Edward Savage

“The wind and the waves” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #240

Niall tapped the barometer with a fingernail and frowned as the mercury dropped to 1010. An hour ago, it had been 1015. “Storm on way,” he muttered as he crossed to the window on the north side of the living quarters. Beyond the thick glass, the distant horizon was a forbidding wall of dark, purple and black clouds. Overhead, cloud outriders of the storm were scudding across the wan sky, driven by the growing winds. The sea was a gun-metal grey, mirroring the sky and earlier whitecaps were now crests of white riding the tops of every wave. ...

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“The Artist of Axeholme” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #239

Elanor stood before the painting trying to understand what felt so different about it. What made it so…. She shook her head, whatever the difference was, for the moment it escaped her. It was not by one of the greats, full of technique and talent. In fact, it was almost childlike in its simplicity yet it… spoke to her. That was it. In some way, somehow, it spoke to her. She tapped her lips with a finger, trying to coax from the composition what it was that so enchanted her. To capture its essence. From the centre of the painting to the mi...

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“I May Be Some Time” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #227

Cold. Darkness. Wind. Above all …. Cold. Hellish cold. Hear my words all you fine preachers standing high in your Sunday pulpits, giving your weekly sermons of blood and thunder. Making pronouncements of how a vengeful God will judge, of how the Devil and all his minions are waiting for us with pitchforks and fire for the smallest infringement of a commandment. You are wrong. Hell is not heat, nor lakes of fire. Neither is it brimstone. Hell is unremitting cold, dark, full of snow and ice. Hell is this god-forsaken la...

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“What Alice didn't see” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #225

The squeaking wipers cleared the rain without improving the view, mainly due to my breath fogging the glass. Sighing I got out into the drearily dismal day, where the rain, more of a mist, settled on my hair and shoulders in tiny beads. The house wasn’t new, nor was it ancient, or a gothic pile of masonry and tile, boasting turrets, towers and leering gargoyles. It was a well proportioned, rectangular Victorian, tacked onto a smaller late Georgian with a large bay windowed room on its first floor. Grey stone-work, streaked by grime and wate...

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“Your Station for the Nation” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #186

"Welcome Sports Fans! This is Marcus Titus Grippius welcoming you to the fourth day of the Lupercalia games. This is your Station For The Nation, Radio Rome! Sports Fans we have a full day of thrills ahead of us. The Emperor is rumoured to be attending and what a thrill that will be for those lucky enough to be here in person. For those out there in the city and the burbs, stay tuned and don't go away as we bring you blow by blow coverage of today's events. Now here's Antonius Priapius Diccus with a recap of yesterday's events for those who ...

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“Chapalu” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #169

"Gawn, get out of it, ya mangy ratter!" The voice was phlegmy, coarse as the old man called out to the cat on the top of the altar tomb next to the path. The cat, a black silhouette in the darkness turned its eyes on him disdainfully. Even in the poor light in the cemetery the cat's eyes flashed with an emerald, green radiance. "Hop it! Scram!" The old man waved his walking stick at the cat which casually stood, stretched and giving the man one last baleful stare, slipped down to the ground on the far side of the tomb, it black coat mergin...

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“Gods cue ball” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #134

I boarded the train, from Liverpool Street Station to Cambridge at three of the afternoon on a cold but clear skyed Thursday in March, early in the fifth decade of Victoria’s reign, at the behest of my good friend Professor Rupert Armitage, head of the University Observatory. Armitage had invited me to join him and the distinguished astronomer, William Lassell, FRS, FRSE, FRSL, FRAS, at the observatory. Lassell was the recipient of an honorary degree from Cambridge but the elderly gentleman asked, no demanded, to see th...

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“Changes” by Edward Savage

“Nanny? Can I ask you a question?” asked the blonde haired ten-year-old stretched out in front of the fire, idly flipping the pages of a photo album. “What do you want to know sweetie?” asked her grandmother looking up from her knitting. “Why’s lots of these pictures black ‘n’ white?” The woman looked to her husband for the explanation. “That’s because we didn’t have the sort of cameras that we have today and while you could take colour photographs on them, the films were expensive and so was the processing,” her grandfather explained. ...

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“In the silence of the waves” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #119

Brook Chine Cottage, BrookGreen, Isle of Wight, England, 7th September 1793 My dearest sister Mathilde, I am trusting to God that this missive reaches you without being intercepted by the authorities, as I have no wish to place you and Antoine in any more danger than you already are from having a brother on the Committee’s proscribed list. As you will note from the address, I have at last reached England and some safety, albeit I still have some distance to go to reach Uncle Michel in Oxford. After three months of weary, fraught travel, o...

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“Changeling” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #118

Today is the day I change. I can feel it, deep down in my very being, today is the DAY! I can’t tell you why I think that. It’s not a knowing, it’s just a feeling. A feeling that finally it’s here. After all this time spent slumbering, the awareness of everything around me veiled and distant, the spark of life, of self, diffused, almost non-existent, after all this time, the metamorphosis, the transformation is nearing its final stage, its completion. Something that begun - I’m not sure just when, several days ago I think - is over. The c...

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“The Busiest Night of the Year” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #117

The chair creaked and moaned as he dropped into it with a heartfelt sigh stretching his legs out in front of him. He pulled off his leather gauntlets and dropped them on the side table then pushed his hood back and rubbed his face in an attempt to rub his fatigue away. There was a clink as a full tumbler of whisky over ice was set down on the table.  “Thank you, Michael,” he said, his voice full of the fatigue he felt. “Your welcome Samael. Rough night?” “I really hate All Hallows Eve,” he replied, picking up the glass and taking a h...

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“When the World Stopped” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #115

“I know you’ll be back Friday Peter, but I’ve missed you. Will you be late…” Jenny’s voice was gone not even a dial tone from the cars speakers. I looked around wondering if I’d driven into some sort of dead zone when every light on the dash flickered on then off and the engine quit. The steering went heavy in my hands, the power steering no longer powered and the car started slowing. I hunched my shoulders expecting any second to be rear ended by the SUV that had been close behind me in the fast lane of the motorway. Instead of the mirror...

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“If I should die before I wake” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #113

The side air-bag pushed me to the left and then the steering wheel bag punched me in the face and chest. My head slammed back into the headrest and that was all I really remembered for sometime. There were images that flickered like an old film and sounds that were faint one moment and blaring the next but nothing coherent just a jumbled montage of sensations. Then things settled down and the noise and the images faded, replaced by a deep unyielding blackness. I was aware, but with the lack of any sensation I honestly thought I was dead, th...

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“When The Rains Came” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #112

“How many days?” asked Brian softly, staring out of the window. “What?” asked Janice. “How many days has it been?” he said louder. Janice looked across to the calendar on the wall. September was covered in red crosses. Only one square remained unmarked. “Twenty-nine days,” Janice said wearily. “Along with twenty-nine nights,” sighed Brian watching the sheeting rain add its volume to the two foot of water already cascading in a broad swift river across the mountain pasture before disappearing at the bottom of the slope. He watched as Alp...

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“The last time we played” by Edward Savage

Submitted to Contest #107

“Give me a drink”, Lisa giggled, waving her empty glass in the air. Daniel laughed and leaned forward with the bottle of vodka and tried to pour some into the glass that was weaving above the coffee table between them. “Hold still dammit!” complained Daniel trying to match the motions of the glass. The pair were well on their way to being rat-arsed. They weren’t the only ones mind you. Micky was almost comatose in the corner, Julia was sat on the floor leaning back against the sofa, squinting blearily around. Becky and Richard were entwi...

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