Keith Vickerstaffe
Bio
I am hopeful of becoming a full-time published writer but for now would be happy to work within the publishing industry. My reading ranges from Stephen King to Robert Rankin, so very eclectic!!
Stories (12)
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A Perfect Inside Job
The engine was idling nicely as I got myself ready for the burst of action that was soon to come. Every moment that passed was stressful because I was worried that something had gone wrong and I would have to leave the scene in a hurry without my friends and criminal partners. I chain-smoked too, lighting the end of every fresh cigarette with the ember of the last and then ditching it into the road.
By Keith Vickerstaffe 4 years ago in Fiction
Just Kids Playing
Part 8 of a connected story written especially for the Summer Challenge. The Magic Window Closes When we had returned to the old barn from the magical window, we were not surprised to find out that we were all bitterly cold and also covered in snowflakes. The window seemed to offer a kind of transparency that was fascinating as well as truly weird. Any ten-year-old with even the most basic of imagination would think that it was all fantastic, Scott believed totally in everything that had happened over the last couple of weeks; his trip to Sithney Fair plus everything that us three had told him of our own adventures too. I however, was still struggling with the whole thing, even though I had single-handedly changed the past. To me it was all a fantasy, a fantasy that my pragmatic head just couldn’t allow to be real.
By Keith Vickerstaffe 4 years ago in Fiction
Just Kids Playing
Part 7 of a longer story written for the Summer Challenge Scott took the best part of a week to recover from his heavy cold and when he did turn up at the school gates on that warm Monday morning, he still didn’t look quite himself. He joined myself and Charlie in the playground, David was still absent due to his prolonged grieving over the news of the death of his friend Jack, asking straight away about the old barn and what had happened since he was last there. I hadn’t told Charlie about my solo trip to the barn, so felt it was now time to come clean and spill the beans.
By Keith Vickerstaffe 4 years ago in Fiction
Just Kids Playing
Part 6 of a longer story written for the Summer Challenge Because I seemed to be the only one of us who hadn’t brought anything back through with me from my trip, I have to confess that I felt unsure that it had actually happened. The memory of the events that I presumed had happened with the charging bull and the killing of the young boy were very fresh and felt real enough but the lack of physical evidence had put me firmly in two minds.
By Keith Vickerstaffe 4 years ago in Fiction
Just Kids Playing
Part Five of a longer story written for the Summer Challenge We had all returned home after David had sat and showed us the framed photographs that he had brought back from his trip through the window. The pictures themselves were all of a young boy who David introduced us to as Jack, his best friend from before he moved here. We passed them around between us but were more intrigued with David's actual trip. He told us about the hay-field and the old lady that he met and as we all parted company, he told us that he was worried about Jack and that he was going to ask his folks for some help in locating him.
By Keith Vickerstaffe 4 years ago in Fiction
Just Kids Playing
Part Four of a longer story written for the summer challenge David woke up at just after 7am and immediately started to wrestle with the notion of getting up and going to school or to make an attempt at feigning illness so that he didn't have to. His mother had seen most of his illness attempts and was wise to them but David had been reading a lot recently and had a few more that needed to be tried out. One of the latest was that he was coming down with Malaria, an illness that he had read about without understanding properly just last week. Apparently, it was passed to humans by little insects called Mosquitos and could be quite deadly if left untreated. David had tried to convince his mother only two weeks ago that he had tuberculosis after befriending a badger in the garden but this had been dismissed out of hand and punished by an earlier bedtime than normal. In the end, David started to think about the abandoned old barn in the woods and its very strange window and decided that that was more intriguing than any attempted illness.
By Keith Vickerstaffe 4 years ago in Fiction
Just Kids Playing
Part 3 of a longer story written especially for the Summer Challenge Just Kids Playing Charlie goes to the Hill As the four of us headed home after hearing as much as we all wanted to about Scott's trip to Sithney Fair, I noticed that Charlie was lagging a little behind and looked very deep in thought. I deliberately slowed my pace by taking the next five or six footsteps a little slower and he very nearly bumped into me. He looked up, startled at first as though he had just been woken from a vivid dream, smiled and then looked down again.
By Keith Vickerstaffe 4 years ago in Fiction
Just Kids Playing
Part 2 of one longer story written for the Summer Challenge. Scott goes to the Fair The excitement at school the next day was tangible for the four friends and lessons couldn't pass quickly enough for any of them. Where they really wanted to be was back in the abandoned barn in Godolphin Woods. Scott and myself shared our lessons but Charlie and David were one year below us and were educated in a different part of the building. The strange thing was that whilst at school, Scott and I weren't really best buddies and didn't even sit close to each other yet when the school end bell rang it was like we connected. Maybe it was because we lived just a few doors apart and had known each other for pretty much all of our lives.
By Keith Vickerstaffe 5 years ago in Fiction
Just Kids Playing
Meeting up with my friends David, Charlie and Scott made every school day worth the effort. The hours of prolonged, but necessary force-fed education gave a growing boy the appetite to expand his mind when the bell rang and we all left school for the day. The group of kids that I hung around with were all local to the area, in fact we all lived within two hundred yards of each other in the village of Godolphin Cross. Set in a valley between two overlooking hills and surrounded by extensive farmland as well as the gloriously spooky Godolphin Woods, the village was a fairly busy place, there was the Primary School that served the outlying areas of the nearest town, Helston, as well as a Post Office, two small stores, a Car Repair Garage and the Pub.
By Keith Vickerstaffe 5 years ago in Fiction
Best Foot Forward
Best Foot Forward Billy exhaled sharp breath, braced himself against the rear wall of the trench and prepared to go. As the whistle sounded, he gave a haphazard genuflection and pushed forward with all of his strength. He leapt and hit the second rung of the rickety trench-climbing ladder hard. In the eerie silence he heard it creak under his weight but it held and propelled him up and over the top into no-mans-land.
By Keith Vickerstaffe 5 years ago in Fiction
