Kevin Duncan's Blog
April 9, 2026
Rewrite
I'm going back to the start.
'The Little Scary Book' is getting a re-write, to make it thematically consistent with 'The Little Scary Book 2'.
So far, as I hit the halfway point, I'm happy with the changes. 'Darkly Deane', especially, has become the story it always was, I just didn't know it.
While work is ongoing, I can at least share 'The Little Scary Book Playlist', which I have finalised.
https://tinyurl.com/bdev65a9
'The Little Scary Book' is getting a re-write, to make it thematically consistent with 'The Little Scary Book 2'.
So far, as I hit the halfway point, I'm happy with the changes. 'Darkly Deane', especially, has become the story it always was, I just didn't know it.
While work is ongoing, I can at least share 'The Little Scary Book Playlist', which I have finalised.
https://tinyurl.com/bdev65a9
May 14, 2025
Halloween comes early this year!
In order to be qualify for the Kindle Storyteller Award 2025, 'The Little Scary Book 2' will be released on 4th July.
In the meantime, there's a playlist to give you a idea of what to expect:
https://tinyurl.com/3h9edyza
In the meantime, there's a playlist to give you a idea of what to expect:
https://tinyurl.com/3h9edyza
November 26, 2016
Notes on 'One Adult, One Child' from 'The Little Scary Book'
Read any interview with an author and they’ll mention that they never plan ahead when it comes to their story. They just get their characters talking and see where it takes them. They improvise. Like jazz.
I hate jazz.
My writing, like my life, is one of constant planning ahead. Look before you leap. (Actually, don’t leap. No matter where you are I’m sure there’s a perfectly sturdy set of stairs with a railing).
The one time I didn’t plan ahead was with ‘One Adult, One Child.’ All I had was a boy realising he’s slept in, on a school day, and rushing downstairs to find out why his mum didn’t waking him up.
She’s gone.
From there, I reverse engineered how we got to this moment. A mum, unsatisfied with domestic life and decides to leave and be everything that she thought she always could be. A Dad, frustrated (emasculated?) at his wife’s lack of happiness, who lashes out and hits her. A boy, standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at the glow of light from the living room as he hears the raised voices from behind closed doors, an adult world, that children rarely get to see, something all children have been through at some point in their life to a lesser or (sadly) greater degree. At first I had qualms about the mum leaving because the fact is, in the majority of cases, it’s the Dad that leaves the family. But it does happen. And just because it is a minority thing doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write about it.
From there, the story moved forward and I had to figure out where the characters would go, in such a heartbreaking moment, and I thought of the place I’ve always seen as a sanctuary from real world problems: the cinema. (In the past, I’ve had weeks at work where the only thing that got me through my dead-end job was the fact that a movie was coming out on Friday that I was looking forward to. Small victories are what get you through life).
The cinema and the ice rink, next door, are based on an actual location and you could, if needed, jump from one to another: http://tinyurl.com/jkanrjh
The first half of the story finishes with the unemotional dad and his son united in their grief for the woman they both loved. So far so good, but there’s no supernatural element in the story. Planning the book, I decided that there had to be a supernatural element running through all stories. Had I not done that, then, possibly, this story may have gone in a completely different direction. As it is, I came up with a “zombie” outbreak. For me, it’s an alien invasion, but you could read as being the beginning of the rapture. And while the other stories are horror, as opposed to sci-fi, both genres are often intertwined (Alien, Dark Horizon).
The ending is a downer and for the book to finish on one gave me some pause for thought. I tried swapping about the order of the stories but what I ended up with feels like a better balance. And while I’ve written about writing optimistic stories being hard but worthwhile, ultimately, the book is a horror book. And, like our main character, it should send you back into the thick, grey, moral haar of the world with a queasiness in your stomach.
So maybe those authors have a point. Maybe writing without a clear plan, laid out on 5 x 3 index cards, is the way to go. I might try it again.
But I won’t listen to jazz.
I hate jazz.
My writing, like my life, is one of constant planning ahead. Look before you leap. (Actually, don’t leap. No matter where you are I’m sure there’s a perfectly sturdy set of stairs with a railing).
The one time I didn’t plan ahead was with ‘One Adult, One Child.’ All I had was a boy realising he’s slept in, on a school day, and rushing downstairs to find out why his mum didn’t waking him up.
She’s gone.
From there, I reverse engineered how we got to this moment. A mum, unsatisfied with domestic life and decides to leave and be everything that she thought she always could be. A Dad, frustrated (emasculated?) at his wife’s lack of happiness, who lashes out and hits her. A boy, standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at the glow of light from the living room as he hears the raised voices from behind closed doors, an adult world, that children rarely get to see, something all children have been through at some point in their life to a lesser or (sadly) greater degree. At first I had qualms about the mum leaving because the fact is, in the majority of cases, it’s the Dad that leaves the family. But it does happen. And just because it is a minority thing doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write about it.
From there, the story moved forward and I had to figure out where the characters would go, in such a heartbreaking moment, and I thought of the place I’ve always seen as a sanctuary from real world problems: the cinema. (In the past, I’ve had weeks at work where the only thing that got me through my dead-end job was the fact that a movie was coming out on Friday that I was looking forward to. Small victories are what get you through life).
