Sold

The painting had been in the cupboard under the stairs for years. It was a portrait of a man with frightening eyes. He didn't like it. It gave him the creeps. He was certain it harboured evil spirits or something.
And now he'd sold it.
£200. And the guy came to collect it.
Later that night he heard a knocking sound. It was coming from the cupboard.
He went to investigate.
The painting was still there.

Soldier of Misfortune

I was in t' army. I know I'm not in right good shape now, but I used to be.
They used to attach a rope round our waists with a tractor tyre attached when we were swimming. That's how good we all were physically.
Anyway, one night I'd been out on t' piss with me mates and when we got back one of t' lads had tried to top himself.
He'd slashed his wrists in t' shower room. He'd done it all wrong - acrossways, like.
I had to clean it all up. It were a right mess.
Anyway I told him how to do it properly.
I said to t' bloke: "You need to cut up your arms, with the veins. And you should do it in a warm bath. You'll just drift away. Totally painless."
I don't know if it's true, but I was thinking it would be easier to clean up. For me, like. All I'd need to do would be to pull t' plug.
He weren't best pleased when I told him.
Some people are so bloody ungrateful.

Assault

The market was busier than usual. It had really grown in the last three or four months and people were travelling from outside the area to browse and buy now. It was doing a lot of good for the town's economy.
Not everyone was happy though.
Derek couldn't cut through the town centre after work without getting caught behind dawdling slow-coaches and he'd had enough.
He opened his bag and pulled out a huge adjustable wrench.
"Out of my way!" he shouted.
He swung the wrench around above his head and brought it down on to innocent people who were blocking his passage home.
Screams, blood, a scuffle, sirens, face-down, handcuffs.

Library

I walked into the library.
"Can I help you?" the assistant practically yelled at me.
People turned around, shocked by the loudness that suddenly pierced the relative silence.
"Yes, have you..."
The librarian shushed me.
"Don't talk so loudly," she yelled.
"But I..."
"You must be quiet or I'll have to ask you to leave."
"Ok, I'll talk more quietly," I practically whispered.
"Get out," she yelled.

The Fear

The woman sat at the table.
The spider climbed on to the table at the opposite end.
They watched each other. The atmosphere was tense. It was like a Sergio Leone western.
Neither moved.
There was a scream.
The spider had never been so scared in its whole life.

Obnoxious

"Fuck you," he shouted.
"Sir, there's really no need for that kind of language. I'm trying to help you," the man in the suit replied calmly.
"No you bloody aren't, you piece of shit."
"If you continue like this I will call security," suit warned.
"Call the cunts; I don't fucking care. You're pissing me off."
As soon as he'd finished his sentence a burly man swept him off his feet and dumped him on the pavement outside the offices.
Suit sat his desk and sighed. He waited for the next unemployed person to come and swear at him.

Predictive

The only way to get the best out of the year and a halfway decent amount of money is to be a better person.
He was a bit of a problem with his family, but it would all be ok in the future.
He decided to go back to the top to make himself better.
Problem solved.

Messenger

He runs and runs, his heart pounding almost out of his chest, cartoon-like.
His lungs are full of fire and his legs are in lactic acid hell.
He continues. He continues because he cannot stop.
The message must be delivered.

Oasis

They cross the desert with their camels. Ahead of them is an oasis and they have gone hours without refreshment. They fear it is a mirage and that they will possibly die of thirst.
They near it and see that it is a genuine oasis. Their excitement grows as they anticipate the quenching sensation.
The first one cups his hands in the water. It burns him. He screams.

Village

The small group of huts aren't an eyesore, but they spoil the sprawling, emerald green fields a little.
Wisps of smoke curl out of the roofs of many of them and the villagers are all assembled outside.
They are eating, drinking, laughing, singing, dancing.
A man on horseback approaches, armed with information that will change everything.

Bird Man

He feels the wind push back his hair and cheeks as he swoops down into the valley.
Birds flee from him.
Flee you must! he thinks as he soars along.
I am Bird Man! 
He laughs as he steers the hangglider northwards towards the landing site.

Incomplete

The man sits in his large study. The expensive furnishings and valuable art on his walls make him feel like he has achieved something with his life, even if he has nobody to share it with.
He sits in a leather chair that cost almost half an average person's annual salary and takes a sip of brandy that cost as much for one bottle as most people would pay for ten.
He looks over the fields where it is snowing, content that he has his huge open fire to warm him.
A single tear rolls down his cheek.

