WEP September Challenge - Changing Faces - 24th-26th September 2014

Welcome to WEP's Challenge for 24-26 September, Changing Faces.

I've just finished reading Roz Morris' science fiction/literary novel, Lifeform Three (2013), which I highly recommend. So I am going to give Sci-Fi another try here.

Changing Faces

Veronica Carlgren awoke one morning to find that she had forgotten what she had done the night before. Thinking back, trying to remember what happened, she realised that she had trouble even remembering her own name. 

What's happening here? What do I know? Where am I? Who am I?

She looked around the room to see if it was a familiar place, but it looked barren av personal mementos or photographs that would trigger her memory. Hospital beds. There were two. The one that she had slept in and another that was made up and hadn't been slept in by any ... patient.

Why am I in hospital? What kind of a hospital is this? 

She looked out the window. Yes, there was at least a window.

The window overlooked a garden or green area nearest the building and farther away she could see a large parking lot. It was a clear view. She must have been on the second or third floor. It was green outside, but whether it was spring, summer or early fall, she could not pinpoint yet. Maybe she could take a walk outside and see.

Suddenly, the wide door to the corridor opened and a women dressed in some kind of professional uniform wheeled in a cart with a breakfast tray and medicines.

'Good morning, Veronica!' the uniformed boomed, 'Glad to see you up and around. You must be feeling better! How about some breakfast?'

'Thank you. That would be nice. Have you been here a long time? I mean, have you been here as long as I have been here?'

'No Love, I've been on holiday for two weeks. This is my first day back. I've read your charts and talked to the others. But I am not allowed to say anything. I'm just an aid. You'll have to talk to the doctor.

'When can I do that?'

'When they have rounds. They usually do that early on this ward,' she said looking at the watch pinned on her uniform's  breast pocket, 'Sorry Dear, they've already been here. You must have been asleep when they came. Better luck tomorrow morning.'

'You called me "Veronica". How do you know my name?'

'Your name is on the charts, Sweetie. It says "Veronica Carlgren" everywhere. My name's Alma, by the way. I'll be back later. Don't forget to take your medicine.'

Alma left the breakfast tray on Veronica's tray-table and wheeled the cart out of the room. It was cream-of-wheat in a plastic bowl, cold toast with a pad of margarine on a plastic plate, and a small sealed plastic cup of orange juice. Nothing glass or metal. Plastic spoon. Paper napkin.

Veronica sat on the bed pulling the tray-table closer. 

I may as well eat something, she though taking the plastic spoon in hand and tasting the cream-of-wheat.

It was then that Veronica noticed her own hands. She looked down at both of her hands. They were not the hands of a young woman, her age, that is, the age that she presumed that she was, around thirty. These hands were wrinkled and had visible veins. The skin on her arms was baggy, and had dark spots, the kind that really old people get. Some of her knuckles were a bit swollen from arthritis.


Have I been in a coma? For how long? 

She had no pain. She could move about freely. If she had been in a coma for a very long time she would not be able to do this. She would have trouble even getting out of bed, because of atrophy of the muscles. That much she knew, without knowing how she knew it. Had she been a nurse? She must find a mirror and look at herself. Maybe she could remember.

Veronica left the bed and looked around the room. There must be a bathroom or at least a toilet somewhere. There. She spied a door near the entrance. She opened the door, walked into the smaller windowless room and looked above the sink where there was indeed a mirror. But the face that looked back at her was a white-haired woman with sunken eyes and wrinkled cheeks.

Veronica did not know her.

 

[This text is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of my imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.]

Word count according to WordCalc: 710

 

P.S.

This is a hastily written text - only a sketch - and the sci-fi ambitions evaporated due to lack of time. This past week has been filled of near-disasters. My ten-year old daughter, Elisabet, took a shower without paying attention to the fact that the floor drain could not absorb the water fast enough. She let the water spew out on the floor, to rinse her hair, again and again. The floor in the bathroom was quickly flooded and spilled out into the hall and ruined the floor there. It happened so fast, I couldn't stop it. I had to mop up as quickly as I could and literally bail out the two to three inches of water that covered the bathroom floor. 

My novel must have a flood scene in it! I have to use this.