The cinema and the ice rink, next door, are based on an actual location and you could, if needed, jump from one to another: http://tinyurl.com/jkanrjh
The first half of the story finishes with the unemotional dad and his son united in their grief for the woman they both loved. So far so good, but there’s no supernatural element in the story. Planning the book, I decided that there had to be a supernatural element running through all stories. Had I not done that, then, possibly, this story may have gone in a completely different direction. As it is, I came up with a “zombie” outbreak. For me, it’s an alien invasion, but you could read as being the beginning of the rapture. And while the other stories are horror, as opposed to sci-fi, both genres are often intertwined (Alien, Dark Horizon).
The ending is a downer and for the book to finish on one gave me some pause for thought. I tried swapping about the order of the stories but what I ended up with feels like a better balance. And while I’ve written about writing optimistic stories being hard but worthwhile, ultimately, the book is a horror book. And, like our main character, it should send you back into the thick, grey, moral haar of the world with a queasiness in your stomach.
So maybe those authors have a point. Maybe writing without a clear plan, laid out on 5 x 3 index cards, is the way to go. I might try it again.
But I won’t listen to jazz.
November 19, 2016
Notes on 'Rat-a-tat-tat!' from 'The Little Scary Book'
Some ideas, for stories, are dragged and clawed into existence, over a band of time, whereas others are immediately thrust upon you.
When I was younger I was in relationship with a woman who had a wonderful, eight year old daughter called Erin. We would play pranks on each other and, one time, when we were all in the living room, watching TV, I exited to use the bathroom.
In the hall, I switched on the bathroom light and entered locking the door behind me. As I sat there, waiting for nature to take its course, Erin snuck out of the living room and switched off the bathroom light. As that bulb went off overhead, another one came on: Imagine if this happened when you were in a house by yourself?
But a moment does not make a story. I did use it as part of a thriller screenplay about a serial killer of pregnant women, but it wasn’t until twenty years later that it finally came to fruition and, as has happened previously, it was a collision of more than one element, but I didn’t realise what that element was until after the story was done.
And that other element was Sam Raimi. Or, specifically, Sam Raimi’s movies. Or even more specifically, the stone-cold classic that is ‘The Evil Dead 2’ and the underrated ‘Drag Me to Hell’.
In the former, Ash’s hand becomes self-aware:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnlzq...
And in the latter, we get the nails drumming against a hard surface:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhr-B...
My story was born.
The being a teenager and not wanting to go out on Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve, as it’s called elsewhere) is something I did when I was old enough to stay in the house by myself. In fact, the very first New Year that I stayed in by myself I stayed up to watch a movie I’d never heard of before: John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’
This was another story that required some research. Thankfully, it was of the alcoholic kind and required me to drink all the shots I write about in the story. I chose limeade because I thought it had connotations of some sort of ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ concoction, but, in actuality, the green of the limeade does not hold up when you have it in such small measure that a shot glass allows. Frankly, none of the drinks described would be my first choice on a night out. I’d avoid if I were you.
Of all the stories in ‘The Little Scary Book’ this is, probably, the slightest of all of them.
Honestly, I had a couple of stories that I could have used instead of this one, but this was a story that had to come after ‘In Shades of Darkness Hide’ and before ‘One Adult, One Child’, two darker stories and that, more than anything, is why it made the book.
Cheers!
When I was younger I was in relationship with a woman who had a wonderful, eight year old daughter called Erin. We would play pranks on each other and, one time, when we were all in the living room, watching TV, I exited to use the bathroom.
In the hall, I switched on the bathroom light and entered locking the door behind me. As I sat there, waiting for nature to take its course, Erin snuck out of the living room and switched off the bathroom light. As that bulb went off overhead, another one came on: Imagine if this happened when you were in a house by yourself?
But a moment does not make a story. I did use it as part of a thriller screenplay about a serial killer of pregnant women, but it wasn’t until twenty years later that it finally came to fruition and, as has happened previously, it was a collision of more than one element, but I didn’t realise what that element was until after the story was done.
And that other element was Sam Raimi. Or, specifically, Sam Raimi’s movies. Or even more specifically, the stone-cold classic that is ‘The Evil Dead 2’ and the underrated ‘Drag Me to Hell’.
In the former, Ash’s hand becomes self-aware:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnlzq...
And in the latter, we get the nails drumming against a hard surface:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhr-B...
My story was born.
The being a teenager and not wanting to go out on Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve, as it’s called elsewhere) is something I did when I was old enough to stay in the house by myself. In fact, the very first New Year that I stayed in by myself I stayed up to watch a movie I’d never heard of before: John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’
This was another story that required some research. Thankfully, it was of the alcoholic kind and required me to drink all the shots I write about in the story. I chose limeade because I thought it had connotations of some sort of ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ concoction, but, in actuality, the green of the limeade does not hold up when you have it in such small measure that a shot glass allows. Frankly, none of the drinks described would be my first choice on a night out. I’d avoid if I were you.
Of all the stories in ‘The Little Scary Book’ this is, probably, the slightest of all of them.
Honestly, I had a couple of stories that I could have used instead of this one, but this was a story that had to come after ‘In Shades of Darkness Hide’ and before ‘One Adult, One Child’, two darker stories and that, more than anything, is why it made the book.
Cheers!
