I’ve been very lazy about this blog recently. No particular reason behind it. I went to the Festival of Writing in York this weekend and met many inspiriational writers, published and unpublished. The message is – write what you love and don’t give up.

So, I’m a story teller and I’ve a few stories to share.

One of my ways to exercise my writing brain is flash fiction. Sometimes I use a promt, other times an idea simply pops into my head as if I invited it in.

This is one such guest.

An Apple a Day

Carmen ate a packet of pickled onion crisps every lunchtime with her sardine sandwiches. She consumed the fragments from the corners of the nearly empty packet, then flatten it and place it in the bin. After devouring the crisps she peeled an apple and quartered it with a sharp paring knife. The peel formed one long ribbon on top of the discarded packet. The knife belonged in a drawer.

Lunch was a simple affair that took all of ten minutes to finish.

Nobody questioned her packed lunches, but one of her colleagues observed them with interest from across the office.

The knife in particular.

When the policeman sealed it the evidence bag, the congealed blood smeared itself across the see-through plastic. He attached a label and filled in the paperwork.

Carmen watched on in horror from the far side of the room along with everyone else, except Jeanette, who was handcuffed to a chair.

Lindsay lay sprawled across the floor, quite dead and crimson in places. Harry shook from head to toe. His bloodstained handprints decorated Lindsay’s white blouse. He’d vainly tried CPR and failed. He wept, as a lover does—gut wrenching sobs.

Later, Carmen would question why she took a paring knife to work. It never crossed her mind she kept a lethal weapon in the drawer of her desk, nor that Lindsay was having an affair with Harry, nor that Jeanette was insanely jealous of the couple. If only she’d paid attention to the gossip circulating she might have heard the whispers and seen the raised eyebrows.

Carmen wasn’t the only one to question her judgement. Her boss fired her. The hiring agency released her; Carmen was mentioned in all the papers, as if Lindsay’s murder was her fault.

She stopped eating apples and ate bananas instead.