Sample Stories

Browse through some recent work and get a taste of what’s on offer. You’ll find stories and poems that will surprise, delight and entertain you.

Riff Raff by Claire Kellaway

“Would you like tea or coffee?”
“Coffee, ta.”
“What’s your name?
“Er, Dave.”
“Mine’s Vanessa.”
Vanessa smiled as she felt his beady little eye follow her out of the room. Very promising. She went to the kitchen and put on the kettle. While it boiled she helped herself to a mince pie, and put three more on a plate. Then she took a large bag of kitty crunchies and poured some into each of the thirteen bowls on the floor. Finally she lifted her favourite kitchen knife from the drawer, walked quietly out to the hallway, crept up the stairs and slipped it under the carpet.

By the time she returned to the living room he was on his feet and trying to pretend he hadn’t been rifling through the drawers of her sideboard.
“There we go,” she said, putting the tray down on the coffee table. “I thought you might like a mince pie. I made them myself.”
He raised one side of his mouth in a half smile.
“Lovely. Don’t mind if I do.” He returned to the chair, gently removing the newly ensconced cat to the floor, and settled to his coffee. The mince pie disappeared in two bites.
“Nice tree you got. Them decorations are a bit weird-looking though.”
“Do you think so? I made those myself too.”
“Those two look a bit like – .”
“Have another mince pie, why don’t you.” He glanced away from the tree back to the plate on the table.
“Ta,” he said, and reached for the plate. “You got a lot of cats then.”
“I’ve got thirteen at the moment, but I don’t think Jesus will see out the winter. He’s very old. I suppose he might last until Easter.”
“Jesus; that’s a funny name.”
“Well he was my first. He came wandering in on Christmas day, looking quite the worse for wear, so I called him Jesus. The others are all named after his apostles. Peter, Thomas, Andrea – after Andrew, John, Phillipa, James, Barty, Jamima, Thaddeus, Mathew, and, of course, Judas.”
“Thirteen cats. God. I don’t mind ‘em but that’s too many of the little buggers for me. Feeding ‘em must cost you a fortune.”
“Yes,” she sighed. “It is a big expense. Hard to make ends meet sometimes.”
“Still, you must have a bit tucked away, though.” He eyed her. He had the half smile on his face again.
“Oh no, not really.” She leaned forward and offered the plate with the last mince pie to him. “Just a little to tide me over.”
“Well, I won’t charge you very much for doin’ the gutters, you’ll see.”
“I’m surprised there’s so much wrong with them. I only had them repaired last summer.”
“I’ve got an expert eye,” he said. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you an extra discount ‘cos it’s Christmas. How about that?”
“That’s very generous of you,” she smiled. He finished off the pie and brushed the crumbs from his hands.
“Why don’t you show me upstairs so I can have a good look around – at the gutters, like.”

It was cold outside but the teenage Halloween party next door was keeping her awake and she felt she needed some fresh air anyway. Her mind had been churning with despair all week. It was lovely to walk in the garden, or at least would have been if it wasn’t for the party. Their parents were away, and noise poured from the open windows and doors as girls screamed with laughter and boys shouted obscenities above the loud and irritating music. She’d had her run-ins with those girls and their obnoxious boyfriends. Riff-raff. So many of them these days; wasters whose only skill was unpleasantness. She hoped it would be over soon, but she knew she would not sleep anyway. There were tears forming in her eyes as her thoughts turned again to her predicament. The money had run out. Feeding her lovely cats was costing her more than she could ever have imagined. She didn’t know how she was going to cope. Her mood had got so black these last few days she had even thought of getting out the collection of painkillers she had been saving for when they came to put her into a home or she got cancer or whatever miserable fate befell her that she didn’t want to bear. But that wouldn’t solve the problem. The poor cats. What would become of them if she wasn’t around to look after them? She looked up at the night sky. The stars were out, stretching far into the heavens. God’s work was a beautiful thing to behold. She looked deeper into the swirls of tiny blue lights. So many millions of them; her own small fate was insignificant, really. But does God not count each and every one of us? She pressed her hands together and bowed her head in prayer. As humbly and sincerely as she could, she asked God to send her an answer to her problem; promising never to bother him again if he could just bring himself to favour this request.

