Here is a short story with a word count of just under 300 words. When you limit your word count it can help intensify your ideas and give your creative writing a tight structure. You choose your words more carefully and pick words that resonate. It is also fun as you decide what you really want to say and what might be irrelevant. Good discipline!
This is a pastiche. A little bit of Dickens, Stevenson and the current political situation all mingling in a rather dismal setting. There is something sinister about an animated puppet, especially when its owner is called Saint-Jean Blackstone!
Communion.
‘Let’s commence with fresh lobster,’ murmured Saint-Jean Blackstone, his eyes wandering to the entrance door. There was little natural light in the nook of the Spitalfields inn. Nevertheless, my uncle’s smooth, porcelain hands retrieved something from beneath the table and made it comfortable beside me on our bench. It was a puppet, about three quarters my size, dressed as a buccaneer.
‘Meet Pugh,’ said Saint-Jean. ‘He’s harmless until you get to know him.’ My uncle coughed into a pale, linen handkerchief and considered the contents. Pugh turned his head in my direction and allowed his hat to droop rather rakishly.
‘Beautiful eyes,‘ I said to Pugh, widening my own.’ Lapis blue.’
Pugh’s jaw dropped slightly and then closed again. His eyes now fixed roguishly on my proud bosom.
‘He’s not used to girls,’ said Uncle Blackstone sotto voce. ‘Too much time at sea.’ He scraped a long finger nail through his creature’s flaxen fringe. Pugh writhed with ungainly pleasure, biting playfully at his master’s hand before he recollected the company.
Unidentified sources claimed that Saint-Jean Blackstone orchestrated the entire beating heart of a ministry department without ever once quitting this intimate inn.
Blackstone’s eyes glinted ghastly gold in the dismal light. He drained a full glass of claret. ‘Pugh manages a crowded portfolio, nowadays. You may baptise him Amanuensis. What would I be without him?’
The Puppet tendered him a fork and Blackstone bolted a mouthful of the lobster’s scarcely dead flesh. Pugh stroked his master’s spine before rearranging our cutlery and plates.
‘Pugh’s without scruples,’ said Blackstone. ’He’s training to be a gentleman.’
The puppet’s head sank to one side as if wounded.
‘And what is your department?’ I asked.
‘Dark Interiors’ said my Uncle, his eyes once again travelling to the door.
