Some of my fiction

Instead of an actual post, I thought I'd share some of my fiction with you. This is the opening to my children's story, which I'm about half way through. I hope you enjoy it.

Craig sat on the curb, shuffling the loose gravel with his feet. He was trying to scuff out a stone that had lodged in one worn down heel, but he wasn’t trying very hard. It was quite dark already, nearly the end of term. There was sharpness in the cold air he breathed, and he could smell the tang of smoke from someone’s fireworks.

The stone, jammed securely in the treads of his sole, caught on a bigger stone in the road, and unexpectedly came free cleanly, like pulling a splinter. Craig was immediately satisfied and then sorry, partly because he had wanted to savour that sort of thing, and partly because his reason to dawdle out here any longer had gone.

He picked up his bag as he stood up, and grabbed the offending stone that had cut short his excuses. He’d been sitting in a cul-de-sac which ran behind a church, and as he looked up at it, someone turned a light on inside, dimly illuminating the stained glass window directly in front of him.

It was a picture of a man, dressed in a purple cloak, leaning on a staff that seemed to be bursting into flower at the top, like a tree. All around the edge were small circles with scenes that Craig couldn’t make out. The placid, grave expression on the man’s face seemed at that moment to be sneering at Craig, and he suddenly felt very angry. His fist tightened involuntarily, and the stone in it dug into the flesh of his palm.

Before he had really known he had done it, he was watching the stone fly through the air. The glass cracked and shattered, a hole now where the man’s hand had been grasping the staff.

Craig stood for one awful, silent moment, and then heard rising voices of alarm within the building. This was an excuse for being out late that he didn’t need, and he felt the adrenaline push into the balls of his feet as he started running. He had only got a few feet, past the end of the church building, when he had to dodge. An old tramp, coat held closed with string, and hair matted and straggled, turned out of an alley and into his path.

“Aye, you run,” said the old man, gesturing toward the church. “There’s none but wolves in there tonight, Craig”

He was already afraid, but the sound of his name in a stranger’s mouth sent a new shard of fear through him, and after a few seconds of the tramp staring at him intensely, he turned and ran with a new energy, as though he were being chased by a pack of hungry wild animals