Icy Sedgwick's Blog, page 120

Friday Flash - The Artist

The pencil skated across the paper. Jessie liked to think she didn't draw on the page, rather that every sheet of paper had a drawing inside it. She just needed to tease it out. That lunchtime, she worked on pulling free a knight. She gave him curly hair and a broad smile.



"You will be Sir Gryffon, defender of the Stone City and son of the late Lord Fearnley," said Jessie. She sketched a griffin on his shield. She'd always liked griffins.



The sounds of a school playing field drifted across to her. She gazed across the expanse of grass from beneath her oak tree. The other girls congregated by the football pitch and pretended to be singers. Their caterwauling set her teeth on edge, and she watched them primp and preen when the boys ran past. Some of them dabbed at their eyes with makeup. Jessie would rather draw fairies and dragons than draw on her face with those black pencils and greasy red sticks.



"I bid you good day, fair maiden."



Jessie looked up in surprise. A tall knight stood beside her. He wore a suit of bronze armour, and held a polished helmet under one arm. His blond curls ruffled in the breeze beneath the tree.



"Er, hello."



"You are the Lady Jessica, are you not?"



"Um, yes, I am."



"Why do you sit here, by yourself? Why do you not play with the other girls?" asked the knight.



"They don't like me. All they want to do is talk about makeup and boys, and they make fun of my drawings. They made me sit over here because I don't watch Glee and I don't know who Lady Gaga is," said Jessie.



"Lady Gaga? I must say, I do not recall anyone of that name at Court."



Jessie giggled. The knight smiled, his blue eyes twinkling in the lunchtime sun.



"That's a pretty sketchbook you have there," said the knight.



"My dad gave it to me," said Jessie.



"Your father has fine taste, Lady Jessica."



"Had. He died."



"Oh I am sorry to hear that. My father is dead, too."



"I know. He fought the Orc King at the Battle of Pond'Haar," said Jessie.



"Yes, that's right. But of course, you know all about my lands, don't you?"



He looked down at Jessie, glancing at the now-empty page.



"You are not happy, are you?" he asked.



"Not really...nobody likes me. I haven't got any friends, and my stepmother says I should be grateful that she kept me after my dad died, but I don't think she wants me around," replied Jessie. "She's not a bad person, but she never talks to me."



"Lady Jessica...would you like to come with me?" asked the knight. He held out his hand and bowed.



"My dad always told me never to go anywhere with a stranger," said Jessie. She clutched the sketchbook to her chest.



"A very wise man, although I am not a stranger. You, Lady Jessica, know me better than anyone. I shall prove it!" said the knight.



"How?"



"What do I keep under my pillow?" asked the knight.



"The first tooth you lost. You got upset because the Tooth Fairy didn't take it and leave you any coins, like all the other kids bragged about. You leave it there, hoping she'll come for it eventually."



"Exactly. And what do I keep in this pouch at my belt?"



"A stone with a hole in it. You keep it because your dad told you that if you looked through the hole, you could see fairies."



The knight nodded. Jessie felt her hand move to her jeans pocket. She patted the stone. Her dad found it on the beach in Dorset when they went looking for fossils.



"Lady Jessica, I am no stranger. You would be most welcome in my land."



Jessie looked across the field at the gaggle of preening girls. Two of them noticed her. Jessie felt the force of the twin glares from sixty yards away. She thought of her stepmother as she looked up at Sir Gryffon. Harriet wouldn't realise she'd gone.



"OK, I'll come with you. But only if you take me to see the dragons in Madrigal Deep. And the griffins in the Sorn Mountains," said Jessie.



"We have ourselves an accord."



Sir Gryffon smiled. Jessie took his hand.



The bell rang to signal the end of the lunch break. None of the girls noticed Jessie was gone until Mrs Peabody took the afternoon register. Carly remembered seeing Jessie out on the field, under the oak tree. All they found was a sketchbook, open at a drawing of a knight and a girl with pigtails.

Photo Prompt 17

Seventeenth prompt, ready and waiting.



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The seventeenth prompt is Harbour.





All photo prompts are my own photography - you can find more of it on Flickr.

Friday Flash - The Castle

A draft blew cold kisses onto her neck. Lady Eleanor stirred from her sleep. Daylight flooded the room. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. She stretched her arms above her head, making her spine crack. She marvelled that the merciless ache no longer plagued her limbs, and no savage cough racked her body with violent fits. She examined her legs and found the peculiar rash had also gone. Lady Eleanor lay back against the pillow, satisfied that the little doctor's strange remedies had banished the mysterious fever. Such a shame the cure had not worked for her late husband.



