October Nights

The nights are coming earlier, the darkness pressing in and even at daybreak, the night lingers unwilling to let go.

Trees turn their green leaves to blood colours and shed a crisp carpet at their roots. Flowers curl and die, burying themselves in warmer soil.

The air smells heady with all the autumn scents. Rich spices of earth and plant mingle with smokey fires which we still build for comfort against the seemingly endless black night.

We wrap up warm, watch the rain tapping against the windows and listen to the wind crying to be let in.

Spooky season is almost upon us. Its time to feel the chills on the back of your neck and lose yourself in a ghost story as has always been traditional.

And as you read, deeper and deeper into a world unknown, you begin to wonder is that really the wind calling you or something more primordial?

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Flee #100WW

The bridge out of the city was grid locked and car horns were blaring maddly. People’s voices rose in shouting and panic, somewhere a baby was crying and there was a dog walking past the cars looking for food.

Izzy’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and she tried not to join in the choir of horns. She glanced to the passenger seat and saw her month old son asleep there. He would be hungry soon and she would have to try and breastfeed him against the steering wheel.

A loud, constant clicking drew her attention to the right. The wide stretch of river was filled with all kinds of boats and on both side banks overcrowded with buildings blocked out a dark sky. Rain was falling in a soft patter, making a nice sound on the roof of the car.

Izzy searched for the source of the noise, knowing it couldn’t be far away. Then she saw it; one of the monsters was coming out from behind a building and entering the river.

It was the height of a skyscraper, had a bulbous dark brown and black body, with many legs each as long as a football field. It looked like a giant flea.

A nearby building exploded; metal and glass raining down on the monster and the boats below. People screamed, abandoning their cars, choosing to run instead.

Izzy got out, ran around and took her son in his car seat out, then grabbed the nearest bags. The rest of the luggage would have to be left behind. She joined the sea of people and tried to get off the bridge.

The monster let out a bellow, destroyed another building and charged forward, destroying all in its path.

Inspired by;

100 Word Wednesday: 169

Postcard Short Story

Dear Gem,

I know it’s been awhile since my last letter and I promise I shall write to you in detail later. Here is a note to say that things are going well at the Haunted House and bookings are coming in fast. It feels strange that my months of hard work are over and soon, the House will be open year around for nightly scares.

Thank you for all the antique stuff, including the china dolls and tea sets you sent. They were useful to fill the nursery room up with. Though it’s probably more horrifying then you wise to see.

I can’t wait for our open day tomorrow. We have half price tickets and also food. We are running special discount books for the future and prompting not only Halloween weekend and Dia de los Muertos night, but Christmas Zombie Feast too!

I wish you could see it!

Your’s Angel.

Autumn Warmth

I didn’t find autumn cold like most people did. I found it warm and cosy. I loved pulling on a soft jumper, curling up on the sofa with a hot coffee or chocolate then burying myself in a thick novel.

Outside, the wind might be howling and the rain might be pouring but that just made perfect background noise to my reading. As the early darkness covered the sky and lingered by the windows, I pulled a blanket over my knees and wonder how the hero was going to escape this time.

The bubbling of stew and dumplings called to me before I could get there. It was a hearty meal with bread for soaking up the gravy at the bottom of the bowl. I felt hugged from the inside!

Sleepiness drifted like the night upon me and I took the book to a fleece lined bed and goose feather pillows. Safe from the world, I disappeared in between the words till I was dreaming I was adventuring alongside the hero.

Postcard Short Story

Dearest friend,

We are having a great time here. Yesterday we hired bicycles and rode around the town and countryside. We stopped at a pub in the evening and someone stole my bicycle! Well, we didn’t know what do to and I decided to walk back to the hotel and let the others go ahead.

Then a local man pulled up on a bicycle, he was drunk but happy and apologised in broken English that he had taken my bicycle instead of his own! I was so happy, I forgave him on the spot. We shook hands, collected our correct bicycles and went on our separate ways.

This would never have happen back home and just shows how wonderful this country is!

Perhaps, one day I will move here fully.

Your’s truly.

Snails

The snails had been eating Burt’s plants again. He signed and plucked away the nibbled leaves that reminded. Hopefully, some of the plants would survive if he give them some extra care.

As for the snails, Burt got some plastic sheeting out of his shed and some metal rods he had made for this job. He constructed a mini greenhouse cover over the plants and put wooden planks on the floor to weigh the sheet down and stop the snails getting underneath.

