Fear

WoW for this week  - Think back to when you were very young. Try to recall one of your first fears. A shadow on the wall, a ghost in the closet, a person, a scene from a movie or book. Write about that fear. Try to remember the feeling it gave you, what that fear would make you do and how you were comforted. Write a real life story or a piece of fiction. Wherever the prompt takes you. Keep your post on the short side: up to 500 words OR a 5 minute stream of consciousness exercise. Link your finished piece to the list and begin popping by the other links. Oh, and enjoy!

She sits in front of the flickering screen, thoughts elsewhere as screenbound Heidi flicks her platinum plaits and runs up snowcapped mountains. She loves the story of Heidi, but not today.

Her mind is firmly across the road at home.

Sprinklers on the roof, gutters full of water, down pipes clogged with ragbag clothes. Dad had swept leaves away, closed all the windows and doors before leaving her at the neighbours’ to play.

But play is not for her today, as smiles and chatter will not come easily. Her tummy feels tingly and slightly sick, her heart beats quickly in her chest. Her sticky hands screw her hanky into knots in her lap. The acrid smell of smoke is everywhere, the daylight weirdly orange as the temperature rises further. Her breath comes faster as a sob rises. She wants her Mum, her Dad, she wants them here and she wants everything to be all right. Now.

Describe place

This week's assignment is to write descriptively, with all the senses,  about place.

She slips from the house as the family dozes, the afternoon sweltering. Her playground is a washed out place of greens and dappled greys. Tall gums, she-oaks and a huge Christmas bush of deepest olive, no longer speckled red, compose her ceiling and her walls. Bark crunches under bare feet as she climbs sandy solid rocks to play, to jump, and to dream. Her mother’s voice, a memory, echoes, “where are your shoes?” Spinning around in the dappled light she spots the green-tinged cream of flannel flowers. She picks one and slips its velvet behind her ear. Rustles in the undergrowth as her passing shadow alarms the under dwellers. A loud whip and scrabble announces a cold-eyed goanna who scales an angled trunk and watches warily. Far off bell-chimes of crimson rosellas break through the pulsing quiet. A complexity of bush smells comforts as her imagination drifts.

“Lion Rock” she says, “ yes you are my Lion”. Soft feet seek toe grips and she climbs lithely to perch atop. She reaches her small arms around his scratchy lichened neck. Resting her cheek to his cool mane, the bush heat throbs around her.

Memories of a headless man – a collector or a hoarder?

Gill @ Write on Wednesdays has given us the task of writing on collections, or collectors this week. Pop by and look at other people's offerings!

He had lived in the neat house on the inner suburban street for well over 60 years. He moved in with his wife, then brought up his sons and as they moved on, one by one, he lived alone. He had a cat for company from time to time.

He was the ideal quiet neighbour, his loss of hearing a comfort to us on our sleepless nights with crying babies. Sociable when engaged, but innately insular, he kept to his home. He never had visitors, apart from the home care lady and his sons. As he became older and needed more help, we were invited by necessity into his home to help him in the aftermath of falls and leg injuries.  Terrible osteoporosis had rendered him bent at the waist, his head invisible from behind.

He had a secret life, collecting, well, everything! Jars of screws, nails, bolts, cottonballs, washed margarine containers, icecream tubs, cotton spools, used matches, newspapers, and magazines – all were neatly labelled and collated. He knew exactly where everything was. Anything with a purpose was put away in case it was needed.

His house was jammed with collections of all descriptions, mainly household hardware and haberdashery. And data…weather data. Millions of pieces of plain paper, with sunrise and sunset, minimum and maximum temperature and rainfall documented for every day of the previous 60 years. All in tiny writing, never a day missed.

I always wondered if the house had been like this when his wife was alive, whether she tolerated (or encouraged?) his obsessiveness. Was he always like this or had he learnt it through hard times – he had seen 2 wars and The Great Depression.  What had his children thought of it? Did he find it a satisfying comfort or a distressing compulsion?

Thinking back, I never asked him why. I guess it was none of my business, it was just what he did.

Shiver - 5 Sentence Fiction

I've been a bit distracted by an online Creative Writing Course I've just started through the Sydney Writer's Centre. I've been loving "just writing" for 5 Sentence Fiction and Write on Wednesdays and thought it was time for me to learn a little about theory and technique. Thoroughly enjoying it so far!

So here goes for Shiver - as requested by my lovely commenters, I've continued my story from Hunger and Poison.

As she slowly drifted toward the surface of her consciousness, her throbbing mind tried to understand where she was. Pitch black had stolen her sight, she had to make sense of this without her eyes. Reaching a trembling hand sideways to feel the dampening walls, she slowly began to comprehend. She knew she was on an island, a tropical island, so why was it so dreadfully cold? Feeling braver, she stretched further and at the moment her seeking hand reached an immovable handle she realised to her horror that she was on the inside.

from motomorinsport