Tag Night

Deluge – Five Sentence Fiction

freyathewriter 12 Comments

Falling_rain_in_mexico-804x1024

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The raindrops pelt my hair, my face, my arms, my hands until I am drenched.

I stand in the empty street, arms outstretched, palms turned upwards, embracing the clouds above.

I know eyes are watching me from behind nets, behind doors held slightly ajar and deep in the shadows just out of reach of the streetlight’s glare.

I know they are whispering behind hands and underneath raised eyebrows – to them I am the woman who has lost her mind with grief, for nobody sane stands in the street, in the rain, in her nightgown.

But I do – it is a relief to feel something other than the weight of profound loss – it is a relief to feel so refreshed.

Tendrils

freyathewriter 46 Comments

In my room –
when velvet black undulates in the depths of night
I am secure, cosseted, nurtured.
Encased in my duvet cloud
toes peeking out, stretching towards the radiator as it clinks and clangs, expanding and contracting
I listen for the background ‘hisssshhhh’ as water rushes through the pipes, molecules racing along in their H2O hamster wheel.
The French door is open behind the blackout blind –

Aeons earlier I had pressed the smooth metal handle, turned the angular key (I can still feel the impression its cold corners left on my fingers), sensed the bolts shudder and slide in casings worn smooth.
Night air clamoured, grappling to fill the void as indoor warmth sighed to the heavens in almost mute supplication
The damp breath of Nature caressed me, gooseflesh prickled and tiny hairs stood to attention –

Creeping-creature sounds surround me now as I recline, supine, feline.
I taste the earth in the air as the world relaxes into its darkest hours –
the delicate tip-toe of the urban fox, an owl screech to wake the slumber-bound
and the frantic flutter of a moth, searching for a shaft of light around which to dance her dance of the mad.

In my room, in the depths of night, all of this can be found.

Tendrils

———–

This week on dVerse Meeting the Bar, our bar-keep Brian urges us to create using all of our senses, except sight. Challenging, or not?  Well, I really enjoyed this inspiration, since I love the fact that my new bedroom isn’t infiltrated by the sound of traffic or street lighting. It feels like a womb (I imagine!). And at night, it is utterly black. Glorious for sleeping!

I hope you enjoy my offering – and do take the chance to dip your toe in the world of darkness, or pick up your own figurative pen, why not!

Caught Short

freyathewriter 4 Comments

It’s my second night in the new house and boxes are lurking everywhere, waiting to trip me up in my midnight journey to the toilet downstairs. So I don’t go.

There has been yet another power cut and I have no idea where my candles or matches have hidden themselves in the frenzy of moving. I consider risking it and feeling my way in the dark, but the thought of being discovered weeks later, a bloated corpse at the bottom of the stairs freezes me in place. Buying an old house in the middle of nowhere is not always the romantic option. Still, it’s too late now.

I can hear the tappity-tap of typewriter keys above the gale.

Why can I hear someone pounding on my Olivetti in the middle of the night? It can’t be an intruder – no house-breaker would pause to bang out his magnum opus before searching for jewellery and credit cards. And more to the point isn’t your typical burglar a fair-weather breaker of the law? That storm would drown cargo ships. On a night like this, Jonny No-good will be snuggled up to his bleached-blond girlfriend, snoring gently.

I have to find out what’s going on.

I negotiate the stairs, any thoughts about safety completely gone. I knew the house was haunted when I bought it. The owners had tried to keep that little gem under wraps, but Eileen the neighbour had been only too keen to share the juicy story of a writer murdered by his wife as he reached the end of his life’s work. The typing had driven her mad, not to mention the loneliness of being married to someone who lived in his head most of the time.

It didn’t put me off – in fact, I knew it would be the perfect foil to my own angst-filled existence; a single woman, recently divorced, starting my life over again when I had expected to be winding down, resting on the laurels of my husband’s hard work. This could be a fabulous distraction. I hadn’t expected a visitation quite so quickly – I must be an empath, or whatever they call them.

I push the living room door open a crack, smiling inside as I picture the publicity that this will bring me. I imagine TV and radio serial rights, a book tour…

The crow stares at me, skittering and hopping across the floorboards, shaking its wings and tail feathers in the weak moonlight. The fireplace is littered with soot, dust and other debris blown in by the storm and dragged down the chimney by a stupid bird. 

No tortured soul.

No ghost-whisperer storyline for me.

Just a crow.

And me, weeing on the floor.