November 18, 2016
Notes on 'In Shades of Darkness Hide' from 'The Little Scary Book.
I’ve always been a light sleeper. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t wake up at least once during the wee small hours. Sometimes it’s because a bird is chirping outside, other times it’s a car roaring by. But what it has NEVER been is a shadowy figure, in the corner of my room, that glides towards me as I sit in bed completely and utterly paralysed.
It was this story that I saw recounted by a young woman on a TV show documenting those who suffer from sleep paralysis. As the programme continued, they went into the ‘science bit’ in an attempt to explain what exactly happens to the human body in such circumstances. To do this, they showed several test subjects in sleep laboratories, filmed on infra-red camera. As those awoke to their nightmares. I found myself asking ‘What if you put someone in there, under those conditions, and you actually saw the shadowy figure? By the time the programme had finished, I had an image in my head of a young boy, dressed in his school uniform, sitting at a desk, surrounded by similarly attired dummies at their desks.
My story was born.
One as fantastical as this needed to be fenced in by realism, so some research was required in order to find out which legal representatives would be present at the sleep laboratory. Little things like calling Morag St. Clair a ‘children’s reporter’ rather than a social worker, or the fact that Kirk Brown was the duty solicitor that happened to be on that particular week as part of the rota system that involves the various solicitors in Dundee, or calling policemen with guns by their correct name of ‘authorised firearm officers’, I feel, gives the story authenticity Plus, as a tangential bonus, I discovered that nuclear power facilities in the UK have their very own police force! Which lends itself to, at the very least, a feature screenplay.
During the writing of ‘The Little Scary Book’, I’ve always imagined what the stories would look like if they were to be filmed for TV or cinema. So, naturally, I end up casting some of the characters that I’m writing about and Gerry Aitken was one such character. He is based on one very specific person, who shall remain nameless here as he prefers as little online presence as possible. (I once tweeted one of his jokes and, within minutes, he got in touch and asked me (very politely) to take it down.
Truth be told, I’m not overly happy with the ending. It feels a bit abrupt and, well…small.
And I will forever kick myself for not thinking of the story title, ‘To Sleep, Perchance to Scream’, prior to publishing.
It was this story that I saw recounted by a young woman on a TV show documenting those who suffer from sleep paralysis. As the programme continued, they went into the ‘science bit’ in an attempt to explain what exactly happens to the human body in such circumstances. To do this, they showed several test subjects in sleep laboratories, filmed on infra-red camera. As those awoke to their nightmares. I found myself asking ‘What if you put someone in there, under those conditions, and you actually saw the shadowy figure? By the time the programme had finished, I had an image in my head of a young boy, dressed in his school uniform, sitting at a desk, surrounded by similarly attired dummies at their desks.
My story was born.
One as fantastical as this needed to be fenced in by realism, so some research was required in order to find out which legal representatives would be present at the sleep laboratory. Little things like calling Morag St. Clair a ‘children’s reporter’ rather than a social worker, or the fact that Kirk Brown was the duty solicitor that happened to be on that particular week as part of the rota system that involves the various solicitors in Dundee, or calling policemen with guns by their correct name of ‘authorised firearm officers’, I feel, gives the story authenticity Plus, as a tangential bonus, I discovered that nuclear power facilities in the UK have their very own police force! Which lends itself to, at the very least, a feature screenplay.
During the writing of ‘The Little Scary Book’, I’ve always imagined what the stories would look like if they were to be filmed for TV or cinema. So, naturally, I end up casting some of the characters that I’m writing about and Gerry Aitken was one such character. He is based on one very specific person, who shall remain nameless here as he prefers as little online presence as possible. (I once tweeted one of his jokes and, within minutes, he got in touch and asked me (very politely) to take it down.
Truth be told, I’m not overly happy with the ending. It feels a bit abrupt and, well…small.
And I will forever kick myself for not thinking of the story title, ‘To Sleep, Perchance to Scream’, prior to publishing.
November 17, 2016
Notes on 'The Five Toed Sofa' from 'The Little Scary Book'
Through all the ‘…Little Scary…’ iterations, the one constant has been ‘The Five Toed Sofa’.
Nothing that I’ve ever written (or, I doubt, ever will) is so classically structured, so textbook in its set up, and natural in its pay off as ‘…Sofa.’
The idea came from news reports about children in the UK becoming obese in greater numbers than ever before. (In my opinion, due to the lack of exercise rather than kids eating more junk food than previous generations.) From there, it was a case of thinking the story through to a natural, albeit fantastical conclusion, which was that the more time you spend on a sofa the more inextricably linked you will become with said furniture (On a personal level, the battle to stay fit versus the desire to lay about all day is one I can relate to).
Having a sister myself, it was an obvious choice to use our antagonistic relationship as the template for the writing. That casual dismissal attitude that Louise shows Martin is one that my sister used on me to great effect. Unlike the story, however, the throwing of a tub of hair gel was hurled by me at her and not the other way around. I, too, missed spectacularly and the gel exploded all over the living room wall. Luckily, our parents were out and together we cleaned up the mess and dried off the wallpaper with a hairdryer before they returned.
