During the MA Professional Writing ‘Novel’ module, we created a selection of collaborative stories. We started, as you’d expect, with a beginning, then a middle, followed by an end (not forgetting the inciting incident, of course); we threw in a timer for some added pressure and learned what happened when seven writers try to write one story. Genius or nonsense? You decide. We certainly had fun and managed to write seven stories in just under an hour. Here is the sixth one.

Part SIX: Candy Crush

Kevin ate his tortoise. Spooned great chunks of it from its shell and watched the fire crackle and reach frustrated towards the moon. Janine swept away the ashes with the back of her flip-flop and eyed a tar-black crab as it lifted, in turn, each of its legs into the air. The sea hissed its taunting whispers. They sat as the night crouched slowly over them.

As the sea swallowed the last flecks of day, the fire was choked out by sand kicked brusquely over the flames.

‘What on Earth do you think you’re doing? Who the hell do you think you are?’

The angry young man had a young, string-candy thin lady woven about him. She released herself to fan the flames of the argument.

‘Don’t you think that turtle had feelings?’ said the man.

Kevin looked down at the shell of the tortoise.

‘It’s a tortoise.’ Kevin looked at the man blankly. The man looked at Kevin. Kevin looked at Janine, who looked at String-Candy and back to Kevin, then at the man and said:

‘It really is a tortoise.’

The man, in his rage, choked on several short words. ‘How is… That not…stupid,’ before growling at Kevin and Janine and kicking sand at them, falling over as he did so.

‘I think I’ve done my back in,’ he groaned at Candy, who wove herself around him again, fussing and stroking.

Kevin and Janine poked at the fire embers with sticks seemingly ignoring their live dinner show. Janine eyed up the crab and nudged Kevin. ‘Quick.’

He pounced and crushed it with his torso and handed it to Janine to cook.

The man let out a horrified wail. Kevin peered at him as he tried to thumb flat the crab-marks in his belly.

This time, Candy chimed in. ‘Crabs have feelings too…’ she muttered. ‘You can’t just kill them, you know, they have souls.’

‘You’d know,’ Janine said.

Candy picked up on the tone and stood back to let the man in the sand fight Janine. The fight was short and Kevin knew who would win. Janine used her body weight, much like Kevin had with the crab. After a rather more satisfying crack, Janine climbed off the body.

The man on the sand groaned and retched and writhed.

‘Knife,’ Janine said.

Kevin handed her the knife, long and thick with a shiny blade. It looked heavy.

‘Not much meat on this one,’ Kevin remarked. ‘I guess we’ll just have to use the crabmeat as supplement.’

‘Then we won’t have any bait left over,’ Janine said as the man tried to crawl away.

Dawn was breaking; a startling purple, red, blue layered light emerged from the grim black of the dying night.

The stale, sordid half eaten remains left in cooling, smoking ash were repulsive to Janine, Kevin and Candy who suddenly felt united in disgust. Their failed attempt to survive on this cruddy island was going to need better organisation or a stronger stomach, Janine thought as she retched in the sand next to the putrid mass.

by Alison Frater, Yage Nieuwmeijer, Harry Webster, Alex Mawson-Harris, Evelyn Gascoyne, Nicki Wheeler and Amy Lilwall