Welcome to Flash Fortnightly!
My name is Laura Besley and I’m an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher. Over the years I’ve met thousands of students of all ages from many different countries in the world. This job really suits me as I love meeting people and learning about different languages and cultures. After working in England for a couple of years, I moved to Düsseldorf, Germany, where I taught Business English for two years and now I’m living in Hong Kong. This small pocket of Asia is a perfect blend of East meets West and is rich in colour, noise and inspiration.
That brings me nicely onto writing. I’ve been writing on and off since childhood and did my degree in English Literature and Film Studies. When I was in Germany I started writing a bit more regularly and in Hong Kong I’ve really had the time to dedicate to my writing. In 2011 I joined the Hong Kong Writers Circle and a critique group which allowed me to start looking at my work with a more critical eye. On 4th May 2012 I embarked on a project to write one piece of flash fiction a day. I’ve always seen myself as a novelist, but actually I’ve found that I really love writing short pieces as it gives you plenty of room to experiment with style, voice, characters and settings. And each day I can write something new.
I hope you enjoy this ‘Flash Fortnightly’ entry and I’ll be back on Wednesday 23rd January 2013 with some more…
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The Almost Perfect Plan
How did it all start? When Jerry roped me into this I had my reservations and I told him, but he assured me it would be fine. He knows far more about this kind of stuff than I do. I just took his word for it, you know?
How long have I known Jerry? Pretty much all my life. We grew up on the same road. His mum and my mum have been friends for ages, in and out of each other’s houses, that kind of thing. The funny thing is he never paid me much attention when we were young, seeing as he’s so much older than me.
When did that change? About a year ago. We ended up at the same New Year’s Eve party. It was dull as dishwater and we were in the kitchen all night raiding the larder and doing shots by the sink. We were together by the end of the night and haven’t been apart since.
When did we start planning it? Ages ago. We tried to foresee all the problems there’d be. I made lists upon lists of things we’d need, as well as making getaway plans and trying to predict where we might fail. The blood is the thing I forgot about.
The blood? We definitely hadn’t thought about all the blood. It’ll be done before you know it, he said. When you watch people being shot, stabbed, etc. on the TV there’s never that much blood, but man… there was a lot of blood. It went everywhere. Have you ever tried getting blood out of clothes? It’s impossible! Anyway, we had to buy new stuff and ditch the last lot hoping no-one would look inside that plastic bag.
What did we do with the body? Now that would be telling.
Laura Besley
This piece started out with the line: ‘We definitely hadn’t thought about all the blood.’ Initially I had planned to use that as the opening line, but that’s the not the way it turned out. I love it when the story has different ideas to the writer. The story always wins!
If you’d like to check out more of my writing, flash fiction and non-fiction, check out my blog: Living Loving and Writing. Or you can follow me on twitter @laurabesley or connect on facebook Laura Besley Writer
Awesome stuff Laura! Loved it, loved the ending
Thanks, Nisha!