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Fiction |
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Last Updated: 14/06/2006 14:07:04
'That can't be the time!' I scream, staring at the clock-slash-radio-slash-CD player. This is the last time I try a DVD marathon within one day, I'll kill Stanny for suggesting it to me. The phone starts to vibrate before the ringtone kicks in. It's Clark's tone...again, 'damn you, Clark!'
I charge across the room and leap over the chair and snatch the mobile.
'Yell-o?' I ask down the phone, I don't know why I ask it, just the first thing I say down the phone sounds like a question.
'Freddy, you still coming tonight?' he asks, again!
'Yes, Clark, I am, and stop calling me Freddy.' I end the call before slamming my phone on the bed, why does it never bounce?
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Ignore that, I need to get ready. Where are my jeans? I slam open the cupboard, where's my jeans? Black jeans, slightly baggy and plenty of space in the pockets, best put my phone in one.
Oh thank god, I'm wearing them. Why do I keep doing this? Luckily my jacket is clean, for once. Long, black leather with silver buckles. Each one of my friends would easily kill for this coat, I'm sure Clark did. It's great to be wanted.
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So after I slip into a T-shirt, that's truly dark, I have to fiddle with my hair. I turn to the spot on my TV where I keep my wax and it's empty. IT IS EMPTY!
I'm going to kill her.
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I charge into my sister's room and stand in front of her, blocking her view of the TV.
'Get out Franz!' she shouts at me, throwing her head about trying to see TV around me.
'Where's my hair wax, Steph?' I bark just as loud at her.
'Come on big bro, you know where it is by now.'
I snatch the wax from the top of her TV and start to stomp out of room. 'And don't call me Franz!' Everyone has their name for me. Hopefully I won't hear my mam's this evening.
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So the hair, let's spike it in all and every direction possible. Ever since the hair cut though it has been quite hard. I'm running out of wax, I'll have to buy more when I find a free moment.
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Now the make up, I'll go for something subtler tonight. Dark blue lipstick and eyeliner will be fine. My sister steals my hair products but not my make up, something strange there. The big-ass Goth boots are the worst, ten buckles a piece, and stiff leather, but they do look astonishing on me. Note to self: stop sounding camp.
'Dang!' I exclaim staring at the clock, ten minutes until my taxi and my mam's still got my wallet. I've got to stop letting her look after it, wait, no I don't. Lord knows what I'd do if I had free reign with my money.
I snatch my coat and bound down the stairs with the taxi driver outside, early for a change, bibbing his horn in time with my first few steps.
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Fiction - Absinthe - A Cautionary Tale By Sean Davey
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In pursuit of the perfect high, man invented absinthe, and I among others regularly enjoy its powerful effects. But on some days, store-bought brands are far too timid for the task at hand. On these days we need the homemade stuff.
Created in garages and lofts, jam packed with wormwood and all those other alpha-terpenes to get the brain synapses into full gear.
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Fiction - Punishment By Nick Quantrill
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Punishment by local crime-fiction writer and thisisull.com contributor,
Nick Quantrill, has won a nationwide short-story competition run by HarperCollins.
Entrants were invited to submit a story of no more than 1,000 words in the
crime-fiction/thriller genre.
Here's what the judges had to say about Punishment :
'We were impressed with the use of
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Fiction - Friday Feeling By Nick Quantrill
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Friday 3pm
It was building up to being another busy Friday afternoon shift. It was probably no busier than any other shift, but the extra tiredness that Detective Constable Maynard felt by this point made them feel that much longer. He had been sent to Young's general store in East Hull straight after attending a suspicious death over on the other side of the city.
It was
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Fiction - The Morning After By Joe Hakim
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They'll be here soon.
There's nothing much to do other than wait, so I make another strong cup of coffee and light
up another cigarette. Even these seemingly arbitrary actions are cast into a new focus now.