Best wishes,
Anna










First Commenter:

Sally Stackhouse

of

Sally's Scribbles

 

Regrets! Regrets! Regrets! Taking Chances - WEP's Challenge for 20th-22nd August 2014

Welcome to WEP's Challenge for August 20-22, Taking Chances.

'Taking Chances' is a thought-provoking theme/prompt for a writing exercise. The image suggests something romantic, but so many different interpretations are possible.

Here is a story about Greta Celsing and her older friend, Ivar Larsson, who usually play the violin together on Tuesday mornings. 

Regrets, regrets, regrets!

'Shall we play this piece first before we have tea?' asked Greta as she put the sheet music on the stand, while Ivar was tuning the fiddles. 

'Why don't we start off by both playing the melody together and then I can play the chords,' suggested Ivar, since he was a more experienced musician. They both took their instruments in hand and began to play.

'You need to fine tune your fiddle. You're flat.'

'Oh, I'm sorry,' said Greta, 'I've made such mess of everything!'

'No, no. You've almost got it. Here, let me help you. Listen to how the A and the E-string sound together.'

'It's not just the tuning. It's my whole life. I have so much to regret!'

'Greta, you're only 22. You're too young to have regrets. What do you regret? What are you talking about? Later on in life you might regret wasting good time in your youth. Why don't we use the time that we have to practice our music?'

'Alright,' said Greta a little ashamed. And they played a folk melody for about twenty or thirty minutes.

'Let me tell you about my father', said Ivar when they took a rest and Greta poured the tea.

'My father had the 1918-flu when he was in his twenties. He survived, but I think it left him with a weakness, because he died when he was only 56. He wasn't well for several years and treated us all very badly, especially our mother. He had something on the brain and could not think right. He was sloppy one day and left his jacket lying on the floor. The cat came and peed on it. He was so angry at the cat that he went out and shot it. Dead. Just because it had messed up his jacket. So after that we were all on our toes and tried not to get him upset.

He had an operation that relieved the pressure on his brain. And since he had been bedridden for so long, I took him out in a row boat and rowed him around Stockholm, where we lived at that time. It was in late winter and there were still ice floes in the water. But he loved it. He dipped his hands into the cold water and laughed as he hadn't laughed for years.

'You took him out in a row boat? He could have drowned.'

'Yes, but by not taking him out, he would have missed an opportunity to feel alive after being so cooped up and ill for so long'.

'How old were you when this happened?'

'Eighteen. I wish I could have had him longer. I have already outlived him now. I wish I could talk to him today. He never got to see all the good work I've done. He only saw my school work.'

'Is this something that you regret?'

'No. I'm sorry that he died so young, but that had nothing to do with me. He didn't die because of me. It was just fate; the way things can be. 

The one thing that I do NOT regret is the fact that I was at home with him at the time when he suddenly became himself again. My sisters missed it. But I just happened to be there. It was some months after the operation, when his thoughts suddenly cleared. 

He looked at mother and me said, 'Now I know how difficult I've been. I'm so sorry that I have given you so much grief. But not now. Not anymore. I'll never be mean again. We're going to be happy from now on,' and he threw an apple between his hands as accurately as a juggler to show us how well his coordination had become, now that he had finally recovered. 

I was dumbfounded of joy. I sat and talked with him and I stayed with him, because I wanted to; because I had missed growing up and going through my teens with a normal healthy father. At that moment, I could finally see what a fine man my father was. And that he loved us. I was so happy. All the hard work of nursing him at home and bringing in buckets of drinking-water and wood for the wood-burning stove; and helping my mother. And protecting my mother from his rage, was rewarded in that moment. In that one golden moment.

But it only lasted a few hours until he suffered a new stroke and died.  

But for the rest of my life, I have been able to be happy, because I happened to be at home, at the right moment, and saw him as he was when he was healthy and good. I think this is why I haven't felt guilty. I did what I could. I was there when he needed me. And those few precious hours before he died gave me a happy memory to live with. To this day.

'Ivar, what are you trying to tell me?'

'Use your time wisely, Greta. Take care of those who really are important to you. Then you won't have to feel sorry. Now, let's play that tune one more time.'

