Lit Assignment

[kethni]

Hi All.

Thanks so much for all the ideas for my assessment. Some of them I'm thinking might work well as fic :D

This is my assessment for my Creative Writing course. It's the final assignment and worth 50% of my marks. (Next module I'd studying Children's Literature.) 

I'm marked on:

Language - Both clarity and precision of language and to it's creative use: adjectives, metaphors, stylistic flourishes and rhetorical devices. (Rhetorical devices is a catchall for all sorts of things like allusions, analogies, hyperbole, and understatement)

Voice - The creation and sustaining of author's style which might include tone, point of view, dialogue, and observation.

Structure (which I always have trouble with) - Effective organisation of the writing. Balance of showing and telling and appropriate development of the story arc or plot.

Ideas - The content of theme.

Presentation - (another weakness!) Correct spelling and grammar as well as sound editing.

If anyone could offer any thoughts, suggestions, point out typo's or anything else on the following I'd be very grateful!

(I don't have a name yet. I hate names. )

 

The wife used to ask me about the punters I get. So I’d tell her about the lady having a kiddie, the fellah going to a funeral, or the woman sticking her tongue down some geezer’s throat, while texting her husband, and Sally, that’s the wife, she’d say, ‘and then what?’ Well, then they got out the cab. That’s how it works, right? All you get in is snapshots: bits and pieces of the story. You don’t get no neat introduction, middle plotty bit, and wrap up. Real life ain’t like that, it’s all messy, see? Here I am living my life, my story if you like, and then the cab door opens and someone else’s story goes splattering all over mine for five or ten minutes, before upping and rolling off. No neatness, just loose ends waving about the place like that Medusa bint with her head cut off. I reckon that’s why them clever buggers write stories, because they can’t cope with the messy bit in real life. Life’s all messy bits, if you want my opinion. And if you don’t want my opinion you can bugger off and read something else because this is all my opinion, on account of it being my story. Right? Right.

            I used to work the dayshift but there’s no money in it. A couple of quid taking some old dear to Tesco isn’t going to keep the wife in gin and fags when I’m gone. The big money are the airport runs but you’ve got to be in tight with the dispatcher to get those, and I’ve never been good at buttering up. Not in me nature and it’s too late to change now. The next best thing is Saturday night, which is good for frequency but lousy for the upholstery. Take this bunch of girls in the back, if one of them isn’t sick it’ll be a miracle. Time was the worst you’d get from a group of girls was some drunken sobbing. Now, though, now they’re worse than the lads. Zul got stabbed in the arm, honest to God, some drunken bint stabbed him in the arm. Granted, Zul’s a pain in the arse, pardon my French, but no bugger deserves to have a hole carved into their arm. Not that these girls look that sort, they’re just a bit loud. It’s early in the evening and they’ll be going until at least three. I blame Tony Blair and his twenty-four hour drinking. All those twenty-four hours licenses, made it okay to be boozing around the clock. Time was that only tramps and alkies drank twenty-four hours, and they had the decency to do it out of the way of regular folks. Now’s it’s twenty-four hour licenses, binge drinking, and that Kerry Kantona on ‘This Morning.’

            Midnight madness has passed and I’m on my way to Hope Court, no bleeding Hope if you ask me. Council estate, but not one of the decent ones, in fact it’s just about the worst one around here. High-rise flats in a circle like one of them gladiator things, and in the middle there’s what should’ve been a play area for the kiddies. Except no council gardener, without a death wish at least, sets foot in Hope, so the grass is long, matted, and dying. In the daylight, around the edges where the shadows from the flats block the sun, the grass is sickly yellow. At night under the humming orange streetlights, like this, the whole shebang is all bleached out, except where the light don’t reach. It’s nothing but shadows where the light don’t reach.

            We don’t hang around here. Drive in and if the fare ain’t waiting drive right out again. This one’s waiting: Skeletor’s girlfriend with lank hair, a scrap of a skirt and one of them strappy tops that’d be revealing if she didn’t have a chest like a toast rack. She’s got a bunch of black sacks with her, which is the universal signal for “doing a midnight flit,” and she keeps looking back at one of the flats. I’ve got a baseball bat under the seat if it comes to it, which is hasn’t, yet.

            ‘The Women’s Refuge,’ she says, sliding in the back seat. “Will that be much?’

            ‘About eight quid. Give or take.’ She’s not that old, eighteen, or nineteen maybe, and there are needle marks and bruises up and down her arms.

            ‘Jesus he’s coming! Just go!’

            I glance back as I pull away but I can’t see anyone.