Like ‘Schreck’ before it, this is a story that quickly drifts into the ludicrous with the arrival of Campbell Campbell. (Although I get the feeling he’s maybe not quite so ludicrous as I think he actually is in real life) The idea to use Verdi’s ‘Anvil Chorus’ as the music by which Campbell Campbell performs the surgery was an obvious one, to me, once I had seen it performed live at the Caird Hall as part of the ‘Last Night of the Proms (You can watch the actual performance right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tssCX... )
More than anything, I think the reason why ‘…Sofa’ has stayed around since the start is that it achieves what the best stories always do:
It’s optimistic.
Pessimism is easy.
Hope is difficult.
And sofas are comfy…
Nothing that I’ve ever written (or, I doubt, ever will) is so classically structured, so textbook in its set up, and natural in its pay off as ‘…Sofa.’
The idea came from news reports about children in the UK becoming obese in greater numbers than ever before. (In my opinion, due to the lack of exercise rather than kids eating more junk food than previous generations.) From there, it was a case of thinking the story through to a natural, albeit fantastical conclusion, which was that the more time you spend on a sofa the more inextricably linked you will become with said furniture (On a personal level, the battle to stay fit versus the desire to lay about all day is one I can relate to).
Having a sister myself, it was an obvious choice to use our antagonistic relationship as the template for the writing. That casual dismissal attitude that Louise shows Martin is one that my sister used on me to great effect. Unlike the story, however, the throwing of a tub of hair gel was hurled by me at her and not the other way around. I, too, missed spectacularly and the gel exploded all over the living room wall. Luckily, our parents were out and together we cleaned up the mess and dried off the wallpaper with a hairdryer before they returned.
Like ‘Schreck’ before it, this is a story that quickly drifts into the ludicrous with the arrival of Campbell Campbell. (Although I get the feeling he’s maybe not quite so ludicrous as I think he actually is in real life) The idea to use Verdi’s ‘Anvil Chorus’ as the music by which Campbell Campbell performs the surgery was an obvious one, to me, once I had seen it performed live at the Caird Hall as part of the ‘Last Night of the Proms (You can watch the actual performance right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tssCX... )
More than anything, I think the reason why ‘…Sofa’ has stayed around since the start is that it achieves what the best stories always do:
It’s optimistic.
Pessimism is easy.
Hope is difficult.
And sofas are comfy…
May 29, 2016
E.V.P.
If, between books, you fancy watching a low budget horror movie, then my first, as writer/director, 'E.V.P.' is available to watch online for free:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBuH1...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBuH1...
May 22, 2016
Short story: Wasps Like to Sleep Under Toilet Seats
‘You want that?’ asked Olivia’s mum, Erin, pointing at the mangy, threadbare sheep costume dangling in the thrift shop window.
She nodded excitedly. They had been traipsing all over town for a Halloween outfit for tonight and found nothing. Then, as they were heading back to the car, she had seen it there, its black head hanging limp amidst an overstuffed clothes hangar trolley filled with elaborate clothing that had seen better days, each item stained with a story to tell.
Her mum sighed, ‘Well, at least try it on first and see if it fits. Come on.’
They walked in, their presence announced by the ding of a bell overhead and the smell of mothballs and autumn damp hitting their noses.
From behind a wall of multi coloured PVC strip curtain appeared a white haired old woman dressed in an ensemble of her own shops accord and puffing away on the dog end of a rolled up cigarette.
‘Well, hello there, and how are you two lovely ladies today?’
As Erin went to speak, Olivia intervened, unconcerned with the niceties that adults felt the need to go through.
‘Can I try on the sheep costume?’ she asked, pointing over her shoulder.
‘Och, fit you want to try on that one fir, a beautiful wee thing like you?’ she asked, her western isles accent appearing under excitement.
‘Exactly,’ agreed Erin.
Unperturbed by this conspiracy amongst elders, she nodded.
The old woman limped over and dumped several articles on the floor in order to get to the costume, which she held up for all to see. It looked even worse once the air had gotten to it.
‘There’s a changing room in the back, first on your left.’
As Olivia took the costume, Erin raised up her hand to ask a question.
‘Has it been washed?’
‘Aye, it’s been washed,’ replied the old woman, slightly offended. ‘Five year ago, mind, but naebody’s worn it since.’
Before Erin could protest further, Olivia vanished beyond the PVC strips. The changing room consisted of a burnt orange curtain, dangling off three of its five available hooks. Inside was a tiny sink, fed by a gas water boiler on the wall, with a chipped Christmas coffee mug stained from years of Irish coffee. On one of the three wood panelled walls was an ornate mirror, its elemental silver cracked beneath the glass.
She stripped off to her undies and vest and put on the all in one costume. The moment she pulled on the cardboard enforced head she felt like an astronaut. Her own breathing echoing in her ears. Her vision, through the scratched, plastic orbs, was limited, but it didn’t matter. She tried to pull up the metal zip at the back but could only get it so far and no further. Again, not a problem. Because what this costume gave her, that none of the others did, was seclusion from the entire world. And that seclusion gave her a feeling that she loved. It felt…rude. Rude to be wandering about knowing that you were in your undies but no one else did. She always enjoyed wandering about in the “scud” as her Dad would say, mortified at her constant state of undress before he ordered back upstairs to put more clothes on.
She appeared from the changing room and saw the look of doubt on both women’s faces.
‘Aye, well, it fits I ‘spose.’ reasoned the old woman.
