So, this was the story I wrote for the Psecret Psummer... wotzit thingy, and I thought I'd post up the opening section. (It's about a quarter of the whole thing, which is a short story @3600 words). I don't write many fight scenes, so I'm particularly interested on whether that works.
Thanks in advance for any comments!
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I killed my first monster when I was nine years old.
Back then, the summers were endless, full of adventure and stories. After school finished, my brother Carl and I were shipped off to stay with Aunt Jane and Uncle Scott in Hampshire, right in the middle of the New Forest. We would leave the house just after breakfast, scrambled eggs and toast every day, and play in the woods behind Jane and Scott's cottage, coming back only for lunch and tea, then heading straight back out again.
We weren't supposed to go too far from the house. “Not until you're older,” Aunt Jane would say, though I was already convinced that I was as mature as I was ever going to be. There were no problems I could not solve, no injuries I could not cure – usually by the swift application of a dock leaf and some brackish stream-water of questionable sanitation.
That day, Carl and I had ventured further than we ever had before. Down past Mr George's cottage, past the back of the local shop, even past the imposingly high wall that surrounded the house of Mrs. Smith.
Village gossip held that Mrs. Smith was “a bit of a character”. She “kept herself to herself”.
All of the children were convinced that she was a witch.
When Stephen, son of the Housemans – who ran the local shop – had measles and had to stay in bed for a whole month with the curtains drawn, we knew that Mrs. Smith had cursed him. After all, hadn't we been throwing rotten crab-apples at her wall that very week? Or at least the one before, and that was pretty much equivalent. Everyone knew that it took a while to work magic.
We kept as far away from Mrs. Smith’s wall as we could, given that there were stinging nettles on the other side of the path, and it was because of that Carl spotted the track that went directly into the forest. It wasn’t a path, really, just a trodden crease that cut through the nettles.
“It’s a fairy road,” I told Carl. “We should follow it.” And so, intrepid explorers, we plunged into the forest. Now, of course, I know that area of the forest is visited often, and the only thing you could discover is an abandoned campfire or a beer can, but then it was an adventure. Carl held my hand tightly as we looked around at the grotesquely gnarled tree boughs, half-excited, half-scared, jumping every time the wind blew the branches.
We can’t have gone far before I knew it was there. I couldn’t tell you whether it was sound, scent, or sight, or maybe some other unnamed sense, that alerted me, but something did. I froze, genuinely scared.
“What is it, Lor?” Carl said, sensing my fear and reverting back to the name he’d called me before he’d turned five and decided I deserved my full “Laura”.
“I don’t know.” I looked around at threatening trees that had, moments before, looked merely strange. And there, in the dark shade between a particularly thick trunk and a snarl of brambles, I saw my first monster.
They’re hard to describe. I think that’s what Lewis Carroll was struggling with in Jabberwocky, and he was certainly working from second-hand information. But still, the jaws that bite and the claws that catch. There are worse descriptions. To this day I couldn’t draw one, and any words that I have are poor imitations of reality. They are a smeared palette of emotion, red and purple and black, bad colours painted by a cruel artist.
“Run,” I told Carl, shaking my hand out of his. “Run home. Go. Go.” I wasn’t thinking, wasn’t planning. I just wanted Carl away from it. He stood still for a second, always contrary, preparing to refuse, but something in my voice must have scared him enough. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him run, back down our once-intriguing fairy road.
I didn’t want to look away from the monster, expecting it to attack at any time, but I knew I needed something to defend myself, to at least slow it down to let Carl get away. I grabbed a fallen branch, one that looked long and sturdy enough to be some use. A small girl and a stick, more than a match for a monster.
It emerged slowly from its hiding place, bringing the darkness with it. I raised my stick and charged towards it, slamming the branch down onto it. As I did so, the stick lit up and, as if resonating to a hidden note, sang in my hand. Over and over again I hit it, feeling as if I was watching myself do it from a remote, detached place. The monster screamed, the sound like the blast of a hurricane on my face. Still I kept hitting it. My body was not under my control; instead, I observed with a clinical eye the glowing stick, the angles of impact, the reaction of the creature.
Then, without warning, the light went out of the branch, and it was just a branch again. I snapped back from my safe mental vantage point, and felt the burn of acid fear in my throat. I turned and ran, not looking where I was going, my arms waving in front of me. Afterwards, I worked out from the scratches and stings that I must have run straight through a nettle patch and a gorse bush, but at the time I was simply running in an uncontrolled flight that ended when I tripped over a wrought iron garden bench. I lay on the ground, clutching my shin and wailing like a little kid.
