The Middle Man

Its all my fault. I did this. I caused this to happen.

My best friends have always had a rocky friendship. They got along as much as two people with complete opposite interests can and both of them liked me. That makes me wonder though if the main reason they stayed friends was because I was their interest in common, if I was friends with both and I was the glue keeping their friendship together. I hope not. I hope there was something else about them that they liked, something that made them want to find something in common.

None of that matters now, they've reached a point of no return and it's all my fault. If last week I hadn't been on my computer in the lecture maybe I wouldn't have been on the internet. If I hadn't gone onto the musician's website, maybe I could have avoided this. Stumbling across a once in a lifetime up and personal concert was like hitting a goldmine. If only it had been nearby, if only it had been in Glasgow, or London, not all the way over in New York.

When I showed it to them, they were both so excited, one mostly because of the prospect that it was in New York, but she said that she was willing to go to a concert of somebody she wasn't particularly fond of for a trip to New York city, the place she dreamed to work one day. The other was squealing like a demented fangirl, well, I suppose that was what she was. Together we skipped and jumped and clapped our hands excitedly.

And the next day it all fell apart.

"I can't go." I told them sadly. I had got home and realised that a trip like that was expensive, between flights, hotels, the tickets themselves, which, as scarce were pricey. So I, living in a flat with three other students couldn't pull that much money together in the space of two and a half months. Plus work would never give me time off for up to two weeks in the middle of the summer, when the sunshine was at its height and an ice-cream shop was busiest. For me the concert was no more than a dream.

The others said that they were still wanting to go - if I didn't mind of course - and they talked animatedly about the whole thing. Where they were going to go, what they were going to do, how exciting it was going to be. The trip was all that occupied their conversation and I thought finally, something for them to talk about.

Or not.

When I met with them on the day they had agreed to sit down and make concrete plans, I arrived to a screaming match. I had no idea where they had started, I had no idea where it was going to finish but all I knew, was that the plan was over. Words were floating around the fight; 'expensive', 'promise', 'liar'. It turned out that another one had thought about it too, she had sat down and done the maths as I had, and she couldn't go either, in the end she wasn't that bothered because she didn't really like the band anyway, she could always go to New York another time. The other felt betrayed, her hopes had been brought up and the plan snatched away in the blink of an eye.

They screamed and screamed. They called each other, stupid, selfish, bitch. I tried to calm them down but I ended up getting stuck in the middle. They yelled at me too, they tried to make me take sides. I didn't want to take sides, I didn't want to be the middle man. I wanted us to all get along.

The feeling of guilt built up in my chest. This was my fault, I had found that damn show. Now they hated each other, one because she felt betrayed, the other because she couldn't forgive things the first said. I liked them both. They liked me. They despised each other. No matter what I was always going to be the man in the middle.

I didn't want to lose either of my friends, but I didn't want to hear them saying that the other made them feel like shit. I didn't want to hear them say that they hated each other, I didn't want to know that people who were so full of joy and so kind to me were the image of hate and hurt to somebody else. To me neither was a bad person but, to each other, they were bitches. I didn't know how to calm them down. How did I get them to make up? How could I make it go back to the way it was?

I needed to fix the mess I made. Somehow I knew I couldn't.

The Joys and Pains of being Kayla Cressey - Part 1, Dreamer

My name is Kayla Cressey. I am nineteen years of age. I currently work in a clothes store and my tasks at this job include...oh god I sound like I'm filling out a job application. The horror! To cut the long boring story that is my life short is that I hate my job and I dropped out of university, I live with my parents and I've never had a boyfriend. Now that you know the highlights of my life lets move on.

People call me a 'dreamer'.

"You live in a fantasy world Kayla" they say to me and I suppose they're right, but somehow the life I can live in my own head is so much more interesting than the life that exists out there in the real world. In my head I am cool and collected, I always know exactly what to say and if I don't I can live out the scene again and know what to say next time and nobody would be any the wiser. I can imagine that I'm one of those people that are liked by everyone and makes friends with the utmost ease. Instead I'm socially awkward and stumble over simple conversations with people who I haven't known more than at least a month or two. I guess that's why I work in the store room and I'm still not sure how I managed to blunder my way through the interview process. Dumb luck probably.

In my head I am whatever weight I want to be, not teetering at the edge of two dress sizes found in two different parts of the store. I can go into any store and go around the racks and always find the right size. Everything looks good on me and I have the most desirable fashion sense, people stop me in the street and ask me where I bought my dress and I'll tell them that I made it myself. Its just a shame that in real life I break sewing machines by looking at them. I want to make it clear however that I never imagine myself to be a size eight or something, because I know that that is far too unrealistic. In the life I live inside it's a world that could be possible to live, if I worked hard enough, if I had the means. If I exercised hard enough and if I ate rights, I would be able to drop a few dress sizes, but doing that would provide me with muscle and therefore I could never be that small.