Word count according to WordCalc: 881

P.S. Yes. This is a work of fiction. I had sifted through four or five different story ideas, and nothing seemed to work. I guess I don't really like writing about regrets. I like stories about chances that are wonderful and unlikely. Life is filled with missed opportunities. Fiction should be a place where you don't have to think about regrets. This story is based on what a friend of mine told me about his life. So it is not really my own story. But I like it so much, that I wish I had made it up myself. 

Yes, yes, I know. I'm 'telling' rather than 'showing'!

 

Best wishes,
Anna










First Commenter:
D.G. Hudson
of 
D.G.Hudson - Rainforest Writing

A Picture is worth a thousand words -- WEP-Challenge for July 2014

Welcome to WEP's Challenge for July 23-25, A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.

'A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words' is such a good theme for a writing challenge. I have been thinking of different ideas for weeks, but have not been able to get anything down on paper. Writer's block? Maybe. Or perhaps this theme is just too big or too close to the essence of everything I have worked for all my life. I love words and I love pictures. But I am not convinced that the one is more important or worth more than the other. Words and pictures just speak to us in different ways.

Anyway, I have failed in trying to invent a fictional story of my own. My imaginative well has gone dry. But I've kept thinking about this theme for weeks and even started seeing it in the movies that my son, Erik, has wanted me to see. Erik is twelve years old and intensely interested in the Far East and Chinese films and movie actors. Erik is a fan of Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and other Chinese actors such as Chow Yun-Fat. 

Erik recommended that I look at the most recent version of The King and I, called Anna and the King (1999), since he knows that I like Jodie Foster. Chow Yun-Fat plays the King of Siam. [I have also seen, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) and Bulletproof Monk (2003), as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean movie in which Chow Yun-Fat plays an ugly villain.]

So Erik wanted me to see, The Children of Huang Shi (2008) based on the life of George Hogg, an Englishman who successfully evacuated 60 Chinese orphans to a far away safer place, when China was invaded by Japan in the late 1930s.

I am always wary of the Hollywood versions of history and biography, so I am not saying that this film is entirely historically accurate. I haven't had time to dig deeper into the real life story that inspired this film (although I have found a biography of the real George Hogg). But putting any anachronisms aside, this film has a scene that has fired my imagination and seems to illustrate the power of images over words. I'd like to share it now. I wish I had made it up myself. 

George Hogg arrives in China, in Shanghai, after leaving England by way of the US and then Japan. He is a young journalist and like many western journalists, he wants to get to Nanjing, a city a few hours west of Shanghai, to see how the Japanese are treating the Chinese there. But the Japanese have closed the city of Nanjing to all journalists. Japan has not declared war on China. They claim to be there to help the Chinese during their civil war. 

Hogg makes a deal with the driver of a Red Cross truck carrying medical supplies to Nanjing. Only the Red Cross gets passes to Nanjing. Using the Red Cross driver's identity and truck, and together with two other young journalists, he drives to the city of Nanjing, which lies in ruins. The three young men split up to report on different things with the promise to meet back at the truck the following evening before nine o'clock.

Hogg climbs up to the second floor of a battered house to get a better view of a park where many Japanese soldiers have gathered. He takes out his Leica-camera and starts snapping photos without knowing what's going on. He sees large groups of Chinese civilians being marched into the center of a concrete ring. Men, women and children stand in rows, not seeming to know what is going to happen next. Suddenly automatic weapons are uncovered and Hogg hears cries of panic and horror as the Japanese soldiers start shooting and killing the Chinese. Every last one. 

Young Hogg, whose family are pacifists, is horrified and shocked, but continues to take pictures, since he feels that this is something that the rest of the world should know about. Night falls and the soldiers lite a fire to burn the bodies. When the soldiers seem to have left the fire to burn, Hogg leaves the house to get a closer look, and takes pictures of the fire. Then he leaves the park looking for a place to hide until it's time to return to Shanghai with his two friends. Unfortunately, he can't escape a group of Japanese soldiers and is taken into custody. Nothing is said. In the next scene, we see Hogg sitting and waiting in silence while a junior officer with white gloves gives a senior officer Hogg's camera and a stack of prints. The younger officer stands and waits while his superior looks one by one through the photos that show the atrocities of the previous day, at every stage. 

