidden by those who don’t know to search for it. She squats next to the resting dog, running a hand over its back, then reaches into her pocket for a few slices of leftover ham from breakfast that she had saved for this purpose.
Anne had been caring for the animal for five months now, from the time it wandered onto the front lawn with two long gashes in its coat of fur, where the blood had already dried. At first, she had been concerned about the wounds affecting the dog’s health, but they didn’t seem to bother him. The gashes faded into almost imperceptible scars over time and Anne pays no mind to them now.
She rests her back against a tree trunk and talks to the dog, detailing the day’s uneventful happenings as he appears to listen. She talks until the dinner bell rings, then says “goodbye” to her dog, and leaves. Even after all these months, she’s yet to find a name for her pet.
For Anne, every day is more or less the same. She barely makes it through her classes, is neither included or specifically excluded by the other children, and visits the dog every day before suppertime. Life at an orphanage is mundane.
Then, two weeks later, comes a day that is not so mundane.
Ordinarily, Anne rushes out of class as usual to escape the dreaded atmosphere as quickly as possible. She seeks her dog in the spot where he usually resides after classes, waiting just for her. Extraordinarily, the dog is gone.
She finds only an empty space, home to nothing alive, apart from some tranquil plants and the occasional bird.
Hoping that the dog had just decided to wander around the greens, she searches every nook, making her way across great lawns around the building. She only covers less than half of the outdoor areas before the dinner bell rings as usual, forcing her to abandon search for the evening.
The orphanage matron eventually calls the girls in for bed. As Anne curls her knees up to her chest in her small cot, she vows to resume her search the next morning. But for now, all she is capable of is sleep.
The next morning, Anne gets up half an hour earlier to make another round around the old building, but still sees no sign of her dog.
For the next three days, the girl is still alone.
Just as she’s beginning to give up hope, Anne spots a spectacularly canine-like figure resting under the tree, as if it was specifically deposited there for her to find. “Dog!”, she exclaims, relief washing through her, for she felt the need to call something and still had no better name.
She dashes to where the dog lays, his back facing her. She reaches out her hand to scratch him behind the ears. There is no response.
Anne hesitates for a moment then tentatively flips the dog onto its back, and the limp body falls on its other side with a soft thud. The lifeless form is still. What is most curious, however, are the two deep red gashes on the dog’s underside. They are not unlike the ones Anne found when she first adopted the dog. This time, though, the wounds and fresh and bleeding, and the dog has already died.
The girl says nothing, only lets the tears balance on the rim of her eyes. They fall as she blinks.
She carefully picks the body off up the ground, and walks without direction for a while. Eventually, Anne ends up at the edge of the woods encircling the back of the orphanage building. She decides that it is here she will bury it.
Anne tries to use the toe of her shoe to dig a small hole, to no avail. She makes an exasperated sound and gets down on her hands and knees, clawing at a patch of dirt, flinging the remnants behind her.
When she’s dug for roughly an hour, she sits back on her knees. Her back is sore, her neck in pain, and joints roughed. She catches sight of the dog’s body and crumbles a bit more on the inside.
She’s about to turn her attention back to the pit, but spots a flash of red. A pair, in fact. Like wolf eyes.
A shadow begins to take form, emerging slowly, slowly, from behind the tree trunks. A wispy grey outline wavers around the shape, creating the illusion of a distorted image. After some time, it recedes into the background, the shadow dissolving, hidden again behind the trees.
Suddenly, a creature leaps swiftly into the clearing where Anne stands. It bares its jagged teeth, like a hundred small knives arranged to kill. The wolf-like animal opens its mouth ever so slightly and emits a deep, rumbling growl, so cold-blooded it could scare every living thing within a mile radius back under the ground.
But Anne does not move. Doesn’t twitch a muscle. Doesn’t even breathe. She risks a quick glance at the ground and realises with a start that her dog’s corpse isn’t there. She darts her eyes to the creature again, and daring to look at it directly, it dawns on her that the beast looks familiar. Anne realises that the creature is not a wolf, it’s a dog. Her dog.
She slowly rises to her feet, wiping her muddy hands on her skirt. Then she turns on her heel, runs, and doesn’t look back once. The creature doesn’t follow.
Nothing happens for another two days. There’s no sign of her dog: dead, or alive in the form of a monster.
One night as she is in her cot, about to sleep, she spots a shadow at the foot of her bed. A pair of flashing red eyes and gleaming fangs.
