Worddzzle, penultimate episode!

Greetings once again for another wordzzle challenge and I think that we’re finally getting somewhere close to the end of the story – just a few loose ends to tie up and we’ll finally get some kind of answer soon

But in the meantime, and for those of you who don’t already know, each week Raven sets a total of 15 words: 5 for a mini challenge, 10 for a main challenge and all fifteen for the mega challenge – the task is to write a story, poem, song or short few paragraphs utilising said words as best one can. It’s a great challenge because it forces you to think in different ways in order to get the job done.

And as recent readers may be aware I have been embarking on a short piece of fiction that has now reached its seventh and penultimate episode (it can’t go on much longer or all the plot strands will just unweave)

Yet another twist this week – so for those of you who want to catch up here are links to Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5, Part6

If you enjoy reading my useage of the words why not go and have a go yourself?

Words for this week's 10-word challenge are: charm, judge, flowers, mixed nuts, earthquake, politics, sugar and spice, bricks and mortar, neurosurgeon, blinking lights, plastic bag

And for the mini: lawn mower, sheets and towels, smashed, bookcase, pinky finger

And before we start…apologies to Cheggers (bless ‘im), and to everyone else’s names that I seem to have pilfered along the way :)

Sleeper, Part 7 (10 word challenge)

Lies within lies within lies.

Sir Keith Chegwin sat back into the plush leather seats of the Bentley and threw the remains of his cigar out the window. His head was aching from the blinking lights of the street and the files on the seat next to him were making him long for a drink.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier – but who was the spy?

Lies: that was the problem. First you lied to the people at work, then you lied to your family and finally you lied to yourself until you no longer knew the truth anymore. He had long suspected that the true answer to the question “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” was that you watched everyone and everyone watched you.

And now he had to judge which one of the people shown in the pictures in front of him was the spy – if any - and for which side...now he had to decide if any of them had planted the bomb or if all of this mess was just so much paranoia. Could this just be a case of too many people jumping at shadows?

He lifted the first picture with shaking hands, hands that had once been as stable as the best neurosurgeon and pulled the first file out of its plastic bag.

Mark Smith – at least that’s what it said on the file. The notes said that he didn’t exist until five years ago, but there was some doubt about that now, an inferrence that the file had been tampered with: but who by and what for. He still hadn’t been found – but there were vague reports of sightings near the coast. Would an agent really let himself be seen?

Sophie Aldred – she’d worked for the Facility for nearly ten years now. Her face was familiar, but that didn’t explain why she had done nothing but ask for him since she had been taken in. He studied her face for a while and decided it was not without charm – was she really an innocent dupe or was there something more going on. Perhaps he would have to talk to her after all

Then there was Richard Devine – until three days ago heading the investigation into the bomb and then, like an earthquake, the evidence had started to collapse and look suspiciously handy. He had approached Mark (or whatever his name was, Sir Keith silently mused) and tried to recruit him – his story being that he was playing politics to try and see which one of the two, Sophie or Mark, would betray the other. It had been done before – but Richard wouldn’t be the first agent to try and implicate someone else to take attention from himself and when the evidence of the files being tampered had come through he too had been arrested.

But then Richard was the type of agent that were the bricks and mortar of the facility these days. Not the old Etonians of yesteryear where you were recruited on background, firmness of handshake and social standing – but the James Bond generation, always looking for their own personal Blofeld

Sir Keith threw down the files in disgust: it was a right old bag of mixed nuts and no mistake - no way to sort it out without hours of investigation that he felt no sense of keenness for. Sleepers: he hated the whole idea of it. You put someone deep enough under cover for long enough and sooner or later the margins become blurred.

He turned to the transcripts of the interview between Richard and Sophie again. Much of it was just the repeated request to talk to himself – and then:

RD: tell me where your friend is. I can hold you here indefinitely if you don’t. If you tell me what I want to know then I will let you speak to Sir Keith

SA: Very well – I’ll tell you what I know

What had mostly followed was a very plausible account of how she had met Mark, how she had come to work for the Facility, her relationship with both Mark and Richard – but that one phrase kept coming back to him

SA: Our relationship could be a bit weird. Like Sugar and Spice – somehow it worked…for a while.

All the best analysts had gone over the transcripts and had found nothing – but Sir Keith felt sure that if there was a message there then it was a message for him.

He sat back in his seat and reached for the thermos flask of not-entirely-coffee and took a sip, still mulling the words over. Sugar and spice. There was just a hint of memory of those words – like the words of the old rhyme: sugar and spice and all things nice – that’s what little girls are…’

He nearly choked on the coffee, jolting out of his chair as the hot liquid caught his skin. He leaned forward and pressed the car phone into life, barely allowing enough time for the person to answer

‘Get me Snyder, fast!’ he yelled, ‘Tell him that Operation Littlegirl is totally fucked!’