In the next scene, Hogg is forcefully led away by four soldiers and the same junior officer who developed and printed his negatives. The Japanese officer is wearing a sword. He removes his hat, holster, jacket and shirt while the the other soldiers force Hogg to his knees and bend down his head. Hogg's hands are tied behind his back. The young officer raises his sword, aiming at Hogg's neck, when machine-gun shots are fired. The shirtless Japanese executioner drops his sword and falls dead to the ground, as do the other four soldiers. A group of seven Chinese men pull Hogg to his feet and run with him to safety.

Mega-star, Chow Yun-Fat, plays Han-Sheng Chen, the communist Chinese, who saves Hogg's life. George Hogg is played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

'Why did they want to kill you? The Japanese usually leave British nationals alone,' asks Chen while cutting the rope around Hogg's hands and giving him a cigarette to smoke. 

'I saw something that I shouldn't. I took photographs and they found them.'


Word count according to WordCalc: 984

 

Best wishes,
Anna










First Commenter:
Nilanjana Bose
 

P.S.

Despite the fact that I don't feel this post is as good as it should be, I have received very kind comments from, so far, five readers. Thank you all so much for your encouragement.

I have tried to get more information about the historical background to this film. The Nanking Massacre did indeed take place. Thanks to Wikipedia, I have found a list of films that touch on this horrible event. (Click on Wikipedia and read more about what happened in Nanjing or Nanking). What happened or even if it really did happen is debated to this day. 

 Films

Main category: Nanking Massacre films

• Nanking (1938), a war propaganda film released by the Japanese government. This film, rediscovered in 1995, appears to portray a peacefully occupied Nanking, but the film professor Jinshi Fujii has expressed doubts that the location being shown is actually Nanking, and about the content of the film generally.^[132]
• The Battle of China (1944) a documentary film by American director Frank Capra.^[133] The footage of Nanking atrocities in this film may be sourced to a Chinese-made documentary which Prince Mikasa showed to Hirohito, but which has since been lost.^[134]
• Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre (1995), by Chinese director Mou Tun Fei, recreates the events of the Nanking Massacre.
• Don't Cry, Nanking aka (Nanjing 1937) (1995) directed by Wu Ziniu is a historical fiction centering around a Chinese doctor, his Japanese wife, and their children, as they experience the siege, fall, and massacre of Nanking.
• Horror in the East (2000),^[135] a documentary film produced by Laurence Rees for BBC, an examination of atrocities and depredations committed by Imperial Japanese military forces, from 1931 to 1945. Includes Japanese film of indoctrination (Emperor worship, Chinese as subhuman) and brutal training of their armed forces, as well as film of the Nanking Massacre itself taken by John Magee.
• Tokyo Trial (2006) is about the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
• The Children of Huang Shi (film) (2008) is inspired by the story of the English journalist George Hogg who took pictures of the Nanking Massacre, escaped death by beheading, and fled to the orphanage in Huang Shi.
• Nanking (2007), directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, that makes use of letters and diaries from the era as well as archive footage and interviews with surviving victims and those involved in the massacre.
• The Truth about Nanjing (2007),^[136] a documentary by Satoru Mizushima denying that any such massacre took place.
• City of Life and Death (2009) directed by Lu Chuan, a dramatization of the Nanking Massacre.
• John Rabe (2009) directed by Florian Gallenberger, a Sino-German co-production about the life of John Rabe, featuring Ulrich Tukur in the title role and Steve Buscemi in a supporting role.^[137][138]
• Torn Memories of Nanjing (2009) directed by Tamaki Matsuoka. Documentary featuring interviews with Japanese soldiers who admit to raping and killing Chinese civilians, and accounts by Chinese survivors.
• The Flowers of War (2011) directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Christian Bale and Shigeo Kobayashi based on The 13 Women of Nanjing by Geling Yan

WEP-Challenge for June - ROMANCE - Wednesday 24th - Friday 26th June 2014

Welcome to WEP's Blogfest for June [=Write-Edit-Publish, formerly 'Romantic Friday Writers'] WEP's Challenge for 24th-2th June 2014 is 'Romance':

Romance: On the Sea of Litorina

Klara Nilsson lay in the inflatable row boat that she had purchased before the flooding began. The sky was blue with puffy white clouds. She was exhausted from a whole day of rowing and all the preparations in the days before. The water seemed calm now; maybe she could sleep an hour or two. But instead of resting, she thought of the events that made her leave home in a rubber boat made for play in a swimming pool rather than escape from a flood.