This patch of time I'm occupying is a bridge - a bridge that spans the space between
the way my life used to be and the way it's going to be. I look around my living room
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Fiction - In A Room By Joe Hakim
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I wish there were bars so I could hold them, wrap my fingers around the cold steel and press my face in between them, but it's just a room, I'm in a dark room with no windows and no features, so I just sit and think and think and think.
I am a captive, a hostage in a foreign country. I'm apart from my family and friends and I don't know if I'll ever see them again.
Every so
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Fiction - Off To See The Wild West Show Part 2: Prologue (June 1904: Hull, Yorkshire) By Frank Beill
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From the outside the two-storey building looked even more forbidding now than the first time I saw it. Eighteen more years of Hull soot had turned bricks from red to dark brown. The dank smell of Grandmother's skirt returned to me. I caught my breath. So many emotions stirred inside me. Doors in my mind that I'd kept closed for so long were opening again but this time
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Fiction - Buried In The Past By Joe Hakim
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Arriving back in Hull, the first thing that hits me is just how much hasn't changed.
As I walk down Princes Ave, I look at all the café bars that have sprang up to replace
the odd little shops and businesses that used to line it, but it still feels the
same somehow. There's a kind of progress, I suppose - even if progress means it's
starting to resemble everywhere else in Britain -
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Fiction - Off To See The Wild West Show Part 21 (1886: Hull, Yorkshire) By Frank Beill
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The extra twenty-four hour wait only made me more desperate than ever to discover what had become of my old friends. It didn't feel right to be back and not be with them. They were Hull to me. I needed to see them and for them to see me. Would they believe little Sammy could have grown so much? Would I be as tall as George now?
My friends were all I wanted
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Fiction - Red Carpet Blues By Steve Rudd
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'One more word out of you, and it'll be your last - I promise.'
The ice-cold gun nudging Ellie's temple was motivation enough for her to keep her mouth shut, as she trembled with fear. She daren't even sob in case her captor construed that any form of noise was reason enough to blow her brains out without further ado.
So much for being a superstar in her own right,
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Fiction - 'I Do' By Steve Rudd
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Nobody told me marriage would be like this. I thought it would be bliss, day in and day out,
but problems soon surfaced, after our hastily arranged elopement in good old Gretna - that bizarre little settlement that straddles the border between England and Scotland as though it can't quite decide where it stands; where it belongs; which side of the metaphorical fence it is
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Fiction - Two Sides : A Friday Night Out In Hull By Joe Hakim
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I'm just finishing off at work, watching the clock and loading the pot-wash with plates and cups,
waiting for Sarah to start her shift so I can go home.
It's been a really busy day, so I'll be glad to see the back of the fuckin' place.
I've been working at Sparks cafè bar on Newland Ave for over a year, but it's only been in
the past couple of months it's got really busy.
Fridays are
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Fiction - Complicity Part 6 By Nick Quantrill
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Complicity is the new crime-fiction novella set in Hull featuring
Detective Sergeant Coleman and Detective Constable Maynard.
The thisisull.com serialisation is accompanied by the stunning black and
white photography of Roland Standaert, which illustrates the story and takes a unique look at the city.
Complicity and other stories are available for free.
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Fiction - Gloomy Sunday By Joe Hakim
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As we got closer I could see it framed against the horizon. From this distance it just looked like a huge black shape, like a giant lump of coal or something. "Jeezus, it's huge," I said. "Yeah, I'm guessing it's a male," Mike said. "Could be about fifty tonnes of whale washed up down there." Mike was a marine biologist.
He'd been given the task of studying
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Fiction - Welcome To Hellville - Part 17 By Rich Mills
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29th November 2040
The information is coming thick and fast.
The latest version of Arc-iSearch is a truly amazing piece of AI software.
It sweeps across the huge net archives, sniffing out the smallest of references,
eliminating the irrelevant with an intelligence that grows as it goes.
I set it on its way yesterday, now it has started to
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