Short story Girl in Front Dija Mulla

Girl in front – original short story

Queuing up to use cash machine at train station.

Girl in front. Long hair. Fruity perfume.

Tap tap tapping her feet.

Queue moves forward. She drops her purse. I swoop down. Pick it up. She turns around.

‘Oh thank you!’ Big wide smile. Warms my soul.

She turns around again.

And starts tap tap tapping her feet again.

My heart is racing. Skin burning.

Queue moves forward and it’s her turn to use cash machine.

She gets money out.

I get money out.

She goes to the platform.

I follow.

She is the one. My one true love.

The first person to smile at me in months. The first person to speak to me in months.

She must be thinking about me, as she climbs on the train. Sits down. Opens her book and begins to read.

I bet she’s not even reading. Day dreams about me replacing words on the page.

When she pulls out a phone. Starts tap tap tapping on it. I bet she’s telling all her friends about the great guy she just met.

I follow her all afternoon. When she pops to the pharmacy, meets her friends for coffee and goes to the hair dresser, I’m there too. In her mind and behind her. Watching.

Watching my one true love. Being truly lovely.

She’s walking along a road full of terraced houses. Pretty road. Smells like roses.

Stops outside one of the houses.

Turns around.

Looks at me.

Brown eyes pierce my heart.

‘STOP following me!’

She pushes the door open and the slam echoes all over the street.

I stay. My insides warming. Head light.

Make a note of her house number.

My one true love.

I’ll watch you forever.

 Short story by Dija Mulla about being followed


Thanks you for reading! This short story was inspired by the book The Collector by John Fowles.
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Cheers!
D

BFFs – cute short story

 

The floor vibrates under my feet. The tube jerks. My hand slips and I stumble. Whirls of faces.

My forehead bumps something hard.

I look up. She looks up.

Rubs her head, smiles silly and we both stand up.

She looks away. Strangers again.

She’s wearing a suit. Nice. It suits her. I smile at my own pun. Smile at the idea that maybe one day she’ll hear it.

She checks her phone. No signal down here silly, we’re underground. I want to say to her.

She tuts with her perfect mouth. She must be running late. Poor thing. That’s just British transport sweety, you can never rely on it. I say to her. In my head.

The tube jerks again. This time both of us are ready. We catch eyes and she smiles again.

The doors swing open and she teeters out with perfect black heels.

The tube moves on.

Where did you get those shoes? I want to ask her. I can never find black heels I like, but yours, well, they’re absolutely perfect.

Maybe next time you’re around, she’ll say, we can shop for them together. Maybe check out the sales.

Hmm let me check my calendar I’ll say. My heart beating fast. Knowing it’s empty anyway.

Oh, I’ll say, I’m not free tomorrow but maybe Saturday?

Great, she’ll say, see you then, she’ll say. We’ll go out afterwards. It’ll be fun. She’ll say.

And just like that we’ll be BFFs. That’s what she’ll call us. It’s a little lame for me, but it’ll sound nice when she says it.

The tube doors slide open. More violently this time. I get out.

Footsteps echoing.

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silly deej

Some Fiction I wrote: Slowly going crazy…

silly deej

In my dream I was running. Running for the absolute joy of it. Running because I could run. Running because of the sheer excitement building up inside of me. I had never run this fast before and it made me manic. My speed was immense. I increased it further until I was flying, my feet barely touching the ground. And still it wasn’t fast enough. Faster I wanted to go. Faster than anyone had ever been before. The scenery around me became a blur. Streaks of black zoomed past me. The cold wind blasted against my face. And still it wasn’t fast enough. The excitement inside of me was growing, rising, mounting, as it thirsted for more pace. It rose further, swelling out my chest. It was going to burst! Rip! Explode! And I would let it.                                         

I felt a surge of pain on my back. I winced and blearily opened my eyes. A tiny lady bug was trundling across a withered yellow leaf near my cheek. The bug was directly opposite my eye, and I could, if I wanted to, count the black spots on its tiny red body. The gentle whisper of running water filled my ears. It was the only sound. I could hear nothing else. The sound was slightly lulling and I could feel myself drifting. Drifting. Drifting on a log in the ocean…

Wait.

This wasn’t my bed!

I whirled around confused, my hand slapping the ground, intruding the heavy blanket of silence. I swore as a sharp flint dug into my palm and looked up, searching for someone to blame. Tall trees towered over me,  and beams of light blasted their way through the gaps in the branches and onto my hurting eyes.

What the hell was I doing in the forest?

Puzzled, I stood up and as I did, I caught a glare of white hot light. It lingered on my eyelids as I massaged my aching head. I couldn’t remember anything of last night. I racked my brains, trying to force a memory to float into my mind. What had gone on? Maybe I’d had a few drinks?

Maybe.

I’d certainly felt something similar to this before – although not as extreme as this. Every single bone in my body was aching. The insides of my mouth felt like a wasteland. What I wouldn’t do for a drink of water…

I started fantasising about the clear plastic jug on our kitchen table at home. I could picture the white ice cubes floating in the cool water, the patterns in them looking like white feathers. I could feel the water pouring into my mouth… The smell of hot baking bread wafted to my nostrils and I could see our oven, with thick blue oven mitts hanging off the handle…

Wait.

I was being watched. A bony man was staring at me. His cloudy eyes narrowed when he caught me staring. My heart sunk when I saw who he was. Great. What did he want? I wasn’t in the mood for his crazy ramblings. He walked towards me, his reddish cotton shirt fluttering in the light breeze. His walk was very cattish, like a prowl, his legs carrying his skinny self lightly and quickly. I gazed at him tiredly, wishing more than anything, that I was at home. His mop of silver hair caught the sunlight making me wince and look away. I scowled.

’Kane?” he said softly, ‘what are you doing here?’

‘Digging for gold,’ I didn’t look at him.

‘You don’t want to dig for gold today lad, didn’t you hear, there was a disturbance here last night. That’s why I’m here, course the others don’t really care, they think I‘m paranoid, but me and Red knew straight away…’

I massaged my head.

‘But you can never be too sure can you? I remember when I was a young lad…’

Oh man! His voice was so hard to block out! It burrowed deep inside your brain. If he didn’t want me to be here, why was he rambling on? I kicked the dead leaves on the ground angrily. I just wanted to go home and have a shower. Why the hell was he talking to me? They called him Mad Murray in the village- I could think of better names.

‘..And we used to have big feasts and we used to sing songs…oh those were the days. And my favourite song used to be “lost in moonlight” I could sing it for you if you like?’

That’s it! I wasn’t going to stand here listening to him sing! I’ve had it!

‘I’m going now,’ I told him loudly.

‘B-but don’t you want to hear my song?’ Mad Murray said and the smile on his face disappeared.

I immediately felt bad, ‘no, I do, I’m just really tired, I’ve got a massive headache and you know I wanna go home’

‘Yes I suppose it’s not really safe to hang around these parts after last night, so we shouldn’t hang around ey?”

I rolled my eyes.

’And Kane,’ he said.

I faced him dully.

“Try to stay awake next time,” and with that he briskly turned and walked deeper into the forest, until it swallowed him and he disappeared from my sight, leaving me staring after him confused and irritated

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