front cover image here... when I finish it. aaaaargh.
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‘My candle burns at both ends It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends It gives a lovely light.’ - Edna St. Vincent Millay - The Confessions of The KCL Creative Writing Society We are Literary Lions - hear us roar!
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FREEDOM IS A WARM GUN
Amidst the fever of exams, a shining light flickers at the end of the tunnel for all you Creative Writers: there is not a long way to go until exams finish and to celebrate your imminent freedom and *summer* fever this time, the Creative Writing Society promises to organize the best sequel to last year’s Mad Hatter’s Tea Party that you have ever seen! So until you throw all your books away and put on your flip-flops, enjoy the Literary Lions’ last session of roaring for the year! And a very exciting session this is: we are offering a sneak-peek into the latest Creative Writing Society project that is soon to materialize into a hardcopy(!) novel - FOSTERING GUILT: centred on a reunion held at a rebuilt orphanage that had burnt down decades prior, the novel brings together different Society authors and literary styles, in a King’s creative project on freedom and loss, like you’ve never seen before! Enjoy excerpts from 10 short-stories written by 10 different Creative Writing Society members! And make sure you get your hands on the hardcopy once it comes out – you don’t want to be missing out on the juicy bits, because we are not giving out too much. Yet! A sneak-peek into:
FOSTERING GUILT A KCL Creative Writing Society 2009-2010 Novel 2
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CHAPTER 1, THICK AS THIEVES by Virginie Pithon I had been born a boy.
[...] I’d already been living at St. Aloysius’s for a year when Sol turned up. I can’t say I was particularly happy there – though admittedly I didn’t make it any easier on myself, going about the way I did. You see, for the first thirteen years of my life I’d almost convinced myself that I would’ve been better off if
I can’t really explain the reasoning behind this conviction. I guess it’d been self-consciousness or something like it that had turned me into such an unbelievable tomboy. As a child, I simply hadn’t identified with girls – or at least, not the girls I knew. And I suppose if I were to be completely honest, I would have to say that they terrified me. Terrified me in a way that boys – even older, crueller boys like Sol – simply didn’t. They had all been so much prettier than me, with their soft hair and soft skin and soft curves. All that softness they tried so hard to make look edgy, with their hair teased and tousled into painful perms and their lips rouged with illicit lipstick stolen from the chemist’s. I remember all those older girls in their little cliques, flicking through magazines with nothing but disparaging comments for the poor girls in them. I had nothing in common with them. And little in common with most of the girls my own age who wanted to be the older girls, who tried to imitate their hair tousling and lip-rouging. [...]
CHAPTER 2, SMOKING LAURELS by Giulia I. Sandelewski [...] My daytime shackles gradually gnawed at the walls of my brain, making me itch for the day of my release with an urgency I know not how to describe without sounding pathetic. The realisation of my suffering prayed on Jerome’s mind, torturing him relentlessly until he was struck by a master plan. It was feasible, this much he knew; I’d done it before, apparently. Knowing not what he referred to, I asked him to explain himself. And explain he did; my house hadn’t set itself alight, now had it? I took my mission seriously, an attitude he applauded – I was leagues apart from those tiresome wimps who’d never committed to flames anything bigger than a car. I wanted to shout him down, protest my innocence, tell him it wasn’t true. I may have contemplated the notion, daydreamed about it even, but these hands had committed no felony except in my frustrated imagination. I wanted to tell him this, but when I turned to do so, the spark in his eyes annulled my resolve. It dawned on me then that he was even more trapped
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CHAPTER 3, THREE-EYED CAT by Nima Mudey [...] “Shit!” I muttered, utterly pissed off, as I scrunched up yet another page and chucked it into the growing sea of white surrounding me. My desk-lamp barely illuminated my work as the sky darkened outside. I should probably put the overhead lights on, but I’m barely making rent this month so I’m desperately trying to save as much energy as possible. “Crap!!” I cursed again, as I screwed up yet another page. My adoptive mum always said being an artist was no way to live, and all I could think at that moment was that she was damn right. Deadlines freaking sucked! The phone rang in the living room of the apartment I shared with my friend, another artist – a sculptor to be precise, which is the reason we were living in such a dump as her discarded art projects littered the place. Judging by the darkness filling up the rest of the apartment, she wasn’t home. I considered using a torch as I navigated my way to the phone. A stubbed toe made up my mind. The dim light bounced off the various artworks dotted around, catching on diverse colours as I made my slow, cautious way to the phone. Along the way I noticed today’s paper – I sometimes wondered why my roommate bothered to get the British paper (we were in New York for crying out loud) but she liked to keep up with the latest gossip from that miserable island we formerly called home. I flicked through the paper absently as I picked up the receiver. “Lechante Fairchild,” an austere voice shrieked down the line. I inwardly winced at the tone; my editor had the uncanny ability to know when I picked up before I’d even answered. “Hi, Ms Priestly,” I said, teeth clenching. I was screwed. [...]