It was June when the nights are short. Since there seemed not to be a change in this, Klara concluded that the earth had not been knocked off its axis. The floods must have some other cause. But she had no idea where all the water came from. Where, if not from the melting polar caps? There was no way to find out. All electronic communication was down. Her battery-operated radio did not pick up anything other than static. Her mobile phone was useless. If Klara's theory was correct, the plains of Östergötland, her province, would be under water in the same places as the prehistoric sea of Litorina. In case she was right about this, she took a modern map and drew a new coastline after maps she had found in a book about Swedish archeology. She hoped to find higher ground before her boat hit something sharp that would pierce it and sink it. For the moment, there was nothing but water in all directions; no landmarks to direct her. Using a makeshift sextant and her compass, she could almost exactly pin point where she was on her map.

Unable to sleep, Klara checked her bearings and continued rowing. In the twilight that is the short northern summer night, a small object caught her eye. It was a floating wooden crate with a wet blanket in it. She came closer to the crate and saw that the blanket lifted its head with pointed ears. It was a cat. Klara rowed slowly closer trying not to scare the feline castaway.

'Would you like to sail with me?' she asked the cat as a way of calming it while she reached over and picked it up and wrapped it in a towel.

'Thank you,' said the grey tabby laying her cheek on Klara's shoulder. 

Am I loosing my mind? Did that cat actually say something? Klara thought, holding the cat like a baby. Was this the next step after loosing her home and everything she owned? One way to find out was to keep talking with her foundling. 'You remind me of my cat, Mathilda. Your face is like hers, with the little tuffs of fur on the tips of your ears like the Norwegian Forest Cats.

'I don't just look like your cat, I AM your cat. I'm Mathilda. Thanks for finding me! It's not been easy since water came and covered everything. I've been soaked to the skin for days.'

The joy of finding her cat, Mathilda alive again, made Klara forget about her losses for a time. She and her cat lay in the boat under a blanket and actually slept for a few hours. When Klara awoke the sky was overcast and it smelled like rain. They must have drifted closer to land, as the tops of trees were now visible above the water-line, as well as a few roof tops. It was exciting, but also dangerous. They were getting closer to their goal, but any sharp object in the water could sink their boat. Through the forest of tree tops Klara could see a man rowing a boat - a wooden one. Should she wave or say 'Hello'?

'Hello!' shouted the man in the wooden boat, beating her to the punch, ' Do you need any help?'

'No, not yet. But my boat may not hold up the closer we get to land. How far is it to the new shoreline?'

'About twenty minutes from here. Here, let me take your boat in tow and row the rest of the way.' the man offered. He looked a bit like a prehistoric man, unwashed, uncombed and unshaven. But when Klara rowed closer, she saw that he was handsome with kindly blue eyes. He probably wore just a mustache to begin with, but now had almost a full beard. 'My name is Jakob Lundin, and you are?'

'Klara Nilsson, and this is Mathilda,' she said holding up the blanket bundle with the sleeping cat.

'Oh my. Do you have an infant with you?' Jakob said with surprise and alarm.

'Oh no, it's my cat, Mathilda', she said revealing Mathilda's furry face. 

Klara half expected Mathilda to speak to the strange man. But the cat said nothing, much to Klara's relief. Maybe the cat's ability to talk was an hallucination.

But then, Mathilda put her face close to Klara's ear and said, 'I will not embarrass you by speaking in front of strangers. Let him think that I am an ordinary cat.'

Jakob Lundin tied Klara's boat to his and rowed quickly toward the new coast, which had been a car park earlier before being transformed into a boat dock. When they arrived, it was crowded with wet refugees and their boats or vessels of every description, inflatable row boats like Klara's, children's plastic pools, as well as traditional boats like Jakob's. 

'What do we do now?' asked Klara.

'We pull our boats up on land and start making supper. I have a camping stove, what do you have?' asked Jakob, obviously hoping that Klara could contribute something.

'I cleaned out my pantry, refrigerator and freezer, before leaving home, but I don't have any cooking utensils or stove. So, I'm all for sharing, if you would like to do that.'

'Yes please. Let's do that,' said Jacob and smiled.

 Mathilda yawned and went back to sleep.
 