She finished her prayer and let her mind drift, forgetting herself in a few moments of contemplation. Then a new sound stirred her. A scraping noise followed by the unmistakable thump of someone jumping into her garden. She was fully alert. She tried not to breath, afraid of giving away her presence and attracting the intruder’s attention. Between her and the house a tall skinny silhouette was visible. The figure stood still. She could see his breath rise in the cold air, lit by the yellow light from her kitchen. Then slowly the figure moved towards the house and Vanessa knew what his intentions were. Panic rose within her. How could she raise the alarm? She glanced briefly at the sky again, about to implore another favour when she caught herself. She didn’t need another one. This was God’s strange answer to her prayer. The fear drained from her. She felt a sudden immense clarity, like the removal of cataracts from her eyes. She took a step to her right and reached out her hand. There was the object she wanted. The spade, propped against the wall where she’d left it earlier in the week. She picked it up and swung it silently across her body so she had it in both hands. It felt lighter than she remembered. She herself felt a strength and a lightness of step that was new to her. She followed the figure’s slow walk down the garden to the back door of the house. Now she could see him stoop and reach for the door handle. He began to turn it. She lifted the spade high above her and with all her strength brought it down on his head. There was a deep metallic reverberation followed by a sigh and the figure was motionless on the ground. She knew straight away he was dead.

Over the coming days she had felt reborn. The task of dealing with the body filled her all time. She had worked her husband’s butchers shop nearly all her married life. Down in her cellar she still had the big industrial mincer from the old shop, along with a set of saws and cleavers. They were all blunt and dirty from disuse now, but with a bit of elbow grease she soon had them sharp and gleaming. She caught her reflection in one of the blades and it reminded her of those early Saturday mornings. Up at five, boning and jointing, laying out the displays ready for the steady flow of regulars. The busyness and chatter in the shop; the exchange of gossip. Her husband Tony, big and fat, making dirty jokes for the old widows to look shocked at while they laughed. Good days.

But the saws were too much for her now. She hadn’t the strength to use them the way Tony used to. He’d have them cutting through the bones like a knife through butter. She’d been able to manage too. But not any more. A visit to B&Q, to purchase an electric saw, proved too expensive . A visit to the library to scour the internet for the saw was more successful. God, in the form of Ebay, provided – and at a very modest cost. By the time it arrived she had only managed to cut off one of the arms. Within an hour of plugging it in she had both arms and legs nicely cut up and ready for the mincer. The cats, smelling the fresh flesh, were at her feet all the time. They were her new customers and they mewed and purred and rubbed themselves against her legs in anticipation, but she had to keep sending them away to get her work done. The mincing was hard, but she attacked it in stages and with vigour. Then she fed her cats. She had never seen them so excited. Even Jesus was friskier than usual.

Each night she went to bed exhausted but content. The despair had left her. In the brief moments before sleep arrived she considered the happy symbiosis of the situation. One of those riff-raff was being put to good use. Instead of wasting the resources of the planet with his useless, unpleasant life, he was making a contribution to society. Only she would have had the skills to do it. People were so squeamish these days. It was no different from jointing a pig, and she’s done that plenty of times in her life. There was a kind of serendipity in it. God did indeed move in mysterious ways, but when his intentions are revealed we humble humans are left breathless by the beauty of his vision. She closed her eyes and fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.

There was a problem, though. The head. Vanessa had cut off the ears, lips and nose and taken out the tongue, but her cats weren’t interested in the rest of it, and it was impossible to cut it into smaller bits. She had taken a liking to his eyes. They were a beautiful deep blue that sparkled in the light when she held them up. The cats had turned their little noses up at them, so she kept them in a jar while she decided want to do with them. The head, though. The head was a problem. With so many bits missing and the big gash from the spade, it was a frightening thing. In olden days it would have been put on a spike at the castle gates as a warning to others. She could hardly do that, but she would have to think of something.

In the meantime, the new supply of food was already running low. The cats had been so keen on it that she had often given them seconds. Vanessa still gave the cats their kitty crunchies, of course. They needed a healthy varied diet, but after only three weeks there was little of the minced flesh left to give them.