***
That night, she paced back and forth in the kitchen, in her underwear, waiting for the tumble dryer to finish. Eventually, she could contain herself no longer and pulled her costume out with several minutes to go. Though threadbare in patches, its woolly balls were puffed out excitedly and it smelled of lavender hills. She slipped into the costume then put her trainers on over the hind hooves.
She peered into the living room where both parents were sitting ensconced for an evening’s viewing and nearly gave her dad a heart attack when he saw a sheep staring at him. Erin got up and walked out into the hall.
‘Have you been to the toilet’ she asked her daughter.
‘I’m not needing,’ replied Olivia, waiting impatiently to be zipped up.
‘Well, try, for me, okay? Once you’re in this thing you won’t be able to get back out of it again.’
Tutting and sighing at the same time, she peeled off the costume and scarpered upstairs.
As she approached the toilet, she went through her usual routine of lifting up the seat then clanging the loo brush off the porcelain bowl. Ever since a fellow school pupil, Brennen Cullen, had sworn to her that wasps like to sleep under toilet seats she had never been the same. Of course, no wasp had ever appeared from beneath the toilet seat, but why take the risk?
As it happened, she did need to go, and she flushed the toilet to make sure that her mum got the satisfaction of being right, something she always enjoyed.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to put some clothes on under the costume?’ she was asked for the fourth time that day.
‘No, I’ll be pure sweating if I do!’
Erin zipped her daughter up at the back and handed her a plastic sand bucket to collect her sweets.
‘Do you want me to walk with you to Mrs. McGowan’s?’
Olivia shook her sheep head from side to side then departed. She made her way from the bottom of Lismore Terrace to Lewis Terrace on the other side of Mill O’ Mains, a mere quarter of a mile away. By the time she was approaching Harris Terrace, the heat inside the costume was such that sweat was trickling down through her hairy forehead.
That was when she heard the buzzing.
She felt it on the back of her neck. Then, tiny legs walked their way directly into her ear.
She. Dare. Not. Move.
It buzzed against her eardrum.
Every single hair on her body bristled as she felt her ear wax being picked at.
Sweat dripped from her prominent chin.
It crawled from her ear, across her cheek, making its way towards her mouth, which she promptly shut. It carried on over her pursed lips and crawled straight up into her left nostril and nested.
A mum and her daughter, dressed in a skeleton costume, passed right by, without stopping to enquire. Tonight, everyone was allowed to act like a weirdo.
Slowly, she exhaled down her nostrils. It buzzed then took off and landed on the condensation covered plastic orb of the costume’s left eye. The sodium light from the lampposts outside revealed her greatest fear had come true in all its black and yellow striped glory.
It’s sting less than an inch from her eye.
From the only bungalow, in a row, decorated in cobwebs and jack o’ lanterns appeared a wolf wearing a polka dot bow tie, standing over six foot tall, even with a stoop, walking towards her.
‘Is everything okay, sweetheart?’ asked the wolf as it crouched down to her level.
Slowly, Olivia pointed to the zip on the back of the costume and motioned for him to pull it down.
‘You want to me unzip the costume?’ qualified the wolf.
She gave the merest of nods, but it was enough to register. The wolf reached around her and tugged the zip, causing her head to jerk back.
Panicked, the wasp took off.
Olivia shut her eyes but could still feel the wasp bumping up against her lids, until the wolf stopped tugging.
‘It’s stuck, sweetheart, I’m going to have to cut you out of there. I’ve got a good pair of scissors in my garden shed that’ll get you out of there in a jiffy!’
The wasp settled back on the plastic orb.
Beyond the insect and the condensation Olivia could see the bulk of her saviour walk away and back up the path to his front door where he switched on the hall light and awaited her.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she made her way up the front path and into the bungalow. Beneath her trainers, she could feel sheets of newspaper. The wolf shut and locked the door after her, then walked through to the kitchen and held the door open. She entered the kitchen, its chipped table tops strewn with dirty dishes stained with unfinished meals and a vast empty space where a cooker would normally sit. Nothing left but a couple of raw, exposed wires and greasy wallpaper design from decades before.
The wasp seemed to buzz a warning as the wolf opened the back door to show the garden shed outside, surrounded on all sides by wooden fences ten feet high.
‘Come on, sweetheart, it’s alright.’
Olivia stayed put.
The wolf walked back and placed a vast paw around the back of her neck, gripping it so tightly, she saw spots appear before her eyes.
‘Move,’ the wolf ordered, all pleasantry wiped from its voice.
The wasp flew from the plastic orb and hid.
The wolf frogmarched the sheep to the shed and threw her inside, locking the door after them. Then he switched on the naked lightbulb above and sat down on a footstool, bending the sheep over his lap.
‘Don’t worry,’ said the wolf, ‘this will soon be over.’
From beneath its right paw appeared five withered fingers which, with magnificent ease, unzipped the costume.
‘Youth,’ gasped the wolf.
Olivia couldn’t breathe, let alone scream, as a hand squeezed her windpipe. She felt fingers slide under her damp vest and stroke her spine, then the fingers slid down and into her underwear.
The wolf howled and jumped up, spilling Olivia on to the floorboards and the wasp on to the beams. He spun around knocking whips and violet wands from the walls as he fumbled to unlock the door and spilled out into the garden.
