Novels by Lucy Wence

Craig impatiently lit another cigarette as he stood, leaning on his car beside some rat-infested alley in Whelp. The stench coming from the trashcans behind was much worse than when he worked the toilets way back in high school. Checking his time-piece, 14:13 hours. He’d been standing there for what…..an hour at the least and during that time had reduced his pack of Camels to a deplorable state. So much for agreements, where in hell was the damn kid he was supposed to meet. An unkempt-looking dark kid in scuffed boots with dreadlocks, tattered jeans and a too-large overcoat bumped into him smelling like a beer salon. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whossamatter with you?’, he said and checked his pockets; one could never be too sure in Whelp. The scum and low-lifes of Kory resided here; this was their headquarters. Pimps, whores, druggies, pick-pockets.. name it, and you

Brianna looked like something from a ghost movie[no offence]. Her once glorious olive skin was now pale and as white as sheet. Her glorious dark locks now thinned so much, the remnants could fit on the head of a medium-sized doll. Her eyes –ever so quick and bright- now looked tired and had a great too many worry lines for her age.Her face was half-covered by an oxygen mask. She didn’t know much about hospital machines, having never been admitted into one before but she could at least guess the one with the zig-zag lines was the EKG. All this was taken in in one glance. She gingerly stepped into the room as if the floor was lined by vicious stinging scorpions and stood next to Brianna’s bed staring at her; trying so hard to picture her without the mess of wires linking her to machines that Ira felt, no longer supported but kept her alive. She didn’t even notice the doctor’s exit.

Ira sat demurely and tried listening to and digesting what Doc Fleming had to say. He gave her an overview of her mother’s state of health. Brianna had been fighting a losing battle with Leukaemia for seven and made no mention of it to Ira. All this was so terrifying, thought Ira. She sat staring hard at him without seeming to register the import of his words. Brianna’s condition had deteriorated over the past few years. She had gone into a faint some hours earlier while tending to her garden in Westside, Kory. She slipped into a coma after that and there was a slim chance of

On the other side of the city in an average apartment, a twenty-six year old brunette stood worried in her apartment. Her right hand tapping nervously on the desk. She hadn’t seen or heard from Matt in about three weeks and was getting terribly worried about him. She now had a horde of unanswered calls and texts to him. Finally, with a resigned shrug. She left the room for the kitchen. She wasn’t surprised, he was reverting to his usual style. Matt the Flash was fading; and real fast. She couldn’t help it, could she? Entering the kitchen, she warmed the leftover chicken sandwich she found and fed her stomach. No way in hell was she going to bother herself over his misdemeanours. She ate it in her sitting-room on a cushion, silently seething but controlling it; Afterall, she knew what she had signed up for. She turned her mind to more impor

He sat back in the jacuzzi, taking another sip from the glass of white wine he had. The day was moving fine and at the leisurely pace, he loved. Taking a few days off from work was the best tonic for his itch for a change of scene. Sometimes, you gotta dump the job on the underdogs and have yourself some fun. He wasn’t ready to swot blind while there was much fun to be had outside work. Occasionally-not seldom-, he thought of Ira;but he had things way more important than her for example, the cat lying and sunning herself on a mat by the poolside, sipping the same wine as he. Ira was too ninny-minded for him, she seemed to take them as a thing that would last for a long time leaving him laughing at her antics. As sure as hell, she was dreaming of wedding bells but he wasn’t the kind of guy to be trapped by unsophisticated, classless ladies like she w

Six months had gone by, months of fruitless searching for Raina’s murderers. A hundred and eighty-three wasted days. Lassair had finally decided to shut the lid on the case since a pin he could not find. Raina was now six months old in the soil and the family-two people actually- grieved her but that couldn’t bring her back. Nan cy had remarked that the search for her killer was a rather futile one and persuaded Matt to finally give up on it. She was buried in the family’s newly erected mausoleum in a gold coffin. studded with paragon diamonds which to Nancy was rather too extravagant. The family had fulfilled all rites but the inevitable gloom and question was still hanging over them; WHO DID THIS TO RAINA???? Matt, finally won over by Nancy, had called off the investigations into her death and suffered in silence. The silence that now hung around the house was a palpable one which he reasoned; was only fit for the dead. Worst of all, Nancy h