TO write a story in just 300 words: this was the tough challenge Wokingham Writers set its members.
The small, friendly group of novices to experienced authors meets to review and discuss each other’s writing in a supportive and constructive way.
They viewed the competition as an opportunity to hone their skills.
Award-winning writer of short stories and historical fiction, Alice Fowler, judged the entries, choosing three, which Wokingham.Today is publishing each week.
The second story is by fiona Dignan.
Fiona began writing during lockdown to cope with the chaos of home-schooling her four children.
She has won several awards, including the London Society Poetry Prize, The Plaza Prize for Sudden Fiction, and the Farnham Flash Fiction competition.
Last year, she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and won Reading’s Dreading Slam Poetry competition.
She volunteers for charity The Reader, runs poetry workshops for other local charities, and is a regular guest on BBC Radio Berkshire.
Story two: History Doesn’t Repeat
The thick slap transports Marcie twenty years back.
The thwack reverberates across the kitchen, her cheek is bruising tender pink.
Marcie recalls her own mother’s silent sobbing at the sink, how her nose collapsed like a mine.
History may not repeat but it sure does rhyme.
“Look what you made me do,” Marcie’s husband says.
“Look what you made me do,” Marcie’s father had said.
Betty peeks her head through the kitchen door, sees her mother cowering on the floor.
“Go back to bed darling,” Marcie spits through red, her daughter retreats to her bed.
She snuggles the softness of her favourite stuffed bunny; powerless little Betty prays for her mummy.
Marcie knows the litany of Betty’s fearful tone, the desperate pleas that are ghostly echoes of her own.
History seeps in like osmosis, and Marcie is well aware of the prognosis.
She recalls the constellation of bruises on her mother’s bloody blue tinged skin.
Blue against black of the body bag she left their home, mutely zippered in.
In court the policeman testified with a sigh,
“He was her husband, what could we do? Women like her have agency too.”
Yes, Marcie thinks, agency is the antidote to the echoes of the past.
She doesn’t have to live in a future, her own history has cast.
History does not have to repeat, it does not have to last rhyme.
Marcie packs a suitcase in a furtive state, packs Betty’s bunny, she will challenge their fate destiny.
Up to sixty percent of adults experiencing domestic violence witnessed it in childhood.
Betty will not become a statistic; she will not become a likelihood victim.
Marcie and Betty hold hands, head to the refuge under the blanket of night.
They look up and think, how tonight, the constellations shine bright for them.
Wokingham Writers group meets at Wokingham Library on the third Saturday of each month from 10am until midday.
Membership is free.
For information, email: keith@writerman.org.uk, call: 01189 781368, or visit: www.wokinghamboroughlibraries.wordpress.com