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CHAPTER 4, GILDED CAGE
I liked it here; I was fed when I was hungry, I could go to school and I had a roof over my head. But sometimes, I missed the thrill of the streets. There were so many things I had picked up from them, but still, there was a great difference between us. I felt older than I was; even Mrs Showalter thought so. She often said I was twelve, going on forty. I liked her. She cooked good food and would make something extra for me if I behaved properly. I wondered if there would be anything left in the kitchen. A glimpse at the grandfather clock showed it was two in the morning. I was hungry. I was, after all, a growing boy who had not had much to eat in more than the last ten years. [...] [...]If I do see him on Sunday, I hope I’ll recognize his face. His pretty face was covered in sweat and blood from the broken glass that was erupting everywhere, I suppose. And the flames were dancing in his blue, frightened eyes. I by Simona Corcoz remember that he was really frightened, he had lost it, like he never did, he the courageous young lad – always up for anything. He was trembling and everything, uh, dreadful memory. He might even have been crying. But I remember I was smiling, I was happy because I saw him, and I knew he had made it out alive. All the time while I was inside the orphanage, trying to make my way out with all the ladders falling and the fumes strangling my lungs, I remember the only thing I wished was that He would make it out. I had no family, I had no other real friends so it was only for him that I prayed, not even for my own life. How silly I was back then, and how silly it seems that I still am...
CHAPTER 5, HEY PAUL
But he was frightened, the poor boy, because he had lost his Box, his shoe-box full of photos of his mother and father but most importantly with references to his jailed uncle he wanted
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CHAPTER 6, BROKEN CONFUSION The stallions were back.
by Roseanna Cooke
It was a while since they’d been. The hatred of that stupid label my uncle Alan had thought up consumed me, yet somehow I couldn’t bring myself to call them anything else. It’d still stuck after all these years. “Mares! That come in the night! They’re-a gallopin’ through, all right.” He’d say. “Don’t let them stallions scare ya, son. They’re not real.” I could still feel those beady eyes examining my very core, shining like marbles as the moonlight caught them eerily; his stooping frame hovering over me, his raspy breath heating my face like the snorts of a stallion. I’d shy away as the shaking hand loomed to dab my forehead with that darned linen cloth. He would cough wheezily and then, because he didn’t know what else to do, he’d leave me in the cold darkness, staring up at the aertex ceiling. I’d lie there, petrified by the wild images that roamed in my head; a young mind tortured by things I couldn’t comprehend. These stallions weren’t majestic and beautiful but coal black, vaporous and swirling; hundreds of them had come to pound my flesh into a pulp of confusion and fear; fear that crept up and scorched my back, flogging me again and again with brick-like hooves. And I didn’t know why. Countless hours of internet research, 20 therapy sessions, and a lifetime of frustration later, the source of my vivid catalogue of images of being chased and repeatedly fleeing a hazy fiery scene still evaded me. At least now, I was finally able to deal with them on my own. The soothing low orange glow of the streetlamps, ever nocturnal, comforting like a blanket in winter, streams through my apartment window every time I wake, my bed damp with sweat. Isolation didn’t make it any more bearable though. [...]
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CHAPTER 7, NO WAY HOME
[...] Blocked them out, shut them out like the boys who had pushed her away and shoved the door in by Wei Yun Lim her face; all this in the midst of dancing red and gold. What had once been comfort had ended up as fear, and she could still recall the boys’ jeering voices as they spat in her face, slamming wood shut into hinges and making splinters fall. Four storeys of brick, steel and glass, the only things she had ever known. What she had once called home, crumbling down around her; rock turning to rubble and life turning to ash. Yet in the midst of all this, her brother had found it within him to grab her wrist, twist it behind her back, call her ugly with his lips curled up into a sneer. And then he ran away, out into the cruel world, leaving her to drag her left leg around behind her, one arm outstretched at her sibling. She’d opened her mouth to scream, but it had made no sound, her voice taken away by the horror of being left alone. Because she was an ugly girl; with no good grades, a funny face, and a bad leg. Because she had been asked to stay away from other children in case they caught what she had. Because even when the teachers were screaming through the hallways, telling everyone else to run away, that they didn't want them to die, she was still left to fend for herself. She had frowned, furrowed her brow as she dragged herself to the door, bit her lip in an effort to stop the tears. No-one could save her. No-one was there for her. No-one could pull her out of this mess but herself... [...] [...] Nothing is black and white.