Wordzzle - Sleeper Part Six

OK – hello again and welcome to the end of another week and this week I’m a little bit later posting the next instalment of my ongoing saga.

So – for those of you who don’t know every week Raven sets a series of words: a set of five words, a set of ten words or all fifteen words if you feel lucky


Anyway – this week the words are:

10-word challenge: pyramid, laughter, orangutan, recycling, infinity, toilet paper, greasy dishes, Spanish, preparation, back-up
5 word challenge: carpet, cane, outer space, hand ball, ambitious

10 word challenge:

Sleeper – Part 6
(for a catch up you can read part1, part2, part3, part4 or even part5 by clicking the links)



After a while the walls were no longer white. Sophie stared at them blearily, trying to make sense of the swirl of colours. It had been six days since she had slept, but already it felt like infinity. There were precious few luxuries in the cell where they were keeping her: the mattress was old and worn and had semen stains engrained on its surface, the light flickered and buzzed but never went out and the toilet paper was so thin that a breath would break the surface. Every so often, just when they thought she was about to fall asleep they would drag her out of the cell and back into this room, firing question after question at her until the noise of it all crashed around in her head like greasy dishes falling from a waiter’s arms

Every time they asked a question she gave the same response: “I want to talk to Sir Keith”

“Why did you plant the bomb?”
“I want to talk to Sir Keith”
“Where is your friend now?”
“I want to talk to Sir Keith”

Sir Keith, her boss at the facility – the only person that just might be able to help her. She knew they would never let her talk to her – knew the only reason they hadn’t tried torture yet was because they had found the bomb and defused it.

Finally, just as she knew they would have to, they sent in Richard. He leaned over the table from the other side, leaning on his fists so that, in her sleep-deprived state, he looked like an orangutan about to groom her for fleas. The burst of laughter was out of her mouth before she could stop it, but the cold look in his eyes made it drain away. He sat down and connected his hands into a pyramid on the table, ‘Where’s your friend?’ he asked

‘I want to talk to Sir Keith’ Sophie responded, her voice tired and nearly worn-out

‘Sir Keith is not available at the moment’ he replied, sitting back. There was a slight hint of an accent in his voice, Greek or possibly Spanish – she was too tired to know the difference anymore, ‘So tell me: where is your friend?’

‘You mean Mark?’ Sophie asked, ‘You should know – you saw him last’

Richard smiled and shook his head, pulling a thin manila envelope from beneath the desk, pouring the few contents onto the desk and allowing himself a few moments of preparation as he spread them out. They were mostly pictures of herself and Mark, both together and separate in a variety of poses: at work, on the street, in a café. He pushed one of the pictures forward and looked at her for a long moment

‘Tell me, Miss Aldred: do you know what a sleeper is?’

Sophie nodded, ‘Of course I do: I’ve worked for the facility for six bloody years: it’s a high-level under-cover agent. Usually just sent to another country and left there awaiting code-worded orders to activate’ She paused, ‘but didn’t they all get withdrawn when the Soviet Union collapsed?’

Richard shook his head, ‘Come on Sophie, don’t expect me to think you are so naïve. Just because we’re all friends now doesn’t mean that we trust one another, besides’ he said, ‘not all were recalled.’ He shook his head, ‘Imagine that: the empire falls, your name is in the book that gets burned and you spend the next ten years living a lie waiting for orders that never come. It could really get your back up.’

‘Are you saying that you think I am a sleeper agent?’

Richard shrugged, ‘One of you: you or him. We’re still not quite sure to be honest. Your friend…’ he looked at the documents, ‘…Mark?’ Richard paused and looked at her for acknowledgment of the name, ‘the thing about him is that until six months before he met you he didn’t exist’

‘Bullshit’ Sophie exclaimed

Richard shook his head, ‘But the thing is that we still weren’t sure it was him that was the sleeper: the Russians weren’t the only country to put a few of their spies names into the recycling by mistake”

‘And so you set a trap’ Sophie nodded, her brain still processing the information. It was all too clear now. Richard must have told Mark, or whoever he was, that she was the spy: got him to plant the box on her to see where she went – and at the same time he had pretended to befriend her, to see if she would make some move that would give her away. Her eyes narrowed: there was still a chance, but she would have to play this carefully. She shook her head, 'Why should I trust you?' she asked, 'How can I possibly know that you're not the sleeper agent just trying to set me up?'

Richard shrugged, 'I never said I wasn't'

‘Please’ she said, ‘you have to let me talk to Sir Keith – he can explain everything: before it’s too late’

Richard shook his head, ‘No’ he replied, ‘tell me where your friend is. I can hold you here indefinitely if you don’t. If you tell me what I want to know then I will let you speak to Sir Keith’

‘Very well’ Sophie said, realizing she had little choice, ‘I’ll tell you what I know’