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Think you have what it takes?

Want to get some practice?

Just need an excuse to put pen to paper?

Then enter the Secret Attic Short Story Competition!

Each month you can submit an entry that will be passed onto our judges who will pick the best and award a winner. During some months the subject matter will be a 'free for all', where you can write anything you like, other months will have a specific theme.

Previous Competition Winners

February 2005 David Willshaw

April 2005 Christine Sutton

May 2005 George L Darley

July 2005 Robyn O'Hara

August 2005 Richard Adamski

September 2005 Hannah Southgate

October 2005 Heather Parker

December 2005 Feathers by Bob Lakin

January 2006 RD Larson

February 2006 Debra Spiller

March 2006 Nethi Sette

April 2006 Joe Louis

May 2006 Kim Montgomery

Love of Literature by Raymond Hopkins, Kronoby, Finland

Missing by Debra Spiller, Kent, UK

Diary of a Ghost by Suzanne Ralphson, Leicester, UK

Shreds of Love by Irene Edwards, Angus, UK

Lip Service by Will Orr-Ewing, London, UK

Red by Gary Campbell, Mount Gambier, Australia

Leaving The City In Ruins. by Trevor Nicholl, Manchester, UK

One For The Watercooler by Simon Maltz, London, UK

The moment Josephine opened the sash window the ledge commanded her to jump, it knew her desires and it made every effort to make the London rush-hour seem a strangely appealing setting for her final display. She stepped up. Bishopsgate - teaming with traffic, a stream of commuters; her amphitheatre, her audience!
The ledge was brutal honesty, unmasked, a confession without boundaries, Josephine’s pedestal, her plaque-to-be. Don’t look down! it barked up at her, though the wind in the air carried its voice, one foot at a time! It was her grand piano, a taste of her requiem, her feet placed on each pedal like the beginning of a concerto, the concentration of that brief moment before the freefall, the flow of ivory keys being rolled, descending, falling into the resonance of the lowest notes like a bed of thunder and a finite linger before the silence of an empty auditorium, a concrete pavement, then nothing, not even a single echoed clap.
Jump! it commanded her.
She stood there on that ledge, a sculpture of a tainted young heroine, tarnished and tired, a heroine soon to be just another eerie ghost. She’d spent the morning hours straightening her hair and applying subtle make-up, ironing her crisp double-cuff shirt, picking out a cardigan that would tonally match.
Don’t wait, don’t savour!
The ledge hissed, neither friend nor keeper, a user, in cahoots with the concrete, Cassius calling down to Brutus, I’ve got a live one for you, sending her down! Another one lured in by the fake petition, the whole of London below her like waves crashing the base of a cliff, too late to turn back because a deal is a deal, and the Devil can put on a mighty show, flipping a penny and revealing a pound, and already one’s fingers are over the keys in fervour, ready to play to the guest-of-honour Himself.
The locks of Josephine’s auburn hair, flowing in streams down towards her breasts; her light cotton cardigan, soft lime, flapping in the wind; her hands, carefully positioned on the frames, every part of her body frozen in tense apprehension.
Jump! the ledge screamed, and Josephine started to sway forward gently, the threshold of balance pierced by the tip of her nose. Her will to give in, to leap and walk among daffodils with Hades, the energy around her livid, or to stay standing and drain out another day in what was the essence of Hell, leaving the Devil sitting in his seat, watching his timepiece.
Josephine was ready this time, satisfied with necessary reasoning and happy to reside over the assumption that there would be no life beyond the cold snap, the pain of Bishopsgate.
At worst, she may arise as a marbled polecat, orphaned among the sloped dunes of the Gobi, with little or no recollection of her life dodging the pollution of dirty looks, and Heaven and Hell would finally be reduced to abstractions, where the lost soul of the deceased is a lighted candle, encased inside a glass urn for the living to worship with a glance up towards the stars, graveside monologues to burning wax.
