In the Stones

Copyright - Freya

Copyright – Freya

I place my hands on the warm brick and slate, closing my eyes against the sun. It’s an unseasonably hot day in April. I’m in mid-Wales and the weather isn’t supposed to be like this. I have dressed for rain, for wind and a dank, brooding atmosphere. I had wanted and wished for omen-filled clouds.

I for one need dark, miserable days in which to channel my muse. Crime novels based in dark, satanic mills and laissez-faire Victorian Britain don’t flourish well in heat waves. All these scantily-clad tourists, the mountain bikers, the squealing children and yapping dogs – they’re all just a waste of my energy.

I force myself to channel the darkest recesses of my mind. This is definitely the place where the murder had taken place. I can feel it in my bones, despite the cheerful weather. This building has an aura; it is leaching out of the crumbling walls and releasing its long-buried story into me. I breathe in, then out; long, slow breaths. I cannot waste this opportunity, even if the weather is spoiling my plans. My affinity with buildings, my unarguable ability to read the past in our surroundings – it is my life’s passion, not to mention my ticket to paying the mortgage each month. Here lie the remains of the infamous Gravely Mill. Nobody knows of its existence – I am the first.

“Jerry! Jerry!”

God, what now? More bloody tourists. What the hell are they doing here?

They appear from behind the ruins of the waterwheel in his and hers matching sunhats and shades. The worst kind of holidaymaker – they’ll be asking me to take their photo next…

“Yes, my sweet?”

Oh God, how sickly, how inappropriate.

I hide behind a wall. Surely, they won’t be long? A couple of snaps, and then they’ll be gone. Please, let it be so.

“This is it. Look, here in the guidebook: ‘Gravely Mill Children’s Extravaganza was built by Sir Andrew Morton-Childs in 1836. He was the first – and little-known -philanthropist to believe that all children needed time in which to play and to let their imaginations run wild. He created a safe haven where children who worked in his factories could put on plays, dress up, and enjoy themselves. This is where the famous playwright Julius Ward – a former child worker at the mill – set his first crime-based play ‘The Murder of Alice Soames’. Some still believe it to be fact, but it is pure fiction, a creation of what Mr Ward himself described as an overactive childish imagination.’”

I imagine voodoo dolls of the couple, and picture myself thrusting pins viciously into their podgy bodies as they amble away.

There had been no murder. The building is full of lies.

Time to go back to the drawing board.

Fevered – Alastair’s Photo Fiction

Here is my offering for Alastair’s Photo Fiction this week, inspired by the photo below.  Why not take part? And why not visit his photography and writing blog to take a look at his other photos…?

Copyright - Kattermonran

Copyright – Kattermonran

– Fevered –

I will never reach the end – the heat will sear me like meat on a spit. I imagine my hair crackling and frizzing, my skin crisping.

We are all but flesh.

I pause, blinking against the searing sweat flooding my eyes. The sting takes me back to a buried schoolgirl memory; a cross-country run in freezing January, the finale a lung-bursting incline to the crematorium.  The irony is not lost on me.

I would kill for that biting wind, for breath torn from my chest in frozen gasps, for skin encased with gooseflesh. Now all we have is a furious orange sun, farther away from our planet than ever, yet burning us alive latitude by latitude.

Winter is a myth.

I wipe my eyes against a sweat-soaked shirtsleeve and resume my climb. 

Hide and Seek – Trifextra Week 83

This weekend, the Trifecta team’s Trifextra challenge asks us to take a trip back in time to our school days, and write a haiku, on any subject.

I’ve spent this week in the fabulous countryside of Ceredigion (mid-Wales), and have been inspired. This afternoon, we watched red kites descend on the lake at Bwlch Nant Yr Arian, which is a nature reserve managed by the Forestry Commission and the RSPB (a charity dedicated to the care and conservation of bird life in the UK).

Anyway, here is my haiku – I do enjoy trying to convey feelings, thoughts and ideas in such a limited number of syllables (5-7-5).

Why not visit here to read all the other brilliant offerings?! Or, take part yourself….

*****

bird soars high above

mists gather, blanket on trees

 mouse hides, small secret

 

Trifecta