Competition

No. 1091: Short short story

Set by Jaspistos: One of Maugham's best stories begins with the question: 'Do you like macaroni?' and ends with the exclamation: 'You bloody fool, you killed the wrong man!' You are invited to write a very short story within the framework of these two sentences (maximum 200 words, including the given quotations). Entries to 'Competition No. 1091' by 30 November.

No. 1088: The winners

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked to describe a 'love scene' from a novel which has the opposite of an aphrodisiac effect on the reader.

To guard against masculine bias, I asked a female colleague to assist me in measuring the negative response factor. A hard time we had of it, in the laboratory. Some of you, I am sorry to say, struck us as deplorably crude in your methods: far too many blackheads, trusses, unwashed socks, etc. After all, it isn't always the physical that has the most off-putting effect. What about archness, garrulity, Lawrentian solemnity or sheer dogged effort? There were several memorable shudders. The scene, for instance, conjured up by C. Clark's: "Be gentle," she shouted, rubbing her bandaged nose along the ragged edge of his solitary ear, a permanent reminder of their battle for the room.' I shivered at I.C. Snell's gum-chewing girl: 'As I watched the Bog Off Elvis printed on her T-shirt rise and fall . . ' and I was chilled by J.S. Waller's dreary paperback-novel lead-in: 'From the cocktail party chat-up, through the candlelit intimacy of the bistro dinner, to coffee at her place, to this, there had been a sort of preordained inevitability that they would end up in bed.'

Special Mary Whitehouse Awards of £6 to Laurence Fowler for his frigidly casual encounter, and to Harrison Everard for his ghoulish sci-fi sex (a bit of a dodge, but a good o'ne):

'Well, let's start,' said Jim.

'Angela took off her glasses. She felt, and indeed now was, completely naked. 'Is this right?' she asked.

'Approximately,' said Jim. 'Let's have the other bar on of the electric fire.' He put on his slippers and walked across the room.

Angela peered at the bending figure.

He came back. 'Further to the left, I think. The springs are weak this side.' He kissed her. 'What's the time?'

'I can't see anything without my glasses. Why?' 'I must be away be six. Are you ready?' `lam a bit cold. Where's the downie?'

'At the cleaners'. Well, here goes.'

They made love. Angela reached for her glasses. He placed his hand on hers. 'Just lie there,' he said. He put on his trousers.

'Thanks,' he said. 'Here are your glasses. I enjoyed that'.

(Laurence Fowler) The exotically beautiful creature was beckoning to him now. This Gritta was so seductively feminine. His sweating, naked body yearned for her. The next moment he was in her arms, which wound themselves around him tightly. She had so many, even for a Martian.

Her pale green flesh throbbed with desire. He cursed his lack of knowledge of her physical geography. 'What', he wondered, 'does what? And where?'

Even as he pondered this problem, his questing organs found what they so eagerly sought.

'You Plutonians,' she murmured, 'are so well endowed. Nine of them!'

An unengaged tentacle caressed his scaly tail. He felt it was not the moment to explain that his sperm was poisonous, and that on his planet foetuses grew and were nourished in the rotting carcases of females.

(Harrison Everard)

1 expected a few entries from Cold Comfort Farm and, sure enough, Ellen Brigwell obliged with: 'Outside, in the shivering night, I heard the far-off, faint, strangulated bleat of her goats': but she was edged out of a place by Edward Samson's Eskimo foreplay. Four pounds to him and to John .Sweetman, and a pound apiece to anyone quoted.

Nonook crawled into his igloo on his hands and knees, where he knew Nooka was waiting for him. Inside it was warm with the familar smell of dry bear-skin and blubber. Nooka lay curled UP deep beneath a pile of seal-skins, only her smiling face visible. Nonook, his heart thumping wildlYs crept up beside the pile of skins. Eagerly, fumblingly, endlessly it seemed, he pulled away skin after skin. His hands ached, sweat dripped from his brow. At last Nooka lay revealed, smiling, her round body shining with seal-oil. Excited by itS odour, Nonook grasped her body, his pulses throbbing, as it slipped from his grasp time and again. At last he held Nooka firmly. She giggle rubbed her oiled cheek against his and whispered, 'Why are the dogs barking?' BreathlesslY he said, 'I forgot to feed them.' (E rd soa 'Joanna, darling. Do you realise it's (Edward s dStaemx a ci: l 'How clever of you to remember. Paul doesn't' 'Well, I remembered..It's because we've got t° (E rd soa 'Joanna, darling. Do you realise it's (Edward s

a year since our first weekend?'

dStaemx a ci: l 'How clever of you to remember. Paul doesn't' 'Well, I remembered..It's because we've got t° Diagram 52.' A I 'Let me see. Oh, it's terribly complicate,.s should think you'll have to take your vest off thi time.'

`Oh, alright. 1 shall keep my socks on.'

'And your gloves. Your hands are so cold.' si `I'll leave the book open on the pillow. J°

lift—'

'Hell! I've got cramp. We'll have to start againu'r 'O.K. Look at the diagram. That's where Y° other leg has to go.' 'Well, she must be double-jointed. Whar5 time?'

'Don't worry. Parkinson isn't on for

minutes. We won't miss the beginning.' 'That's good. But you'd better hurry.' (John Swee tina"