Tag: short story

Review of 2012

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ 7 Comments

I've read a few of these 'review' blogs over the last couple of days and after a year of various monthly challenges I thought a quick review of my own was required.

January started with my first attempt at Janathon. This was a quite a challenge to start the year, and I actually ran every day of the month and completed a total of 133 miles. It was great fun, really enjoyed reading the blogs of fellow janathoners. Good start to the years challenges.

After the excursions of Janathon, I decided on something rather gentler for February. The aim was to teach myself to play the ukulele. Didn't go amazingly well, although the uke is still hanging around and is often picked up every now and then.

March's challenge was again music related, only this time the challenge was to listen to new music and blog about it. This was an enjoyable month, I discovered some great bands and some have even made the list of bands to see in 2013.

Thanks to my sister and her birthday present to me, April was a month of model making: an Airfix model of The Cutty Sark. This was a very difficult challenge, the model was near impossible to make, very fiddly, and the paint didn't work either! Although a YouTube video of the final boat was a thing to behold.

And so we reached May and one of the most difficult challenges of the year: write a short story. Difficult for a number of reasons: time was an issue, lack of plan and a distinct lack of skill.

So after a couple of rather relaxing challenges, June brought us Juneathon and the attempt to run every day of the month. Didn't go quite as well as Janathon, I dipped out on running every day and completed 114 miles in all.

July's challenge was tasty: baking. I made ten different things other the course of the month, from cupcakes, brownies and tarts, through to shortbread, cookies and flapjacks. Lovely jubbly!

Of course, after making and eating cakes for a month, a physical challenge was needed for August. Swimming was decided. I could swim before but after a month of visiting various swimming pools in the area my swimming has really improved. I'm far from entering a triathlon, but maybe that's something for the future.

Learning to ride a unicycle. Seemed like a good idea at the time. September was the month to do it, which because of injury, turned into October's challenge as well. The unicycle was not mastered, even after two months, but I've not give up on that yet. Summer 2013 for the next attempt.

After the efforts of the previous two months, November brought the rather more gentle art of Origami, one per day for the duration of the month. My tutor group came on the journey with me and between us we produced 100s.

And so to the final month of the year, December, or should I say decembeer. The challenge was to drink a different beer every day of the month. This was a good challenge, and despite a dodgy illness over Christmas, it was completed. A reflection on 31 beers in the form of a blog post coming soon.

So the idea to dump the new year's resolution and instead complete 12 different monthly challenges was a complete success. I can now: run, swim, bake, unicycle, appreciate music, become more knowledgable about beer, have become an origami master, make models and write. All to varying different degrees. But as much as I've enjoyed the year…..enough is enough.

 

Unencountered – Part 9

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ Leave a comment

Just in the nick of time the final part of May’s Project is published. Original idea was a short story in around about ten parts, so I consider the project to be a success. As for the quality, that’s another story altogether. May I present the concluding part of ‘Unencountered’…..

Part 9

It was difficult coming to terms with what had happened over those turbulent few months, but time is a good healer and a year down the line I was beginning to understand. The endless police interviews, the physical tests and the psychological consultations had all played their part. Steve had just left. Steve was the coroner that had very nearly killed me, and over this past year we had become good friends. We had discussed that day in the autopsy suite many times and had reached a conclusion. A conclusion that, even now, seems impossible. That unencountered presence was a warning.

For Steve it started about five years earlier. A seemingly dead body that he had to conduct an autopsy on. Only the man, like me, was not dead. And again, like me, as Steve was about to begin he felt a presence that delayed him long enough for the man to ‘wake up’ from what doctors later described as some sort of extreme sleep paralysis.