Building

"It will take about two weeks to complete," his boss had said.
That was two and a half months ago and they still hadn't finished. Darren was fed up with it.
They were building a shed, a garden shed.
There was no reason for it to take so long, except that his boss kept changing his mind about how it should be done and rejecting work done for not being accurate enough.
Now Darren had had enough. He sneaked back to his boss' garden late one night.
He had with him a canister of petrol and a cigarette lighter.

Lust

He peered through the window as the woman peeled off her clothes.
This was the perk of being a window cleaner. At least that's what his mates would say when he told them about it down the pub later that night.
He washed the window as she continued to undress. She knew he was there. How could she not?
She was obviously putting a show on for him and he was finding it quite distracting.
What she and his mates were completely unaware of was the fact that he'd much rather see a man taking his kit off, but that never happened.
He sighed and descended the ladder.

Fight

The first punch was thrown and there was a bone-crunching sound as knuckles connected with a nose that had already been broken a few times.
The fist that came in reply hit the underside of a chin and dislodged a couple of teeth.
A third party joined in and wasn't a fan of hand use. A forehead slammed into a cheekbone as useless fists were chucked at it without effect.
The brawl continued for several minutes until the three of them sat on the floor, no energy remaining.
It was the last time the old ladies played bingo at their coffee morning.

Ice

He was wandering through a labyrinth of frozen passageways. He knew he was below ground, or at least beneath a significant amount of ice.
Everything was white. He had wandered for a long time. He couldn't remember how he had ended up where he was, but he was appropriately dressed for the conditions and assumed he was meant to be there.
He turned on to yet another icy corridor and saw something different. There were compartments along the wall. In each one was a body, frozen solid.
He approached one that was empty. There was a sudden, sharp blow to the back of his head.

Panther

Henry was a clown, but he was described by many as a gentleman and scholar and by the ringmaster who thought it was still the 70s as "groovy".
He would do anything for anyone. He was honest from head to toes. He was a one and only, a true original.
Some circuses had all the animals you'd ever heard about, but there were no rhinoceroses, tigers, cats or mink here. There were strongmen and acrobats and of course clowns.
Of all the funny animals in all the world, humans were the funniest and Henry was as rinky dink as the rest of the clowns.
Henry was thinking as he put on his nose and looked in the mirror. It wasn't as plain as the others', was it? No, it was pink, positively pink. Ever so pink.

Awake

He woke up and looked at the clock. It was just after 4am.
He tried to go back to sleep, but it just wouldn't happen.
Maybe he was all slept out? It happened occasionally.
By 5:30 he'd abandoned his attempts at sleep and was reading a book.
His alarm sounded at 7 and he got up to have a shower.
As the water gushed into his face he realised he'd never felt so tired in his whole life.

Bus

A 90-minute journey on a bus with no toilet? After an afternoon in the pub?
It was lunacy, but this was what he was subjecting himself to.
Less than ten minutes in and he already needed to urinate quite badly, despite having gone to the loo right before the bus arrived.
He thought about peeing in a bottle. There were too many people on the bus for him to get away with that.
Instead he just wet himself contentedly and sat in a piss-soaked seat for the rest of the journey.

Copper

The policeman was walking through the city centre on a Saturday night. He was on his way back to the station, carrying some stolen property he had recovered. The property in question was a ghetto blaster or boombox or whatever they were called nowadays among the trendy elite who once again were using cassettes.
A large group of young women approached him. Judging by the raucous behaviour and inflatable phallus it was a hen party.
"Wahey!" one of them yelled in his face.
"Gerremoff!" yelled another.
"I'm a real police officer," he protested as the group bundled him into a shop doorway amidst a cavalcade of cackling and fondling.

Gardening

He pushed the lawnmower up and down the garden, creating perfect stripes that would make the groundskeepers of most football grounds jealous.
A sudden spasm in his arm caused him to veer off course slightly.
His perfect garden was less than perfect now.
Another spasm had the same effect.
He was furious. His garden was ruined.
He pushed the lawnmower with great speed straight into his fish pond.

Shop

He entered the shop and his world was turned upside down.
They'd moved everything around. Again. He'd only just got used to the new layout and now he would have to learn it all from scratch.
"WHY?" he screamed at the top of his lungs.
Shoppers turned and looked at him.
He shrugged, picked up a basket and started his shopping.

Off

Click.
He surfed the channels from 1-500 and then he started again.
Click.
He couldn't find anything worth watching.
Click.
But what else could he do?
Click.
Eventually something would come on that he wanted to see. Wouldn't it?
Click.
He needed to take action.
A different click.
The bullet punctured the screen and ended his televisual hell.

Success

The man in the pinstripe suit strides along the London street. He knows he is powerful, a success. What he doesn't know is that his success counts for nothing in this part of the city. The man who needs a narcotic buzz who is lurking around the corner brandishing a knife and about to relieve the man of his wallet is proof of that.

