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Alan Hancock

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2024

Stories (9)

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9 Stories

155 karma pts

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A Message from the Heart

Alan Hancock

Submitted to Contest #300

A Message from the HeartAlan Hancock Prologue Just after midnight he checks the phone for the last time and sits on the kitchen stool. He stares out through the window, through his reflection and into the darkness, as if he might find there some clue to a problem he’s trying to solve. He doesn’t see anything. No reply, no message: just him and the phone, as pointless as everything else in this house. He picks up his keys from the granite work top and walks quickly down the hallway to the front door. Outside the air is restless and hot. An ea...

13 likes

870 Express

Alan Hancock

Submitted to Contest #297

870 ExpressAlan Hancock At the end of the day what he liked most was to pour himself a double scotch, Johnnie Walker Black Label and to hell with the cost. He’d put Perry Como on the old Bang and Olufsen, then slip a new magazine into the shotgun. Remington 870 Express, best thing they ever made. He’d bought it years ago. Discontinued line – didn’t make them like that any more, bit like him. Felt nice too. Just heavy enough, so you knew you’d got a gun in your hands. He’d brought it back from the place they’d had on the south coast. Used i...

9 likes

Three Little Words

Alan Hancock

Submitted to Contest #297

Three Little Words by Alan Hancock2 520 words Back in the days when she took an interest in what I did and said, my wife gave me a book to read. I didn’t get very far with it. The bit that stuck with me was where the writer said how important it was to tell the truth. All the time. Doesn’t matter how messy things get. Tell everyone exactly what’s on your mind. If you don’t then all this bad energy builds up inside and fucks up your life. That was the message as far as I could understand it. I meant to ask her if she’d tried it out herself a...

9 likes

Leaf

Alan Hancock

Submitted to Contest #288

LeafAlan Hancock 2025 2, 695 wds I am ready for the storm which will surely break on all of us, she said. I have my safe place and my rainbow and my coat of many colours and everyone is going to wish they'd thought about these things when they were busy watching reruns of The Cosby Show or moaning about the price of fuel. Everything and everyone is in this together she said, and not once did she look up over my shoulder at the sky or mention the fact that the wind was pushing coke cans round in circles down there in the...

7 likes

The South

Alan Hancock

Submitted to Contest #287

The SouthAlan Hancock 20252 020 words When she woke, always before me, always at first light as slanting sunlight brought the touch of the day's heat in through the gaps in the wooden shutters, through the muezzin's long call to prayer as the swallows went swooping and screaming past the window down the long canyon of Rue Descartes, past Hamid the bed maker opening the steel doors of his workshop, in the first light in the still of the early morning she made tea. I would half wake and hear her in the kitchen. The metal sound of a lid taken o...

3 likes

Guide my steps

Alan Hancock

Submitted to Contest #281

Guide my stepsAlan Hancock 2024 I watch him as he walks in the rain. If only he knew, how close I am, always, how much I care. He would be surprised, frightened maybe. And I don't want to frighten him. Not now. So close I can feel his poor heart. He thinks he is a poet. He notes things down in the special notebook that he bought at the bookshop by the harbour. He goes there often, when he is lonely, when he wants to leave his lonely house and be part of the big world. I've followed him down there, watched him walk up and...

4 likes

My Secret Life

Alan Hancock

Submitted to Contest #281

My Secret Life Alan Hancock 20242,660 wds When I put this story together I was wondering where to start. And I thought, let’s start at the beginning, a long time ago in another place a very long way from here. So, to start from the beginning. When I was a boy I loved stories about people who had a secret. Some of them were true stories and some were made up. But it didn’t make any difference to me. They were all just as good, as long as they had a secret. I read this story about a gang of kids ...

6 likes

The Lighthouse

Alan Hancock

Submitted to Contest #275

The LighthouseAlan Hancock, July 20242 055 wds June 2024The lighthouse had withstood storms, high tides and king waves for over 150 years. ‘Just look at those walls, they must be near a metre thick’, Simon said, ‘And windows like ships port holes’ Annie added. It was indeed impressive. ‘Did you see the cat?’‘No, where?’ Simon looked up from the visitors’ guide account of the shipwreck.‘Big black one. Sitting on the path, then it ran up ahead up the steps. Like it was leading the way. You sure you didn’t see it?’‘Must have been heading h...

7 likes

Sky

Alan Hancock

Submitted to Contest #253

The Sky – Alan Hancock 2024With thanks to the illustrators of the cover to Ian McEwan’s novel ‘Saturday’ – this image inspired my story1, 150 words He doesn’t go and make that coffee, he doesn’t check the NASDAQ and the Dow Jones Index, the DAX and the FTSE, the Brent Crude spot prices or US dollar exchange rate forecasts, not that day, or ever again. Because he lingers at the bedroom wondow and watches Venus beaming down on North London, next to her the Post Office Tower lit by its electronic and neon beacons that outshine any star or plane...

4 likes