Once I heard Steve explain this story I began to piece together my own dealings with this unencountered presence. Those weird notes I was writing myself during sleep were not notes aimed at me, they were warnings for Steve. A man I had never met, but soon would. They were warnings of what could happen. And my old friend John, the incident in the pub. The incident that seemed so real at the time, was, as I found out later, a warning. The very next night John was involved in brutal attack from a drunk, that left him needing stitches for a six inch wound to the face. The incident in the alley that ultimately left me on the autopsy table, the deafening hum that I heard, merely the hum of the fluorescent lights at the morgue.

We hadn’t told anyone about our theory, it seemed so far fetched, and actually I’m not sure if we believed it ourselves. But over the past year neither or use had felt the unencountered presence and, for that, we were truly thankful.

The End


 

Unencountered – Part 8

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ Leave a comment

I know what you’re thinking, you only posted part 7 yesterday. Well you are absolutely right – I’m making a big effort in an attempt to finish May’s Project. The aim was always about 10 episodes, so tonight’s episode and one tomorrow will get us to nine (which is virtually ten), and success! May I present the next part in the pathetic enthralling story…..

Part 8

I was no longer watching from above, I was in the room, back within my ‘lifeless’ body. I was still on the gurney, unable to move, but I could feel the light on my eyelids. I tried to lift them and slowly the light seeped in. Everything was blurred, holding my eyes open for only five seconds took a supreme effort, even then I was unable to focus on anything. I could sense the coroner, he was moving around in a very agitated way, grasping for tools, talking to himself. I continued lifting my eyelids in an attempt to see a way out of the situation. Every time I did this the world began to come into focus. First I could make out the lights above my head and then the notices on the walls. Then the coroner.

He was walking towards me, scalpel in hand, tears rolling down his face. He was muttering to himself, questioning, deciding. “I don’t understand….so much death….it’s too late…stop….?” He was getting closer and closer. I could smell the unmistakeable smell of death on his clothes. Still I couldn’t move. I opened my eyes, wider and wider, tried to blink to show him how desperate I was. Then his face was above mine, but still he didn’t look at my eyes. I was pleading with my eyes, my whole body screaming at him.

He was distracted by something, he looked over his shoulder, and that is when I felt ‘it’. The darkness was in the room, that same unencountered darkness, was above us both. That was when it happened.

He looked directly into my eyes – he saw I was alive.

At that precise moment I felt the darkness disappear. “Oh my God!” He gasped. He leapt into action, tools went crashing to the ground, sirens sounded, telephone messages were exchanged, syringes were filled. I was unaware exactly what was going on around me. I was slowly overcome with tiredness….

[To be continued]

 

Unencountered – Part 7

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ Leave a comment

It has been a week since Part 6 of May’s Project. Not good, I know. How about a list of excuses:

  • Busy at school: exam workshops, marking, etc.
  • Running: been putting in a bit of extra effort.
  • Still looking after mother-in-law’s dog: he is very annoying.
  • Actually finding the whole short story writing quite difficult. No idea where the story is going, no plan, I’m just writing AND on top of that I need to try and get to an ending that actually makes sense!?

So here goes, another short one….

Part 7

I was now looking down on myself, a body laying on a table, I felt nothing, no fear, no worry, nothing. It was as if I was dead. But I was dead?

The coroner calmly approached the lifeless body. He carefully lifted the scalpel from the tray, the blade glistened in the overhead lights. Was this it? Was this what death was? I was dead on a gurney, surely that was it. What was I waiting for? The heart to be cut out? The soul to be destroyed? Or perhaps this was what happened after death, you were left in this weird lifeless existence. I would seem that I only had a matter of minutes until I found out.

He began speaking into the microphone, “The chest has considerable bruising….this would indicate extreme trauma shortly before death….about to make the Y incision….what’s that….is someone there….?” He looked around a confused look on his face. He spun round, dropping the scalpel and scattering various other tools of his trade across the floor. “Who’s there?!” His shouts sounded desperate. The coroner’s calm exterior had disappeared, replaced by a tense, psychotic image of himself.

