Memento by Carolyn Glass

It was another one. Just the same as always, abducted, restrained, left to die somewhere and later dumped. But we were sure he would make a mistake soon. The intervals got shorter, the dump sites more public, we were trying to find a link between the victims, or the place he was holding them, but zilch.

As usual it was overconfidence that got him caught. He always took a souvenir, the ring finger of the left hand, complete with rings. All the victims’ families agreed there was at least one ring taken.

A very shaken jeweller tipped us off, he had been offered a ring, and he rang the secret alarm under the counter which got us there in minutes. He said he would not have realised the significance, had he not noticed the guy wresting it from a finger which he then placed back in his pocket.

Memento by Lesley Whyte

She left her cellphone in my room. A little souvenir, a memento of our time together. Of course, she didn't just leave it on my nightstand or dresser like a normal person would have done. Oh, no, she had to tape it to the underside of my bed. Where I wouldn't see it. Where I wouldn't even know about it until after the cops found it.

Well played, Cass. Well played.

Day Thirty

And today's prompt is...

Memento

Broken Doll by James D. Irwin

They treated her like a plaything in her teens. By twenty-five she wasn't much more than a broken doll.

Broken Doll by Lesley Whyte

He called me his little broken doll. I wasn't sure if it was a compliment. Actually, I'm still not sure, but I like to think it was. I always pictured little girls who loved their dolls so much that they broke them - squeezing them too tight, playing with them too wildly, taking them to bed when really they should have been left on a shelf. I thought it was a cute little pet name. I thought it was a sweet. He wasn't good with words, he wasn't good with feelings. But it was something we shared, something that brought us closer and made what we had real.

Turns out he called me his little broken doll because I was pretty but damaged goods. Still, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Broken Doll by Sara Travis

When Elsie was five years old, her mother bought her a china doll. Blue eyes, painted lips, dark curls, Elsie loved her instantly.

When Violet came to stay, Elsie was instructed to share her newest playmate with her older cousin. And when she refused, Violet snatched the doll from Elsie’s hands, hurling the thing against the bedroom wall. Elsie did not cry. She did not scream. She did not tug at her cousin’s long hair, or scratch at her eyes with her fingernails, or throw herself down on the rug, thumping her fists and kicking her feet. Instead, Elsie watched with mild curiosity as chunks of her beloved doll’s head fell to the floor.

They stuck her little face back together with glue, but the cracks never disappeared, and she was never quite the same after that. Elsie didn’t like to look at her. Something had broken inside of the girl, too, and although the cracks were never visible, they were there nonetheless. When Elsie turned twelve, Violet came to stay for the weekend. Elsie crept into her cousin’s room in the middle of the night, and sliced her face with a kitchen knife. Even now, many years later, when she closes her eyes, Elsie can hear the screams, see the red seeping through the bed sheets, smell the fear in the stale air. And when that happens, she pictures the cracked, distorted face of her lovely china doll, broken on the carpet, and something inside her feels whole once more.

Day Thirty

And today's prompt is...

Broken Doll

Cuban Heat by Emily Chadwick

They say there comes a day in every man’s life when he deserves to smoke a Cuban cigar. A rite of passage, if you will.

My time came a short while after I had turned fifteen.

I was mowing Mr Henderson’s lawn. Now, that doesn’t really sound like a promising start to a story, but I swear it gets better. He came out into the garden to oversee my work, like he always did, standing on the decking like a general and smoking one of his fine Cuban cigars. A curl of dark smoke rose into the summer sky (that’s as poetic as you’re going to get, you know).

As I turned at the bottom of the garden, Mr Henderson fell to the ground. This wasn’t as dramatic as it seems, as he just kind of slumped as opposed to tumbled from the decking. But still, I was pretty shaken up. I abandoned the lawn mower (after switching it off, of course) and ran back up the garden, shouting, “Mr Henderson! Are you all right?”

There was no response.

I wasn’t really sure what to do – my lawn mowing expertise didn’t really cover elderly collapse – so I just rushed inside, grabbed the phone off the wall and called 999.

Once the ambulance was on its way and I had moved Mr Henderson into the recovery position (at the instruction of the nice lady on the phone), I noticed that Mr Henderson’s Cuban cigar was still smouldering on the decking. I was curious, which overrode any apprehension I might have felt about pilfering the half-smoked cigar. Was it really as magical and life-changing as my friends had made it out to be?

I scooped it up off the ground and took a long drag.

Then I coughed, choked, spat and tossed the cigar onto the ground.

Disgusting.

Cuban Heat by Lesley Whyte

The air was thick and muggy. The sky was red streaked with orange. We sat on his balcony, looking out over the ocean. Watching the figures walking along the shore, silhouetted against the bright sky. 

He smoked a cigar. I tried not to choke on cigar smoke.

The sweat crept along my collarbone. A gunshot rang out in the distance. The wind rustled through the trees. Our skin stuck to the warm, metal chairs. 

He smoked a cigar. I tried not to choke on the smoke.

Cuban Heat by Sam Smith

There was a three month period in my life where I would put something odd in the microwave once a day. I had just moved into my first place by myself, so I felt pretty free from rules. Mum would have never let me use the microwave for entertainment purposes. It was for cooking in her house. I used it to warm up my socks on a cold day a couple of times. I did the same with my pants once, but it’s quite hard to know how long pants need to be in the microwave to get them warm but not so hot that they burn some sensitive areas of my body. I have the scars to prove it.

Finding things to put in a microwave wasn’t too difficult. At first, I just looked around my flat, picking up old books and toys from boxes that Mum forced me to take because they were taking up room in her house. Books don’t really do much unless you leave them in there for a long time, then they start burning in a weird way. All the pages curl up and darken. When you take it out, the middle pages are sort of soggy. Toys just melt if they’re made of plastic. Not as dramatic as I thought it would be as a child.

Soon, I started to run out of stuff and I started to steal things just to microwave them. Beer mats, potted plants, sandwiches, fancy Cuban cigars from some prick at a club, hats, oranges. All sorts of rubbish. It taught me a valuable lesson. Everything reacts when it’s exposed to enough heat. I started to apply this theory to situations in life. I argued more with people, stared at them until they felt uncomfortable, shouted every once in a while to see what would happen. It was a strange time in my life.

The novelty of putting things in the microwave eventually wore off when someone complained about the smell of burning plastic coming from my flat. I guess they thought I was making bombs or something because they rang the police, whom swiftly turned up at my door. They shouted at me to get on the ground. I reacted. Currently I am serving a five year sentence for throwing molten plastic at a police officer. Prison is no fun.

Day Thirty

And today's prompt is...

Cuban Heat.