Her dog is back.
For a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, the dog stays still. It even takes a seat. But Anne never relaxes, convinced the creature is on the verge of attacking each time.
The dog comes back the next night, and the night after that. Every night is the same. The dog sits soundlessly, Anne is scared witless, and can’t calm herself enough to fall asleep.
On the thirty-first day of the month, the dog leaps onto Anne’s bed, and lays down beside her. Her entire body tenses up at first, but begins to relax as she notices it isn’t doing any harm. The girl and dog stay like this for the entire night.
For the first time in weeks, Anne sleeps, and dreams.
Lucy was staring into space at the graffiti-ridden street in front of her. She was a 23-year-old woman and was dealing with depression, living in her 3 room flat in East London. She was always thinking about if living was worth the hassle. She had a date with a 24-year-old called William at a rip-off of Nando’s. He wasn’t exactly a gentleman but he was a nice guy to be around. She met William round the back of the fake Nando’s, he was waiting for her sitting on the bonnet of his blue Ford Fiesta. He strutted over to Lucy. He was a tall man wearing a red hat, some ripped baggy jeans, a huge body-warmer and some chains round his neck. Lucy was wearing some ripped skinny jeans and a baggy T-shirt. They walked into the restaurant and sat down at a table for two. Lucy had the peri-peri chicken and William had the chicken wings.
William said to Lucy, “You know maybe we should stop coming here, it really shows on you ya cow!.”
“WHAT! excuse me but I thought you were the one who asked me to come here with you.” She was working up in a rage now, she was breathing heavily, her pulse speeding up and fists clenching. She grabbed her fork and stabbed William in the neck slowly twisting the fork to cause maximum pain. The blood was oozing out staining his white T-shirt turning it red, he struggled for a bit then fell limp and gurgled. she ran fork in hand covered in blood crying and screaming.
Meanwhile in the restaurant the waiter had called 999 and the police were already on their way. Lucy ran until she found an unlocked bike and was riding to her apartment. She brought the bike inside and locked the door behind her. She was freaking out. She had no idea what to do so she decided to call her friend Jake to ask what to do.
“I just killed William. What do I do.”
“Take deep breaths in and out in and out, then try to do something to take your mind off it like playing a game just don’t think about it.” and hung up. She decided to check her emails and there was a knocking at the door
“Open up! This is the police from New Scotland Yard.” said a gravelly voice on the other side. But Lucy did quite the opposite and blocked the door with most of her furniture pushed up against the thin wooden door. She had already planned her escape route and was lowering her bedsheets out of the living room window. Luckily she only lived on the second floor. It was a height of two storeys and was on the verge of being deadly.
Her phone rang when she was tying the bedsheets to the table which was the piece of furniture closest to the door she answered it “Hey Lucy.”
It was her friend Wayne. “I just saw there’s someone the news called Lucy and she looks like you too.”
“You idiot Wayne that is me!” Cried Lucy
“You killed William!”
“He called me a cow!”
“The police?”
“Yep right outside the door now.”
“Ah, well I’ll leave you to it” and he hung up. She slowly climbed down the wall clinging on to the sheets for dear life. The sheets suddenly dropped nearly throwing Lucy off of them. Death was inevitable as she plummeted towards the earth. ‘The table must have slipped’ thought Lucy as she plunged to her impending doom. At the last second Lucy stopped hanging upside-down about a metre from the ground. The table had pulled her barricade apart but was stopped by the windowsill. Lucy had escaped her drab flat and was running to the last place she could go. Her brothers flat. Again not the most luxurious flat available but it was safe.
Lucy lived in North-east London while her Brother Luke lived in south-east London. It was a long way but she got there by walking and hitchhiking. She knocked on the door Luke answered “hello who is it?” “it’s Lucy” he opened the door and let her in “hey sis whatcha doin in these parts” “well turn on the news and you’ll see” Luke walked over to his 20 inch TV and turned it on. The newsreader was in the middle of saying “so if you see this woman contact police immediately” “what did you do?!?” exclaimed Luke with a sense of outrage in his voice, Lucy began to stutter “d-da-dd-d-di-dibididab furgleyurgle” she had completely lost control of her voice. “Ssssshhh” uttered Luke pressing his forefinger on her lips “Do you want some tea or coffee Luce” said Luke in a calming tone. He knew that she had been through an emotional shock. “You can stay here for a few days if you want” “Yes please” she stayed for three days at her brothers house.