Word count according to WordCalc: 997.


P.S.

This text is a work of fiction. Any similarity to events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This text is my attempt to write science fiction and it could be a part of a longer work. What has happened is that the plains of Östergötland (where I live in Sweden) are flooded because the polar caps have started to melt, due to yet unexplained forces in outer space such as meteorites hitting the earth and changing its axis. But no one knows for sure, because all electronic communication has been knocked out. The University of Linköping (where I study) is under water. Our heroine is one of the few who saw it coming, and took the precaution of purchasing an inflatable boat before they were all sold out. The name 'Litorina' is actually the name of a body of water that existed under prehistoric times in this part of Sweden. 'Litorina' is a shell fish that could be found in that sea at that time. 

I am not the first to use the Sea of Litorina in a literary connection.

---------

 
Best wishes,
Anna










First Commenter:

Denise Covey

of 
Denise Covey 
and
Write...Edit...Publish

Through the Eyes of a Child - WEP Challenge for 26 March 2014 - Write Edit Publish

Welcome to WEP's Blogfest for March [=Write-Edit-Publish, formerly 'Romantic Friday Writers'] Challenge for 26 March 2014 - 'Through the eyes of a child':

Through the Eyes of a Child

Ida and Karla were both nine years old. Ida lived on a farm with horses. Karla lived in a city, an hour's drive away. But Karla's father owned the nearest farm and that was where they spent holidays and weekends. 

Ida and Karla were very modern children, and kept in touch through their i-phones. Karla sat in her room with make-up on a small table with the image of Ida on her i-phone propped up against a bottle of nail-polish remover.

'What do you think of this colour, Ida?' showing off her lip glans*.

'Did you get real earrings?' asked Ida.

'No, they are glue-on earrings from the children's department at Ahlén's department store.'

'Really? They look like real earrings. Everyone here has pierced ears. My older sister and my second cousin and everyone at school. I got my first pair of earrings last year.

'Almost everyone at my school wears earrings now.'

'Do you want to get your ears pierced?'

'Yes. But Mum won't allow it. I'll do it when I'm eighteen and can do what I want.'

'That's nine years from now. Why won't she let you do it now?'

'Because of the risk of infection. She says my heart leaks.'

'Your heart leaks?'

'Yes. I have a huge scar on my chest from the heart-operation I had when I was only one week old.' 

'Well, maybe she's right. You have to be careful in the beginning before it heals. I had to wash my ear lobes with alchohol every morning and night for six weeks.' 

'Do you like my nail polish?' asked Karla holding her hand to the phone camera, changing the subject.' Karla then brushed her eye lashes with mascara. 'Can you see that I have mascara on my eye lashes?'

'Just a little. Are you coming to the farm on Friday?'

'Yes. I'll be there.'

'Good. I want to show you my new pony. And then we can play with my Barbie dolls.'

'I'll let you know when we are on our way.'

---------

Word count according to WordCalc: 357

P.S.

I bet you all were expecting something horrble to happen here. Am I right?  Originally, I was going to do just that. 

This everyday scene is very much like a conversation, that I happened to overhear, between my daughter and her friend. 

My babies are growing up. Little girls start early wanting to be little women. They also want to be exactly alike. It is hard for a little girl to be different; to be the one who does not do what everyone else is doing.

I know. This is just a sketch. It's not really a story yet. But it will be. Karla arrives at the farm, and the two friends take a walk through the woods where, in the moonlight, a spaceship hovers and Karla is beamed up and abducted by aliens! 

 

Best wishes,
Anna











*P.S.
'Lip glans' is meant to be 'lip gloss'. I was thinking in Swedish, temporarily.





 
First Commenter:
Niljanjana Bose
of
Madly-in-Verse

 

WEP Challenge for 22nd November 2013 - Sharing

Welcome to WEP's Blogfest for November [=Write-Edit-Publish, formerly 'Romantic Friday Writers'] Challenge for Friday 22 November 2013 - 'Sharing':

'Oh, we were just talking about how nice it is to share our home with you two-leggeds!' says Mathilda and looks up at me holding my camera.

Best wishes,
Anna










First Commenter:

Tanya Walton
of
Allotments 4 you

WEP's Blogfest for Wednesday 30 October - 'HAUNTING!'