After a few moments enjoying the peaceful morning, Lady Eleanor noticed the chill in the air. No fire blazed in the hearth. She couldn't even see any logs. She frowned. The servants knew of the illness, and knew the doctor's orders that she must be kept warm. How unlike them to have forgotten, she thought.



Lady Eleanor threw back the covers and swung her legs out of bed. She fetched a robe from the armoire in the corner, and padded onto the landing outside her chamber. She winced when her bare feet met the cold stone floor.



"Elspeth? Violet? Mary?"



She called for her housemaids. Her voice echoed down the spiral staircase. Lady Eleanor listened intently, expecting to hear the clatter of the kitchen or the shouts of the stableboys in the yard. She heard nothing.



"Hello? Is there anyone around? I am much recovered now," called the Lady.



She ventured down the stairs, whistling for the castle hounds. No paws scampered across stone. No tails wagged, and no excited barking met her in the lower chamber.



This is a wretched awakening. Why is there no rejoicing that I am recovered? she thought.



Lady Eleanor wandered along the corridor to the entrance hall. The vast oak doors stood wide open. She rushed to the doorway and gazed out across the lawn. She expected to see the shepherd and his flock in the meadow across the ha-ha, though it lay empty.



Oh! Have brigands and thieves seized my castle as I slept? Are my servants slain? thought the Lady.



She hurried back inside and heaved the oak doors closed. The clang as she threw home the bolt echoed around the entrance hall. The sound brought no one running.



Lady Eleanor felt panic rise in her gut, and worry fluttered in her stomach like demonic moths. She broke into a run, bounding up the stairs leading up to the great hall. Again, the room was empty, the chairs and benches of her elders standing unoccupied.



A sound in the eaves caught her attention. The whirring of wings came from the corner of the room. Lady Eleanor peered up into the gloom, but saw only shadows. She shivered, noticing again the dead atmosphere of her castle. She crossed the room and crouched by the fireplace. Two logs sat in the hearth, and she contemplated how she might set them alight.



* * *

"What was that bang?" asked Lucy.



"I expect the wind blew the door shut. Now look up. See those holes in the wall? They held floor joists. Do you know what floor joists do?" asked Mrs Black.



Lucy shook her head, setting her ginger curls swinging. Mrs Black smiled.



"Floor joists are big beams that the floor sits on. Yes, there was once another floor above us. The great hall was up there."



Mrs Black pointed upwards. Little Lucy leaned backwards, craning her neck to see the room above. There was a fireplace halfway up the wall, above the holes for the floor. Moss clung to the walls around the fireplace, and a small tree grew out of the brickwork at the back of the hearth.



"There was a room there?" she asked. The fireplace was so high. It looked funny.



"Yes! The family would have received visitors there. A bit like a big version of our living room. Try to imagine it with a roof," replied Mrs Black.



Lucy screwed up her eyes to better see a roof over the whole space. Her brother stood in the corner, transfixed by the swifts. The birds had nests in the holes between the bricks. They heard the babies tweeting for their mothers when they came in to see the ruined castle. Theodore watched the swifts flutter near the top of the wall.



"Tell her how it's haunted, Mum!" shouted Theodore.



"Don't scare your sister. Lucy, it's not haunted," said Mrs Black.



Lucy stuck her tongue out at her brother and looked back at the fireplace. The harder Lucy stared, the more she thought she could see something beside it. A grey shadow, a smudge in the air. She felt sad when she looked at it.



"Mummy, mummy! What's that?" asked Lucy. She pointed at the shadow.



* * *

Lady Eleanor paused. She cocked her head on one side and listened. Voices. Indistinct, but voices nonetheless.



"Elspeth? Mary?"



She listened hard for the reply.



"Mum, why is the lady so sad?"

Save Our Libraries

There has been a lot of talk on the Internet of late about plans in the UK to close many public libraries as their latest idea for saving money. Other people clearly feel the same way, if the #savelibraries hashtag on Twitter is anything to go by. Personally, I'm absolutely horrified at the idea - of all the things that the government pays for, libraries should be LAST on their list of things to cut.



But it's easy, isn't it? Snip a little here, snip a little there, and hope that all your small savings add up enough to take a chunk out of the overall deficit. Trouble is, in the end, it costs more money than it saves due to the losses incurred as a result of the cuts. As my dad says, it's like removing your doors to save on the cost of paint, while leaving your house wide open to burglars. Look at it any way you like, but the UK is a country with a colossal budget for foreign aid, yet we have children within its borders living below the poverty line - children who will lose their access to free information and the chance to expand their knowledge if the libraries are closed to save a few pounds.