As she waved goodbye to her brother she thought “Why not visit William?”. It took her an hour to go to the graveyard where they buried William, but her oyster card surprisingly still worked. She wandered around for a while looking for William’s grave. At long last she found a grave marked ‘William Foster’ she felt sorry for him, she had not wanted this but there he was all alone. She started crying, the tears rolling down her cheeks as she dropped to her knees “I’m sorry” she muttered as she held the fork in front of her own neck and falling flat on her face. The fork penetrated her windpipe killing her in a matter of seconds. The gravekeeper was the first to find her six days later with the fork still protruding from the back of her neck.
Title
Notes:
Setting: East london, Summer of 2010
Characters: Lucy is average height with brown wavy hair. she has blue eyes and a pale white skin colour (23), Wayne lucy’s friend skinhead with a heavy london accent (24), Luke (25) lucy’s brother tall quiffed brown hair ice blue eyes, William her ex he is tall and thuggy wearing 5 gold (made of plastic) chains round his neck he has black mini afro hair (24).
Beginning: (Lucy kills william) using a fork in east london. Because the way he ate at the restaurant was disgusting. she showers to get the blood off
Middle: (on the run) she rode her bike to her apartment. Police catch her, she was under house arrest by the police. she was freaking out. she opened her computer to ask for help from her friend luke, and saw an email from wayne saying someone that looked like her was on the news for killing william foster with a fork.
End: (feels sorry) for william alone in the grave just rotting away. she kills herself with the same fork because of how savagely she killed him.
She killed a man with a fork.
She rode a bike into her room.
She opened the computer and saw an e-mail.
She felt sorry for it, she had not wanted this but there it was, abandoned and alone.
By: A.C.
Notes:
Beginning
- Anne lives in an orphanage, and takes care of a stray dog there
- She falls apart when her dog died, as he was her sole companion
Middle
- In the late night, Anne goes to bury the dog’s limp body in the grounds behind the orphanage building, at the edge of a forest
- She sees a creature lurking in the shadows of the trees
- As it emerges, she realises that it’s a sort of ghostly reincarnation of the dog she’s taken care of all these years
- Reaction - Her throat goes dry, and she hears the unsteady pounding of her heartbeat.
- She takes a look at the grave she’s dug and the dog’s body is no longer at the bottom
- She flees the site of the grave in despair, and is haunted by the memory of the creature
End
- The creature slinks into her room, visiting her every night for a month, eyes gleaming and sharpened teeth revealed. It seems to be on the verge of attacking each time.
- But on the 31st day of the month, the “monster” leaps onto Anne’s bed, and lays down beside her
- Anne is not adopted from the orphanage as she passes her childhood. When she reaches the age of 18, she leaves the orphanage, eventually settling down in farmlands to start her own life and create the family she never had.
- During her entire stay at the orphanage, she’s visited and comforted by the spirit of her dog every night
“Anne, may I speak to you?”
She stops in her tracks, and reluctantly turns to face her literature teacher as the rest of the class files out.
The teacher shuffles some papers and looks into her eyes, causing Anne to avert her gaze.
“I’d like to speak to you about the tests I handed back today. I see that you have a few areas you may need to work on...”
The young girl sighs inwardly and tunes out as the teacher offers extra help, and reminds her that she needs to work harder than the other students, due to her “troubles in comprehending written text”. She’s had this conversation countless times.
As the teacher dismisses her, Anne ducks out of the classroom quickly and stops by the girl’s bed chamber to drop off her school bag, and jogs down the stairs to the first floor, then out the door onto the orphanage’s back lawn. Rounding the corner, she slows her pace and smiles.
The dog lies in the alcove between the garden shed and some trees, well hidden by those who don’t know to search for it. She squats next to the resting dog, running a hand over its back, then reaches into her pocket for a few slices of leftover ham from breakfast that she had saved for this purpose.
Anne had been caring for the animal for five months now, from the time it wandered onto the front lawn with two long gashes in its coat of fur, where the blood had already dried. At first, she had been concerned about the wounds affecting the dog’s health, but they didn’t seem to bother him. The gashes faded into almost imperceptible scars over time and Anne pays no mind to them now.
She rests her back against a tree trunk and talks to the dog, detailing the day’s uneventful happenings as he appears to listen. She talks until the dinner bell rings, then says “goodbye” to her dog, and leaves. Even after all these months, she’s yet to find a name for her pet.