Oliva kicked off her trainers and tore off her costume as she gasped for air, the crisp autumn night attacking her flushed body. She grabbed the most lethal looking instrument that came to hand and cautiously left the shed.
In the garden there was no sign of the wolf. She made her way into the house and found him prostrate on the hall floor, screeching for a breath, his left paw reaching out for an old rotary dial telephone plugged into the wall.
Then, the screeching stopped.
She pulled off the wolf’s mask to reveal an old, bald man, his entire face swollen up like a purple pumpkin, with beady eyes holding on to the terror that took him.
Beside the phone was a cake bowl filled to the brim with sweets. She grabbed the bowl, unlocked the door, and ran home as fast as her bare feet would carry her.
Drama over, the wasp landed on the old man’s face and crawled beneath the lid of a shocked eye to hunker down and hibernate for the cold winter ahead.
The End
She nodded excitedly. They had been traipsing all over town for a Halloween outfit for tonight and found nothing. Then, as they were heading back to the car, she had seen it there, its black head hanging limp amidst an overstuffed clothes hangar trolley filled with elaborate clothing that had seen better days, each item stained with a story to tell.
Her mum sighed, ‘Well, at least try it on first and see if it fits. Come on.’
They walked in, their presence announced by the ding of a bell overhead and the smell of mothballs and autumn damp hitting their noses.
From behind a wall of multi coloured PVC strip curtain appeared a white haired old woman dressed in an ensemble of her own shops accord and puffing away on the dog end of a rolled up cigarette.
‘Well, hello there, and how are you two lovely ladies today?’
As Erin went to speak, Olivia intervened, unconcerned with the niceties that adults felt the need to go through.
‘Can I try on the sheep costume?’ she asked, pointing over her shoulder.
‘Och, fit you want to try on that one fir, a beautiful wee thing like you?’ she asked, her western isles accent appearing under excitement.
‘Exactly,’ agreed Erin.
Unperturbed by this conspiracy amongst elders, she nodded.
The old woman limped over and dumped several articles on the floor in order to get to the costume, which she held up for all to see. It looked even worse once the air had gotten to it.
‘There’s a changing room in the back, first on your left.’
As Olivia took the costume, Erin raised up her hand to ask a question.
‘Has it been washed?’
‘Aye, it’s been washed,’ replied the old woman, slightly offended. ‘Five year ago, mind, but naebody’s worn it since.’
Before Erin could protest further, Olivia vanished beyond the PVC strips. The changing room consisted of a burnt orange curtain, dangling off three of its five available hooks. Inside was a tiny sink, fed by a gas water boiler on the wall, with a chipped Christmas coffee mug stained from years of Irish coffee. On one of the three wood panelled walls was an ornate mirror, its elemental silver cracked beneath the glass.
She stripped off to her undies and vest and put on the all in one costume. The moment she pulled on the cardboard enforced head she felt like an astronaut. Her own breathing echoing in her ears. Her vision, through the scratched, plastic orbs, was limited, but it didn’t matter. She tried to pull up the metal zip at the back but could only get it so far and no further. Again, not a problem. Because what this costume gave her, that none of the others did, was seclusion from the entire world. And that seclusion gave her a feeling that she loved. It felt…rude. Rude to be wandering about knowing that you were in your undies but no one else did. She always enjoyed wandering about in the “scud” as her Dad would say, mortified at her constant state of undress before he ordered back upstairs to put more clothes on.
She appeared from the changing room and saw the look of doubt on both women’s faces.
‘Aye, well, it fits I ‘spose.’ reasoned the old woman.
***
That night, she paced back and forth in the kitchen, in her underwear, waiting for the tumble dryer to finish. Eventually, she could contain herself no longer and pulled her costume out with several minutes to go. Though threadbare in patches, its woolly balls were puffed out excitedly and it smelled of lavender hills. She slipped into the costume then put her trainers on over the hind hooves.
She peered into the living room where both parents were sitting ensconced for an evening’s viewing and nearly gave her dad a heart attack when he saw a sheep staring at him. Erin got up and walked out into the hall.
‘Have you been to the toilet’ she asked her daughter.
‘I’m not needing,’ replied Olivia, waiting impatiently to be zipped up.
‘Well, try, for me, okay? Once you’re in this thing you won’t be able to get back out of it again.’
Tutting and sighing at the same time, she peeled off the costume and scarpered upstairs.
As she approached the toilet, she went through her usual routine of lifting up the seat then clanging the loo brush off the porcelain bowl. Ever since a fellow school pupil, Brennen Cullen, had sworn to her that wasps like to sleep under toilet seats she had never been the same. Of course, no wasp had ever appeared from beneath the toilet seat, but why take the risk?
As it happened, she did need to go, and she flushed the toilet to make sure that her mum got the satisfaction of being right, something she always enjoyed.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to put some clothes on under the costume?’ she was asked for the fourth time that day.
‘No, I’ll be pure sweating if I do!’
Erin zipped her daughter up at the back and handed her a plastic sand bucket to collect her sweets.
‘Do you want me to walk with you to Mrs. McGowan’s?’
