Jamie Graham

This short story was inspired by “Rocks are slow life” by the Super Furry Animals which was another suggestion from my bro.

Neil wasn’t from round here and nobody let him forget it.

He felt like an alien, “a Scotsman living in Newark”. He was used to running home from school every day to avoid the sticks and stones and names that hurt him.

One night he was so fed up he went for a walk, he couldn’t sleep anyway and was past caring why his Dad would only come home a couple of nights a week.

He could hear fireworks going off in the distance and they made his heart skip that little bit faster. He knew whoever was setting those off was probably one of his enemies from St. Cuthbert’s Comp.

Neil felt a sharp pain shoot down his thumb as he scaled the barbed wire fence to get into the quarry site but it was so dark it was hard to see how much it was bleeding.

The ground underneath his feet was becoming more and more unsteady but he just kept walking further into the darkness until he reached a massive pile of rocks.

Neil started to feel dizzy and lay down on one of the huge slabs and cast his eyes up to the stars.

This was the most relaxed he’d felt since he moved here and his breathing began to slow down. As life drained away from Neil with each jet of blood that spurted from his thumb, it felt good to be in the quarry.

Rocks are a slow life form, evolving and changing over hundreds and thousands of years, but Neil’s young life was tragically over before it had really begun.

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