apologies

i got sick with an invisible illness that took away my heart and my soul and i didn't write for two weeks. i feel guilty now, and kind of like a failure but i could give up - or i could keep trying. and i suppose i will try and keep trying, but try is the inevitable word here.

somebody has snatched away all of my words, and kept them greedily for themselves, and now they're ruling my life with the misuse of their silly syllables and i'm stuck in a loop of forever feeling like i'm not good enough to skim at the bottom of the ocean.

i am going to try and combat this with positivity and today is a nice day. and hopefully there will be a new story on monday - but if there isn't, i promise to grovel at the feet of anybody who cares to listen and beg for yet another chance.

thankyou.

week two;

manners.

she packed the sandwiches first, followed by the apples and the small bottles of sparkling water – before filling every gap she could manage with small biscuits. she smiled as she flipped the top of the basket down, and shrugged her cardigan across her shoulders. she’d been looking forward to today for the past two years of her eight year life-span, nothing could dampen the chipper mood she felt rock her core.

she waved goodbye to her mother, whose eyes barely left the pool of other children swarming around her ankles – and took the disgruntled hiss that left her mouth, as a very happy goodbye. she kissed the very top of her kitten’s head, and she patted the dog with a little too much enthusiasm, and she walked down the winding path that she had found on her sixth birthday.

when she had asked her mother on that very day, she had a look of danger in her eyes.

oh bonnie no. that path leads to the very middle of a very dark wood, and in the darkening shadows the children of goblins play – they play and they don’t play very nice. promise me, promise me you will never walk down that path. children should never walk that way alone. and bonnie had agreed. no children should ever walk that way alone.

she turned eight that day. eight and in her own mind, she was no longer a child – she felt a cling of adulthood tugging at her childish plaits, untying them and letting her long hair flow effortlessly in the wind. she was no longer a child, and she was ready – she could feel it. she would meet the goblin children, and nobody could stop her.

she hadn’t bothered with a coat, and she wondered if that was a mistake. but it was too late to turn back now. the trees were crowding above her head, and the smell of the forest flooded her body like a wave of happiness. she’d never felt this way before. she’d never felt this happy tied in between the four small walls, too full with dirty children. there was a freedom outside that you could never clasp when you couldn’t be there. but she was here now.

she thought she heard a rumble of laughter, and her legs stopped moving instinctively. she thought about staring into the trees to pick out the goblin-eyes, but instead she stared at her feet. her white stockings were grey with dust and her scuffed shoes were muddy down the sides. she felt uncomfortable, but even more than that – she felt invisible.

she was staring down when the first of the goblin children came out, and it was lucky too, that they missed her – so small and so innocent that they all just flittered past her without looking twice.

they came in pairs and clusters of three, normally. small ugly little creatures. and the final in this very trio was small, almost as small as bonnie, but his nose was good. and he swore, oh how he swore on the very life of his nose that he could smell apples, and pears, and roast-beef sandwiches – but his brothers would never believe him. and so they carried on, never noticing the small girl with the basket of apple biscuits and pears and roast-beef sandwiches.

she kept walking after that, unafraid – marching along without looking back at the small house that poked out of the back of the forest. she kept walking until she came to an opening. a large clearing in a perfect circle, where the trees seemed to bow outwards, away from her – like she was their master and they were all begging for her approval, their heads held high and their arms stretched well above their scalps to promote their height.

she didn’t sit down until she’d pulled the blanket from the top of the basket she was carrying. she set it down elegantly, smoothing the corners out perfectly, in the centre of the shunned circle and she set out the food. there enough for three and she sat back and she waited. she crossed her legs and she reclined into the open misty air and she twiddled her thumbs.

it didn’t take more than five minutes before she heard the sniggering. and then there they were.

goblins don’t really like clothes, and they don’t really like people – that’s why they hide away between the trees and they watch, mainly – they don’t like to be judged by their harsh exterior, or their barbaric mannerisms. they just like to watch people going along their days without any bother. but they also like to play. they like to wrestle and they like to play tennis, but they’re too afraid of people to run onto any open courts.

hello said bonnie, but she hadn’t taken her eyes off the patched quilt she was sitting on. she hadn’t looked directly at the goblins, but she knew they were there. she was a clever girl.

they didn’t respond at first. they took a step towards her, and then a step back and they hesitated. there were two of them, a boy and a girl – lucky, because she had only packed enough food for three.

hello, finally the boy replied. gathering all of his courage. despite the fact that he was significantly taller than the girl sitting in the middle of the parting, he was surprisingly terrified of her.

how do you do, bonnie stood to curtsy to the pair. i’m bonnie.

the pair took another step closer. they could smell the sandwiches and the biscuits and they wanted them. bonnie bowed once again and then sat down again, legs crossed and her palms pressed together in her lap.

it happened slowly and then all at once. they took a single step and suddenly their rough green-tinged toes were touching the quilt and they fell to their knees. grinding them into the ground as their fingers greedily grabbed at the food. they were grubby, and bonnie noticed. she didn’t mean to be rude, but she found herself tutting.

excuse me, she coughed.