Olivia shook her sheep head from side to side then departed. She made her way from the bottom of Lismore Terrace to Lewis Terrace on the other side of Mill O’ Mains, a mere quarter of a mile away. By the time she was approaching Harris Terrace, the heat inside the costume was such that sweat was trickling down through her hairy forehead.
That was when she heard the buzzing.
She felt it on the back of her neck. Then, tiny legs walked their way directly into her ear.
She. Dare. Not. Move.
It buzzed against her eardrum.
Every single hair on her body bristled as she felt her ear wax being picked at.
Sweat dripped from her prominent chin.
It crawled from her ear, across her cheek, making its way towards her mouth, which she promptly shut. It carried on over her pursed lips and crawled straight up into her left nostril and nested.
A mum and her daughter, dressed in a skeleton costume, passed right by, without stopping to enquire. Tonight, everyone was allowed to act like a weirdo.
Slowly, she exhaled down her nostrils. It buzzed then took off and landed on the condensation covered plastic orb of the costume’s left eye. The sodium light from the lampposts outside revealed her greatest fear had come true in all its black and yellow striped glory.
It’s sting less than an inch from her eye.
From the only bungalow, in a row, decorated in cobwebs and jack o’ lanterns appeared a wolf wearing a polka dot bow tie, standing over six foot tall, even with a stoop, walking towards her.
‘Is everything okay, sweetheart?’ asked the wolf as it crouched down to her level.
Slowly, Olivia pointed to the zip on the back of the costume and motioned for him to pull it down.
‘You want to me unzip the costume?’ qualified the wolf.
She gave the merest of nods, but it was enough to register. The wolf reached around her and tugged the zip, causing her head to jerk back.
Panicked, the wasp took off.
Olivia shut her eyes but could still feel the wasp bumping up against her lids, until the wolf stopped tugging.
‘It’s stuck, sweetheart, I’m going to have to cut you out of there. I’ve got a good pair of scissors in my garden shed that’ll get you out of there in a jiffy!’
The wasp settled back on the plastic orb.
Beyond the insect and the condensation Olivia could see the bulk of her saviour walk away and back up the path to his front door where he switched on the hall light and awaited her.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she made her way up the front path and into the bungalow. Beneath her trainers, she could feel sheets of newspaper. The wolf shut and locked the door after her, then walked through to the kitchen and held the door open. She entered the kitchen, its chipped table tops strewn with dirty dishes stained with unfinished meals and a vast empty space where a cooker would normally sit. Nothing left but a couple of raw, exposed wires and greasy wallpaper design from decades before.
The wasp seemed to buzz a warning as the wolf opened the back door to show the garden shed outside, surrounded on all sides by wooden fences ten feet high.
‘Come on, sweetheart, it’s alright.’
Olivia stayed put.
The wolf walked back and placed a vast paw around the back of her neck, gripping it so tightly, she saw spots appear before her eyes.
‘Move,’ the wolf ordered, all pleasantry wiped from its voice.
The wasp flew from the plastic orb and hid.
The wolf frogmarched the sheep to the shed and threw her inside, locking the door after them. Then he switched on the naked lightbulb above and sat down on a footstool, bending the sheep over his lap.
‘Don’t worry,’ said the wolf, ‘this will soon be over.’
From beneath its right paw appeared five withered fingers which, with magnificent ease, unzipped the costume.
‘Youth,’ gasped the wolf.
Olivia couldn’t breathe, let alone scream, as a hand squeezed her windpipe. She felt fingers slide under her damp vest and stroke her spine, then the fingers slid down and into her underwear.
The wolf howled and jumped up, spilling Olivia on to the floorboards and the wasp on to the beams. He spun around knocking whips and violet wands from the walls as he fumbled to unlock the door and spilled out into the garden.
Oliva kicked off her trainers and tore off her costume as she gasped for air, the crisp autumn night attacking her flushed body. She grabbed the most lethal looking instrument that came to hand and cautiously left the shed.
In the garden there was no sign of the wolf. She made her way into the house and found him prostrate on the hall floor, screeching for a breath, his left paw reaching out for an old rotary dial telephone plugged into the wall.
Then, the screeching stopped.
She pulled off the wolf’s mask to reveal an old, bald man, his entire face swollen up like a purple pumpkin, with beady eyes holding on to the terror that took him.
Beside the phone was a cake bowl filled to the brim with sweets. She grabbed the bowl, unlocked the door, and ran home as fast as her bare feet would carry her.
Drama over, the wasp landed on the old man’s face and crawled beneath the lid of a shocked eye to hunker down and hibernate for the cold winter ahead.
The End
May 8, 2016
Notes on 'One Big Thing' from 'The Little Scary Book'
There’s a thin line of terror running through Christmas. Most notably in television (Tales from the Crypt’s ‘And All Through The House’ http://tinyurl.com/zp99zyd and The League of Gentlemen’s Christmas Special http://tinyurl.com/k3b5lwa ) as well as film (‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ http://tinyurl.com/j9rhtk4 and the stone cold classic ‘Black Christmas’ http://tinyurl.com/z6c5dat )
So when it came to writing a horror book about children it was clear that I needed to ‘get in the ring’ and see if I could come up with something that stood up against what had come before me.
The first thing that came to mind, when I think of Christmas, is naughty or nice. That clear definition that takes you down one of two paths. Naturally, we take the naughty path and think about the consequences of that choice.