Welcome to WEP's Blogfest OCTOBER [=Write-Edit-Publish, formerly 'Romantic Friday Writers'] Challenge for Wednesday 30 October 2013 - 'Haunting'



 

Here's my text:


The Haunting

Maria Blixt awoke suddenly, frightened in the middle of the night. She did not know what had woke her. Was it a loud noise? She felt for the light-switch to turn on the lamp by her bed. No, nothing was disturbed in her bedroom. Everything looked as it did when she had gone to bed several hours before.

She lay back in bed, turned off the lamp and closed her eyes. Had she locked the door? Yes, of course she had. It was almost Halloween, maybe she was being haunted. What a silly thought! She was no gullible child anymore, scared of ghost stories that her older brother told her when they were alone waiting for their parents to come home. No, Maria was a rational adult and not a frightened little girl running to her mother’s bed after dreaming nightmares. No, Maria knew that there were no such things as ghosts, or she had stopped believing in them a long time ago.

Time is such a strange thing. You live your life and time seems to go slowly when you are young. But then, somewhere in the middle, things start moving quickly and suddenly you are not so young anymore. What seems like yesterday, is actually ten, twenty, thirty or forty years ago.  And as time passes, people die; people you know and love. Maria started counting all of the people she had known and loved, or at least liked, when she was a child; all these warm-hearted people who were kind to her; who cared for her; were no longer living. Ghosts. Are they ghosts now?

She thought about various aunts and uncles and her grandparents, and even her own parents, all of whom she missed and wondered where they were now. Have they just evaporated? Why so many gone? She did not live in a war-torn country; most of them died of natural causes, and did so when they were quite old. So this must be normal, Maria thought. I am the one who has grown old.

Wouldn’t it be nice if some of these lovely people could come back to visit, thought Maria, but then shunned the thought and immediately tried thinking about anything else. Imagine if they returned as ghosts just to visit me? But what would she say to her grandfather, if he returned for a visit? Or would he even recognise her? He passed away when she was still a child. Would he understand that this old woman was once the small child who looked up to him? Would he understand this and still love her? Or her father? Would he forgive her for not living exactly the life that he dreamed of for her? Can ghosts forgive? Can we, the living, forgive?

Maria did not like where her thoughts were leading her. What was it her father taught her about how to avoid sleepless nights? In his youth, when he was in the army in the War, sleeping in damp tents in foreign countries, with bombs flying overhead, he would just ignore the sounds, close his eyes, and sleep. It was as if he had pulled down a shade over a window. 'Pull the shade down!' he would say. There was nothing they could do if one of the bombs dropped on their tent. So he would try to sleep and hope for the best. And by some miracle he did survive the war.

So why am I such a coward? thought Maria, There are no bombs dropping here. But I'll try Daddy's method and just pull down the shade...

After a time, Maria stop thinking about ghosts, and was almost asleep again, when the door handle moved. Maria opened her eyes wide.

’What was that?’

As the door handle jerked and snapped, Maria jumped out of bed and walked to the door, watching closely how the door handle turned again and the door was pushed ajar.

Maria froze with fear.

But in the ray of light coming from the hallway, she could see the small four-legged figure of her own tabby tom, Sammy.

’Oh, Sammy! You nearly scared the daylights out of me!’ said Maria out loud to the seven-kilo ginger feline, who looked up at her and replied with a short yap as a greeting. 

’Do you believe in cat-ghosts? I mean, do you have nightmares about cat-ghosts?’ asked Maria scooping up Sammy and carrying him with her back to bed.

Sammy lay beside Maria and purred. Both Maria and Sammy were soon sound asleep.

Word count: 759 (NCCO)

This story is completely fictional. Any similarity to events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright 2013 Anna Christina Wigren Nordeman


P.S. 

After reading Yolanda Renee's comment, I feel the need to explain some of the background to this story. 

Yes, this story is fictional. I am not Maria Blixt, but I have lent her my own father's story. My dear sweet father, who passed away in July of 2006, had been in the U.S. army during World War II. He was drafted, but because he had a college education, he could become an officer, which probably helped him survive. He was sent to England and then Belgium and Northern France. He landed in Normandy in a troop transport boat, but thankfully was not among the first who landed. As quartermaster it was his responsibility to see that his men had the supplies that they needed. And this could be anything from soap to firewood. 

