Sunday Writers’ Club Blog

Enjoy reading “Treacle” by Sunday Writers’ Club member Connie Phlipot. Based on the story prompt: Write a story entitled “Treacle” where, ironically, the story’s pacing is quite the opposite – no backstory, no pondering protagonist, no narrator interjections – it howls along, leaving the reader gripped with anticipation to the big question: Why the hell is this story entitled “Treacle”?

Dana wasn’t alone.

A whisper of warm air against his skin, the echo of an undefinable rasping against the wall. Sweat dripped down his side into the drawstring waistband of his pants. He got up from his knees — he’d been going through his morning exercise routine. He had devised it years ago to define and delimitate his days.

ALL BEARDS MUST BE SHAVED BY MIDNIGHT.

The priest launched into the sonorous voice reserved for incantations as he read the bold sign on the village hall. He spat. God had determined that holy men must have their faces covered.

“What if a woman were told to shave her head?” he thundered to the baroness, who had stepped out of her carriage to read it.

The cardboard cover was bent at the edges, the red coloring faded to pink in the center. Angela didn’t buy expensive leather bound notebooks for her journals in those days. She scooped up a handful from the college bookstore sales bin at the end of the term. She had only one requirement — that they were lined. She couldn’t journal across blank pages. She needed some structure to guide her wandering thoughts. This one was from her late 20s. One of the last notebooks she had bought at school.

The villagers loved them, or to be more precise, “respected” them, because the love was tinged with a bit of fear. How could you not be a little afraid of such strong characters. They looked as if forged from the same iron as the harnesses and rails and pots and pans they made. No one had ever seen them get hurt, or look sad.

The canes of the raspberry bushes had to reach a purplish stage of red. Each early January morning the villagers would gather around a patch of raspberries at the edge of town. They didn’t need to say anything or make some kind of an announcement.

Trams are a much-loved mode of transport–rattling and clanging along busy streets in the world’s most cosmopolitan cities. But the Central European species of tram is particularly fascinating, as Sunday Writers’ Club member Connie Phlipot shares with us here.
Do you enjoy riding the tram? Please do share your thoughts about this story and how you feel about riding trams in the comments section at the end of this blog post.