Clare's entry:
Stratford
A pitiful miaow. I tap gently on the grating. There it is again.
“Have you found her?” Geoff runs towards me carrying the cat basket and torch.
“Yup, she`s down there, I can hear her.”
Geoff picks up my hammer, wedges it between the corroded bars, and pulls, hard. Slowly the grating gives, and begins to rise.
In the torchlight, purring now, is Avon, surrounded by four tiny kittens, whilst a fifth is curled up on her back.
Gently we lift out the first four, then Geoff retrieves Avon, with her little burden.
“We`ll call this one Stratford!” he declares.
Margie's entry:
Stratford City Hall was filled to capacity. The lights dimmed, the curtains rolled back and the audience hushed. The maestro lifted his hand elegantly above the keys of the grand piano. On cue, the prima donna breathed deeply to fill her lungs. In the depths of the instrument, sharp pointed teeth corroded the remants of felt on a hammer. Above, the pianist struck the first key. A thud was followed by a pitiful squeal, then a flurry of fur as a mouse sprang into the ample cleavage of the prima donna whose drawn-out scream in mezzo-soprano brought the house down.
Maya's entry:
Stratford could have been on the moon for all I knew. They sent her there to have her baby and I never saw her again.
I didn’t know what to do, so I buried my memories of my best friend from high school.
Such behaviour corrodes the word of God they said. “Who is God?” I asked.
“God gave us oversight for your soul,” they hammered home their pitiful message.
Fifty years later I found her; we talked, and we will meet. We’ll hug, laugh, cry, and we’ll show each other pictures of our grandchildren.
Thank god for the internet.
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