For Anne, every day is more or less the same. She barely makes it through her classes, is neither included or specifically excluded by the other children, and visits the dog every day before suppertime. Life at an orphanage is mundane.
Then, two weeks later, comes a day that is not so mundane.
Ordinarily, Anne rushes out of class as usual to escape the dreaded atmosphere as quickly as possible. She seeks her dog in the spot where he usually resides after classes, waiting just for her. Extraordinarily, the dog is gone.
She finds only an empty space, home to nothing alive, apart from some tranquil plants and the occasional bird.
Hoping that the dog had just decided to wander around the greens, she searches every nook, making her way across great lawns around the building. She only covers less than half of the outdoor areas before the dinner bell rings as usual, forcing her to abandon search for the evening.
The orphanage matron eventually calls the girls in for bed. As Anne curls her knees up to her chest in her small cot, she vows to resume her search the next morning. But for now, all she is capable of is sleep.
The next morning, Anne gets up half an hour earlier to make another round around the old building, but still sees no sign of her dog.
For the next three days, the girl is still alone.
Just as she’s beginning to give up hope, Anne spots a spectacularly canine-like figure resting under the tree, as if it was specifically deposited there for her to find. “Dog!”, she exclaims, relief washing through her, for she felt the need to call something and still had no better name.
She dashes to where the dog lays, his back facing her. She reaches out her hand to scratch him behind the ears. There is no response.
Anne hesitates for a moment then tentatively flips the dog onto its back, and the limp body falls on its other side with a soft thud. The lifeless form is still. What is most curious, however, are the two deep red gashes on the dog’s underside. They are not unlike the ones Anne found when she first adopted the dog. This time, though, the wounds and fresh and bleeding, and the dog has already died.
The girl says nothing, only lets the tears balance on the rim of her eyes. They fall as she blinks.
She carefully picks the body off up the ground, and walks without direction for a while. Eventually, Anne ends up at the edge of the woods encircling the back of the orphanage building. She decides that it is here she will bury it.
Anne tries to use the toe of her shoe to dig a small hole, to no avail. She makes an exasperated sound and gets down on her hands and knees, clawing at a patch of dirt, flinging the remnants behind her.
When she’s dug for roughly an hour, she sits back on her knees. Her back is sore, her neck in pain, and joints roughed. She catches sight of the dog’s body and crumbles a bit more on the inside.
She’s about to turn her attention back to the pit, but spots a flash of red. A pair, in fact. Like wolf eyes.
A shadow begins to take form, emerging slowly, slowly, from behind the tree trunks. A wispy grey outline wavers around the shape, creating the illusion of a distorted image. After some time, it recedes into the background, the shadow dissolving, hidden again behind the trees.
Suddenly, a creature leaps swiftly into the clearing where Anne stands. It bares its jagged teeth, like a hundred small knives arranged to kill. The wolf-like animal opens its mouth ever so slightly and emits a deep, rumbling growl, so cold-blooded it could scare every living thing within a mile radius back under the ground.
But Anne does not move. Doesn’t twitch a muscle. Doesn’t even breathe. She risks a quick glance at the ground and realises with a start that her dog’s corpse isn’t there. She darts her eyes to the creature again, and daring to look at it directly, it dawns on her that the beast looks familiar. Anne realises that the creature is not a wolf, it’s a dog. Her dog.
She slowly rises to her feet, wiping her muddy hands on her skirt. Then she turns on her heel, runs, and doesn’t look back once. The creature doesn’t follow.
Nothing happens for another two days. There’s no sign of her dog: dead, or alive in the form of a monster.
One night as she is in her cot, about to sleep, she spots a shadow at the foot of her bed. A pair of flashing red eyes and gleaming fangs.
Her dog is back.
For a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, the dog stays still. It even takes a seat. But Anne never relaxes, convinced the creature is on the verge of attacking each time.
The dog comes back the next night, and the night after that. Every night is the same. The dog sits soundlessly, Anne is scared witless, and can’t calm herself enough to fall asleep.
On the thirty-first day of the month, the dog leaps onto Anne’s bed, and lays down beside her. Her entire body tenses up at first, but begins to relax as she notices it isn’t doing any harm. The girl and dog stay like this for the entire night.
For the first time in weeks, Anne sleeps, and dreams.