All posts filed under: Stories

Rumble Fish

BOYS OF SUMMER

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Holiday romances always seemed to happen over a long hot summer. Lazy days at the beach, pool parties, stolen kisses in the back row of the cinema and those inevitable good-byes at the end with promises to keep in touch. That summer Lucie accomplished three things: she celebrated her nineteenth birthday, she grew out a particularly bad haircut, and she lost her virginity to an American boy named Chet. Chet was twenty-two and taking a break from his University studies and a relationship with a high school sweetheart which had started to turn sour. He had only been in Australia for two weeks when he first saw Lucie leaning against a wall in a nightclub, Vodka and Tonic in one hand, the other hand tucked neatly into the pocket of her jeans. By the end of that night, their first night together, Lucie had learned almost everything she needed to know about Chet. How his parents met and fell in love to the sounds of “Chet Baker Sings” at a friend’s dinner party and decided …

Millenium

MILLENIUM

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London knew how to throw a party and tonight would be no exception. It was New Year’s Eve, Millennium Night. At the stroke of midnight everyone would sing Auld Lang Syne and say farewell to the nineties and hello to the noughties. Lizzie had managed to wrangle a ticket to party at a private members club in North London. Whilst most of her friends would celebrate the Millennium by dancing with thousands of clubbers at the Millennium Dome, or dining on a £500 meal at a restaurant in Central London, Lizzie would spend her evening dancing and drinking French Champagne with a select and fashionable few. The owner of the club and host of tonight’s party was Johnny Tate, a young actor enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame as the star of the popular television soap “Prognosis”, a one-hour show depicting the highs and lows of a group of attractive twenty-something medical students. It was the sort of show Lizzie and the rest of London would watch on a Sunday afternoon whilst nursing a hangover …

Epic Moments Ahead

EPIC MOMENTS AHEAD

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Marion had broken her arm two days ago. It was one of those weeks that had been sent to test her. On Tuesday morning on her way to work a man had yelled at Marion, accusing her of shoving him as she tried to manoeuvre herself out the doors of a busy and over-crowded tram. He was rude, obnoxious and unreasonable given the circumstances, and on any other day Marion would have simply moved on and not let him or his words bother her. However the encounter with this man had rattled her and she didn’t understand why. On Wednesday evening on her way home from work a cyclist rode through a red light and knocked Marion over as she walked across a pedestrian crossing. A trip to Accident and Emergency and a consult with a bored and condescending Dr only added insult to her injury. According to the Dr, when the cyclist had slammed into Marion and knocked her to the ground, she had fallen in the wrong way. Essentially the prognosis was that …

Mothership

MOTHERSHIP

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She had been abducted and held here for a few days. It had happened at home, at night while she was watching TV. The last thing she remembered was a white light, a piercing sound and a ringing in her ears, and then she woke up here. She is in a small room which is white and clinical, and smells like fresh pine needles. An image of a small wooden cabin by a lake is projected on one of the walls, it seems vaguely familiar to her. There is no furniture apart from the bed she is lying on and a small table beside it. She is hungry and thirsty however she isn’t scared, she feels an overwhelming sense of calm. Her abductors have only visited her once, three of them dressed in white with strange silver masks on their faces. One placed a thin white disk on the palm of her right hand while the others stood silent and observing, like medical students studying a patient in a hospital. The white disk started to …

Band Practice

BAND PRACTICE

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She is counting down the minutes, watching the clock, longing for the bell to ring and signal the end of another school day. The hour where schoolbooks are left in the locker, a guitar is placed firmly in her hands and band practice begins. She had recently joined an all girl rock band and while the other girls were busy cultivating their image, borrowing from Bowie, Blondie and Suzie Q she already had hers. All she needed was a leather jacket, a slick of black eyeliner and a great haircut. Fame was already on its way. Photo shoots for cult Japanese magazines, parties by the pool at the Tropicana Motel, and boys hanging out backstage were soon to come, but these would all be incidental. A minor accompaniment to something else. To her it was all about one thing, the music. Image: Joan Jett photographed by Brad Elterman. Visit http://www.bradelterman.com and bradelterman.tumblr.com

The Electric Hour

THE ELECTRIC HOUR

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It was that time of the evening, the party was in full swing, the music had been turned up a few more notches, voices were suddenly raised, and everyone had an air of drunken, flirtatious confidence about them.  The energy in the room was intoxicating.  For the romantic in her it was that particular point in the evening she liked to call “The Electric Hour”. She had known him for a number of years.  He wasn’t a close friend more a casual acquaintance who moved in the same social circles as she did, but somehow he was always there. Image: Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, Vogue Paris, May 2015.