An Emotional Journey

Short, powerful stories written for radio

By Writing For A Living participants

My mother, a strange, frustrated woman. Half-demented, mostly deaf from childhood, given to slaps and locking me in cupboards. My father, orphaned by the age of ten, sometimes there in body, almost never in spirit. Arguments or silence. Another adult, of whom I will not speak.

Fast forward. "I'm pregnant," the phone call said. "You've made your bed," my father advised, "now you'll have to lie in it".

No shirking my duty. One day he popped out, a blue cork from her champagne bottle. Unwrap the cord from round his neck, suck mucus from his mouth. Convulsively he breathes and cries.

Fast forward. Three a.m. , past demons knit their bony fingers in my hair. As I raise my hand to strike, a watershed. I gather my son to me and say "It stops here".

Fast forward, but consider him behind me on the chair, combing my hair.

We grew apart as sons and fathers do, in our case to an intimate distance.

And as my life imploded, I fell into his arms, his now bristly chin against my cheek. Filtered through those years, a voice shines.

"I love you, Dad."

And he holds me as I weep, like the child he once was.

by Steve Steadman

SWORD FIGHT

The sword in my hands reflects the golden sun. My breath is shallow. I have spent the past two years working towards this. My life from early childhood, through teenage years, then to fending off a boring job, living a mundane existence, until one truly bizarre day, when I discovered medieval re-enactment. Traveling to muddy fields and hitting each other with large lumps of metal.

When I first started fighting things were a struggle. Not helped by the fact of me being crap. I was the Frank Spencer of the re-enactment world.

At one show, as I lay in the mud, gasping, like some red faced fish out of water. A figure danced by. He dodged, ducked and dove. Bob introduced me to Karate.

For two years I worked, my Sensi pushing, sometimes too hard. After much hard work I was ready. I issued an open challenge, I'd fight. No script, trusting skill and skill alone.  He approached, my trepidation made the man seem massive. There was no backing down.

We fought, my memories of those few minutes hazy. I could not breathe. The pain in my chest excruciating. Within seconds I had won. A flood of pride and elation filled me. There have been moments since of equal intensity. But non can ever equal the first.

by Chris Ellis

The Toughest Time

I shivered awake from the heroin stupor, saw the syringe still in my arm - how dangerous!!! It could have snapped!! I could have died! I'd nearly overdosed! This was no longer any fun. I wanted to stop. But how?

A while later I was in prison. I spoke to a drugs counsellor. 'Have you thought about rehab?' she asked. 'Yes. That's what I want to do', I replied. And I really meant it.

I was de-toxed in prison. It was easy to stay clean in there. I often imagined the job I'd get, the flat I'd rent, the girls I'd meet... the drugs I'd leave alone? Would I? Could I?

I arrived in rehab. 'How do you feel, Martin?'
'Fine, sorted,' I replied automatically.
'Look, think about how you feel. Really feel. Aren't you scared? This is going to be a tough journey,' they told me.

Only now do I know how tough. I'm not, 'sorted', any more. I feel the normal range of human emotions and I live with them. I like living with them - 'cos for fifteen years the heroin&coke&booze blocked them all out.

by Martin Curtis

Every year, when the daffodils begin to appear, I'm always reminded of the day nature's promise of new life was denied me, when my ripe womb became a tomb, empty and bereft.  I'm reminded of unimaginable joy turning to indescribable pain, of my heart tearing apart when no heartbeat was heard, and my body blowing apart as I had to give birth to my dead baby boy.  I'm reminded of how bitterly I cried as I placed those heralds of spring, picked so innocently by my two little girls, around that lifeless bundle, just before I watched his tiny coffin lowered down into that fertile soil from which the visible fruits of new life were so distressingly springing up all around me.  I'm reminded of how I died that day, yet as I buried daffodil bulbs deep into the earth of his newly dug grave, I was symbolically shown how nothing ever really dies. That same force that every year propelled life from those inert bulbs surely resided within me as well. I too could rise up and be reborn, give life another chance. Pascal, my son, was born when thick snow lay on the ground, my constant reminder that even in the desolation of winter the seed of spring can still be found. Every year, when the daffodils begin to appear, I'm always reminded of broken promises, mended.