Her simple reasoning came like error-messages on her infected computer, flashing and streaming across like bad football results, reminders of the unavoidable truth, not pretty or comforting, but ugly and imminent. Reasoning came everyday, forcefully. Reasoning knew no etiquette. They were all ugly.
They were the foreign tourists, standing to the left on an escalator, motionless, during the peak of traffic. For all the coughs without a hand to the mouth. The urchins who beg for money to feed their babies, as if their dirty habit is a rosebush that needs watering, a lover in need of romance; as if hidden under those baby wrappings isn’t just an empty needle in need of attention. For the thick tyre of the N15, and for the puddle it forgets to avoid. For the puddle that wants to be disturbed, and the splash, like an army of bees from a shaken hive. For the elaborate timing, the clinical execution. The cost of dry-cleaning. A white dress for Christmas. Another fine fucking day in paradise. For the slain until pardoned, those lying bastards, the yes-men and the power hungry, those men who suck the marrow from all decency, leaving integrity brittle and pale.
But it wasn’t all for them, not entirely. It was for romanticism, for Plath and Wevill and for the place where the lost and unbalanced travel in large clusters along a faintly beaten track; to join them on that journey, her part to play between the wind and a flutter of wings and the concrete that would end it all.
It was also for Charles. Dear innocent Charles. And that fucking bitch Gloria, whose take on ‘keep away from my man’ was evidently a table for two at L’Escargot.
A few of the yes-men appeared as sheep in a meadow, the only fences keeping them from escaping their field the red-tape of office hierarchy, the wife who made it impossible for them to be anything but slaves to the 35k salary, and a lifestyle akin to McCarthy era paranoia. They had everything they wanted and all they’d had to do was sell their selves to a Satan in pin-stripe, ten-a-penny in any corner of the city. Josephine watched them on the pavement, nervously walking to Dirty Dick’s for an early lunch, briskly keeping up with the flow around them, if one were to duck in cowardice, the others would surely follow suit. Suit follow suit.
It would be a show-stopping aria; her cotton blouse, waving and fluttering in the wind, arms flapping, twisted flesh, that thud as she’d hit the pavement, birds reacting with fear, that moment like a sudden blow to a dandelion, scattering seeds across the street as if the traffic were fertile land.
That moment immediately after, the shock, in which a pin-drop would finally have its say, the audience stunned, each of them a statue, chess pieces in the aftermath of a checkmate. That moment. Full glory, a row of medals, a ribbon on her lapel. In recognition of services for the betterment of society, for finally having the bottle, shifting the focus, a real tragedy to consume.
She closed her eyes and tightened her grip, and the wind almost took her down, an inch to go before the edge, the hoots of an approaching train getting closer. Her eyes were open, and Bishopsgate had turned into a cattle market, and she could see the space where she would land, visualising that plot, her final resting place. Eyes closed again, and the ledge nudged her closer, as if ants underneath her feet were carrying her weight, a wobble, a lean in the direction of the wind. She raised the soles of her feet, and smiled.
We’ll go down smiling! the ledge yelled from beneath her.

She felt the attention of the audience, now her time had arrived, could see their eyes on her, gasping, holding their breaths, could it really be? Cancel the meeting! Put the wine on ice! Call the police! An ambulance! Sweet mother of Christ have mercy!
WE’LL GO DOWN NOW! shrieked the ledge, WE’LL FUCK ‘EM ALL UP!
3…
GIVE ‘EM HELL!
2…
MAKE ‘EM PAY!!
1…
HELL!!

The phone rang, a monotonous whine, with no echo but a constant looping of the same declaration – pick me up, pick me up, pick me up, pick me up….
Josephine gingerly removed herself from the ledge and carefully closed the sash window. She straightened out her skirt, pulled her cardigan together, fastening one button, wiped a stray hair from her cheek, walked towards her desk, sat at her chair, took a deep breath, and picked up the receiver.
“Good Morning, Mutual Trust Investments, Josephine speaking, how can I help?”