Writespiration #46

One of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is the elements; Earth, Air, Fire and Water. There’s a couple of reasons for this. One, in my novel, there are a set of characters that can control the elements, so I have been doing some research.  Two, I am developing a new series which I will run once a week on the weekend. It will be totally different to anything I’ve done before so I won’t be launching the series for a few weeks until I am happy with the posts.

This weeks writespiration is Fire. Here’s mine:

Crackling whispers drifted through the smoke. The ashy shadows of my life filled the air as I watched the bonfire incinerate my past. I threw the last box of paper work on it. It would be like I never existed. I couldn’t leave a trace. Half a burnt photo danced out of the fire and landed at my feet.

“My beautiful boy…”

The words choked my throat and salty tears spilled onto the photo as I fought the quiver taking over my knees.

The heat from the fire dried my tears as I stared at the photo. I desperately tried to imprint its image onto my mind, but his face was seared and blackened. Even my memories were tarnished. All I could see when I closed my eyes was the white room, sheet being pulled away and…

“I should have been there,” deep sobs ripped through my chest each one an agonising reminder of my failure. 

“Ma’am, if you want this, you can’t leave a trace…” The words of the dark suited man rang in my ears. I kissed the photo and let the fire consume it.

I knew if I didn’t let go, if I didn’t take this chance I would stay here alone forever. Broken. Guilty. He was giving me a chance to start again, a new life. I’d never forget my past, but like the phoenix reborn from fire, I would be too.

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Now to last weeks writespiration, which was to write the best, worst ending to a story you could, and this week brought lots of newbies to Writespiration, and some seriously terrible endings:

The winner… and it does pain me to do this, but, it is the always fantastic Geoff Le Pard, who is now not only brilliant  at ‘writing good!’ but is now excellent at ‘writing bad’ too! If anyone can make a shred of sense of his ending please do let me know:

‘So now everyone is dead, can you explain who did it.’
‘After Mrs Arbuthnot left her dentures in the tea pot, giving Mr Ermintrude the opportunity to take Mr Galoshes’ hand-held defibrillator from its neoprene case while Toady Johansson untied the sailing boat in order to set Miss Prim-Nipple free to catalogue the recently declassified twenty-seven volumes of Gladstone’s Most Curious Tree clipping stories for the perpetually bewildered while injecting Sir Pustulent Cyst’s right buttock with formaldehyde, thus creating a speed awareness diversion which PC Nobby Bigend mistook for a minor infraction of a recently introduced piece of European Food Hygiene legislation that had temporarily prevented Colonel Particle-Lamppost from completing his Neo Classical refurbishment of the former Home for Terminally Uncertain that had had to close on grounds that The Right Reverend Dolores Throb once kiddy-fiddled the recently elected MP Parsons Grope-Closet whose campaign was exclusively based on obtaining justice following the unfortunate immolation of Nuneaton’s last remaining witch.’
‘Ah ha! Of course. It was obvious wasn’t it?’

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Runner up goes to QuantumPhysica who broke all the rules by writing an ending so bad we didn’t actually get an ending! BRILLIANT entry 🙂

As he looked at the whole of information he had gathered, the files, the testimonies, the map on the wall full of pushpins and post-it notes… Martin suddenly realized he didn’t care. He didn’t actually care. Every clue was right there for him to put together… but he just didn’t give a damn. As the realization sank in, a smile crept on his lips. With a skip in his step he walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. Someone else might find his notes and determine who had murdered the Ashton girls… but he wasn’t going to bother anymore. He was done with this particular whodunnit. THE END.

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Larry gets the prize for comedy, his short, sweet and rather final ending made me laugh out loud:

And they were all hit by a truck.

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Linda gave a fantastically bad ending with rule breaking galore:

And then I woke up and it was all a dream!

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Lenora joined in next with this revolting ending

Slime dripping from his nose and ears, Bart who was having second misgivings about dating Pam, turned to her and asked, “What the hell do you mean that’s not how you’d kill a Ghost? Pulling off his gooey slimey shirt Bart threw it at Pam and growled, “The next time I get to pick the restaurant.”

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I had two entries submitted through twitter, I’ll let them do the telling, first up

B.K Crawford

 

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Last but by no means least we had Aidan McQuade

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