by Carolyne Michael

My Journey to Freedom in Three Snapshots

I'm fifteen and wearing too much eyeliner. My black clothes and long hair gather dust on the floor of one of the bedrooms of the boarded up vicarage. Three older boys in leather jackets sit around me sharing a bottle of White Lightning. My black lace-gloved hand clutches a bottle of Malibu . The broken window casts rays of light about us and illuminates the smoke from our cigarettes.

Now seventeen, with purple hair, I'm sitting on a brown sofa in one of several lounges in my Brighton hostel. The bearded man to my left knows every answer on Mastermind. The unshaven man to my right drinks Special Brew and swears loudly. I'm working on the jigsaw my mother gave me; it's a woman's face blending into the sea and sky, her hair becoming waves on the ocean. Mum named it 'Freedom'.

Now at twenty-six, I'm standing by the side of the road, thumb out, backpack beside me. The wind blows my sun-bleached hair from my tanned face. Even taunts from car windows don't break my smile. I have a road map, someone I love, and a sign that says 'North'.

by Jo Nean

Mother and baby were both sleeping when I entered the room. I placed the bouquet on the bed and went to greet my daughter.
"Hello little one. I'm your daddy." I whispered. I sat in a chair waiting for them to wake. I was lost in thought.

What did being a dad entail? I had no role model. My own father scarpered years ago. The advice that I had been given from well meaning family members of do's and don'ts of child rearing whirred round in my mind like a tornado. Raising a child is a minefield. A life in my hands. The thought of how easy it is to get it wrong. How hard it would be to get it right.

My daughter stirred. I went to the cot and I held her for the first time. My daughter in my arms. I was a dad. The fears that I had, vanished. This moment in time would live in my heart forever. Was this the first lesson of fatherhood?

by Mark Oi

When I was eleven I came home to a woman smiling at me. I remember thinking 'I've never seen you before'. I looked at mum. Something was wrong. Mother told me I had to go into care. She couldn't cope. It'd be like a holiday she said. I could come home at weekends. I had five minutes to take it all in. I cried but I knew mother loved me.

The children's home was like a normal house. Mum's was only a bus ride away.  There were eight of us looked after by an old lady. She was a witch. I never really spoke. We all had jobs to do. The old lady left and a young couple came. They were brilliant. I went on holiday with them, they made me feel really safe. We stayed at a priest's house and walked across the Bristol bridge.  It was one of the best holidays I've ever had.  The couple brought a spark of life to the home. Whatever they are doing now, I wish I could tell them what they did for me. I missed them when I left.  My mother had me back home for good, but I'll always have special memories of Bristol.

By Simon Nihill

My father died when I was two, he was seventy-six. He had two children from his first wife, whom he outlived. Those children grew up and also had children before I was born. My father's grandchildren were older than me!

I had a lop-sided upbringing from my Victorian mother. I was sent to Windlesham private school here in Dyke Road , Brighton . At the age of eight I was packed off to boarding school in Hertfordshire. I hated boarding school. I wasn't academic at all really. However, I did manager to win first prize for gymnastics, diving and school record for pole-vault. By public school standards I left a failure.

I fumbled through life with no real direction.. things then changed when I saw an advertisement in the Worthing Herald. "Earn £500+ per week," it said. (£2,000 in today's money)

I applied for a joke. I trained as a joke. Then I sold home improvements as a joke. But suddenly I was earning £700 a week. Then £800..then £900. It had worked. I became the company's top sales consultant,,,but better than that, I was earning more than my own bank manager - and, the head of my old school...I had arrived.

By Peter King