CHAPTER 8, BLACK AND WHITE
It is an insignificant, back-page headline to anyone but me. I rip my fishnets on the zip of the sleeping bag, put on my heels and by Fiona Anderson check my reflection in a Double Whopper burger advert. My hair is platinum blonde now, hiding the raven headed days of my childhood. In my line of business you can be every colour of the rainbow in a lifetime. Unfortunately, a chameleon is still a chameleon and a prostitute is still a whore. My poor, ignorant mother, wherever she is; she’s hardly the Scarlet of Gone with the Wind, after whom I was named. I laugh at the irony; she christened me hoping for a strong, independent daughter and here I am, thirty-three years later, relying on my position on streetcorners to make a living. If it’s any consolation Mum, I’ve become a successful and independent business-woman; making transactions nightly and with merchandise in surprisingly high demand. There must be a few disappointed mothers out there with vain hopes that a name could be a precursor to character. Sol was another blip, among the many adjectives I could use to describe him. I’ve looked it up; apparently, Solomon means ‘peaceful’. He was a biblical character – another reason to be an atheist or at least acknowledge God made his fair share
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CHAPTER 9, OLD DEBTS by Hesham Zakai TO THE JUDGEMENT DEBTOR AND ALL CLAIMING UNDER SAME: You are hereby notified that pursuant to the Order of Court and Notice to vacate heretofore delivered to you or your agent, or posted upon these premises, your occupancy of these premises has been terminate. Welcome to St Ives. Round here, you do what you can to survive. You spend what you got and you borrow what you don’t. And when you’ve borrowed so much that you can’t borrow anymore, that’s when you start to stop to survive. Everyone knows everyone here. Most the people were even delivered by the same lady, so all the elders know who to blame whenever there’s a problem. Aunty Saeeda vehemently protests her innocence though. “I gave everyone the same kismah only some chose to ignore it”. If you wanted to point Aunty Saeeda out to someone you’d tell them to go and look for the strangest person in the room. We never liked to see anyone go under. You didn’t need a dictionary or an A* in English to work out what had happened, though Asad had both. Old Charles had manned that shop for so many years but lately you could see he was starting to go down. His wide grin was taken over by an unconvincing smile and the odd mumble had traded places with the sweet sound of his harmonica. Not even his photograph, his most prized possession which no one else was ever allowed to see, was any consolation now. We tried to buy more Jamaican beers recently but it was no good; it only revealed the cracks in the wall. The news saddened everyone but worried Mr Karim more than most. Mr Karim owned the laundrette next door but in truth everyone thought it was his shop that needed cleaning. It got so rundown and dirty his wife had to paint ‘WELL COME WHERE OPEN’ where the sign used to be just to make sure people didn’t get confused. She did most of the work, filling and emptying the machines, ironing the clothes, folding them up, ordering the detergent and that kind of stuff, whilst Mr Karim just sat there complaining about social mobility driving his business down. ‘When I was a kid no one could afford a washing machine! No one! Everyone had to use a laundrette! Everyone!’ His words would swirl round and round in the ears of his customers like the clothes in his clogged machines. [...]
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CHAPTER 10, PERHAPS by Gina Lawrence
Today I feel old. Creaky stairs and empty landings, dark corridors and outdated pipes all shuddering into a bleak morning. Shutters blinking and squinting – as the belligerent sun will insist upon rising every bloody day and smirking upon the world. A lick of paint, the curled tongue of modernity: these cannot cover up the past. So we begin with the end. A sunset is the sky bleeding. The sky impales itself upon the horizon, forcing its body upon the sticky up bits of the world – and the blood and puss that oozes out, we praise and call beautiful. It is the spreading of hot guts onto the floor of a person, a human, an individual who throws themselves onto the railings. But we begin with the end; today the end is a sunrise, a cold resurrected sun that insists on rising every bloody day. So we end with the beginning. Pressing flowers, pressing matters – press cuttings strewn across the dark floor like fallen leaves from a symbolic tree. Men have been running through me where once the wind whistled – I’ve been gutted and reconstructed like the empty shell I’d become. Just walls, and not much inside. [...] FEAST HOUR – KCL CREATIVE WRITING SOCIETY EVENTS We ignite our literary passion with ghosts in crypts and verse and music. Join us in a feast to remember! Mad Hatter's Tea Party in St James's Park Upon request, KCL Creative Writing Society is having a revival of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party due to the popularity of last year’s event.
Where: St James's Park When: Friday, June 3 · 3:00pm - 8:00pm
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