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Friday 16 May 2014

FIRST PRIZE to Me!

I recently won first prize for my beginning for an accumulator story run by ww.creativefrontiers.com
http://creative-frontiers.com/continue-next-part-riggins-story-enter-accumulator-short-story-competition/

How about composing the next 300 - 350 words to the story and adding it to mine.  This is a great fun competition with great prizes to be won, for just 300 words and a little effort and imagination.
Here is my entry:



Riggins pushed back her fedora and re-read the black words crawling across the cream page. No, it said the same thing with her glasses on. The spidery strokes triggered a faint memory.  She should know who wrote it. She fingered the paper. Good quality, decent thickness, not some flimsy airmail weight. She held it to the light and noted the ‘croxley’ watermark. Obviously the writer had taste, albeit shocking penmanship and didn’t mind paying full postage.  She turned it over - nothing further, not even a signature. She examined the envelope. Posted in the U.K., last week, with no return address. Damn.
If some unknown person thought she would drop everything in the middle of her secret mission to Egypt on behalf of M.I.6, (or was it 7?) to stand around at the Cairo airport with a sign saying ‘Pick Me’, then they were crazy.  With strict instructions to be undercover at all times this action would attract the attention of the local police, not to mention numerous randy British tourists arriving to see the pyramids.
Her decision to dress as a male, right down to the classy headpiece and white linen suit was her answer to ‘being  undercover’. Most female operatives would have dressed in a burqa. Few would have had the imagination to take it a further step, although the attentions of several men and their invitations to accompany them home had worried her. She blamed her heavy jaw-line inherited from her late father, Brigadier Riggins. Young men appeared to be in great demand.  She had reconsidered the burqa option on three such occasions.
But a burqua would prevent her driving a car and transport was a necessity.
She’d been chosen for this mission because of her imagination and lateral thinking. Cecily had told her this, personally. So why the hell didn’t Cecily sign the damn letter? She’d just recognized the hand writing. Could it have been written under duress? Did her boss have a gun to her head? Contract law said anything signed under duress was invalid.
Someone pounded on her door…