Reggae Hell

He walked into the room. The door slammed behind him. The lights came on. What the hell? He grabbed the handle. It wouldn't budge. Music started to play. Reggae. Fucking reggae. It was far too loud.
"Make it stop!"
He covered his ears. It didn't help. The music's volume increased.
He screamed. His head pounded. He felt a rumbling sensation. He fell to the floor. Blood trickled from one ear. Rumbling in his head intensified. He was in agony.
Suddenly the music became quieter. It faded to nothing.
He started to speak, but stopped. He couldn't hear his voice.

Paper

"Have you got a pen and paper? I'll write it down."
"You what?" His colleague frowned at the suggestion he had made.
Howard kept forgetting that things were different now. Ever since the new law had been passed, the use of paper was illegal. The government's stance on environmental issues had shifted from couldn't give a shit to deeply concerned almost overnight.
"Never mind. I'll just type it into my phone."
He returned to his desk.
An hour later two police officers arrived at Howard's work station.
"You need to come with us, sir," one of them said.
"What for?"
"You know what for. Environmental crime is taken very seriously now."
"But I..."
The officer cuffed him and dragged him away from his desk.
Howard noticed the colleague he'd been talking to earlier looking ashamed as they passed his desk en route to the cell where he would be detained for four days.

Supermarket

Nigel headed for his favourite part of the store - the reduced section.
It wasn't the section that was reduced, it was the prices of the goods displayed there. There were always bargains to be had and today was no different by the looks of it.
There were pieces of cheese from as little as 20p and a huge pizza for £1. He grabbed as much as he could in one go and stuffed it in his basket.
"Put that back," said a voice behind him.
Nigel turned around and saw a supermarket employee waving a gun at him.
"What the...?"
"Put it back."
"Why?"
The question hung in the air unanswered as a single shot was fired.

Tower

The people looked like ants beneath him. There was a distance of several hundred feet down to the pavement. He suddenly remembered some comedian or other talking about the Tower.
"If you threw a ham sandwich off it," he had said, "it would build up so much speed on the way down that it would kill somebody."
This wasn't necessarily funny, but he wondered if it was true.
He had a sandwich in his bag. It wasn't ham, it was egg mayonnaise, but the principal was the same.
He took it from his bag, removed the clingfilm and lobbed it over the side. He watched as it descended.
A seagull swooped and grabbed the falling sarnie, ending his experiment.

Quick Pint

It had been a while since he sent the text to his wife.
"Just going for a quick drink with the boys. See you soon."
It had been more than a while in all honesty. 16:23, it said beneath the message he had sent. It was now almost 03:00. He'd been in the pub for 10 hours. He knew he was in trouble, but he wasn't going to be in any more trouble if he had another pint, was he?
He drained his glass and staggered to the bar. The rest of his colleagues had bailed out hours ago, but he was determined to keep going.
As the barman poured him another drink the phone behind the bar rang.
"Excuse me," said the barman and answered it.
He was agreeing with whatever the caller was saying.
"Ok, I'll tell him," he said as he hung up.
"Who was that?" the man slurred.
"It was your wife. She said not to bother coming home."
The man thought about this for a while.
"I'll have a double whisky as well."
He laid a crumpled twenty pound note - his last one - on the bar and smoothed it out.

Trying

"You're doing it wrong."
His dad always said this to him no matter what he did. He wondered why he even bothered trying to impress him any more.
He tried again.
"You're still doing it wrong. Bloody hell."
He started to cry.
"Oh don't fucking cry. You're seven years old. You should be past that now."
The crying continued.
His father turned and left the room. The boy ran out after him and pushed him down the stairs. He definitely did that right.

Text

His phone vibrated in his pocket and he took it out.
It was another text message he didn't want. Some advert or other. He didn't bother reading it, but the end of the message stood out.
TO STOP RECEIVING THESE MESSAGES REPLY WITH 'STOP'.
He received twenty or so of these messages every day. Stopping them would be a fantastic idea.
He followed the instruction and sent his message.
Within seconds his phone was vibrating madly. There were more and more texts from various companies. New ones were arriving faster than he could delete them.
His phone rang. It was a number he didn't recognise, but he answered anyway.
"Hello?"
A message was playing. Something about a pension. He hung up. It rang again immediately. It continued to vibrate as text after text arrived. He turned the phone off and slid it back into his pocket.
A homeless man staggered towards him with a can of strong lager in his hand. As he drew level he took a swig from the can and stared at him.
"You'll never stop them," he slurred and staggered off.