As Bella ripped the false lash from her eyelid, a hot salty tear slid down her cheek. An avalanche of smoky mascara followed in pursuit. Flannel in hand she began to scrub the orange skin on her face, enraged she ever thought she needed to be the colour of a carrot. Looking down at the cracks in her ornate gel nails, her anger flipped to exhaustion.
Continue readingCategory Archives: April 2026 – Vanity
Beneath the Froth
The door to the coffee shop tinkles as Charlotte opens it. At first glance, it bears no resemblance to the busy hairdressers it used to be, though there is something familiar in the warmth that envelops her the moment she steps inside.
It’s called ‘Froth,’ which Charlotte considers an appropriately shallow name for a place that was once called ‘Vanity Hair.’ On the surface, it was just somewhere you came to fix your hair. But the healing went deeper than that. People left feeling better about themselves on the inside as well as the outside.
Continue readingGlorious Vanity
Bob Hawkins nudged his empty pint glass across the beaten copper of the barroom table. Opposite him sat Jim “Kipper” Jones, whose weather-beaten face was an object lesson in why digging roads through West Wales winters was no career for an aspiring film star, especially not after thirty years. Bob was no picture himself, either. His lived-in face topped a scrawny frame wrapped in a Gannex mac two sizes too big, fished from the back rail of an Oxfam shop fifteen years earlier.
Continue readingYou’re the Villain in Someone Else’s Story
09/04/2012
Mildred Addams is an eyesore! Did her mum marry a gorilla? She’s a girl from school, built with the size and dimensions of a stone boulder, so shave her head and plonk her outside a nightclub and you’ve got yourself a bouncer. I swear if I pull down her knickers I’ll see her willy.
Anyway, come lunchtime, whilst me and my girlfriends are hanging out by the picnic tables, she’ll be there, eating by herself, her miserable stink putting me right off my lunch. Delia tells me to ignore her but I’m going to give it to golem girl someday.
Continue readingPrompt for April 2026 – Vanity
HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 23.04.26.
TASK: ‘Vanity’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Vanity’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 23rd April 2026. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 26.04.26, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
Send all homework to Pat