Content note: this may trigger insect phobia.

She was five: old enough to know that bees make honey and attack as a last resort, but wasps make nothing and cannot be trusted. Don’t run and wave your arms if a wasp comes, said her brother, just keep very still and it will soon go away on its own.
Late summer, The garden full of fragrant, sleepy, humming heat. Her orange lolly mouth a sticky beacon. She flinched as a wasp swerved close, and froze as she felt it alight on her sugared lips.
Unable to move or speak, she waited.
The wasp saw no reason to depart.

The crowd didn’t known it was a crowd until this moment.
It started as a feeling of anger; binding a few people into a mob. There’d been cheers and chants from people in the mob, in a self-conscious way, like people who have seen an angry mob on telly and have an idea of what’s expected.
But the anger is growing, pulling people out into the streets; people are forgetting about being people, for now. The crowd is thinking for itself. It knows it is a bigger, more powerful beast than can be contained by guns or truncheons.
It roars.

Most people round here were born here, like their parents and grandparents, and they stay, like their children and grandchildren. People do leave, but they don’t go far. They stay close enough to come home for Sunday lunch. They leave at least part of their heart here.
She left.
Took her suitcase, her dreams and all of her heart.
She was born here like the rest of us but she never really came from here. Her eyes always strayed to the horizon. She only ever smiled at her daydreams. Nothing here delighted her.

I hope she found her way home.

This one’s for Auntie Kate. xo

The li’l silver pug leapt joyfully to her mistress’ side. She didn’t exactly exist on this plane of reality but when your mistress calls, you don’t let reality stop you.
She had the impression, sometimes, that her mistress was feeling daunted, even afraid. When her voice quavered, or her brow wrinkled, she’d whimper; ears twitching, her own brow creasing up like damp laundry. She only called her when there were adventures afoot, and why be afraid of them?
The sight of a puzzled pug always made her mistress smile, and then they’d step out together, ready to face the world.

Another one prompted by Julie Mayerson Brown.

I have eaten big dead naked pigeon of God.
God came in with food.
God put food in high boxes and cold box where I cannot get it.
But then God got out naked pigeon food and rubbed it with biting dust. And then terrible plastic friend which God loves more started crying.
(When I cry I am BAD DOG but when it cries God tickles it and talks to it for hours.)
God went away talking to terrible friend.
And I jumped up and ate all of pigeon and soon God will know.
I am BAD DOG.

Thanks to Julie Mayerson-Brown for the prompt.

“Let’s go to the safari park”, you said. “It’ll be fun”, you said.
So here we are then. Shame about the car.
Why did you hand the keys over like that? It was a baboon. What was it going to do, moon you? I can’t believe you fell for the old “loaded banana” trick.
Who knew baboons could drive though?
Well, sort of.
I hope they don’t charge us for the damage. That wall’s pretty trashed. So’s the car. And the baboons aren’t lasting long now the lions can get in.
All I can say is, I hope you’re satisfied.

The resources afforded her were limited, but listening to a scratchy vinyl voice asking “Oú est la plume de ma tante?” was better than nothing.
She didn’t know where the plume of his aunt was, why his aunt even had plumes. She imagined a stately French comtesse, half woman, half peacock, pecking comptemtuosly at the ear of her hapless nephew as he fumbled and stuttered before her about the whereabouts of her finest of her evening feathers. “Oú est ma plume, idiot? Tu es betes comme tes pieds!” She pitied this hapless pigeon of a nephew, his hopeless, monotonous incompetence.

A comma is half a breath, because there is no time to take a breath, you must keep telling them, but you must take half a breath to keep you going. A full stop, then, is a satisfied grunt. A folding of arms. A defiant nod. I have finished.
A semicolon; frustration swallowed to the back of the throat. You wanted to nod and fold your arms but more is needed.
A colon: a self conscious intake of breath before your uninvited lecture can commence.
A question mark? A shrug, palms lifted. Eyebrows raised.
An exclamation mark – jazz hands!

He stared out from the stage at the rowdy crowd, laughter and the clink of beer glasses bombarded him. Paper in hand, he reached for the microphone and began to speak.
He had worked on this poem, crafting it, agonising over word choices, scansion, rhyme. He’d muttered it in the street, proclaimed it in the shower.

The room grew quiet around him. He found himself longing for heckles or jeers: something to convince him that the crowd was taking in his poem, however unfavorably. Instead he stood on the brink of darkness, flinging metaphors into a abyss of strained politeness.