Knocking on The Door

WRITING TASK: Develop a character based on your classmates motivations for writing. Write a 200-300 word short story, based on a writer finishing a story, script or poem when there is a knock at the door.  You must use the ‘writer’ character you have developed.

She tongue-twists a few mouthfuls of dead air.

DOORS CLOSING

Is this what those kids feel like? When they strap the backpack on? Do they know how to feel?

The matchbox drags upwards.

Forgetting her cigarette she thinks she can see doom floating around the elevator, seeping up under the lightbulbs

She almost slips into believing the movie cliché, the big build up to the false fall. But she knows better than that. The protagonist won’t escape this time – neither will she.

 

 

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TENTH FLOOR

He steps inside on cue. One ye peers out from beneath its brow, the other remains sandwiched between a sickly green bump.

I loved him once.

This agent cyclops, staring at her with pitiful honesty. He’d been right, and the company was deserving of his betrayal, but she couldn’t live knowing his hands had been responsible for the death of so many. Those fingers wrapped around so many necks. The mark of their wedding ring on piles of corpses. She’d agreed to meet him here; to die here.

“I know what this is” He says.

“I very much doubt that.” She replies.

They wait for the cable to be snapped. In the news it will be reported as a tragic accident.

He stretches his hand to hers. She closes her eyes and waits for the sound. Bracing herself.

She imagines a hundred cats abseiling down a chalk board.

 

KNOCK KNOCK

 

Something’s wrong.

 

KNOCKKNOCKKNOCK

 

You can’t knock on a lift door.

Where is the crash? The breaking of bones?

CREAK

She opens her eyes. She is alive. There is light. There is coffee – everywhere.

“Are you fucking kidding me, John? The sign is on the door. It’s right there.” She mumbles.

“It’s 8am. You have work in an hour”

“I slept through my alarm?” she peels her face off the laptop, Dead Sea facemask crusted onto the keys.

“You must’ve done. Jesus, you’ve ruined those sheets.” She pulls back the blankets in horror, the coffee sticks the fabric to her arms. It’s a shame caffeine doesn’t absorb through pores.

The bed has more sheets of paper than bedsheets. A half-finished story about a CIA agent sits in the bin deemed too clichéd, self-proclaimed drivel. Trash rap is still blaring from the tangled headphones, the cable almost snapped.

“I had a nightmare”

“What happened?”

“I was trapped in a falling lift with some spy guy”

John rolls his eyes, “You should write that down.”