Copyright – Al Forbes
Sorry that this is so long. I’ll be stricter with my editing once exam season is over. To submit your own piece based on the prompt, click here.
The shed was the safe place, always had been. They played all kinds of games in the yard around it, but the shed was base. You couldn’t be “got” in the shed.
Alice curled up in a little ball in the half furthest from the door. The dust irritated her lungs, but she was too exhausted to cough. She scratched the scabs on her legs until they were sore pools of red. The stinging accompanied her into her dreams, where it turned into nettles that whipped against her shins as she forced her aching legs to run and duck through the undergrowth, the pain nothing in comparison to the vice of fear around her heart and throat.
She could hear the men thundering through the bushes behind her, their gleeful taunts becoming frustrated insults as they tired of the chase. Eventually Alice was out of the forest and on the abandoned streets, littered with empty cars and silent houses. There was no time to be nostalgic when she recognised the house of a childhood friend, only enough to climb over the locked gate into the neglected yard.
Alice let go of her dream at the same time as she gave up the absurd hope that her pursuers would recognise the sacred status of the shed; when the door was kicked open.
To Be A Magician 