New Life

The water lapped over the sides of the vessel. He stood at the front and watched the waves.
This was it, there was no turning back.
Land appeared on the horizon and began to approach them.
He went back to his cabin and packed his bag. Soon they would be there and he would be picked up and taken to his new home.
It had to be better than what he'd left.

The Call

The phone rang. She heard it from the garden and it rang at least fifteen times before she made it inside and grabbed hold of the receiver.
Had it stopped ringing because she'd picked it up or had the person at the other end given up?
"Hello?" she said, apprehensively.
There was no voice at the other end of the line. Nor was there a dialling tone. Somebody was on the line.
"Hello?" she said again.
No reply.
She was just about to hang up when she heard a voice whisper.
"We're coming for you, Sarah."
"What?"
"We're coming for you, Sarah."
"Yes, I got that. But who's Sarah?"
"You mean you aren't?"
"No."
"Oh, shit. Sorry."
They hung up.

Smell

Where is it coming from?
It smelled like a sewer in the house. It smelled like a sewer in the garden. It smelled like a sewer in the street. All three places smelled as strongly as each other.
He got on a bus. It smelled like a sewer.
"Can you smell that?" he asked a passenger who moved away from him.
Maybe I smell?
Maybe, indeed. The smell stayed with him all day.
He returned home and showered thoroughly. He put on fresh clothes. Still there was a sewer smell.
He tried to eat his dinner, something the smell made quite challenging.
He went to bed and drifted off as the sewer smell hung over him.

The Way to Work

Every morning he walks the same way to work and every morning he hopes that he arrives to find his workplace reduced to ashes.
The half hour walk is spent fantasising about being sent home due to the devastation and having the day and the rest of his life to himself.
Maybe he should destroy the building himself?
No, he couldn't.
He passes the same people on the way every day. They seem less pissed off about going to work than he does, but perhaps they're just better at hiding it.
He turns the final corner. Disappointment yet again as the building is still standing.
One day. One day he'll do it.

Beard

"That's a nice beard."
The man saying it thought it was alright to grab hold of the beard about which he was talking. The owner of the beard thought otherwise and aggressively pushed his hand away.
"What's wrong?" he laughed.
"How would you like it?"
"What? Oh, get over yourself."
The bearded man thought about this. He smiled and grabbed the other man's throat.
"Nice throat," he said.
The man gasped and thrashed around.
"What's wrong? Don't you like it?"
He let go of him after his face turned blue and he slid to the floor.

Day Trip

The train rumbled and clattered along and he looked out of the window, mostly satisfied with his day at the coast.
After a while the rumbling and clattering of his stomach became almost as loud as the train. He knew the fish and chips he'd eaten had been sub-par, but now they were potentially going to make a reappearance.
He vacated his seat and headed for the toilet.
Once safely locked inside the hermetic cubicle he lifted the lid of the toilet. It was full of paper and based on the smell something a little more sinister lurked beneath it.
He pulled the handle to flush it away and nothing happened. He pulled it again.
There was a loud gurgle, but nothing happened in the bowl.
He attempted another flush.
Another gurgle, followed by clattering. He felt a blast of pungent air coming from the toilet.
It stank in the cubicle and he wanted out. He pressed the button, but the door didn't open.
The toilet gurgled and clattered and more shitty air  blasted from it.
He tried the door once more without success.
One final ear-splitting gurgle and a brown geyser erupted from the loo coating him and the cubicle in a faecal cocktail.
The train rumbled and clattered on.

Election

The polling station had closed twenty minutes earlier and the counting had begun.
"There's a lot of people voting for that guy we don't like," one of the women said.
"Really?" asked another.
She glanced at the two piles of voting slips next to the first woman and her eyes widened.
"We can't have that," she said.
She snatched the large pile of votes for the guy they didn't like and tossed them into a metal bin next to the table.
She reached into her handbag and brought out a canister of cigarette lighter petrol. She squirted it over the ballot forms and then produced a lighter.
The votes burned away and were quickly reduced to ash.
The counting resumed.