In a country where education league tables are everything, where the Building Schools for the Future initiative has been halted and pupils are taught in crumbling relics of the 1960s, surely we should be preserving these last bastions of free knowledge. There was an outcry when the government proposed it would cut a service aimed at providing free books, and it relented, allowing the scheme to continue. Yet closing libraries denies access to free books on a much wider scale. Books aren't cheap to buy, but if you have access to a library, you have access to an entire world of literature, not to mention general knowledge. A library is warm, dry - and keeps a young person off the streets for the day.



In his foreword to Fahrenheit 451, author Ray Bradbury advocates the existence of libraries, since in the absence of a formal education, he taught himself the things he wanted to know in his local library. Who is to say that children all over the country aren't doing the exact same thing? Of course, they won't be able to, if there is nowhere for them to go. Libraries are often the only means some people have of accessing the Internet, and if the library goes, then you cut away the resources the Internet has to offer for those who cannot afford it in their own homes.



I'm lucky, I live in a London borough with six libraries, and only one is threatened with closure. The library in question is in a position where it may be saved, by being turned into a new community facility which would incorporate the Citizens Advice Bureau, family learning courses run by a local college, and even church youth work - hopefully, this proposal will meet with success. Mayor Boris Johnson has also announced plans to set up a trust to run those libraries unable to fund themselves - it's a pity the rest of his party cannot have the foresight to do the same on a national level.



I'm also lucky in that I can afford to buy books, and have the Internet at home. Many don't have this option, and it is on their behalf that I ask everyone to join in the campaign at their local library to ensure we keep these institutions going, for the good of everyone.



(Please read author Emma Newman's post on the same topic - she puts it across far better than me)

Photo Prompt 16

Sixteenth prompt, ready and waiting.



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The sixteenth prompt is Window.







All photo prompts are my own photography - you can find more of it on Flickr.

Friday Flash - The Body Of Your Dreams

Victor stares at the screen in disbelief. The credits roll past in chunky white type as an electronic soundtrack thuds in the background. Was that it? he thinks. Did I really just waste £16 on that?



He picks up the DVD case. A smiling woman with a toned stomach and gleaming teeth beams at him from the cover. She doesn't look like any medical practitioner Victor has ever seen. He flips to the back of the case to read her bio. It lists qualifications he's never heard of, and claims she studied biology at a city college in Nevada.



Victor turns back to the cover. There it is, a strapline in white Comic Sans, promising that the DVD will help him to "create the body of his dreams".  He glances between the DVD and the anatomical text book lying open on the floor. Am I missing something? he thinks. Victor casts a longing look at the surgical table and box of tools behind him, and sighs.



There's just no way Victor can make a monster by doing squats and sit ups.

Photo Prompt 15

Fifteenth prompt, ready and waiting.



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The fifteenth prompt is Reflection.







If you want more prompts, check out Walt White, Eric J Krause and Jen Brubacher!

Friday Flash - A Girl's Best Friend

There is a mystical bond between a child and its first bear. Or so believed William, clinging to the belief as he now clung to the top shelf in Susie's room. Wedged between a pile of old board games and a lamp with no bulb, the old threadbare teddy leaned against the wall and tried to reassure himself that she still loved him. My Susie knows I'm here, he told himself.



Of course, she didn't answer to Susie now. Once the raucous din replaced the inoffensive pop, her blonde hair turned black and she insisted everyone call her Wrath. Her posters of dolphins and Brad Pitt disappeared and new ones were put up in their place. These posters were of angry looking men in black leather, and winged demons William wouldn't look at when the light went out. Susie refused to open her curtains, and spent hours hunched over her computer in the dark. Her mother occasionally attempted to straighten up the mess, and if Susie was out, she would even lift him down to dust him. Once or twice, Mom even spoke to him. William relished the rare bursts of human contact.



One night, William overheard Susie talking on her phone. He realised the following day was Susie's birthday. He sat back against the wall and smiled to himself. Susie's grandmother gave him to her the day she was born. Now, here they were, about to celebrate their seventeenth anniversary. Susie will remember. I know she's forgotten the last two, but she'll remember this year, thought William.



The old bear spent all night fretting about the big day. He watched Susie paint on her makeup before she left for school. William was glad when Susie's mother came in to tidy the room, and remembered to dust him. He wanted to look his best when Susie got home. He planned it all in his head. Susie would come home, and she'd take him downstairs. He'd sit at the table with her while she ate her birthday dinner with the family. Evening would arrive and they'd watch movies together in the den. At night, she'd take him back upstairs and she'd fall asleep cuddling him.



A slamming door and thudding footsteps on the stairs told him Susie was home. He sat up and tried to fluff up the threadbare patches on his tummy. The door flew open and Susie stomped into the room. She glared at the tidy room before heading back out onto the landing.



"Mom! Where are my old cat ears? Mom! I need them now! I'm gonna be late for the party!" she shouted.



"What do you need them for?" Mom's voice drifted up the stairs.



