What do you love or hate about Secret Attic? Tell us what you think in our poll.

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

Apple Juice by Raymond Hopkins, Kronoby, Finland

A Matter of Energy by Asher Wismer, North Wayne, Maine, USA

Dying to be thin by Emily Clift, Atherton, UK

She looked in the mirror, and staring back at her was the ugliest face on earth, she stood transfixed, glaring at her fat, flabby body, grabbing pieces of skin and pulling them angrily, tears streamed down her cheeks. "Why me?" she whispered, touching the mirror and tracing her finger down the horror of a reflection she saw there. To Ellie, she was fat, she was ugly, she was discusting. To everyone else, she was a skinny, pityfully skeletal, pale and withdrawn 14 year old. Ellie couldn't see this, all she saw, was fat. Horrible, ugly, hanging, fat.
She brung herself to turn away, and grabbed the jeans that lay on her bed tugging them on easily, the jeans hung loose around the hips, so loose infact that she had to wear a belt so tight it dug into her skin. After she'd pulled on her skimpy T-shirt and pulled her hair back into a bun, she sat down for a few minutes, regaining her vision, which had gone dodgy and dizzy. She stepped carefully downstairs, hoping not to lose balance, and made it into the kitchen, were she grabbed her trainers that lay on the mat and tugged them quickly on.
" Ellie?" her mother called, hearing her mother coming downstairs Ellie scarpered quickly out the door determined to miss the food lecture, there she saw her bike as always, waiting to take her on her daily ventures. She mounted the seat and foot on peddle she pushed off down the road, the world whizzing by.
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, sighing, this was how she liked it, how it was meant to be like, this was when she was happy, when all her bothers and cares just faded into the background and passed her by like rockets. As she opened her eyes the dizzy feeling re-gained it's hold over her and she had to slam on the breaks to sit down.
She sat on the pavement edge, holding her buzzing head, and slowly the dizziness faded and she took hold of her bike again riding back off onto the road. As the world became a rollercoaster again, she started to feel almost weightless, like the air, like she could fly. She shut her eyes and didn't care anymore about looking for cars and people and anything dangerous. She lifted her hands off the handles and let her feet slip off the peddles and allowed herself to lean back, her only support being the seat. She felt truly uplifted, almost out of consiousness, she felt like she was dreaming. It was then she felt her body tip off the bike, and then her consiousness fading completely, she sailed off into a black dark room, her mind over-taken completely by the darkness that seemed to surround her.
2 hours later. Her mother, father and younger sister Natalie were sat in a green waiting room, all pale with worry. As a doctor walks towards them with a grim expression the family begins to crumble and cry right there. They already know. Even so the doctor begins to explain what has become of their beloved daughter.
" I am very, very sorry to tell you, your daughter, Ellie, has passed away. We did our upmost to save her but with her poor health in the first place the fall she'd taken to the head had left her brain damaged and un-able to think or do anything for herself, she also went through a heart trauma which made the situation completely impossible to save her"
There Natalie and her parents sat motionless. Questions and thoughts and memories ran through each of their minds, and the main one being. "What if we had made her get better from the anorexia??"
They knew this was impossible and only she could of done that. Even so guilt and frustration over-came the family and they went home distraught and in agony from the loss of their friend, their sister, their daughter, their baby.
2 week later Natalie sat on her bed, touching the pictures of her lovely sister and tears falling solitarily onto them, she lifted a shaking hand and took an overdose of penicillin, then she lay down her head, closing her eyes, entering the same darkness as her sister, she died aswell.
After the death of her last daughter, the mother climbed a tower block and jumped off it, sailing through the air to land in a motionless clump on the ground.
The last one, the father, no he didn't commit suicide, he did worse, he lived a life of regret, sadness, dis-belief and depression.
There he sits, in that carehome, reading his paper, like every sunday, every so often he'l glimpse up towards the sky, gazing up at the heavens, imagining his family up there, and waiting to join them.

Anorexia doesn't ruin one life, it can ruin many.