Sunday November 16th, 2014

The exercise:

It's Random CD prompt time.

I will never understand how I manage to go so long between using this, one of my favorite prompts. Ah well. Go find a song, as randomly as you like, and use its first line as your own. From there, after giving credit where it is due, go wherever your inspiration leads you.

Kat's business launch has been put off until Wednesday, as the next few days are looking crazy enough without adding that to the mix. Plus it gives me some extra time to finish off a couple more things for her.

Hoping to spend part of tomorrow morning preparing for this coming Saturday's winter farmers market in Penticton, where I will be in attendance to sell my greeting/Christmas cards and some photography prints. Both looking forward to and feeling nervous about that one.

Mine:

Little Talks - Of Monsters and Men

I don't like walking around this old and empty house. Not that it's vacant, not really. This place is full to bursting with memories that I cannot escape.

Over there, in the room we used as the library, that's where I fell in love with the written word. Secretly, of course. If my older brother had ever caught me reading the fantasy books I favored I would have counted myself lucky if all I lost was a tooth or two.

And down the hall, in the kitchen. I tasted homemade pizza for the first time. Baked my first cake in that oven. Learned the mysterious voodoo of recipes and cookbooks. Dodged my mother's wooden spoons and cast iron pan.

What's up there, you ask? Where do these crumbling stairs lead? I don't go to the second floor, not anymore.

There are some places, you see, that even ghosts prefer to avoid.

2 comments:

Greg said...

Oh, I hope the preparations go well for both of you! And I'm sure that ancient Feng Shui techniques will tell you that the Water Dragon is in retention on Wednesdays making it a most auspicious day to start new businesses on!
Hmm, I'm sure I wouldn't like walking around that house either with all those memories in it, though at least the worst memories seem to be upstairs rather than right when you walk in! I do like the word choice in your third paragraph in particular.


On a storyteller's night (Magnum)
There's a stormlamp on the table. It's lit again, though she knows she blew it out before she went upstairs. Her tread is heavy in her pink, bunny-headed slippers, and her dressing gown swirls around her legs as she descends, sighing a little as her knees ache and complain and her hips click rhythmically.
"Ephraim? Is that you?" she calls. Her voice sounds cracked and grates in the back of her throat and she wonders for a moment when the last time she spoke was. When was the last time she saw anyone to talk to? When Ephraim left, maybe? Shadows cast by the lamp dance on the walls as she thinks about it, her pace slowing to a halt. Only when the stairs creak underneath her does she remember what she's doing and continue on down.
"Ephraim?" She's calling now more to hear a voice in this house. She doesn't think he'll answer.
At the foot of the stairs she lifts the lamp's cover and blows the light out. There's a lamp lit upstairs that'll see her back up there and into bed.
As she turns though something catches the corner of her eye and when she turns to look she sees another light flickering in the kitchen, and a chill breeze ruffles her dressing gown and circulates about her knees. She shivers, a huge ripple shuddering through her heavy frame, and cinches the belt of the gown tighter. Has Ephraim sat down in the kitchen? Damn boy might be eating the pie she made and left to cool.
The kitchen door is ajar, but only by a hand's-width, and she pauses there for a moment too. Surely she'd left the door open? But there's definitely a light on in there, so she puts a calloused palm against the rough planks of the door and pushes it open. The kitchen's just as she left it; the pie is on the windowsill under it's little white net to keep the summer flies off of it, and there's just a candle standing on a saucer on the table that's casting the light.
"I'll forget my own head next," she mutters to herself, though she can't remember lighting the candle. Dangerous though, she thinks, it might set fire to the house.
As she shuffles across the stone floor to the table, she hears the kitchen door creak shut behind her, and then something blows the candle out.
In the darkness, something skitters as though on long, long legs, and she can't shake the feeling that it's above her, on the ceiling.

Marc said...

Greg - well, I'm always in favor of having a dragon on my side!

Good lord you write creepy well. Such great atmosphere and details and tension. Excellent work.