But she had been shown the way by God and now it was up to her to get on with it. So it was a matter of finding another specimen of riff-raff whose time had come to repay his debt to society. Her first idea was to advertise some furniture for sale in the local supermarket. Mostly honest folk came to look, but in amongst them were some who were all eyes and twitches, with knowing nods to each other and barely-concealed predatory leers. But they came in pairs, and that was no good at all. She was fearful of having them in her house, where they could easily overpower her. She had had to say sorry the items were sold and close the door on them.

Then she read an article in the local paper. There was a new government scheme for offenders. Instead of going to prison, some would serve sentences by working in the community. The local Probation Service was looking for people who would be willing to offer work to these offenders. She called the number and found that she was one of very few respondents so far. They were very keen to sign her up. Two days later a woman came to call and they filled in the forms together. Work in the garden, work on the house. Vanessa had dozens of small jobs that they could do. The woman was sure that Vanessa could provide an almost limitless repertoire of community engagement opportunities. Vanessa agreed. As the woman said herself, it was the perfect way to meet offenders on a one-to-one basis and build a rapport with them.

The only drawback was that they wouldn’t be able to send anyone along until they had checked that she didn’t have a criminal record herself. They didn’t want their precious offenders mixing with lawbreakers. That meant that it would be after Christmas before they could send their first – the word “victim” popped into her head – but “client” was the word the woman had used. “Offering” was the word she really preferred.

But she had to find a way to get through Christmas. She had eked out the last few pounds of flesh over the end of November and into the first few days of December. But the cats were having to make do with smaller and smaller portions. At each mealtime their little voices were raised in plaintive cries asking for more. She didn’t despair though. It wasn’t like before. She had a renewed faith in both God and herself. Something would turn up.

It was as she sat beneath her newly decorated tree, enjoying a cup of tea and contemplating this very problem, that the doorbell rang. She slipped the chain on and opened the door. A lean youth, all eyes and twitches, stood there.
“Your gutters are in a bit of a state, love. I’m a tradesman and happened to notice as I was passing. Thought I’d better warn you, like.”
“Oh, what’s happened to them?”
“Their just all knackered, like. Least, they look it from down here.”
“How can that have happened, I wonder?”
“Well there was a bit of a storm couple of weeks ago. Might have been that. You want me to have a look?”
Vanessa hesitated. She peered behind him as far as she could see.
“Are you alone?”
“Yeh. Just me.”
She slid the chain off the door.
“You’d better come in, then.”

Vanessa and Dave began to climb the stairs. Her mind was working quickly now. As they stood up in the lounge she guessed his weight at about twelve stone. Quite solid, really. A good, handy size. But she had to be careful. If she didn’t get him first time, she probably wouldn’t get a second chance. The stairs bent to the left near the top. It was a dark spot and that’s where she had hidden the knife. They were almost there and, as she began to tense herself for action, the doorbell rang again. She turned. For a moment she and Dave stood frozen. In the dimness she could just make out a gleaming object in his hand.
“God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay – ,” the muffled carol singers warbled. Vanessa tutted and smiled at Dave.
“Carol singers,” she said. “Always after your money.”
“Yeh. Can’t stand ‘em meself, said Dave. Vanessa turned back, reached for the landing light switch and flicked it on. The light caught perfectly the eyeless, noseless head stuck on top of the landing newel post. Dave let out a yelp of surprise, followed by a gasp as the knife struck deep into his body. He toppled slowly backwards, a screwdriver falling from his hand, and then crashed down the stairs.
“To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy.”

Later, when Vanessa was back in her chair enjoying a fresh cup of tea and another mince pie, Jesus climbed slowly into her lap and settled himself there. She stroked him and reflected on her recent ups and downs. There was so little separating despair from contentment when you thought about it. This Christmas would be her happiest since Tony died. Her lovely cats would have the feast they deserved and she would put her feet up and rest herself. Because she would have a busy time of it in the new year once the offenders started arriving. Her life had changed so quickly. She was a force for good, now. She was making a difference. She looked up at her tree and watched the two blue eyes twinkle at her as they slowly rotated on their threads. She wondered how many more home-made decorations there would be on the tree next Christmas.