Wishing for Witches

My friend, Gina, lives across the road from the Witch’s Hat houses. It is a grand and gothic strip, those magnificent old homes with their spires. Some of them even have gargoyles (check out the house on the right….)

Seems a bit of an urban myth has developed in Gina’s block. She and many of her neighbours are of the belief that the witches hats are actually used at night by real witches to frolic and dance and jump; clinging to the steep peaks of the spires like bats.

I can see what they mean. If I was a witch I would be tempted to fling myself from hat to hat. When the shadows were high and the moon was bright.

And if I managed to get right up to the top and secure myself it would be so hard not to shout out: ‘I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog too…’  I don’t actually think I could stop myself (think I’ve watched The Wizard of Oz too many times.)

Funny how urban myths develop. Tricks of the light, dark clouds, solar flares, traffic lights; all sorts of things could contribute to the leaping shadows the locals claim they see. They will harbour no argument. They want witches on those hats and witches they shall have.

Gina has taken her imaginings even further. She works at the university and looks out onto this window every day.

It is a window full of mystery. Intriguing, reminiscent of days gone by. At twilight every day a shadowy figure appears in the lower right hand corner of the window. It is a bulky formidable shape, it could be half man, half beast. Gina swears she sometimes hears the beast’s hooves on the sandstone path, is sometimes disturbed in the middle of working by the sweep of his cape.

I peered through the window one afternoon and saw a projector on a table covered with a huge vinyl sheet, which in the right light could have been a cape. The projector was bulbous at the top, protruding. It could have been the head of some supernatural creature, coming to life as the university was gripped by shadow.

I didn’t have the heart to tell Gina what I saw. She loves fairy tales and magical things even more than I do. As far as I can see there’s no harm at all in wishing for witches, or beasts, or anything else that captures your fancy. No harm at all. Even urban myths need a helping hand from time to time.

Tell Your Story

I posted this photo a while ago on Twitter but I’d like to post it here because it has inspired me to talk about something I feel passionate about.

It astounds me how inspirational some of the graffiti is that I come across.

Tell Your Story.

Whether it be shouting it from the rooftops, talking about it over coffee, painting it, photographing it, singing it, wearing clothes that say what it is, and of course, writing it – we all have a story to tell.

I had a conversation with a young woman I know today who mentioned her desire to write a book about a significant event in her life. She is a good writer – I’ve read some of her prose – but she is worried no one will want to read her story. She believes her story is too ordinary.

‘On the contrary,’ I said. There is no story that is too ordinary and in fact, most of the memorable characters in fiction and film – Tennessee Williams’ Stanley Kowalski, Jane Austen’s Emma, Alice Walker’s Celie; even Clarice Starling from Silence Of The Lambs were ordinary people. Memorable people.

The point I’m trying to make is that most of our personal heroes (unless they are actually superheroes) are ordinary, everyday people who through the beauty of storytelling turn out to do extraordinary things.

There are stories all around us waiting to be told. People all around us with stories to tell.

These quotes say it better than I ever could -

Live your life from your heart. Share from your heart. And your story will touch and heal people’s souls.

~ MELODY BEATTIE

It’s the process of writing and life that matters. We are trying to become sane along with our poems and stories.

~ NATALIE GOLDBERG

In unsettled times like these, when world cultures, countries and religions are facing off in violent confrontations, we could benefit from the reminder that storytelling is common to all civilisations……the story is our most ancient method of making sense out of experience and of preserving the past.

~ WILLIAM COLLINS

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.

~ ROBERT MCAFEE BROWN

However you choose to do it TELL YOUR STORY. It really is worth telling.

My Zombie Valentine

I had to do it. Couldn’t help myself. Here’s a little zombie tale just in time for Valentine’s Day. Hope you all have a more normal Valentine’s Day than Marcie did…..

Marcie had gone out with Greg once. On Valentine’s Day six years ago. He had worked in the same office as she did but she had never really noticed him, intent as she was on her department manager Filippo who had the physique and face of a Greek God. An Italian Greek God.

Marcie lusted after Filippo. He had the most perfect pecs and abs she had ever seen. She came in early and stayed back late, dusting the filing cabinets, in an attempt to impress him. But Filippo didn’t know she was alive.

In the build up to Valentine’s Day six years ago, Marcie began to receive heart shaped cookies, chocolates, love notes and a book of love poetry – from an unknown admirer. She convinced herself – foolishly – that they were from Filippo, placing them shrine-like on her dressing table along with all the photos she’d taken of him with her iPhone, Instagrammed and perfect.

Even more foolishly, after a few weeks of receiving the romantically-themed gifts, Marcie became convinced they were in fact from Filippo and approached him one afternoon as he was in the midst of formatting his Powerpoint Presentation on the most efficient use of office stationery.

‘You look really nice today. That pink tie suits you,’ Marcie said. Filippo looked at her with suspicion, wondering if she was angling for more access to the document shredder or an extra pack of those rainbow-patterned paperclips the office girls liked so much. Either request would blow his monthly stationery budget, which would mean a grilling by Sonia in accounts. Sonia had a monobrow, which she seemed unaware of. Filippo had a phobia (that he mostly managed to keep hidden) of monobrows. So he tried to avoid Sonia at all costs. And consequently tried to avoid anyone who would bring him into contact with Sonia. At all costs.

‘Thanks, Maisie,’ Filippo said. ‘Gotta go. Presentation in half an hour. Don’t be late.’