they both stared. the girl looked instantly terrified, almost as though her legs were about to take off, no matter what it was that her mouth craved.

you’re not using your manners at all, bonnie shook her head. now first, who are you, and please refrain from rubbing dirt all over the blanket, thankyou. she nodded a blonde wisp of hair back behind her ear, flattening her pale dress against her knees.

they both looked at bonnie like she had stolen the sun. bonnie began to question herself. what had she gotten herself into, what if they didn’t even have manners. she knew nothing of goblins. she only knew what her mother had drilled into her head. she thought, she had just thought that maybe her mother was wrong. maybe they were kind, and just a little shy.

they call me – bonnie lost the word that the boy had spoken, knowing only that it didn’t sound like english, and she surely couldn’t be expected to understand it.
but i heard about a boy named john and i like that name too. the boy looked at his feet, suddenly bashful.

we used to live near water, the girl spoke and it shook bonnie to the core, the beauty in her syllables. so you can call me river.

bonnie grinned wide enough to catch sunlight between her teeth. oh good. oh yes, very good.

they sat in silence now, all too afraid to talk in fear of scaring the others off like they were all timid rabbits in an open field.

bonnie clenched her fingers together once more, staring up between the trees, trying to pick out any more prying eyes before she finally bent to raise her fork. the goblin children were starting. watching her. hungry?

they nodded but they didn’t move. waiting. watching. afraid that their worlds would come crashing down around them. they waited and they watched until bonnie pierced the apple cookie with a force that split it into tiny little chunks. she laughed as she picked a piece up.

it was all over then. the goblins were eating, and so was bonnie and they weren’t really saying anything but they kept making eye contact and they kept laughing and suddenly everything seemed like it was okay again.

i like this said river, as she pulled the sandwich apart, chewing on the roast-beef and tossing the buttered bread aside. tastes a lot better than the children we normally eat.

bonnie laughed, and she hoped that she sensed sarcasm, but she decided to let it slip past anyway.

it wasn’t long before they were all lolling on their backs, soaking in the light like it was their life support, heads all facing in and all feeling the sick prong of over-eating.

john liked pears, and river liked the beef and bonnie liked her friends.

i should go now, stumbled bonnie. she began to try and tidy the mess but soon she realised that most of it had already been consumed by the goblin children. they were strange, and bonnie liked to look at them with her head tilted – just trying to work them out. but she was afraid that maybe she never would. they were mysteries to her, but she was glad that just this once she never listened to her mother.

bonnie curtsied before she left, and watched john fumble forward into a haphazard bow, and river trip over a bent knee and suddenly she felt that strange freedom fill her heart again. she didn’t stop smiling as she walked back to her overcrowded house, and she grinned as she slipped back in the door, once again unnoticed and she sat at the kitchen table and she said.

oh mother, i had the most extraordinary day today, i could get used to being an adult.

week one;

iris.

he could feel eyes lingering over him, like soup in a can. he was glancing over his shoulder while doing his grocery shopping. letting his gaze slip over everybody, staring at their pupils, trying to pick out the criminal from an ordinary day lineup. but he couldn’t find anything. maybe he was just insecure in his new haircut, maybe he felt like his pants were a bit tight, maybe he was just paranoid that the world was watching, when really he was very unimportant.

but the feeling didn’t leave. it followed him to his car, and it followed him to his house and it followed him down the hallway. at night he tucked himself in, to his solitary bed in a very empty room and the feeling of those eyes fitted snugly underneath the sheets with him. he woke up and he could taste it, taste the eyes over his gruffly uneven skin and as he slumped into the kitchen, in search of coffee - he felt the eyes blink against his chest.

it didn’t take longer than a week before they felt normal. people adapt and so did he. the eyes seemed to fit in to his schedule, somewhere between being awake and being asleep – so confusing that he could sense these eyes, but the only thing he couldn’t do was see them. they didn’t force him into reclusion, and they didn’t make him second guess the tie he paired with his beaten suit, and it didn’t make him doubt his choice in frozen meals. they just sat there, uncomfortably comfortable against his flesh like they were at least once, one.

he knew that one day, one day in the future they would meet. they would lock eyes and he would finally see them and finally he would feel okay – but he was okay with waiting, he was a patient guy. it was okay.

-

ten years later there was a wife and some daughters and a dog. they lived in the same overgrown house behind a closed, old, privately-owned wood that kept the secrets of men that didn’t deserve to be kept. he went to work and he walked the dog and he forgot what living without that nagging feeling of being watched felt like. the eyes grew through him like a tree over a bicycle. he laughed and his voice sagged with an age he had never felt before and his children had swollen into ball of joy that could carry themselves in conversation and throughout gravity.

tuesday evenings were his nights off, free of children, free of noise and void completely from responsibility – on tuesday’s, he didn’t exist. he’d sit with his back pressed against the wooden frame of his bed, and his own eyes scampering over a novel, worn and beaten against time and weather and he made a world around him that only he could see, and that was where he lived. on tuesdays, he called those overgrown woods that grew from his mind, his home.

