Kit Whitfield's Blog, page 3

#2024MakeAMonster day 13: Pet

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PetAll right, first day? Fine: welcome to the Illegal Preternatural Pet Trafficking Division. Got your license? Right, right - just let me scry it. Sorry, regulations. 
Okay, you're good to go. Now, from the looks of you you're just out of grimoiry, so I'll start you simple. See this? Pet rock container. Open it up - hey, gauntlets on first! All right, all right, I'll put it down to first-day nerves. No, leave the spider-silk; you want old-iron mesh for this. You don't want a ni...

#2024MakeAMonster day 12: Art

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ArtIt had been years since I tried to paint. Whatever joy I'd once felt in the process dried out drop by drop, until all the days when friends or family told me to 'Take some time for your art!' were something I dreaded. I'd stare at the blank page, and nothing I did to it would stop it being empty. There was a time when I could pick up a pencil or a brush and just start moving, and once there was a line on the sheet before me it'd come alive; I could play with it, follow its m...

#2024MakeAMonster day 11: Cosy

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Cosy

I was walking in the park the other day when I saw it: the hollow of a tree, filled up with rainwater. Copper leaves lying atop, and the surface shimmering like silver.

Johnny stopped me when I went over to touch it, though. He said it could have all sorts of dirt in it. I shouldn't have got angry; I know he was right. He always is. It just looked - cozy. The water fitting so perfectly to the edges, nestled in place, a perfect little teacup of a pond.
'Of course the water's up...

#2024MakeAMonster day 10: Trash

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Warning: violence, misogyny, decomposition and body horror

Trash

He wrapped me in bin bags after he killed me. No one ever tucked a duvet around me so tenderly as he wrapped those plastic sheets. Masking tape fitted around my arms and legs tender as a tailor; he tucked in the stray ends as if I were Cinderella preparing for the ball.

In life he'd never touched me. He'd been a fussy man, nervous-handed; I'd seen him down the hallway sorting his mail, setting his shirt-cuffs straig...

#2024MakeAMonster day 9: Coffee

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CoffeeGood morning and welcome to Waker's Coffee! No sleep too deep, that's our motto. Yes, we have all kinds here. Blonde roasts, single-origin, even Kopi Luwak. You know, those coffee beans that pass through the digestive system of a civet cat and get mellowed on the way?Ethical? Well, mostly. If you want wild-harvested civet droppings you'll have to pay wild-harvested prices, I'm afraid, but those'll run you pretty high. Civets don't eat coffee beans every day, and even if t...

#2024MakeAMonster Day 8: Shoe

 

#2024makeamonster day 8! Today's prompt: SHOE.

Shoe
My Granddad never helped around the house. 'A man needs his rest,' he'd say, and go off to toast his slippers.

I always wanted Granny to stand up to him, but she wasn't as strong as she used to be. I'd seen the photos, and back in her day she'd been a dancer. She was beautiful then, or if not pretty-featured then something better: strong and graceful with a face like a lioness and legs she could lift all the way up to her cheek, pointing a powerf...

#2024MakeAMonster day 7: Insomniac

#2024MakeAMonster day 7!

InsomniacThat's the thing about insomnia: it's in your flesh. During the day it's like being sodden: weariness soaks me like a sponge, and all of me feels so heavy I feel like if someone shook me the meat would just drop off my bones. But let me lie down, and I'm crawling. My nerves come away and crackle ant-trails through my skin; wherever I touch the mattress, I creep with a skittering chant of can't, can't, can't. 
And yes, I've tried things. I exercise and have hot bat...

#2024MakeAMonster day 6: Teacup

 #2024makeamonster day 6!

TeacupIt was my Grannny taught me to read fortunes in tea-leaves. She liked to look for signs in everything. It was cosy cuddled up to her; we read the leaves wrapped together in her lucky blanket. She always insisted we do it with the blanket around us; she'd made it herself, some kind of crochet-knit mix that she said wove in good-luck knots for fortune and oysterman's stoppers to keep bad things away and a snuggle hitch for comfort. We'd look at the leaves and she'd ...

#2024MakeAMonster day 5: Fire

 

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Fire

When I took the job as a professional hermit, being keeper of the flame went with it. 
It wasn't supposed to, officially speaking. Carstanton House is one of those eighteenth-century manors built on empire money out of grey stone and NeoClassical notions: pillars and porticoes and little acanthus leaves softened with old English lichen. Beautiful in a way they never intended, I think - the lines of the place were set by people who grew up on Greek and Latin and figured the b...

#2024MakeAMonster day 4: House

 

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HouseMy granny never liked my dad. She wasn't one of those mothers-in-law that resented a man for taking away her daughter; she mostly had criticisms of Mum too. If Mum ever mentioned in her hearing she'd had a problem with someone, Granny would say, 'Well, if you will speak to people like that...' Even when our neighbour had a breakdown and got it in his head Mum was planting spy-cams in his walls, Granny told Mum that no doubt if she'd been more careful how she spoke to him p...