A Writer's Wonderland [PDF] - University of Portsmouth

with a door right at the end, which sits three-feet shorter than the rest of the doors in the
hallway. Actually, perhaps the door is of a normal size, but because it is so far away, it appears
to be smaller? Just like when you hold your fingers up to a person in the distance and pinch
them between your fingers, because it’s wonderfully easy to squash someone when they’re only
two centimeters tall.
I have fluctuated away from the point; Beauty progresses down a corridor that clasps
her by the shoulders, and with a little effort she maneuvers herself onto her knees when the
ceiling begins to disrupt the buoyancy of her hairstyle. It is lucky that she is a rather archetypal,
skinny heroine, because if I were to break tradition and give her some baby-weight, she would
never have been able to fit down the hallway that leads to the door, which I have just
remembered was not a door, but rather a dog-flap.
Beauty pushes the dog-flap ajar with one beautifully preened hand to find a mutt sat
squarely in front of her, gnawing tenderly at some brownish-red substance on its forepaw;
presumably some exotic type of dog food. Who knows what these privileged people put into
their pet’s food?
As Beauty gazes into the eyes of the dog, she is filled with motherly tenderness, because
she is generally very lovely. However, the dog stares back at her with a ‘Don’t-fuck-with-me’
sort of expression. Oh, excuse my vulgarity; stories like this aren’t supposed to have bad words
in them, are they? I’m very sorry.
As Beauty’s eyes widen like those of a squirrel caught in the path of a predator, the dog’s
lips twitch. Beauty, who opens her front door every morning to find floods of cats and birds
singing together in harmony, begging for milk and freshly baked cookies, knows that all this dog
wants is to be cuddled and fussed, so she coos to it and smiles with a set of teeth so beautifully
white that she can provide three hundred homes with year-round lighting. Not only is she
beautiful, but she’s energy efficient. However, her expression drops and nerves wrench at her
stomach as the dog raises its upper lip into a trembling snarl, exposing its yellowing teeth.
As the dog’s grumbling begins to ripple out into its cheeks and lips, Beauty moves with
haste back towards the door, and it is not until she is squashed into an awkward stance between
two pressing walls that she recalls the narrowness of the hallway that holds her like a leash. It is
at this point that the dog takes motion, bounding forward with, we wrongly assume, the purpose
of protecting its home, and as it lunges for her, she has no means for escape.
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