Five Until Midnight

Ok, ok, so I haven't been around for a while.  Stuff's been happening, personally, and I've been somewhat distracted.  My writing?  What writing?!  I haven't been working on anything for a while, not that the ideas have dried up altogether, I just haven't had the time or the energy to get them out.  I still have some flash fiction in the works that I need to get done, and I promise I will, now that I'm starting to settle down again.  So this is just to say, I'm still around, and will start working on some new stuff soon.  I might even come back and tell you about it, if you're really, really good!

 

Love,

Tereasa xx

If you were unfortunate enough to reside in one of the ten rooms at the back of the White Hill Hotel, you might be roused from sleep by the rumbling of the lift being powered up or down the shaft at all times during the night.  And if you were riding that lift, it is unlikely that you will see the ghost of Eliza Norman.  You would not see her small figure with her back pressed against the back of the carriage, her hands clasped together at her front, her head bowed with her chin almost resting on her collarbone.  You would not see the strands of hair which hung carelessly about her face bellow ever so slightly with the breath she no longer breathes, her small blue eyes peering from underneath.

Sometimes, if you happened to be on the 3^rd floor, perhaps walking along the hallway, you might witness the lift doors slide open, but no-one will get out, and no-one will get in.  She’s just checking.  She’s been waiting a long time, for him to come back.  And when he does, and she’s sure he will, then she will step forward, and place her icy hands around his throat, squeezing in the same way he had done with her, until he was still.  Only then will Eliza Norman step out of the carriage.

John tried to hold the gun steady, but his hands were trembling.

“Stay away from me,” he warned, and the other man held his palms up; no worries.

“Put it down, Mr White.”

He shook his head, fraught, and his breath sounded shaky.  “No,” he said, “I know what you are.”

“A Police Officer, Mr White.”

“You know what I mean.  You’re a…” he felt stupid saying it.  “You’re a vampire.”

The uniform advanced a step.  “If that’s true, I hope those bullets are silver,” he said.

“Just a myth.  A shot through the heart, that’s all it takes.”

“Mr White, you’re misinformed.”

He shook his head.

Another step.  “Let’s just say, I am what you say I am.  You shoot me.  Straight through the heart.  What then?”

No reply.

“I’m a Police Officer.  You’re a madman.  You’ll go to prison.  It won’t be long unyil they know your secret.”

“I have no secret.”

Another step.  “Oh really?  Well, Mr White, that wound on your neck tells me otherwise.”

He touched, felt pain, and saw blood when he looked at his fingers.  With no sound, the uniform had gone.

So here is the first in a series of flash fiction that I am working on at the moment.  As always, comments and crit are welcome!

 

The girl stood alone on the sand, facing the sea whose waves forced themselves upon the shore.  Beyond her, on the horizon, a boat, the men on board only visible because of their movement.

A man, greying hair dancing in the wind, walked along the beach and stopped when he reached her.  They observed the scene together, watching as one of the figures jumped from the boat, adjusted his mask and disappeared under the water.

“They been searching long?” asked the man, his eyes fixed, hands linked behind his back.

“Not long,” the girl replied.

The man nodded his understanding.  “Looks like it’ll rain soon.  They’ll come back to shore then,” he said.

The girl looked up at him, but he didn’t shift his gaze, so she returned her attention to the boat.

The sand began to darken until it looked as grey as the clouds which gathered above.

“You been here long?” he asked, and the first drops of rain began to fall.

“A while,” she said, “have you?”

He shook his head and said; “That man in the boat, he’s my son.”

She looked at him again, and this time he met her gaze, but only for a moment.

“They won’t find you.  Not now,” she said.

He nodded sadly.  “I know.”

“It’s OK, at least we found each other,” she said.

He looked at her, smiled, and took her hand.

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” he said.

As the figures in the boat hauled the diver from the water, they walked slowly together into the sea.

Over the past week I have been working on a series of flash sories (ie, short stories of 150-1000 words).  I'm hoping that, when I've completed the project, I will have somewhere between 20 and 30 stories which I will collate into a collective of some kind, either printed or on the web.  Some of them I will be publishing on here for you lot to read, so keep your eyes peeled!

 

Love,

T xx

I'm going away on Saturday for a few days, on the (hopefully) sunny South Coast.  I'm feeling so utterly exausted lately, I can't wait for the break, just so I can rest away from the stress of real life for a while.  On my return, I will hopefully be in a better frame of mind to finnish some of my projects, and tell you more about my special little project I've been working on, in my own chilled out kind of way.  But, just to keep you entertained, I want to point out that if you go to Kealan Patrick Burke's website (linked below), there is a rather exciting little project he has been working on over the past weeks - he is writing the first EVER 'Wovel'!  What do you mean you don't know what a wovel is???  I suggest you go and read, the first 3 parts are fantastic, and you even get a chance to influence the way the story goes.  So, what you waiting for?  Go see!

 

Bye for now,

T xx

I had a bit of a meltdown shortly after I vowed to write a page every day, and after forcing myself to write for a week, I ended up hating the story, the characters, and just about everything else.  So, I stopped.  I collected my thoughts and allowed myself some time to stop beating myself up about how unfair it all was.  I came to the conclusion that I can't write when I put myself under pressure like that.  It becomes a chore instead of something I enjoy, I can no longer involve myself in the story and the whole thing feels wrong.  For the time being, all the stories I have started/planned are on hold.  I'm not going to scrap them - some of them could be good - but I'm going to put them in a avult and forget about them for a while.  I have gone right back to the very beginning, and this weekend just gone, I sat in front of my computer with nothing in particular in my mind, and I wrote.  And what did I write?  I won't reveal that just yet, but it's something special (to me, anyway), and I'm really happy with the direction it's taking.  It's kind of a 'part 2' to something I've already written.  Am I going to finish it soon?  That I can't say.  There's going to be no pressure, I will write when I'm inspired to do so, when I feel that I have something to say, and that's the way I want it to be.  I want to enjoy the process of writing again.  This is what I need to do.

 

More soon...

 

Tereasa xx