Part VI and Guest Poet 4 - Sarah Miller - Untitled

(Part 6 again changes the angle of the piece to the newspaper men outside the station. Our latest guest piece is from a great writer called Sarah Miller who is the co author (with the equally great Melanie Rees) off Selkie Singing at the Passing Place (http://www.flapjackpress.co.uk/page10.htm). The piece below is directly set inside the world of Ghost story II. Sarah advies me it doesn't have a title and is a prose freewrite, but it's gripping stuff as i am sure you will agree.More of Sarah's stuff including her own adventures in Napwrimo can be read here https://sarahmillerwhowrites.wordpress.com/

VI

Whistle stop the reporters

Flocked to the scene of the crime

Scattershot with their cameras

And barbed, mumbling soundmen,

Circling around the doors

Transformed into vultures

Dressed in designer suits

And Barclaycard watches

Tweeting out the same questions

Until the air was bled dry

Clouding the windows

Exhuming the dead

Before they had barely

Been carried out of the station.



Untitled 

She had been trying to eat a sandwich, fighting to pull back the plastic that sealed in the little white triangles of egg and cress. She wasn't that keen on egg and cress but it was in the value range and she was 'coppering up' as her nan would say.  Down to the last few coins in her purse and wishing there had been something better in the fridge to pack before she left the flat that morning. She was now thinking it was a bad idea. She couldn't get egg on her suit. She needed to walk into that interview looking confident and business-like and leave with the job. She couldn't ask her dad for money again. She knew he would give it to her, no questions asked, rip a little cheque from his cheque book...who used cheques anymore?....and say, "Just keep at it. I know it's tough to be young right now" and pat her hand like he did when she was ten and worried about a maths test or a bad dream.

She heard the sound first, a sort of whistling popping noise, then a rapid series of little thuds. On the platform, people started to fall, hitting the concrete, staggering backwards, and then the screaming and howling started all around her.

For some reason, at that moment, she looked up. She saw the shape on the roof opposite, saw the gun, saw it pointing at the platform, saw it was a man, recognised that look on his face....recognised that face. She saw the barrel pointing at her but she kept staring. She didn't move, didn't look away. She found she was mouthing his name, no sound coming out, just moving her lips. Terry....Terry Lovell? That's when he started shaking, lost the cool precision which, up till now, had been accurately hitting target after target. Thirteen, he had shot thirteen people up to now. They hadn't done anything to him but he needed to make the hit look random, the act of a desperate man or even a terrorist. They were just strangers and he didn't even think about who they were or who or what they would leave behind, they were just a means to get the job done without detection.

Lara Beaumont, that woman with her wide eyes fixed on him was Lara Beaumont. He had been in the room opposite in the shared house, the second year of uni. She hadn't been in any of his classes and they weren't close but the night when he had got back, the week he'd had to leave uni for good, that night when his head buzzed and his thoughts tumbled in on themselves, when he was sobbing in the kitchen, she had been there. She had rubbed her hand up and down his back and patted his hand, telling him to breathe, giving him water and telling him everything would be alright even when it wasn't. She had gone with him in the ambulance, stayed with him on the ward and even come back to visit weeks later. She had been there in front of him when he felt like his insides had been scooped out leaving raw cavities where a person had once lived. Now, she was there again, staring from that platform, saying his name, the name he had left behind in that hospital with all the vulnerability and overwhelming feelings. Seeing her made them all rush in, two years worth of feelings all coming at once, filling every space. He was shaking and the gun was firing wildly. Panic set in and he realised he was staggering backwards himself, moving away from her mouth reminding him of who he was. He pulled at the heavy door that he'd wedged open slightly, forgetting to pick up the cartridges from the flat roof-top, not even hiding the gun. He lurched down the stairs, his chest tightening and as he threw open the fire exit door at the bottom and the cold hit his face like a splash of water, he could hear her saying "breathe, it'll be alright" but he knew again that it wouldn't be. He couldn't get enough air into his lungs, his eyes were darting around like bullets and he wanted her to be in front of him in the back street, rubbing his back like she had done that night but he knew she couldn't be. He had seen the blood, blooming like two big flowers on her chest, turning her white shirt almost completely red in seconds. She had known it was him, had still been mouthing his name, still seemed to be looking at him when her body landed with an inaudible thud.