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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

My Own Personal Time Machine by David Darlington, Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK

Women and Me and My Mate Jamie by David Darlington, Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK

Collecting Footsteps by Annemaria Cooper, Glasgow, UK

The Burning Tree by Daniel Michael Manning, Bath, UK

As Still as Statues by Patrick Johnson, London, UK

The Bonestripper's Bait by Ben Schroeder, Melbourne, Australia

The road from Kaikoura to Christchurch undulates and slaps like a half-taut fishing line. Threads of tarseal and mud flail from it, sprawling over the hull of the waka.
From above, a car driving across the coast seems like a bead of salt-water washed onto the line, slovenly dripping back to the wake.
Greg and Karen are silent. She huddles beside him, gently rubbing her face. He glances at her libations, and has an awful premonition. He sees himself striking wildly at her, scratching out her womb. It is nothing, he thinks caustically, but vengeance against the man who kept his promise.
The fisher flicks his line, and umbilical farm-houses flicker through the rain as bait.
" This is it. Here."
Karen knows her husband has dreams of her, pushing through labour, giving birth to fish. She sees him praying on the toilet-seat.
" Here?".
Greg clicks open his door and kicks his feet out onto the mud. His sternum pops as he stands. "This is the place, we'll find him here. He's the only one left to help us."
She unbuckles her seat-belt and steps out onto the road. Outside the car, she is a ghost in the opaque.

They gaze through, to where the house radiates. It is old, though not antique. Only a few flecks of unpeeled paint remain on the roof and veranda, dull-gleaming lures.
They pass under two trees on the lawn, perpendicular and aggressive. She says to Greg, "I don't like what you've told me about him."
He takes her by the arm and walks her towards the door. Before they have reached the stoop, the door opens and a pale girl stumbles out towards them. She sees them, stalls, and lurches into the bushes. She begins to vomit, her back heaving in waves. She shies back and clutches his arm. He marches her inside.
As they cross through the door, they first see a man, draped in a silk curtain, lying spread- eagled on a table. Broken glass is sprinkled around his feet, in his feet, around his head. He is saying, "let us not be compromised."
As they watch he stops speaking and turns his head away.
From nowhere, Karen feels dampness against her arm. "Thankyou for coming. There are some things you ought to know." A voice, sou-wester on the manuka.
He is mildly grotesque in his features. Though he has a young face, he has a crooked eye and a crooked mouth. Symmetrical but not.
She is so desperate, and she almost cries, "my husband is dreaming of fish."
This skeletal and primary coloured boy narrows his eyes. "My ancestors were Pardoners. They sold indulgences to crowds, kept fat and rich by stealing bones from dead men and selling them to the living. I am of their stock, I strip bones of their flesh and preserve the relics."
“ What can you do for us?” Greg interrupts. It is too hot, clammy.
He snarls. “A time ago, they believed that holy bones had enough holiness left in them to carry us to heaven, but even bones become dust. Where does the holiness come from then? It comes from dust in the air itself. Then you have breathed in the holy dust. Everything eventually subtracts into everything else. So the holy bones were constructed. So your baby was constructed. So you were constructed. All out of holy dust.
You only felt your child and lost your child. It indented your stomach like pellets of lead. It indented your mind, but it is a construct of holy dust. It has come and gone. Come with me."
Together they walk through madness. In one room they dance like snakes. In other, everyone is painted white.
They leave the house through the back door, and find themselves on a cliff. There is no sound but the striding of the wind. There is a sheer fall before them.
" I once jumped off", whispers The Bone-Stripper. "Never fell. I kept falling until I fell into the place I am standing now." He grins. He has fish-scale teeth.
" If you lost everything, what would remain? Bones, certainly. Thoughts probably. Ghosts are only the thoughts of the living. Departing and arrivals.
Bones. Thoughts. Ghosts.
This is what your child is."
The bone-stripper removes something from his pocket, a jaw-bone. It has fine carving on it, scrimshaw of humanity. It is broad, and fine. He lifts it before them, and removes a line from his pocket. He flicks it around the lower part, and then winds it tightly. He pulls the jaw-bone away from himself. "We must not be compromised!" He shouts, and then he whips the line above his head. It flies into the sky. In a lower voice, he says, "who knows what fish we'll find tonight?"
Karen and Greg do not believe there is a line perched in the grey clouds above them.
Again he says, "Who knows?" Then, "My fear is my own. My own is my fear."
The sky begins to rumble and quake. Great flashes of lighting rip down and throttle trees and fences. "The heavens buckle tonight."
He tugs on the line, and it braced at his tension. It snaps and spins. The bone-stripper grips as tightly as he can, dragging it back towards himself. It snaps with an awful melody. He bears it tightly. Lower and lower it comes, until the hook touches the tips of the bone-strippers fingers. And then the jaw-bone swings down beside him. "Do you want it," he says, "or should I throw it back?"
They both think of nothing.
" It's freedom," he says, "an empty hook."