In my head life is not normal and workaday. It is not mundane. It is wild and fantastical and brilliant. Most importantly it is always logical. If I imagined that some movie star was my best friend, I didn't just grow up being her "BFF"; I made enough money by working three jobs to make my way out to California where I served her coffee for a year and a half before she asked me if that was what I really wanted to do. When I said no, she got me an audition for a small speaking part in her movie and from there I built up an acting career from there and we became close friends. See...logical.

In my head I am pretty. I still have the same face but the standards of beauty in my head are nowhere nearly as high as the real world and my plain and ordinary face is one that is considered desirable. Therefore people find me attractive and I go out on dates with them. In here, where the unlikely is possible I have boyfriends who buy my chocolate and call me beautiful. They tell me they love me and I live out a long and happy life with them, whoever they are this week.

In my head I am not afraid, I never think about all the reasons why I can't or shouldn't do something, I just do it. I live the life that I want tot have, the one that I wish I had the strength to follow through.

Pompeii

Hey all.

So...its been a long time since we were last here. Recently my friend had been bullying me into writing again and this evening I was listening to Pompeii by Bastille (whom this friend also insisted I listen to) and I came up with this. Its a little...bizarre, but I hope you enjoy it.

Our rusty old Ford pulled up and with a wince at the blistering sunshine I slid my sunglasses over my pained eyes. Mum handed me the sun cream and I began to plaster it over my my ruby-red arms as we walked towards the ruins. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing there; all of my friends were at Disneyland, posting daily photos online of all the fun they were having without me. Naturally I had been an idiotic child who had agreed to go on a family holiday the summer before I started university. I don’t deny that Italy is beautiful and I love being there with my family, but I’m still a little hazy about the decision making process that led me to sunburn over rollercoaster’s.

My evil little brother ran ahead and my parents walked along calmly behind him, used to the hyper nature of children. As long as he was in sight and not jumping on anything that was valuable, they didn’t really care. I sloped along at the back, scrolling through the latest Disney pictures that had been posted. My best friend Jess was standing with Peter Pan, a disgustingly huge grin spreading across her face. The title she had given the picture was ‘Is it just me or was Peter Pan really hot?’. Naturally she had tagged me in every picture they had posted, just to remind me I wasn’t there.

As I stepped into the ruins, a crippling sense of déjà vu washed over me. It was so utterly painful, building from the place where my feet touched the ground, pumping through my body until I found  myself crouching, unable to stand up, unable to think, unable to speak. I was dying I had to be, I was dying. Abruptly it all disappeared. I was fine. There was nothing wrong at all. Up ahead Mum and Dad were still strolling along behind Euan. I pretended to tie my shoelace so I didn’t look like I was going mad and stood back up, shaking my head.

I took a few steps then turned, looking up at the volcano, which had begun to smoke, “The gods have begun their ruling.” I muttered looking up at the ashy sky before walking on.

I stopped again. Where had that come from? The volcano was fine! I turned back to mum and dad but they were out of my sight. I started into a jog, following the ruins of the streets as if I knew them. It took me a few minutes to realise I wasn’t even going the way my family had been, I was just letting my feet guide me along the destroyed streets. Looking around I decided I was at the baths. I sat across from them and waited. When noon arrived Caius would arrive round the corner as he did almost every day and wave at me with that mischievous smile that I couldn’t help adoring more and more every time I saw it. Finally the sky touched its height and he lolloped around the corner. I ran to him and pushed him into the shadows from prying eyes.

“Marcella,” he laughed, taking my face in his hands, “What is your rush today? I shall see you later, shall I not?” He raised his eyebrows and for a moment I wished that everything was fine and I could act as if the world was normal.

“Do you not feel it Caius?” I begged. If anybody could understand how I felt today, he would. At least I hoped he would - Caius was always there for me. “The tremors of the earth grow stronger and stronger every day, and this morning there is smoke in the air, as if the sky is on fire! The gods are making judgement on the people of Pompeii. Apollo is telling me this, I swear to you, he is giving me sight.”

“My love, calm yourself. The sky is not burning, this will pass, just as the tremors do. If indeed it is a sign from the gods we must take it as a blessing, that Vulcan has chosen the mountain as his new home. Fear not.” He pressed his lips to mine. “I will come later, as I always do and I promise you. This will have passed.”

