New Story – With new ideas and directions to hand. I’m writing this and posting it straight onto Steemit – You can’t get more exclusive than that!

Yesterday I started a project Here

Some idea popped into my head and I ran with it. I had a lot of luck with the comments on the post I made and the idea began to take shape.

Thank you to everyone that commented. I've not forgotten your comments, even if they don't get utilised until later, I'm still using them as fodder for this story.

Here's what I came up with... I hope you enjoy this. I still don't know where its going.

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I’ve worked from the age of nine years old. OK, I haven’t had a full-time actual job since I was nine, but I have always grafted.

I wasn’t old enough – or big enough – to get a paper-round. I didn’t have a bike to run errands (hence the need for a job). I would always say yes if the old-folk on the street wanted a letter posting or a loaf of bread and a tin of beans fetching from the shop. I saved every last penny I got from those little errands and chores.

The other kids either ignored the shouts or couldn’t hear over their own boisterous noise. I seemed able to tune-in though, and always abandoned the game I was playing in order to get that gig.

On occasion, I’d get taken for the 5p or so promised, but I got to know which ‘canny old bird’ did that and she got the privilege of taking her own damn letters – even to the point where I walked right past her at the garden gate as she waved a letter in my face. I was going to the shop for one of her neighbours and would have passed the post-box, but she’d done the old “I’ll give you a penny when you come back,” and disappeared off into her house before I collected my ‘wage’ once too often and as far as I was concerned, she had died.

Before I was nine years old I had the cynicism to blank adults if they pissed me off. What a skill-set I was developing.

Then, I dropped lucky. A friend told me to come with him, he knew someone that wanted someone to work for him.

Yes, I did wonder why I was being offered a favour. I also wondered why he hadn’t taken the job and why he was offering it to me.

So, with these questions tumbling about in my cynical mind, I followed anyway.

We went to a house that was perched on a parcel of land high above the pavement. It loomed down from the top of a steep flight of stone steps.

I stood on the pavement and looked up. I couldn’t see the top two or three steps. I followed the friend and he walked right inside. It wasn’t his house and he didn’t have any relatives in the village, the family were newcomers, been living in the village less than a year.

He didn’t knock or call out, he just walked right in and I followed.

A man sat in a dark, dingy living room. The curtains were closed and he was watching the television. The room wasn’t filthy, it was obviously cleaned on a regular basis, but it sure could have used a decorator. The décor was from the 50s at least.

There was a disturbing, yet faint smell of piss – sickly-sweet piss. I wrinkled my nose.

I took a better look at the guy when I realised he was studying me. He wasn’t just watching, he was actually measuring me up.

So I measured him up.

The room was dingy and in need of decorating because he couldn’t do it. He was sitting in an armchair and I could see even then that his legs were wasted and all-but useless.

His arms were not quite so emaciated, but were well on their way.

A small bay window to the side housed a bucket which became apparent as the source of the sickly-sweet-piss smell.

“What’s your name, kid?” he said. His voice was strong and deep and I imagined the disease he was suffering with would eventually steal even that vitality, but for now, he still possessed it.

“Ash,” I said after a moment.

“Did you forget your name, kid?” he said, poking fun at the pause.

“No, I was figuring out whether I was sticking around or not and if I wasn’t, you wouldn’t need my name.”

He raised his eyebrows at that.

He turned his head toward the other kid. “What have you told him about the job? Have you told him about the job?” he asked.

The kid looked at me and I shook my head. Just once, but he got it.

“No, I haven’t said anything about it. I thought you’d want to do that, I might get some of the details wrong.”

“Or the details would have put him off and he wouldn’t have come,” the guy said.