December: Christmas Ghost Story

The car shakes us as it travels over gravel. I watch the bushes at the side of the road. My head is against the glass of the window. The seatbelt is at my neck. The bushes have spiky leaves in yellow, light green, dark green. We pass a set of bushes with fuzzy red berries, long spindles of branches. ‘What are they?’ I turn to ask Martha. She doesn’t look away from the road.

‘Just bushes,’ she says.

The house at the end of the drive rises. Its white columns are like the bones of another house, a house that has long ago withered into this one. It’s a sun bleached carcass of a house. Martha’d said that she’d found it last minute. That the reviews were good. That the pictures were good. We’d spend a few days here then head up to meet the others at the mountain lodge. My ex was going to be there, at the lodge. Christmas isn’t the right time to break this to her, we both think that, so we’re stealing a few extra days stolen before we have to be just friends.

‘Spooky house,’ I say.

Martha shrugs as she pulls our bags from the boot. ‘You think everything in the countryside is spooky.’

‘Bring me to a city,’ I say, ‘I’ll be happy.’

‘New York next year then,’ she says, slapping my arse. ‘Here, help me with the keys.’

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November: Hero Type I (born to it)

I knew her mother. A woman who didn’t like other people much. You wouldn’t ask her to take in a parcel for you, to watch your kids while you popped out, for any kind of favour. I didn’t know she even had a boyfriend but she must’ve. One day she was ‘showing’ and took to wearing smocks. I asked her about the dad, a few times I asked. She said he was away, said he wasn’t into commitment, said he wasn’t interested. To be honest I think she was just saying things off the top of her head, getting rid of me kind of thing. Anyway the bairn, when she got here, was right bonny but a wild thing.

Flammarion

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September: Remember (guest post)

I’m still working on my dissertation and creative project story fans (as of writing only 2000 words and lots of edits to go). Next month normal service resumes but until then please enjoy this guest post by the very talented Sue Oke. She blogs over at susanmayoke.com. Pop over and say hello!

North to South

It’s the voice I hear first, a baritone with the unmistakable soft edges of a Yoruba accent. We turn at the same time, tentative smiles of recognition blossoming as our eyes meet. And then he’s grinning, wrapping me in bear hug, his enthusiasm temporarily infectious.

‘How are you? How are the children?’

I grab a breath, the rote , ‘We’re fine,’ slips out of my mouth.

He barrels on, ‘And what of Oga?’

Oga… chief… boss… master… he’s using a title to refer to the man who, twenty years ago, used to be my husband.

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July: Review

In July, August and September I have to write a lot to finish my course. Instead of writing new things for my blog I’m going to tart up some old things. Here, from November 2011 is one of the first re-tellings I tried out. Let me know what you think.

November: 14 Down, Mythical Maze (9)

After Theseus leaves
What kind of madness can you call it that led Ariadne to this island? She tries to remember, but her memories wisp away when she attempts to catch their threads.

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June: EZY7410

I can’t remember much of the flight – its innards if you like. I was told that in Spanish the word migas is for the soft part of bread. The middle part surrounded by the crust. Do we have a word for that? It’s what I need now to describe the missing part of the flight in my mind, or if not missing then out of focus, getting out of the way when I try and look at it. Not that anything happened on the flight. I think. The outsides of the experience I recall. At the boarding gate, waiting for the plane to taxi up to the window. Wondering if the plane would be in a hurry – it was already an hour delayed – and would taxi too quickly, bashing into the window, killing us all or maiming at least/ at worst.

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April: Night Bus

There’s a night bus couple sitting behind you. A man and a woman, at least judging by their voices, both archetypes of man tone and woman tone.

You can’t help but hear their conversation. They’re not keeping their voices down. What they’re saying doesn’t interest you until the man’s voice says, ‘Why are you always like this?’
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March: ghost story attempt

She showed up in a taxi. The sort that trawl the train station picking up tourists and children making brief prodigal returns. She took from the taxi a re-purposed cardboard box. Its four flaps were folded closed rather than taped shut. Her only other luggage was a hard plastic case on wheels.

She introduced herself to the receptionist as Shona Omara. The receptionist, who was also the proprietress Mrs Headle, told her how to find her room.

Shona pulled her case up three flights of carpeted stairs to the third floor. Along the walls of the staircase Shona noticed scuff marks, presumably made by other guests dragging their own luggage. She made a second trip to the lobby to collect the cardboard box.
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February: The Grand Tour

In this story a young man, older than a boy but not so mature that he would be expected to have as many regrets as he in fact carries around with him, leaves his home town, Hull, for an odyssey he himself cannot see the end of but in which the reader or listener of the story thinks they can predict where his story will take him.

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January: Brünnhilde (ii) (backwards)

I love your abused mouth; your lips pad together with final words.

I will die here too in a place where no-one can say my name, except for you. And you are dying mouthing not my name, but his.

Cities have fallen and cities will fall.

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