He left then, returning to the life that I was not permitted to be a part of. I myself walked home. I ran my fingers across the walls, took in the marble and the stone. I studied every form of art that my eyes could catch and hoped that it would not be the last time I saw these things. If it was, I was determined to see everything one more time.

       My husband would not be home for days if he returned at all. Every time he left, I begged the to the gods that he would not return to me. So I sat alone in the darkness of my empty house, watching the smoke from outside curl thicker and thicker as I waited. In front of me I had a bowl of water in which I was dampening cloth and holding it across my mouth. I did not know if it was working but I could only hope.

“Please,” I begged Vulcan, “Please stop, the smoke is going to kill us, I know it, please.”

I was sure there was bangs and flashes in addition to the smoke, screaming too, but to keep my sanity I pretended it was not there and instead continued to pray. To Vulcan to stop the smoke, to Jupiter to clear the sky, to Venus to bring Caius back to me, to the household gods to keep me safe.

Eventually Caius stumbled into the house. His skin was blackened with ash and he was coughing dangerously. I rushed to him with my bowl and helped him swallow back the liquid within. He clung to me, weeping in a way that respectable young men should not. It pained me to see him this way, but I did not ask, I did not comfort him. I just waited.

“You were right, Marcella,” he wept, “The sky is falling on us, the mountain is on fire. The other side of the city is burning and so many are dead already. I almost never made it to you…” he began to cough again and I pulled him into my arms, rocking him back and forth. When his coughing subsided, he whispered, “We are going to die Marcella. I don’t want to die.”

I leant back and looked at him, tears breaking in the corners of my eyes. “Neither do I.”

He kissed me then, forgetting that the sky as falling, forgetting that every time he coughed, I could have sworn he coughed up ash and smoke, forgetting that the world was falling to pieces and that the gods were punishing us all. Together we sat huddled together on the floor until the cinders settled in our lungs and Pompeii fell silent.

“Ella! Ella! There you are! What’s wrong my love? What on earth is wrong?” I looked up and the sky was a bright and clear blue, my mother stood over me, trying to gauge why I sat alone huddled in the midst of the ruins of the city. I stared at her and looked around the stone. 

“I lived here Mum,” I told her, “This was my home…I…I died here.”

Last Words

Hey all, so it's been a while but I've been that weighed under with work I haven't really had time to post anything so sorry about that. I wrote this a few weeks ago when I downloaded a writing prompts app and this was one of the quirky prompts that I thought I would have a go at. I hope you enjoy!

 The smoke curls around me, the raspy breath taking a ragged and broken inhalation. I am dying, I know that, my friends are all gone, bar one. He sits there, waiting for his turn to come, knowing that death is nothing less than inevitable.
I can thee the match on the ground, ironically stamped out as I catch fire. I am burning slowly and the pain, the pain is so much more than unbearable. I don’t have a name, none of us do, out lies in the light are too short to be worth names but as I burn and whither I wish I had one.
My pearly white skin crumbles away, searing at the torture of the fire. Do they know my pain? Do those who light the fires that kill my kind understand? I don’t think so. I think that maybe to them we are simply disposable. Once I saw one of my friends thrown onto the top of a bin; such a harsh ending, so undignified.
They say we kill them, and if that is true, I am glad, this torture, is worth their own end. I believe in that. This is it I think, I am almost at my end.
One more ragged breath and I fall…fall…fall. I whisper a broken goodbye as the foot falls on my head. They stalk off and my life flutters away to nothing. The life of a cigarette is a cruel one. Our life light burns only as we die.

The Mud in Your Boots

Hey all, sorry I didn't post last Friday, I wrote the post earlier in the day than I had done the past few weeks and by the time I got back to my computer I had forgotten all about it. Then every day since I have tried to remind myself to come on and post it but I am just that damn forgetful. So here it is now, and I promise business will resume (hopefully) as usual this Friday, where I will begin writing your ideas as short stories. (Its not too late to send me a quick email telling me what you think I should write) So with this story I told myself I would NOT write about war or a battle or someone fighting the 'man' and yet that was all that sprung to my mind last Friday, it would seem that is all my ideas would appear to contain however because that is about what I have written. If it helps in any way, shape, or form, this time I have not written about the past, but the future this time and *spoilers* nobody dies at the end, so 'yay for me!'. Still, I like the promise of fresh ideas from you and I never say 'no' to any form of constructive criticism - somewhere2open@gmail.com 
So until Friday, I hope you enjoy! C