Burt would never put out poison. He didn’t believe that was the correct way to deal with nature. The snails were just hungry and they didn’t mean to eat his plants, it was just their way. So, he wouldn’t kill them but he would stop them from getting access and encourage the snails to move on.

Being in harmony was the best way to live.

Houdini #FridayFictioneers

Dad’s shouting woke me. Rolling over in bed, I rubbed my face and tried to understand through the fog of sleep what was going on. I heard footsteps along the hallway then the stairs. Mum’s voice in the kitchen and dad replying.

I got up, climbed down the bunk bed’s ladder and went, yawing and groggily, to investigate.

‘Look in the sink!’ mum cried as I entered the kitchen.

Confused, I did so and what I saw shocked me fully awake.

A fluffy, brown, fat hamster was trying to climb up the back of the sink but he kept sliding down because he couldn’t get a grip on the smooth surface.

‘Houdini!’ I yelled and grabbed the wiggling hamster, ‘I thought you were lost forever.’

‘So it’s him, then?’ dad asked.

‘Houdini has been missing a whole year,’ mum pointed out, ‘are you sure?’

Peering into my cupped hands at the ball of fluff and I nodded.

‘Where has he been?’ mum wondered.

 

(Inspired by; https://rochellewisoff.com/2020/07/08/10-july-2020/ with thanks.)

This is a true event from my childhood. Houdini was so named because he would escape and we’d never find out how he did it. He would be missing for awhile but this time it really was a whole year that he was gone for.

A few years after Houdini passed away, we got a new washing machine and a hamster nest was discovered in the vent. We believed it to have been Houdini’s nest and he had lived in the kitchen were there was always access to food and water.

Shirt Wings #TaleWeaver

What I happened? I only remember one thing;

Nancy running along the path in the woods. We were chasing each other under the shade of the trees with a grey sky peeking through the leaves. Nancy was laughing and tossing her head back often to see how close I was gaining on her.

My shirt, she had begged to have because it was cold and she was just wearing a vest top, was sliding off her shoulders and billowing out like a cape as she ran. I think my shirt give her wings because I couldn’t catch her.

Nancy flew away.

I heard the snapping of branches, the tumbling of soil and rocks. The ground left my feet and air rushed around me but unlike Nancy I couldn’t fly.

Was that Nancy screaming and crying as the world spun like a top or were they my screams and cries?

The ground was hard underneath me, I was covered in soil and small stones. It took me a few minutes to release I was in a quay crater. Despite the broken bones, bruises and pain, I looked for Nancy but she wasn’t with me.

What happened to Nancy? Do you know?

My shirt really give her wings, didn’t it?

 

(Inspired by https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/07/09/tale-weaver-283-shirt-july-9th/ with thanks).

Afternoon Coffee

It was still raining and it would carry on no matter what I did. Signing, I turned back to the jigsaw puzzle in front of me on the dinning room table. I had been wrestling with the 2,000 pieces of the solar system for days now. The boarder was there and some of the middle was starting to stretch out but I had a long way to go.

I got up, abandoning things for the fourth time that day and went into the kitchen. There was nothing amusing in here. I made a coffee but not just any, it was a nutty latte with a thick layer of foaming milk on top and a sprinkle of coco and nutmeg on top. The smell was amazing and like being in a fancy coffee shop during a break from the Christmas shopping rush.

Gripping some soft biscuits with creamy buttercream in between them that I made this morning. I took my hot mug into the living room and curled up on the sofa with a huge book about all the known myths and legends around the world.

 

 

In Memory

I could have had something simple inscribed on placate placed on the bench I’d made for my parents. The normal thing of their names, birth and death dates and perhaps stating this was their favourite spot.

I knew they had walked the cliffs often. They had meet on the beach below as teenagers so this area did hold special memories for them. Why my dad had chosen to bring my mum here to end everything, I could only guess.

Perhaps, it had been the easiest place for him to tell the old people’s home to take them on a day trip. It had been their special day after all. The career had said, my dad had asked her to go and get them ice creams whilst he and mum rested on a grassy spot.

Mum had been in a wheelchair, gone to dementia and dad with numerous other illness had recently been told he had that disease too.

I guess he couldn’t bear it anymore and that’s why he’d done it.

The placate reads;

In memory of Harry and Betty who committed suicide here on the 2 .8. 2019, their 55th wedding anniversary.

Their love began and ended on the beach below. They were always together. 

Missing you, mum and dad.