I do hallucinations, but I don’t do the supernatural. I don’t do memoir, apart from when I do. But I’m very fond of Lisa Reiter of Bite-Size Memoir and Charli Mills of the Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Challenge, and it’s been one of my slightly bonkers blogging goals to concoct a dual response to their imaginative prompts, not just in a single post, but in a single flash. I’m also somewhat partial to spoof horror movies like Young Frankenstein and Shaun of the Dead, but I’m not confident I could pull off something along those lines myself.
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As my blog is due a break from serious reviews of serious novels, I took these ingredients with me on my walk yesterday in Jane Eyre territory ...
Lisa’s bad-hair prompt is for a photo on this occasion rather than words. I was never sufficiently adventurous for really bad hair but I did suffer, in my late teens, The Henna and The Perm. I couldn’t find the photo that shows this at its best/worst, so I’m treating you to a selection. Laugh if you wish but these days I tend to look back on my younger self from the perspectives of an indulgent mother, and insist I look rather sweet.
From her fascination with graveyards and a spooky green fog caught on camera, Charli challenges us to compose a 99-word creepy story in time for Halloween. Here’s mine:
Gwendolyn’s smirk at the lych gate, convinced me the mirror had lied. The dye had turned my hair not burnished copper, but green-tinged straw. Even with my tresses pinned up beneath my Sunday hat, I couldn’t show myself in church.
I fled to the graveyard, seeking the final resting place of the mother I’d never known. I thought the strange green lights must be Gwendolyn and her cronies come to taunt me until a ghoulish figure emerged from behind a tombstone, a tangle of snakes about her head. With a bony finger she beckoned me: “Daughter, what beautiful hair!”
I fled to the graveyard, seeking the final resting place of the mother I’d never known. I thought the strange green lights must be Gwendolyn and her cronies come to taunt me until a ghoulish figure emerged from behind a tombstone, a tangle of snakes about her head. With a bony finger she beckoned me: “Daughter, what beautiful hair!”
Join me again on Thursday for a double-review post bringing October’s book count to 11 (if you’re checking, The Delivery Room has been delivered back to the library to the public library)
which, by sheer serendipity, is the exact match of September’s total.
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