"I want to look cute for Plague! Mom, where are they?"



"Try the shelf with all your old kid's stuff on it."



Susie ran back into the room. She climbed onto her bed and came face to face with William. His heart leapt as her hand snaked around his stomach and picked him off the shelf. With a flick of her wrist, Susie tossed William over her shoulder. He tumbled through the air, landing on the floor with a soft thump. He watched Susie rake through her childhood things until she found the cat ear headband. She pushed it into her thick mass of black hair. William thought she looked far from cute. She looked fierce.



William's furry little heart broke as she ran out of the room.



He lay on the floor, snuffling to himself. The other toys left her room long ago, and he didn't even have the will to pick himself up. Everyone else went on to new homes and new lives, but not him. Susie kept me, but she doesn't really want me, he thought. She threw me away.



Hours later, the door opened again. Susie slunk into the room, her eye makeup running in black streaks down her face. She threw the cat ear headband at the opposite wall. It slid behind her computer desk. William didn't want to look at Susie, but sobs spilled out of her narrow frame. She shuffled across the room, and her foot connected with his tummy.



Susie bent to see what she'd kicked. She squeaked as she spotted William on the floor. He thought he was dreaming when she picked him up. Susie sat on her bed, hugging William to her chest. She buried her face in his fur, smearing eyeliner across the back of his head. William didn't mind – she'd experimented on him with makeup before. It would just mean a spin in the washing machine again.



"I'm so sorry I threw you on the floor. I didn't mean to, I was just in such a rush. I'm sorry, William. At least you still love me," whispered Susie. "You still love me and you don't care what I look like or any of that stuff. You're not going to invite me to a party for my birthday when you know I like you and then make out with someone else in front of me. Stupid Plague. He's just a stupid moron who's really called Jason. Stupid Jason."



William didn't know what to say, or what to do, to comfort her. He chose to do the only thing he knew he could.



He cuddled back.



* * *

This one is actually inspired by my own photo prompt 14! It's dedicated to all the many stuffed dogs, bears, lions, pandas, elephants, dragons, kiwis, meerkats and many more than I've owned over the years. No one is there for you quite like a teddy.

Three Words for 2011

I'm an avid follower of blogger Deb Ng, having discovered her on the Freelancer Writing Jobs blog, and now her new venture, Kommein. On her 2 January post, she follows the advice of super-blogger Chris Brogan and recommends choosing three words to sum up the year ahead.



Now, I realised in the latter part of last year that I don't really talk about myself much on this blog. There's a lot of fiction, a lot of photography, talk about the mechanics of writing, and some discussion of those aspects of culture that interest me, such as art or film, but not very much about me or what makes me tick. A lot of bloggers are a lot more open about themselves - I'm not, simply because I decided my interests are more interesting to a reader than I am. Still, I'm not entirely devoid of emotion, so here are my three words for 2011 - and a little bit of myself to go with them.



Acceptance

No, I don't just mean this in the context of having more work accepted for publication (although this is clearly a goal for 2011). It doesn't even mean acceptance onto my chosen research program to begin the now-infamous PhD (although I'd give someone else's right arm to do this). No, I actually mean 'acceptance' in a more broad sense. I'm the first to admit that I'm incredibly self-critical, and I want to be more accepting of myself in 2011. Many discussions with an incredibly dear friend in the closing weeks of 2010 have at least helped me to see there's not strictly anything wrong with me, I just have different perceptions of things that may be culturally and socially accepted 'norms'. On another level, I'm also a bit of a control freak, so I want to learn to accept that some things are simply beyond my control, and that's no reflection on me, simply my inability to manipulate space/time.



Create

This doesn't just mean in the obvious sense of writing - pretty much anything which requires thinking requires creativity in some sense, even if it's just coming up with a new solution to a problem. I want to create some sort of balanced life for myself that allows time for writing, work, and fun. I want to have actual concrete things in my hands at the end of the year that I can hold up and say "I created this" (I don't mean ACTUAL concrete, either). I want to have enough finished drawings that I could paper the walls of my flat. Basically, I want to keep my mind occupied with creative endeavours.



Silence

I'm a BIG fan of silence (which might be an odd confession for a film scholar who DJs) but this year, I want to try and focus more on enjoying it; that is, actually taking the time to slow down and relax occasionally. Normally I feel like there's so much to do that I have to be doing something at all times, and that any time spent doing "nothing" is time wasted. However, in 2011, I'm hoping to have more 'quiet' time to recharge the ol' batteries and hopefully combat the persistent tiredness that has dogged me in recent years.



What would your three words be?

Photo Prompt 14

Fourteenth prompt, ready and waiting.



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The fourteenth prompt is Bears.







If you want more prompts, check out Walt White, Eric J Krause and Jen Brubacher!