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Creative Writing Task (narrative)

Write a story about a time when things "turned out unexpectedly”

Date : 07/03/2023

Author Information

Kanwar

Uploaded by : Kanwar
Uploaded on : 07/03/2023
Subject : English

“Write a story about a time when things turned out unexpectedly” - but do so using the features of one of the genres you have studied in the Prepare section:

  • Crime/Detective
  • I entered the building through the rotating doors, I never use the automatic ones. There`s something about automatism that grates with me. I took the stairs and entered the fourth floor. A rare stream of morning light, soft and hazy as one would expect in April, filled the trading floor with a luminescence that was short lived. Not twenty minutes later storm clouds roiled and rolled pregnant with the world`s energy. I felt like I was in the middle of a great consternation, on the 24th floor and not the 4th.

    This imbroglio summed up my year, by force of habit and hopelesness I looked round to assess which of the hounds of hell would be most disgracefully, contemptibly, predictably on my case today. The everyday folk, the water-cooler talkers, ramblers, gabblers...didn`t really disturb my state of mind for at most a couple of minutes each week. It was the radioactive, carcinogenic, formless executives of my division that had finally stolen my soul not too long ago.

    I can list them for you; Charles (Division Head), Michael (Deputy Director of Operations) and Alan (Senior Risk Manager). Unassuming, pleasant in everyday conversation; vipers and poisonous by temperament when it came to money. I logged onto my computer systems one by one, basking in the glorious interval of peace and solitude before the flashing screens, the notification bells and the overwhelming bilge of emails asking me of something. Always suspicious of the prying, wolf-like dead eyes of my competitors I checked
    my Profit and Loss account to see if any overnight moves had disturbed the burgeoning balance in my trading account.

    The roaring risks of the last week had paid off, the biggest of my career to date. I needed that bonus this year, to get out and make something of the time I have left.

    I had to look twice, three times, each time clicking refresh hoping for something less morbid and terminal than what I was seeing. Alan had flagged my balance and somehow, for some reason and for some nefarious purpose no doubt transferred the entire profit of the last week to someone called James Darrow. Who was this? I looked up the register of employees and he WAS there. He had worked on the floor for some 6 months, but I`d never seem him! Who was this shadow, to my mind threatening figure.

    I glanced with purpose at Alan`s office. He wasn`t there....but I`d seen not an hour ago! He had to slip past me unless he was going...
    to the stairs..the emergency exit.

    Perhaps he was avoiding me? I got up languidly, picked up my coffee mug and walked with growing rapidity to that same exit, all the whilst trying to pick out this James Darrow. I edged open the emergency bar, expecting some sort of rapid response trigger but none came. It has been disengaged. I edged through the door into a parallel Universe..everywhere iron railings, meshed floors and stainless steel handrails. I walked down a flight, stopped suddenly and looked back at the corner of a right-angled turning. There, slumped over in the shadows of this darkened and cold exit was someone, draped with a suit jack butat what first-look seemed to be a medieval robe, a cloak of some sort.

    I knew who it was, it was him whom I had come down here looking for. As I lifted the jacket in one swooping motion I saw a pair of eyes, begging for something, for life or forgiveness in the afterlife? I couldn`t tell but not a jot of sympathy, in fact, relief and a release from a gnawing somewhere inside of me was the physiological rapid reponse I diagnosed. He had the beginnings of a bruising pattent on his neck, in the form of a red rash. His head was tilted off-angle, irregular even for this overweight, toxified and hedonistic caricature.

    As I leaned in to search his pockets I felt a hand on my left side, a slight breeze on my cheek and a whisper that carried on in an ceremeonious sweep down the stairs. I glanced to my right and double-taked, it cannot be...it`s scientifically impossible! I saw my exact double, a younger looking and healthier version no doubt, but for all intents and purposes (which I had already made haste to
    judge...) he was me! I was not him.

    He shot a leering, maniacal grin, cackled and swept his head back aloof of everything the world had to offer as he contorted himself down another and another set of stairs. I dropped everything and launched myself down whole chunks of steps at a time. My knee threatened to buckle but I caught him at the foot of the ground floor but he slithered through my grasp and out into the foyer.

    "THERE HE IS GENTLEMAN! THERE IS THE MAN THAT KILLED ALAN JOHNSON YET JUST A FEW MINUTES AGO!!! HE HAD ME IN HIS CLUTCHES BUT I ESCAPED AND LOOK HERE, LOOK WHAT HE HAS DONE TO MY FACE!"

    He turned his right side toward the officers, who were now brandishing
    firearms and raising them slowly but concertedly toward...toward...me. His face was a panoply of slashes and scratches, blood slowly but steadily effusing into a red stain which made him look like he had two sides. As I looked at his aghast and vindictively, even aggressively, I saw him wink and grin with eyes of startling intensity. No one seemed to notice...I moved forward and gesticulated
    to the officer that this man was an impostor, not quite getting my words out but doing enough to make him look across at the man that had accused me.

    He seemed to see something, looked again at me and them him, shook his head and raised his gun with increasingly clear purpose and determined judgement. I raised my hands in a pleading motion, staggered a few steps before halting, like some spirit-essence had grabbed the back of my head and whispered in my ears the words, `Where has your money gone chap? To me, it`s sitting comfortably in my ungrateful possession! Aha! I say ungrateful because it was he who I convinced, that you had wronged me!`

    These words sounded less rythmnic than they had on the stairs but the bone twisting truth of this had only now squarely and logically been concluded by me for their scope and shape. I was the one, the one who had a history with Alan, the one whom they were all trying to dispose of - it was I who was in the cross-hairs. I lowered my arms, bent my knees and with ungraceful dignity bent to my immediate fate.

    This resource was uploaded by: Kanwar

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