To celebrate the release seven days ago of our latest novel—Ghost Story by G.V. Pearce—I'm going for eerie in this week's writing prompt.
And I've decided the photo doesn't get its own word any more. There were too many words and not enough breathing room so if you find yourself inspired only by the photo, write toward that. Don't ever feel you have to use the words, just…the purpose of these is to fire you up.
Ready?
From Babs to Ibiza: What Hath the Writing Prompts Wrought?
So last week's prompt inspired itself some interesting things from Barbra Streisand to gorillas, below are some snippets, check out the full wee stories of Can you see me? here.
*
The singing… The singing!
"Papa can you find me in the night?”
Listen, I’m as much of a fan of Babs as anyone else but I swear to god I’m going to snap if he…
"Papa can you find me in the night?”
Listen, I’m as much of a fan of Babs as anyone else but I swear to god I’m going to snap if he…
*
You people are known to go right past gorillas or holes in the ground if you’re focusing on something else, and you’re usually focusing on something else. So I’m the gorilla most of you don’t see…
*
…all I could think of was how you used to hold me and make me forget the night terrors, before you buggered off to Ibiza with that bloke you met on Grinder, Mateo. Twateo, more like. Anyhow, I’ve decided, its time I stopped this moping…
*
The bandage came off today. “Can you see me?” I was feeling hopeful…
*
She’s a playful ghost.
Can you see me?
She likes hide and seek.
I’m behiiiiiiiiiiiind you!
Can you see me?
She likes hide and seek.
I’m behiiiiiiiiiiiind you!
*
She walks up to a few kids from my class and asks if they could need another pair of hands to build their leaves maze. I don’t expect anything to happen. I am a ghost. Nobody sees me. But…
Your turn! Have a look at the colours, image, and words above and see if they inspire a teeny tale for you. Then come whisper it to us below...
Old Mrs Gillespie stares daggers at me as the nurse ushers me through as an emergency. I inwardly poke my tongue at her. She is only here to ogle the nice young doctor whereas I am actually bleeding.
Doctor Mardan steps in and pales a bit when she sees my arm.
“What the heck have you been doing?”
She pulls me out of her office onto the small terrace and into the light of the sun.
“I was gardening and got into a fight with the shed.”
I smile weakly and she chuckles. “It’s not as bad as it looked inside. You won’t even need stitches.”
Her finger ghosts over the soft skin on the inside of my arm and I shiver, imagining them on other places on my body.
She tells me to wait and then returns to clean the wound and to gently pluck out all the splinters. We are still on the terrace and the act feels far more intimate than it would have in her office.
I watch her eyes crinkle in concentration. Her hair is in a ponytail and shimmers like liquid caramel and I long to run my hand over the shaved part of her skull, feel the delicious tingling of the short hairs.
“All done!” She smiles at me and I quickly lower my gaze as to not give anything away.
*
The heat of the day is slowly dissipating when Julia comes home. I have given up on the gardening about an hour ago and am enjoying the evening in a deckchair, reading a book.
Julia comes into the garden and toes off her shoes. Then she crawls onto the deckchair and on top of me until we are nose to nose.
I can feel her grin as she kisses me and I already know what’s coming.
“Someone had naughty thoughts about her doctor today!”
I blush and she smiles.
“I told you I don’t mind.”
“But it’s your workplace.”
“Do you think you are the only one looking at me like that? I prefer your eyes on me to anybody else’s by far, workplace or not! But if it bothers you, you can always switch doctors.”
She leans down to whisper in my ear, “I will now tell you in confidentiality that I am having naughty thoughts about a patient on a regular basis.”
She pulls back and smirks at me like a goblin. I can’t help but laugh.
“Is that so?”
She hums against my lips and we forget about talking for a while.
She shimmies down a bit until she can rest her head on my chest. I put my hand on her neck, my thumb gently caressing the soft short hair on the base of her skull.
The sun is slowly setting in the distance and I close my eyes, her weight on me grounding me in the beauty of this moment.
I look like a moomin as I elbow-crawl toward the hint of light.
Full disclosure, I don’t know what a moomin is other than some vaguely hippopotamus-type creature with big eyes and bigger hips, yet I feel sanguine in saying that in this dark tunnel, inching wide-eyed toward a distant light, I must look very like.
Seven-year-old me had loved tunnels like this, culverts my mam called them. They represented portals to lands where lived goblin queens, shivery ghosts, maybe dinosaurs.
Just like now, all I usually found inside was mud and still water, but in the dark there was endless escape for imagination, freedom in the unknown. While I crawled I daydreamed adventure, breathed chill air, wondered if I’d come out the other side of the world.
After a timeless time in a tunnel it was never a let down to emerge instead at the edge of a little park, by a stream or, once, just once, right into someone’s back garden, a tiny Glen terrier quizzically blinking black eyes at me.
That was then and this is now and right now my moomin hips mean I am moomin stuck, so stuck, really stuck because you can only crawl if you can wiggle and I really can’t wiggle and—
“Aisling Orla O’Hara-Deshmukh are you stuck in that pipe again?”
I don’t need to escape to the lands of queens and treasure any more. I have my own now, and her name is Rebecca Deshmukh and right now she’s hollering at me as she pulls my feet and tells me to relax. I know we still have to finish unloading the moving van and that this culvert probably just goes to the small stand of trees I can see off to the left over our fence but I wonder.
I wonder if Becca will get in here with me next time. She hardly has any hips to speak of and maybe we’ll come out in Cork beside a castle…
The ghost of her past clung to her like January frost to a single pane window. It created floral patterns of infinite repetition, but it was cold to the touch and disappeared if she got too close to it, her breath melting the fragile forms away.
She rose, slowly, mindful of her aching bones.
The mirror was blackened with soot from the many candles she had lit near it, trying to catch a glimpse of her face. Each glimpse causing more darkness, making it harder for her to see herself. She had lost track of how others saw her – goblin or elf, butterfly or moth, human or goddess.
She held a new candle in her right hand. With her other hand, she rubbed at the mirror, but the soot had merged with the glass, become one. A cloak covering silver shards, holding on to her past face without allowing its image to reach out into the light of the candle, a ghost, too, trapped forever. Her youth.
She touched her face instead and with it the stories the lines on it told. The many furrows that laughter and sorrow had edged into it. She felt her features shift as she smiled and blew out the candle.