            ‘Moonlight flit, is it?’

            She laughs and folds her arms. ‘Yeah, something like that. Can’t do it anymore. Just can’t. You got a fag?’

            ‘Sorry, it’s against the law now. Bleeding health and safety busy bodies.’

            Her phone rings then and she starts crying even before she answers it, ‘I don’t want to talk to you Jason! No. No. You always say things’ll be different and they never are! I don’t have to be with you. I can look after myself. Yes, I can! Don’t call back!’

            ‘You alright?’

            ‘Yeah, yeah. Overnight in this place won’t be so bad, right? I’ll go to my mam’s in the morning.’

            In the rear-view mirror I see here roll her eyes.

            ‘Yeah?’

            ‘Yeah. Whole new life,’ she says, looking out of the window.

 

I do a couple more drunk runs and then it’s on to one of my regulars. You know what I was saying about only ever seeing bits and pieces of lives, well with regulars you see more bits and pieces of their lives, but still only that.

            I pick up Ralf at the dance hall. It’s damn late for a Gent his age to be out bumping and grinding but it don’t seem to bother him none. He’s seventy-ish, with perma-quiffed grey hair and dark enough skin he looks like he lives on a sun bed. I happen to know though that the skin’s natural, his mum’s an Indian. And not one of them what lives on a reservation and hunts buffaloes, neither. I asked.  He’s not what you’d call a skilled conversationalist and he smells like an explosion in Boots. He tips good though and he’s amiable enough.

            ‘Good evening Darren, warm isn’t it? Do you think it’s the global warming they’ve been talking about? I was telling my daughter Saffie and she said...’

            Lonely old bugger. He’s a daughter, Saffie, and a son, Rai, and he’s forever changing his mind about who’s going to inherit what. Mind you he’s always banging on the kids don’t listen to a word he says.

            ‘... of course if I get married again then I’ll have to leave the house to my wife,’ he says. He’s been talking about getting married again as long as he’s been a regular, which is... blimey, fifteen years.

            ‘Met someone have you, Ralf?’

            ‘I might, I’m still a vibrant, and attractive man. I have all my own teeth you know!’ I can hear him shuffling around in the back. ‘Actually, I told you Saffie set me up on that interweb thing?’

            He told me she had a good laugh at him loading a twenty-year old photo onto his profile at Match.com. Of course he explained it were the only decent photo he had. ‘Yes, I think you mentioned it.’

            ‘Well Minnie kept coming up as a perfect match! Minnie from the dancing? I started to think she’d... nobbled it somehow.’

            ‘Doesn’t it go off interests and that kind of thing?’ I ask.

            ‘I... oh. Yes, I suppose that could perhaps be part of it. But she’s always staring at me. I’m very attractive man, you know! The ladies at the dance hall all want to dance with me.’

            ‘How many gents go dancing?’ I ask. If I live long enough for the wife to bugger off then I’m sure I’d have a damn sight better luck with the old biddies than the teenyboppers at the local nightclub.

            ‘Hardly the point, the point is that Minnie stares at me and she keeps coming up as a perfect match.’ He leans forward as far the seatbelt will let him, ‘So tonight I told her that I liked her and kissed her cheek! I was a little anxious, I’m not one of these men to put themselves about, but I did it. What do you think of that?’

            ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway, eh Ralf? What did she say?’

            ‘I thought I’d let her... mull the situation over with the appropriate amount of thought. So I kissed her and left with entirely reasonable alacrity.’

            Kissed the girl and ran away. Dear oh dear.

 

I do a twelve-hour shift, give or take, eight pm to eight am. At the right time of year, I get to see sunset and sunrise. I love a good sunset but God’s choice of colours can be a bit loud. If this lump isn’t just a lump, I might be telling him soon, you’d never get the wife wearing orange, purple, and red together! The sun’s just coming up now as it goes.

            This one’s a hospital run. Don’t look to be a kiddie on the way though, when it’s a kiddie you generally see dad hopping up and down on the pavement, or inside curtain twitching. I’m not a fan of pregnancy runs, too much stress. All that shouting and swearing plus half the time the dad has forgotten the baby bag. Or worse, he’s forgotten his wallet. Then there’s the risk of cab ride for two suddenly becoming a cab ride for three and have you tried cleaning up after that? It’s worse than vomit.

            Anyway, this job is Faith Farm, it ain’t that rural, not really, it’s one of these plum in your mouth jobs; big house, driveway, and a couple of big apple trees dripping blossom all over the driveway. It’s been raining and the fat, pink flowers are all clogged up in the water, swirling round and round dizzily. The punter is in business dress but with a knee-length skirt, and you don’t see many skirts on the business types these days. She’s got flat shoes and short-ish hair, sensible short, but bright red nail varnish.