Thanks in advance for any comments!
--
I killed my first monster when I was nine years old.
Back then, the summers were endless, full of adventure and stories. After school finished, my brother Carl and I were shipped off to stay with Aunt Jane and Uncle Scott in Hampshire, right in the middle of the New Forest. We would leave the house just after breakfast, scrambled eggs and toast every day, and play in the woods behind Jane and Scott's cottage, coming back only for lunch and tea, then heading straight back out again.
We weren't supposed to go too far from the house. “Not until you're older,” Aunt Jane would say, though I was already convinced that I was as mature as I was ever going to be. There were no problems I could not solve, no injuries I could not cure – usually by the swift application of a dock leaf and some brackish stream-water of questionable sanitation.
That day, Carl and I had ventured further than we ever had before. Down past Mr George's cottage, past the back of the local shop, even past the imposingly high wall that surrounded the house of Mrs. Smith.
Village gossip held that Mrs. Smith was “a bit of a character”. She “kept herself to herself”.
All of the children were convinced that she was a witch.
When Stephen, son of the Housemans – who ran the local shop – had measles and had to stay in bed for a whole month with the curtains drawn, we knew that Mrs. Smith had cursed him. After all, hadn't we been throwing rotten crab-apples at her wall that very week? Or at least the one before, and that was pretty much equivalent. Everyone knew that it took a while to work magic.
We kept as far away from Mrs. Smith’s wall as we could, given that there were stinging nettles on the other side of the path, and it was because of that Carl spotted the track that went directly into the forest. It wasn’t a path, really, just a trodden crease that cut through the nettles.
“It’s a fairy road,” I told Carl. “We should follow it.” And so, intrepid explorers, we plunged into the forest. Now, of course, I know that area of the forest is visited often, and the only thing you could discover is an abandoned campfire or a beer can, but then it was an adventure. Carl held my hand tightly as we looked around at the grotesquely gnarled tree boughs, half-excited, half-scared, jumping every time the wind blew the branches.
We can’t have gone far before I knew it was there. I couldn’t tell you whether it was sound, scent, or sight, or maybe some other unnamed sense, that alerted me, but something did. I froze, genuinely scared.
“What is it, Lor?” Carl said, sensing my fear and reverting back to the name he’d called me before he’d turned five and decided I deserved my full “Laura”.
“I don’t know.” I looked around at threatening trees that had, moments before, looked merely strange. And there, in the dark shade between a particularly thick trunk and a snarl of brambles, I saw my first monster.
They’re hard to describe. I think that’s what Lewis Carroll was struggling with in Jabberwocky, and he was certainly working from second-hand information. But still, the jaws that bite and the claws that catch. There are worse descriptions. To this day I couldn’t draw one, and any words that I have are poor imitations of reality. They are a smeared palette of emotion, red and purple and black, bad colours painted by a cruel artist.
“Run,” I told Carl, shaking my hand out of his. “Run home. Go. Go.” I wasn’t thinking, wasn’t planning. I just wanted Carl away from it. He stood still for a second, always contrary, preparing to refuse, but something in my voice must have scared him enough. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him run, back down our once-intriguing fairy road.
I didn’t want to look away from the monster, expecting it to attack at any time, but I knew I needed something to defend myself, to at least slow it down to let Carl get away. I grabbed a fallen branch, one that looked long and sturdy enough to be some use. A small girl and a stick, more than a match for a monster.
It emerged slowly from its hiding place, bringing the darkness with it. I raised my stick and charged towards it, slamming the branch down onto it. As I did so, the stick lit up and, as if resonating to a hidden note, sang in my hand. Over and over again I hit it, feeling as if I was watching myself do it from a remote, detached place. The monster screamed, the sound like the blast of a hurricane on my face. Still I kept hitting it. My body was not under my control; instead, I observed with a clinical eye the glowing stick, the angles of impact, the reaction of the creature.
Then, without warning, the light went out of the branch, and it was just a branch again. I snapped back from my safe mental vantage point, and felt the burn of acid fear in my throat. I turned and ran, not looking where I was going, my arms waving in front of me. Afterwards, I worked out from the scratches and stings that I must have run straight through a nettle patch and a gorse bush, but at the time I was simply running in an uncontrolled flight that ended when I tripped over a wrought iron garden bench. I lay on the ground, clutching my shin and wailing like a little kid.
But overall, nicely done!