on a tuesday that would always blend in with the rest upon further inspection, something happened. something changed and the wind slapped him out of his daydream. he felt his heart slip down around his toes and his head turned so frantically he was afraid his balance would be thrown. something felt wrong, and wrong and wrong and strangely right. the eyes. they moved, they shifted and they shuffled along and they weren’t pressed against his limbs in a passionate frenzy anymore – they were there, hovering – in the present.

he felt his lunch of tuna-pasta slide back up his throat, and he dropped the book he was holding to the floor. he rose from the bed shakily, eyes darting almost as suspiciously as the first time he’d felt them fall on him – a feeling he’d never spoken about, never repeated, never dared spell out. and here it was, happening in reverse.

they were near, so near and so close and so silent and he flew across to the front room of his house, overlooking a small veranda sporting only a moth-eaten hammock and a too-polished rocking chair.  he felt the same panic he felt when seven years ago he lost his daughter at a fair – that same cut-throat-death-terror that could only be saved by the sight of a child toddling towards him, arms outstretched. but he wasn’t sure he’d get the same gratification today. why. why now, why today, why.

he was pressing himself against the fly-wire door, teeth clenched and fingers bunched, staring where the vacant spaces against his body pointed – the woods. and he stared so intently that his eyes turned red and dry against the whipping winds.

but he didn’t have to stand there to long, because soon she came. she came through the trees without hesitation, walked out like this was her house and she owned it – stalked in like nothing could have ever stopped her.

he felt strange, his body was tingling with confusion and anger and hope – but her eyes never touched him and he still felt empty. he watched her walk, swaggering down the overgrown path, dodging the misplaced toys and tennis balls and walking straight for the door, straight to him.

h-hello he was flustered. did you want to come in? there wasn’t a reply but the eyes grazed across his chest and he felt himself burn and cave in, before suddenly, he felt normal again – everything that had suddenly shuttered out of his life, had fled back in. he blinked. she blinked back.

he opened the door and she walked in without waiting for him to move out of the way. he hated it, but he knew what he’d have to do. he knew until the eyes closed, he would have to share his life with them. he realized he felt parched without them.

my wife wouldn’t like this, he mumbled – more to himself than to her, but she wasn’t listening anyway. she was walking through the kitchen, turning over everything with her eyes as if weighing up her options. he shrugged against himself and felt a little uneasy.

did you want a drink? once again she didn’t respond, just let her eyes stare him down, and he nodded almost as though he’d been given a direct order. okay, he wasn’t going to get everything his own way, he supposed, and he wandered into the kitchen to pour some water.

-

his wife came home with one sleeping child, and one with too much energy. she wandered in to find him sitting with her on his lap. he looked apologetic and kind-hearted.

what’s this then? she asked, waiting for the child bouncing at her feet to notice the stranger in the room.

i’m sorry he slumped in his seat and closed his eyes waiting for the cries, waiting for the panic and waiting for the hiss.

but the silence was there for too long. his wife staring at him, shaking her head, biting her lip. his daughter was bounding around the room, taking too little care to realize the trap that had been set for her. but she stopped and she stared and she realized.

A KITTY, it came – bounding from a body too small to bode such a volume. his eyes narrowed as the child ran closer, arms stretched outright. he watched as the cat’s tail fattened and the hissing began. his wife sighed.

well i called her iris he mumbled, hoping he wouldn’t be kicked out of bed tonight, like the day he brought home the blasted dog. he finally felt whole.

a cure to writers block

i've always loved writing, always as long as i can remember i was telling stories. i spent years with a fascination of hippos, writing stories about their hippopotamus families full of alliterating names like harriet and henry and hank. i evolved to stories of triplets (always triplets) and tragic fires and stolen identities - and finally settled into a dejected prosetry for years throughout my teenage years. i wrote myself through a depression that thoroughly rotted me to my core, and watched my flesh melt in the flames - and then one day i stopped. i could still wield the power, when i had to - but it made my skin crawl and i felt uneasy and unnatural and showing my writing to people felt like tearing my soul in half to give them a piece and i could never do it - and so i had stopped. i wouldn't, and i couldn't do it anymore.

and now i need to start again. because i can feel the life of words slipping out of my marrow, i can feel the way that this-could-be-talent-but-i'm-not-so-sure comments sit against my hips and they grow into me like trees and if i don't move them out of the way soon - then i truly will give up on writing, and then what use will i be? an identified writer who retired herself at eighteen? dead?

i've challenged myself to write fifty-two short stories this year. one for every week - there aren't really set lists, set challenges or set word limits but i want fifty-two by the end of the year, and they should not all be written in a slump in december when i panic. so instead i'm going to post one here every week when i've finished (hopefully).

today is january the seventh. and due to leaving this challenge so late, my story is only near-completed. it will live and it will breathe tomorrow, but today i have to sleep.

i hope that if anybody reads this, although the chance of that could be slim unless i share it with the small world in my repertoire, but i hope that you'd say something - anything, say nitwit, oddment, blubber, tweak!

(i hope i finish this, i really hope i do)

so for now, thanks for paying attention thus far, if you have. and i should be back very soon.
yours forever,
jessica.