There was no one else in the room. He began pacing about the room looking for something, I could see the fear on his face. He began shouting, incomprehensible words that echoed throughout the room. “Away…..wrong…..rising…blood….death…..darkness!” Suddenly he dropped his head, seemingly afraid of what he might see. Darkness? Then it dawned on me what I was watching. I was watching a man experiencing exactly what I had gone through for the past two months. He could feel ‘it’ too.

[To be continued]

Unencountered – Part 6

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ Leave a comment

Twenty three days into May and this is only the sixth part of the story. Therefore we can probably say that May’s Project is slightly disappointed so far. I think we need a few parts in quick succession to catch up, although that’s easier said than done, another short part tonight me thinks. Anyway, here goes…..

 

Part 6

Three simple words. Three simple words that turned my already mixed up world upside down. My mind was in a mess and I was having trouble concentrating. The voices kept fading in and out. I was still unable to lift my eyelids, in fact I was unable to move at all. It was just the voices….

“I’ve just got a couple of questions detective, that I’d like answered before I start the autopsy.”

“Ok, fire away Doctor!”

“I understand that he was found on Turnpike Lane?” This question didn’t make sense. The last thing I remember was being in the alley opposite the pub. Turnpike Lane was on the other side of town.

“That’s right Doctor, we got a call from a member of the public saying that they had found a body laying in a ditch near the entrance of Turnpike House.”

“But I was told that the man was alive when the paramedics arrived at the scene?”

“Yes, you’re right. An ambulance was dispatched to the scene. The paramedics found a faint pulse, he was rushed here, but died in the ambulance.” I couldn’t quite comprehend that this conversation was about me. I tried to move again. Nothing. I tried to speak. Nothing.

My sense of hearing intensified, I could hear everything. The squeaky wheel of the trolley as it was pushed into the room. The clink of metal as equipment was collected and placed on the table. It felt so surreal.

“Well thanks for filling in the gaps detective, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got work to get on with.” Filling in the gaps!? Here I was listen to a doctor and detective discuss my death….that’s when I realised….when I realised what was about to happen….

[To be continued]

 

Unencountered – Part 5

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ 1 Comment

Ok you’re right, May’s Project is a few days behind, I know. But it has been an incredibly busy week at work. A reasonably short part today, I’m finding it increasingly difficult and I’m only 5 parts into it! Check out Part 4 to catch-up before you read on….

Part 5

The view was breathtaking. Clear blue skies, green rolling hills and a feeling of freedom. I looked around to try to take in exactly where i was. The sun looked impossibly large in the sky and the sound of birds filled the air. I stood in awe at the sight in front of me. As I stood there I began to hear a faint sound that slowly got louder. It was laughter… in the distance I could hear laughing. Without hesitation I began to follow it, I hadn’t heard laughter for weeks. It lead me down a country lane, I began running but still it didn’t seem to get closer. As I rounded a bend in the lane I saw it. A cottage. A picture postcard cottage. It was bathed in sunshine and surrounded by roses, tulips, daffodils, all the colours of the rainbow were present. I approached the front door. I was just about to enter when I felt the feeling that had become all too familiar. My head dropped in despair, I slowly began to turn and lift my head, I was back in the real world.

The real world? Where was I? I couldn’t see clearly, the world was a blur. I waited. Waited for the world to come to me. But it didn’t. I could sense movement, people moving around me, and voices, I could hear voices. But nothing was clear. I was inside, that much I could tell. Inside a room, a room that felt so cold and sterile. A room that contained the same presence I had been running from for months. The darkness was rising. I was trying to remember what had happened in an attempt to push ‘it’ from my mind…

I could vaguely remember being in the alley, I remember the pain I had felt, and I remember leaving John in the pub. Where the hell was I? I tried to move, but couldn’t, it felt like I was trapped. Then I began to hear the voices, “….white male….approximately 30 years old….severe head impact…..dead on arrival…”

It took a while for me to make sense of what I was hearing….

Dead on arrival.

DEAD on arrival.

DEAD ON ARRIVAL….