A bomb flashed somewhere to my left, the sound of gunfire rained down around me. My captain was dead, my comrades; all gone. I was all that was left – me and a few other lost souls that roamed the broken battlefield for some shelter or hope of rescue.
I stumbled through the mud of the undergrowth, slipping and sliding in my broken boots. They used to say that concrete lay beneath all the dirt of the ground I knew; the captain said you used to be able to walk down these streets without getting so much as a stone in your shoe. Nowadays you were deemed lazy if you didn’t have so much mud in your boots, you could barely walk.
I shifted my gun in my arms and searched around. I had two bullets left and the torch attached to the top had died out hours ago. It was barely any use to me anymore but I still felt safe to have it. As I looked, a light began to shine above and I dropped to the ground, hiding myself away from it. I used some body, sticky with blood, smeared across the chest, bullet holes peppering the ‘armour’ – a standard cotton shirt, brown overcoat and a thin sheet of plastic that you hung from you neck with a brittle piece of string. I doubted this armour had ever saved a life. It certainly had never saved anybody I had seen wear it.
There were rumours back in camp, they swarmed like flies and multiplied until you were unsure who told the truth and who told you fibs, but there was a favourite amongst my comrades that said the Enemy had state-of-the-art metal plating, helmets, the lot; like the old days when they used swords not guns, but better than those of the past. I had no idea if it existed but I certainly hoped I never had to come face to face with that armour.
The light began searching in the mud and rubble, flashing this way and that for signs of life so I buried myself deeper under my hiding place, freezing myself to a state similar to death with the mud that began to cake my face as I stared up at the ‘copter above. Which was where I noticed something.
Their sigil was not of us or the Enemy. Ours was an old beast, a wolf I think they were called on a circular splash of blue. The Enemy’s; crossed swords in a triangle of green. Both reminiscent of the old ways. But this? No, it was not of the old ways, at least the old ways we all appreciated. It did not have fancy designs in perfect shapes, all it had was a large cross, like a plus sign, crudely painted so it blazed in a fiery red.
I did not know who they were or what they were doing; for all I knew they could have been the Enemy – some strategy to collect the weak from the battlefield. For all I knew it could have been us. I was just some foot soldier, now was a lost ghost with two bullets in a broken gun and no hope to survive.
It was that thrilling uncertainty that made me pause a moment then push myself out from my hiding place and jump up and down, waving frantically up at them. When they saw me, they lowered themselves slightly and allowed a rope ladder to fall from their great metal belly. With shaky arms and blocks of ice for legs, I hauled my body up it until I found myself falling into the deck above.
“Welcome aboard, Miss…” A bleep resounded, “Greenwood. You will be safe now with us.”
I looked up at the young man’s smiling face and could feel that it, that smile, not the simple clothes and decent armour he wore, not the shining surfaces of the inside of the ’copter, not even looking back down out the window at the carnage I had just been rescued from below, the smile. It was that and that alone which made me knew that he wasn’t lying. These people were some kind of underground movement, I could feel that in my chest and they were only here to help. Finally I was safe.

Ideas....

Hey guys,

So every Friday, I get round to posting and I have to quickly write something before I stick it online. As my second story might suggest; I do not really think about it, I just spraff (which means to ramble on to fill space if you are unfamiliar with the term) and a lot of the time it ends up being pretty strange. Plus I feel that sometimes I'm just trying to stick to what I know and I really need to try and shake myself out of my comfort zone.

I really want to make an effort to try harder here; to not scrawl something down before I post. So, I make a request of you, dear Reader, please, for my own sake, for the sake of the blog and your reading pleasure, I would love it if you might like to offer suggestions as to what you would like me to write about - you can make it as wacky or as normal as you like! Email me at somewhere2open@gmail.com and offer up your suggestions - or if you would like to make positive/negative comments on anything I write, feel free! Thank you Reader, I appreciate it!

C x

The Archer - Flash Fiction

Hey all, so here we are once again. This week I've been quite busy and have had little time to write so I thought I would write little. This is called 'flash fiction' if you have not heard of it before. The point in flash fiction is to get as much as possible into as little words as you can manage and I was challenged with writing in eighty words or less. This is based loosely on the novel I am writing so I hope you enjoy it! C.


This was it, here, now, a single arrow remaining. One chance to end the false king’s life, in turn ending the long war that tormented her kingdom.

The battlefield ablaze as the sun caressed armour of the dead and blades of the living.

She saw her comrades far and wide, some still fought in her name. Most were dead.

Her bow raised one last time.

An arrow burst through the pretender’s chest. A blade came down on her.

Silence fell.