On one occasion he and his driver were sent off to purchase something from the local people. This was either in France or in French-speaking Belgium. He was chosen to do this because he was the only one who had studied French in college and was fluent enough to communicate with the locals. 

When he and his chauffeur returned, no one was there. Something had happened while they were away getting supplies. A big surge from the German army, most likely. There was just a note saying where they were to go. He never found out if everyone was killed or taken prisoner or just scattered with the wind.

My father never talked about his experiences of the war. It was toward the end of his life that I started asking him questions, but, alas, he had forgotten so much. There was not much he could tell. But he never forgot the fear of sleeping in a tent in Northern France and listening to bombs being dropped overhead. It was unnerving and different people reacted differently to this kind of pressure. My father stopped smoking. He gave it up. Which was a good thing in the long run. But the dampness and cold left him with arthritis and back problems to the end of his days.

He never complained. He said once to me that he was just so happy to be able to come home. Not everyone got to do that.

Peep

So this is one of two true stories that have inspired my short story. The other true story is about a cat named Peep, who was so tiny and hungry at birth, on April 5th 2011, that he peeped after food all the time.

One of Peep's siblings was stillborn. I did not want Peep to die too, so I kept feeding him special kitten-milk, in case his mother did not feed him enough. I fed him until he started growing normally and he became a pretty big cat. But the name Peep stuck.

Peep as an adult

I was worried that Peep may have suffered mental damage due to his early malnutrition. But it turned out that he became a very clever and inventive cat. He learned how to jump up and pull a door handle and then, with the help of his sister, Mathilda, push the door open. The cats worked together! I have seen him do it, so I know how he did it. I had to use a strap to bind the door shut when I wasn't at home, if I did not want the cats to invade my workroom and do mischief there.

The first time I discovered that Peep could open doors was very spooky. It was late at night, well after midnight. I knew that the children were not at home. He opened the door and my heart skipped a beat. I thought I was going to see a ghost! It really scared me. 

Peep is first cat on the left

Peep does not live with me anymore. He is the only one of his mother's kittens that my former husband let move to the farm, a paradise for cats. He can run free outside and climb trees and hunt mice and dream about catching birds.

For my story, I used my ginger boy cat, Lars, to be the door-opener. In reality, none of my remaining cats opens doors anymore. (To my great relief. It makes life easier if they don't.) 

For those of you who live with round door knobs, the Swedish or European door handles are what make this story possible. Any dog or larger cat can learn to jump up and hang on the handle and then push with their hind legs open the door and get into a room.

I am going to take a photo of a door handle to show this. But right now I need to take a break.

Best wishes,
Anna
Thursday 31st October 2013

-------

Today is November first, my father's birthday. He would have been 96 years old today. (Happy Birthday, Daddy! I miss you.) This is what my father looked like when I was in my teens:

Look, I had braces!

I have received several comments about the door handle or latch. Please look at this photo and tell me what this door-opener is called. 

This is little Rosetta pretending to open the door.

Some of you, who live with round door knobs that require some effort to open with a hand with an opposing thumb, have mentioned a scene from a movie about dinosaurs coming back to life and invading a room thanks to these easy door-openers.

Come on folks, Jurassic Park is fiction! Let's get back to reality! There are times and situations when these door handles are a godsend. There is a wonderful description in Dean Koontz' novel Midnight, about one of the characters' dog who can open these specially installed latch-door handles. This man is a Vietnam-vet and he is paralyzed from the neck or chest or waist down. I think he can only use his left hand. But thanks to this amazing dog, he can live alone in his house. Dean Koontz has written in an afterword that this part of his fictional tale is true and even included an address for readers to send donations to this worthy cause of training dogs who can help people with handicaps.

I can't find my copy of Midnight, so I can't tell you exactly what page this is on. I would just like to defend door handles. They are also easier for people who don't have a helping dog, but who have, for example, arthritic hands and have difficulty grasping and turning a round knob.

Geographically, I am curious as to how widespread door knobs are, and what would you call these door handles that Nancy calls latches? What do your door openers look like where you live?

Best wishes again,

Anna

November 1, 2013

------

Best wishes,
Anna










First Commenter:

Yolanda Renee


 













of 
Defending the Pen