I've been doing a few online FutureLearn courses lately.
It's been super! I'm always interested in learning something new, so having all this information available for free and in my own time is awesome. At the moment I'm currently doing two courses, one in kitchen chemistry and one in writing fiction.
I've always wanted to write, but I guess I didn't really know where to start. Keeping this blog was initially to get me writing more often. I figured the more time I spent constructing sentences, the more likely it would eventually come to me.
One of the tasks set by my course this week was to write a paragraph on a character using notes we'd collated from people watching. I'll be honest in saying I haven't found any time to people watch this week, but the course included a short video to start us off with, so I used that.
I started writing one morning while the boys were still asleep, and didn't stop until we were officially running late for group.
I thought I'd post it here for your perusal.
I really enjoyed writing it, so if you don't like it, it doesn't particularly matter to me ;)
but constructive criticism is of course very welcome :)
Go gentle though, it's my first time.
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| Screen shots taken from FutureLearn's video. |
The Girl at the Bus Stop.
The early Saturday morning
commuters are mostly on their way to work.
But not Sally.
She sits at the bus stop
clutching her sleeping bag on her lap, like some lost remnant of a life lost,
of days gone by. Her bag beside her.
Oh, how she regrets going last
night.
She’d bought this sleeping
bag, choosing a luscious purple, especially for the girl’s slumber party,
because her old one is still back home.
She awkwardly shifts her
weight on the uncomfortable steel, her fingers fiddle with the sleeping bag toggle.
She feels so out of place among the commuters. She can’t work out how to hold
herself, where to put her hands. Do they know? Can they tell where she was last
night? She feels dirty in last night’s clothes. Her teeth feel furry; her
tongue tastes the same as the smell of a passing London bin truck. That smell which fills her
street every Monday morning, as the truck dawdles through the early streets,
gorging itself on the overcrowded houses’ rubbish, only to regurgitate it up a
few small miles away.
She longs to be invisible.
At least she’s not in that
house anymore. At least she’s free from those prying eyes.
Oh, she shouldn’t have
gone last night.
She was expecting a proper
girly slumber party, like the ones her and her friends had back home.
She’d been invited by the
girls from work. The same girls who sniggered behind her back everyday. They
were nice to her face of course, but she knew they thought she was just a
simple country bumpkin and mocked her 22 year old virginity. She thought she’d
go anyway. She hadn’t made many friends since moving here, so she wasn’t
exactly in the position to turn down an invite. And if they only got the chance
to get to know her better, surely things would be better at work.
The night started ok. They
congregated at Lisa’s house, which she apparently shared with some other
people. Lisa’s housemates were out for the night, so they had the place to
themselves. The house was the end of an old Victorian terrace, with giant bay
windows, all stone and cold looking. All three stories, with their black
windows, loomed down on Sally as she passed the threshold.
As everyone settled in,
handbags and coats taken to Lisa’s room upstairs, party donations presented, Sally
wondered if she should worry that she had brought homemade chocolate biscuits
but everyone else had brought wine.
No one had brought a
sleeping bag.
She tries to fit in, to
laugh along with their jokes, despite most of them being aimed at her.
They laugh at her when she
asks when they’ll all be putting their PJs on.
“Well” says Lisa “if it’s
an old fashioned sleep over she wants, lets do a makeover!”
She grabs her make-up bag
and the girls sit Sally down on a stool, setting to work on her untainted face.
But they won’t let her check the result in a mirror and hand her a mug of white
wine.
She has a few drinks which
make her cheeks feel hot and her legs unsure.
The girl’s jokes get ruder
and start to baffle her completely. Her sheltered upbringing rearing its
innocent head.
All the time, their eyes
are on her, sideways glances to each other and small sniggers.
She continues to smile and
nod. She so wants to fit in. At work the girls natter at their desks & go
off for lunch together, while she sits alone all day, longing to be part of
something. Part of anything. She knows she’s a massive prude, and she won’t
sell her soul for a job, but some friends would be nice. They weren’t wrong
when they said London
can be lonely place. When she moved here, her poor Ma was so worried London would change her.
She promised it wouldn’t.
As the evening wears on,
the flow of wine grows faster and the air grows thick with cigarette smoke.
Shaz goes out for more wine.
Oh, she should’ve left
then! Why did she stay?
Instead she finds herself
a seat in the dusty living room, a huge armchair in the corner of the darkened
room, lit by a few lamps in the corners. There she sits, waiting for the nausea
to subside. She tries to get herself a drink of water, but Sam won’t let her
and pours her another glass of wine instead. So she sips it gently, trying to
appease her thirst but only making it worse with the sickly sweet white wine.
Shaz returns, clanking all
the way to the kitchen at the back of the house. Then her, Sam & Ally come
into the living room giggling to themselves & sit together on the sofa.
They don’t even notice Sally sat in the dark. Sally didn’t realize until they
were arguing over the butt that they had been smoking a joint.
Oh, she should have left
then. But it was too late. Her senses were dulled.
It was almost like time
stood still and yet when she next looked at the clock on the wall, it was past
11pm and she’d missed her last bus home.
She sits in the armchair,
her thoughts spinning, too nauseous to move. She feels trapped, trapped in her
body. Trapped in this house.
A burst of raucous laughter
jolts her from her day dream state. She looks through the doorway into the
hall, where Shaz, Ally and Leah were cackling together, each clutching their
phone, making drunken phone calls and sending texts.
Another hour slips by, Sally
hasn’t moved from the armchair. Her head feels woozy, her eyes cloudy, like she’s
lost her peripheral vision.