            ‘St James Hospital, please,’ she says sitting next to me. One of those, if they can’t be in the driving seat they’ll damn well be in the front seat.

            ‘Right you are.’

            ‘Can I smoke?’ she asks suddenly, fidgeting with her skirt. ‘Shit, I shouldn’t have worn this.’

            ‘Sorry, it’s against the law to smoke in here. I’m not allowed either.’

            Her hands are shaking anyway; I’d end up with ash all over the upholstery.

            ‘I don’t suppose you have anything to keep the cold out?’

            It’s sweltering out, and seven in the morning to boot.

            ‘Got some brandy in the glove box,’ I say. ‘Hope you’ve had your breakfast, it’s a bit much on an empty stomach.’

            ‘Thank you,’ she says nicely and rifles through the maps and papers to find the flat, silver flask. She’s got the posh accent alright but now and then there’s a twist of something else, like she’s lathered it on top of something more common.

            ‘Didn’t think they let visitors in at this time,’ I say, and she smiles. If the wife finally does drag me into hospital kicking and screaming, there’s no way I’m having this one operating on me.

             ‘I’m not visiting as such,’ she says. ‘My father is on life support. I’m going in to see them switch it off.’

            ‘Sorry to hear that.’

            ‘Don’t be! That fucking bastard should die screaming, not slip away in his sleep!’

            There’s not really anything to say to that, right? 

She gulps down a mouthful of brandy and screws the top back on the flask. She swipes at the little trickle running down her face with the back of her hand. ‘Fuck, now I’ll have to do my makeup again,’ she mutters.

            ‘You can hardly see it.’

            ‘But I know it’s there.’

            ‘Right,’ I say. Great, it’s another three miles to the hospital an all.

            ‘I don’t care if he’s an old man. He’s still an evil bastard. The world will be a better fucking place without him,’ she says.

            ‘So you’re going to hold a pillow over his face are you?’

            She laughs a bit at that, ‘I’m going to face him.’ She blows her nose. ‘Pathetic, I should’ve done it years ago but I was always a coward.’

            ‘Hardly seems worth it if he’s dying.’

           She tucks the tissue up one of her sleeves. Urgh! ‘I have to face him. I refuse to go through life still afraid.’

 

Final pickup of the day: from the Women’s Refuge to Hope Court. It’s beautiful out, all sun and blue skies. Makes a person glad to be alive and that’s a fact.

            She’s standing on the step when I get there, shivering in the same scraps of material and with her life heaped around her in black sacks.

            ‘Oh it’s you again,’ she says, slumping into the back seat. ‘Don’t you sleep?’

            ‘I finish for the night when I drop you off.’

            She scratches at a needle mark on her arm. ‘It’s hard.’

            ‘What’s that?’

            She looks out of the window. ‘They gave me a right long list of rules in that place: no men for one! And the windows were all sealed. What kind of place seals the windows? What if I’d wanted to have Jason visit?’

            ‘Thought Jason was the one you were flitting from?’ I ask. ‘Whole new life and all that?’

            I hear her shifting around in the back, ‘Yeah. Well. It’s easy to say you’re going to do something. When you get to do it, then it’s a whole different thing.’

            She winds down the window and lights up a cigarette.

            ‘Sorry love, you can’t smoke in here.’

            She takes a drag on the fag and then pitches it out of the window. ‘It’ll kill me, right? But giving it up is too hard. At least dying’s definite.’

            Her phone rings and she sighs before she opens it, ‘Mum, I’m not arguing with you again.

            ‘No! Jason loves me.’

            ‘Well that’s because he loves me.’

            ‘I’m scared Mum. I can’t do it on my own.’

            ‘It just is.’

            ‘No, I’m nearly home. I’ll... I’ll call tomorrow.’

            ‘Do you ever do anything because you were scared not to?’ she asks quietly.

            ‘Yeah, and I don’t do things I should because I’m scared,’ I admit.

            I park up the car and she gets out, ‘Sucks, doesn’t it?’

            ‘Yeah, it does.’

 

            The wife’s up waiting with my supper when I get home. She’s going to start on about the hospital again, I know.

            ‘Make us an appointment, eh Sal?’ I ask. ‘Let’s find out one way or the other.’

            ‘I thought you were too frit, what happened?’

            ‘Had a think about it. Can’t go through life afraid,’ I say. ‘Now give us a kiss, Sal.’

The End