Inhabited, Hubble Drive

I really love that the MKLitFest gives themed prompts for their competitions – I had great fun coming up with stories for the ‘Tales from the City’ collection, and the ‘Dreams for Llamas’ and Christmas themes were great to write to. However, I really struggled with the prompt for this year’s collection – “Home”. Of course, I thought about haunted houses, but – really? That’s been done, and I’m sure some writers could do a terrific fresh take on that, but not me, and certainly not in 500 words. So, I was all set to give it a pass, but then one foggy morning, I was walking through the new-build estate up the road, remembering when it was being built (and when it was all just fields, yes, yes) and thinking about the idea of “phrogging”, idly wondering whether anyone might have snuck into one of the houses and made their secret home up in one of the lofts. I had the theme from The Exorcist playing at the time, and two ideas bumped into each other in my head, and when they’d picked themselves up and dusted themselves down, I had a story. Apologies to anyone who reads this who actually does live on Hubble Drive. I’m sure everything’s fine 🙂

The LitFest took a pass on this one, but I had so much fun writing it that I’ve shared it on here for anyone to read. Enjoy. Wait – did you just hear something knocking from upstairs? I’ll go and look…