Thursday 24 January 2013

Janet gets drunk


The other evening my husband was away in Milton Keynes with work (well someone has to pay the mortgage). After passing a lifetime or two on my Facebook accounts, Pinterest and Twitter, I decided to get ready for bed.

At that point I begun to feel very sure I could hear movement and footsteps. Becoming increasingly uneasy, I switched on all the external lights and peered out of the back windows apprehensively. ‘Aha!’ I thought, ’if there’s an intruder I will be able to see his footprints in the freshly fallen snow’ (I'm a big fan of ‘Silent Witness’).

However, I couldn’t see anything, so I moved on to patrol the area to the front of the house, stealthily twitching the curtains by the front door.  Nothing. It seemed it was all in my over-active imagination. I turned, making ready to climb the stairs to bed. And that is when I completely freaked out to find a small person and a demonic charity shop teddy staring at me. My youngest child had apparently been ‘wondering where I was’ and had been following me about the house. Needless to say, despite apprehending the villain, it took me some time to get to sleep that night.
 
My 'villian' does not look particularly frightening in the daylight...
 
On the upside however, it did remind me that this week’s challenge is a bit of ‘Flash Fiction crime writing. In just 250 words I was to follow this brief: ‘Thirty-five year old Janet comes home to find a burglar in her flat’.  I just needed to harness the horror I had felt as I crept around the house attempting to out-smart the psychopathic axe-wielding maniac I had felt sure existed. It couldn’t be that hard…could it?

Anywho, when I finally got down to writing the piece, Janet proved herself to be a shameless hussy of a singleton, who comes back worse for wear from after work drinkies. Despite disturbing the thief, come the morning she can’t quite remember why her flat is a mess and presumes she has had it off with a colleague. Silly Janet! And at this point I cannot stress enough that Janet’s story is not autobiographical. I have never apprehended a burglar.
Janet may have drunk all this

So last week extended erotic zombie tales and this week short and snappy crime writing. What next on my whirlwind tour of writing styles I hear you cry? Well, much like that dirty birdie Janet, I’m open to suggestions…

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