‘I won’t,’ Marcie said. ‘And it’s Marcie, not Maisie….’

The Powerpoint Presentation was where it all began. Or ended, depending on your point of view.

Angelica Porter, who claimed her mother had modelled for Vogue in the 1960s, assisted Filippo with his slideshow. If you could call it that. She was all over him like a rash. A rash. And he seemed to like it, announcing he and Angelica were spending Valentine’s Day together.

Marcie realised as her stomach hit the floor with a sickening thud that she had been wrong about the gifts. Very wrong. She looked around the conference room and wondered which one of her co-workers was the perpetrator, the gift horse giver.

Greg Green. It suddenly became clear. Smiling at her behind the photocopier. Offering her the first Tim Tam from the pack at morning tea. Giving her a new pack of Stick-It Notes before she had even run out. He was the one who had given her the gifts. He was smiling at her right now. Engrossed.

Marcie didn’t know how it happened but she ended up agreeing to have dinner with Greg on Valentine’s Day. In the still foolish part of her heart she thought Filippo might find out about it and be miffed; but in the cold light of day part of her mind she knew he couldn’t care less, hellbent as he was on Angelica Porter.

Greg was attentive, polite, the perfect gentleman. They went to the renowned restaurant Gore-Met where the food was bloodily themed. People had to book months in advance to get in. Marcie batted her eyelids over her Bloody Mary Soup Shots with Shrimp and Pickled Vegetables and began to pout suggestively over her Beef Blood Sausage Bourguignon. She didn’t know if it was the sight of all the apparent blood or a desire to erase the memory of Filippo from her head but by the time dessert came round – a bittersweet chocolate pudding with a blood orange jus – Marcie was positively panting.

At Greg’s place he began to talk, expressing his desire to read some of the poetry he had written about her, but Marcie would have none of it.

‘Get your gear off,’ she said, throwing him on the bed.

Greg was surprisingly adept beneath the sheets. Marcie couldn’t believe how close she’d come to never noticing him at all. She congratulated herself as she drank really good sauvignon blanc in bed afterwards, feeling the high thread count of Greg’s sheets with satisfaction. Impressed by the postcode of his flat on the water. Greg had done well for himself. Very well.

After about an hour when Marcie was half asleep and totally drunk she didn’t even notice Greg’s clambering, gawky protestations of love for her.

‘You will always be my Valentine,’ he said. ‘Always.’

Greg didn’t turn up for work the next day. Or the day after that. Or the day after that. Greg didn’t turn up for work because Greg was dead, knocked over by a Valentine’s Day reveller who had overindulged on the all you can drink Lambrusco at Mamma Maria’s Valentine’s Amore Festa; thinking he was all right to drive at 7AM although his blood alcohol reading was still three times over the limit.

Greg’s funeral was a quiet affair. He had no family and very few friends. The guy with the lopsided glasses who worked in software development read the eulogy. Marcie hardly paid attention, intent as she was on Angelica Porter adjusting the fall of Flippo’s hair so that it sat just so, emphasizing the attractiveness of his jawline.

‘You will always be my valentine. You will ALWAYS be my valentine,’ the software development guy’s whiny voice rang out through the empty church. Marcie realised he was reading a poem Greg had written about her. An anxious feeling began to sit at the bottom of her stomach.

A lawyer grabbed Marcie’s arm after the service. He handed her a thick envelope. ‘It’s all yours,’ he said. ‘The estate of Gregory Green. He left everything to you.’

Inexplicably, Greg had left everything he owned to Marcie. His car, his investments, his flat. She was sitting pretty, mortgage free and cashed up, but the anxious feeling in her stomach remained.

It began a year later. The night before Valentine’s Day. The eve. Footprints on the stairs leading to the flat. Wet, ridged, as if whomever they belonged to had been walking in mud. There was a smell – stagnant river water and rotted leaves – that permeated the flat all day; so bad that Marcie had to close all the windows.

When she came home from work the next evening there was someone in her flat. Something. Sitting at the dining table, an empty plate in front of him. It was Greg. Or what remained of him. Putrid, festering, fingertips sticking to the table.

‘Happy Valentine’s Day,’ Greg said. Marcie could only catch part of what he was saying because half of his mouth had mouldered away and when he spoke it sounded as if he was shouting in a wind tunnel, but she managed to decipher that Greg wanted food. A very specific kind of food. And he wanted it at that moment.

She ran to three different shops before she found what she needed. The butcher raised one eyebrow as he wrapped her purchase. ‘An unusual dish for Valentine’s Day,’ he said.

Marcie rushed home. She could feel her purchase squishing around in the butcher’s paper.  When she opened the door to the flat she was overwhelmed by a smell of putrefaction, oppressive, nauseating.

She opened her purchase, pulled a frying pan from the cupboard.

‘No,’ shouted Greg. ‘Raw. RAW.’

She put the food on his plate, retching as he ate it raw, smacking what was left of his lips. A slivering, slimed, glistening plate of brains.

Greg left shortly after he ate the brains, his left foot breaking away from his body, dragging behind him like a rudder. It took Marcie two weeks to get rid of the stench of him.

Every Valentine’s Day he was back, leaving the muddy footsteps on the stairs, sitting at the table waiting for his dinner; rancid, rank. Saying what he said every time – ‘You will always be my Valentine. You will ALWAYS be my Valentine.’

Marcie dreaded his return, dreaded the sight of him even more, but it was only once a year; and a girl had to do what a girl had to do for a flat on the water and sheets with a three thousand thread count.