Challenge 15: The carving

The dark patches of shadow have retreated and the dusty street is lit up. The carver shifts on her green plastic chair and moves closer to the dirty plaster wall, out of the sun. In one hand is a damp grey rag; in the other, a square piece of wood. The shopfront across the street is dangling wood and coconut-shell cutlery, wooden statues, and little wooden pencil holders or key holders or sets of hooks meant for holding something (no one knows what) or sets of holes meant for holding something (no one knows what), with images of palm trees and boats, and thick, gleaming varnish. It is nearly identical to the shopfronts on either side of it. In fact, if one were to wander down the street (the only street that is apparent in this village) it would be clear that all of the shopfronts are nearly identical - apart from one which sells everything else; that is, packages of biscuits and fizzy drink, jandals, bulbs - even though no one has electric lights, batteries, matchboxes, plastic toy cars, metal boxes, figurines of gods (and that's just the front of the shop). Fruit and vegetable stalls have sprung up this morning just outside of the village.

The carver has made a knot across the front of her skirt, so it hangs just above her knees. The soles of her bare feet rub indulgently against the soft, pale grey dirt on the ground. Tiny dark wood chips are scattered where her chair was before. The wood in her hand is a proud but warm brown, the brown in a cuckoo's feathers. Out of the wood comes a bird with tiny carved feathers- not a cuckoo - a bird with alluring, womanly eyes; elegantly curved tail; a beak like parted lips from which emerge swirls (water, or flame, or ribbon).

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Sunrise has revealed a strong blue sky and a warm day. It's still early - there's no one else about on the wooden walkway as a girl in boots, tartan blanket under arm, strolls beside the wide river, gazing into water that doesn't seem to be flowing, but must be because the ducks are moving fast and they aren't paddling. Trees droop into the leaden water, and around the boardwalk is a little forest of ferns and vines.

She stops at an embayment where the walkway juts out close to the river. Angular letters are scratched into the weathered handrail, forming names or initials or swearwords. There are trees next to her: one tree with small white flowers and small green leaves. Another tree with bigger purple flowers and no leaves. A third tree with no flowers and shiny, dark green leaves the size of her hand. The spiralled head of a fern is growing through a gap between the boards. There are fantails and sparrows flitting amongst the trees. Across the river is a paddock on a hill, with horses and grass and a faint smell of manure. There is a vague rumble of a jetboat which doesn't appear. The girl runs her foot between two nails, back and forth, switches the blanket to her other arm.

A flowing brown bird with swirls in its mouth swims through the air in the distance.

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Word count: 543

Challenge 15: Dead walking

White is the colour of purity, the colour of my dress, tight with too many pearl buttons. Red is the colour of passion and of sin, the colour of his blood on my hands, wet from the tears as he dies in my arms. Black is the colour of death, the colour of the gun in my hand, loaded and cocked as I turn away to hunt down his murderer.

My almost-husband died that night, the moon shining through the windows of the church where none but the angels of God should have been able to touch us. I thought I had left that life behind me, but now its siren song was calling me back. Out into the cemetery where the bones were whispering, yearning for me to hear their stories, to grant them peace. How could I give something I have never known?

On, into the night, tripping on the hem of my lace gown, stained with his blood and the mud. I rip away as much as I can, discard the useless shoes, run with the ground pressing between my toes. I reach the beach and do not pause for the waves. The one I hunt is barely a shadow in the moonlight, drawing me out, onto the ocean. What a fool I was, thinking to marry in Bermuda; there are too many ghosts here.

Deep beneath the surface lie the wrecks of ancient ships, forgotten by people, hidden by coral and seaweed. One of those shipwrecks is called the Cyclops and the brave men who once crewed her lie now as smooth white shards of bone between her many rotting decks. I can feel them stirring, my foe calling them to his aid. The light of the moon, touching the sea at just the right angle, those bones begin to knit together and the dead walk once again.

Long ago, in the heady perfumed night of Paris, I made the mistake of giving my love to a man, powerful but dark – a necromancer to my ghost whisperer. Such a pair we made, he said, as we danced through the wild streets, defying death and laughing in his face. But my punishment fit the crime. The Black Plague ripped all humanity from my once-lover but I was not so lucky. My heart shattered, seeing the suffering of children, the loss of whole families, lives wasted, dead whispering, blaming me. Incapable of dying, I walked like a ghost through the streets, desperate for any offer of redemption. I could hear the voices. But the dead were always silent to him, pawns in a game without heart, only lust.

Now he had ripped me from the illusion that I could escape my mistakes. My pretence at a normal life was gone, along with a man who loved me in innocence. The dead were walking again and I was the only one capable of sending them back to sleep.

Black is the colour of death, the colour of the inky sea, bubbling with the rising dead. Red is the colour of passion and sin, my life laid bare before God, a small price to end this madness. White is the colour of purity, the colour of the moon on the quiet Bermuda waters as the dead return to the depths and our souls committed into God’s keeping.

Wordcount: 558

Image 1 was:
White is the colour of purity, the colour of my dress, tight with too many pearl buttons. Red is the colour of passion and of sin, the colour of his blood on my hands, wet from the tears as he dies in my arms. Black is the colour of death, the colour of the gun in my hand, loaded and cocked as I turn away to hunt down his murderer.

Image 2 was:
Deep beneath the surface lie the wrecks of ancient ships, forgotten by people, hidden by coral and seaweed. One of those shipwrecks is called the Cyclops and the brave men who once crewed her lie now as smooth white shards of bone between her many rotting decks. I can feel them stirring, my foe calling them to his aid. The light of the moon, touching the sea at just the right angle, those bones begin to knit together and the dead walk once again.

Challenge 15

Two Images Separated at Birth

Think up a vivid, haunting image. Work hard to construct this image so it is not only visible to the reader but exciting and thought-provoking. Then think up another unrelated but equally vivid image. The key to this exercise is to work at composing two unrelated images, two scenes or situations you do not think are part of a story. Now write a story fragment out of the two images.

Wordcount: 600 (+/- 10%)