All of a sudden the front
door crashed open, squeals of delights run from the kitchen and the living room
is filled with the smell of stale lager and body odour, tinged with the smell
of fresh rain. She didn’t know it had been raining outside.
They were so loud. Their
deep bass voices rumble through Sally’s bones, raising the sense of nausea from
the pit of her stomach. Not wanting to puke here, in front of everyone, she
drags herself out of her seat, avoiding eye contact with all, fumbling her way
to the stairs, heading for the bathroom.
On her way through, she sees
glimpses of strange men, having thrown off their wet coats, making a bee line
for the girls. They must all know each other, thinks Sally as she heads up the
stairs.
The bathroom is like a
tiny sanctuary. All white and clean and bright. With the door locked, she can
pretend she isn’t even here. She could stay here for the rest of time, but it’s
inevitable that someone will need the toilet soon. In the mirror, her
reflection is not her own. She looks like a whore. Thank God Ma can’t see me
now, she thinks.
She rinses her face with
cold water. It feels so good, she does it again. The nausea eases. She’s
starting to sober up, but her head feels clouded, like the smoke got in there
and fogged everything up. Like the mirrors when you have a long hot shower.
Mascara has dripped down
her face. She finds some eye make up remover and manages to get most it all
off. She’s relieved to see her old face staring back at her as she leans over
the sink.
Not wanting to bump into
anyone on the stairs, she decides to leave the sanctuary and find somewhere out
of the way to spend the last few hours before the sun rises and the buses start
running again. This kind of house always has nooks and crannies to hide in, as
she knows from the childhood games she used to play back home. She’ll be able
to find somewhere where no one will bother her.
As she opens the door, a
figure looms out of the darkness. She screams a small scream, then decides she won’t
be scared.
A big, sweaty man stands
there with a stupid grin on his badly shaven face.
“So you’re little Miss Frigid
are you? You’re quite pretty. Why have you not found anyone who’ll shag ya,
eh?”
Stunned by his question,
she tries to shove him aside, but he’s huge compared to her slight frame and he
doesn’t budge.
He grabs her around the shoulders;
she can feel his sticky palms on her skin. He smells like lager and ashtrays
and something oddly spicy she can’t place. His clothes are covered in wet
patches and stains, like a young boy who’s been out playing and ate his tea in
a messy rush, eager to go back out.
He pushes her back into
the small bathroom, holding her against the sink. The porcelain digging into
the small of her back.
“It’s alright darlin’,
chill out will ya, I only wanna chat” he tries to reassure her, but the way
he’s leering at her tells another story. His eyes wander up and down her
slender body, taking in her pale lemon blouse, thigh length skirt, black tights
and comfortable work shoes. Stale from a day at work. He smirks.
“Maybe you should let the
side down for once darlin’, let’s ‘ave some fun”
She’s afraid, just when
she’d decided she wouldn’t be.
He leans in to kiss her. His
grizzly wet lips aiming for her neck.
She reaches her breaking
point.
Her whole self has taken
such a bashing this evening.
She’s had enough.
There’s no way she’s
letting this disgusting excuse of man touch her.
Yes, she’s a virgin but she’s
not desperate, she’s saving herself. She doesn’t give a damn what the girls
downstairs think. Not anymore.
She grabs a giant seashell
which was sat on the windowsill and brings it crashing down onto the back of
his head.
The look in his eyes goes
dead. Stunned, he falls, his heaving weight tumbles sideways toward the toilet.
His head smashes on the cistern before coming to rest on the toilet seat. She
calmly places the shell back in its place. Stepping over his legs, she heads
for the door. She glances back. He looks like he’s just passed out with his
head over the toilet. There’s no blood. She wonders if he’s dead or just
knocked out.
Her skin starts to crawl,
her legs threatening to give way. She goes to Lisa’s bedroom where her
overnight bag and her sleeping bag are stored and wanders around the first
floor landing until she finds a window on the stairwell with a large sill.
Shaking, she lightly tosses her bags up, then clambers carefully up, pulling
the heavy curtains shut behind her.
Resting her head on the
wall behind her, she waits for sunrise, so she can leave this Hell hole and get
the first bus home.
Her thoughts are in
turmoil. Is he dead? She should never have come tonight. Will someone find him
like that? Will they think he’s just fallen asleep there? Will they think he’s
dead? Will they scream? She should never have moved here. What made her think
she could make a life for herself here? She promises herself she’ll get the
first train home tomorrow. That’s where her heart belongs. She should just give
up and go home. Coming here was Dad’s dream, not hers. She knows where she
belongs. She thinks about Billy, the guy she left behind. She can’t hear the
sounds coming from downstairs well enough to make any sense of them over the
noise in her own head.
There’s a bright light in
her eyes. As she opens them, memories fill her head and she wonders which ones
are real. She realizes she’s perched on a window sill. The window is frosted so
she can’t see through it but the light fills her head.
Oh god. It was real.
She carefully peeps around
the curtain, but there is just silence. She lowers herself and her bags down
onto the stairs. She glances at the bathroom, the door is wide open. The corpse
is gone. She tiptoes down the stairs. As she descends she can hear voices in
the kitchen; there’s a man and a woman talking. The man is nursing a sore
hangover and a black eye which he can’t remember getting. They laugh together.
No one hears her open or
close the front door.
She walks as fast as she
can to the nearest bus stop, only realizing half way there that she hasn’t even
checked her disheveled hair.
She’s already planning
what to pack, what to leave behind and who she needs to tell she’s leaving. How
easily would the police find her if she just left without a word?
She hopes the man she hit
was the one she’d heard in the kitchen.