I had the idea of a girl visiting Santa’s grotto and speaking to an elf who asks her the question to which she naturally replies that she has been nice. The elf looks at his list and disagrees with her assessment and sends her on her way with a gift from a pile of used spectacles and jewellery and ballet shoes akin to what happened in the death camps in World War 2 (a dark thought, admittedly, and an example of something that would be too much in a book like this). From there, the story would follow the little girl as she waited for a visit from bad Santa. Not a bad idea but, ultimately, one that I didn’t feel strongly enough about to sit down and write.
My second thought was regarding the rules of Christmas. When I was growing up you could have one big thing. A television or a computer or a bike. But what if you didn’t? What if you asked for all the big things? That would also put you on the naughty list. From there, I needed to figure out what my bad Santa would be called. My first thought was Killer Kringle, which had been used. Then I decided that each country in the world would have its own bad Santa so the Scottish version would be called Mackie Bont. Next up, consequences. What are the consequences of the girl being greedy? Since we’re doing horror it has be the worst possible outcome and what more terrible thing could happened at Christmas than a child’s parents being killed in the bloodiest way imaginable. But even in a horror story I knew I couldn’t leave it on such a bleak ending, so I played my joker card and gave Santa the ability to bring back both parents when the little girl chooses for her one big thing to be their resurrection.
With the premise in place, I started to write. I typed the title ‘One Big Thing’ at the top of the page.
And I looked at it.
Oh, no. No. I can’t do that! Can I? It’s too much! Is it?
I spent half a day, walking about, wondering if I should go with the ending that I was thinking about. Should a little girl have to choose which of her parents she wants to bring back? Ultimately, I decided to go with it because greed has it consequences. We’ve all seen that with the housing bubble collapse. Banker greed that we had to pay for.
If only Mackie Bont could visit them!
So when it came to writing a horror book about children it was clear that I needed to ‘get in the ring’ and see if I could come up with something that stood up against what had come before me.
The first thing that came to mind, when I think of Christmas, is naughty or nice. That clear definition that takes you down one of two paths. Naturally, we take the naughty path and think about the consequences of that choice.
I had the idea of a girl visiting Santa’s grotto and speaking to an elf who asks her the question to which she naturally replies that she has been nice. The elf looks at his list and disagrees with her assessment and sends her on her way with a gift from a pile of used spectacles and jewellery and ballet shoes akin to what happened in the death camps in World War 2 (a dark thought, admittedly, and an example of something that would be too much in a book like this). From there, the story would follow the little girl as she waited for a visit from bad Santa. Not a bad idea but, ultimately, one that I didn’t feel strongly enough about to sit down and write.
My second thought was regarding the rules of Christmas. When I was growing up you could have one big thing. A television or a computer or a bike. But what if you didn’t? What if you asked for all the big things? That would also put you on the naughty list. From there, I needed to figure out what my bad Santa would be called. My first thought was Killer Kringle, which had been used. Then I decided that each country in the world would have its own bad Santa so the Scottish version would be called Mackie Bont. Next up, consequences. What are the consequences of the girl being greedy? Since we’re doing horror it has be the worst possible outcome and what more terrible thing could happened at Christmas than a child’s parents being killed in the bloodiest way imaginable. But even in a horror story I knew I couldn’t leave it on such a bleak ending, so I played my joker card and gave Santa the ability to bring back both parents when the little girl chooses for her one big thing to be their resurrection.
With the premise in place, I started to write. I typed the title ‘One Big Thing’ at the top of the page.
And I looked at it.
Oh, no. No. I can’t do that! Can I? It’s too much! Is it?
I spent half a day, walking about, wondering if I should go with the ending that I was thinking about. Should a little girl have to choose which of her parents she wants to bring back? Ultimately, I decided to go with it because greed has it consequences. We’ve all seen that with the housing bubble collapse. Banker greed that we had to pay for.
If only Mackie Bont could visit them!
May 1, 2016
Notes on 'Darkly Deane' from 'The Little Scary Book'
Not every story that is created has a lightbulb moment. Sometimes, several fairy lights-quite dim by their own standard-only grab your attention when they cluster together to create a glow greater than the sum of their parts.
‘Darkly Deane’ is one of those times when I sat down to figure out what I did NOT have as far as storytelling was concerned and what I did not have was Homeric. The hero’s journey. The protagonist who goes beyond the border of what is known into the unknown.
Thinking of that border immediately made me think of where I grew up, in Mill o’ Mains, on the outskirts of Dundee in Scotland. It was literally a concrete island completely surrounded by a moat of road called Hebrides Drive (Here’s a pic of said road from back in the day: http://tinyurl.com/zv85y7n )
On one side of us ran a stream (or ‘burn’ as we call it in Scotland) and on the other was fields of wheat. And it was thinking about those fields of wheat that triggered off a memory of an idea I had for a story once. In this story a group of boys were playing football by fields of wheat when a fireball appeared in the sky and plummeted into the wheat causing the field to explode into fire. From the fire appears this man, black as ash, who casually walks past the boys and continues on his way. It turns out that this ‘man’ is an angel who has come to earth to right some wrongs rather than sitting up in heaven doing nothing. Several other angels descend to find him and take him back as quickly as possible before his presence becomes known. It’s a story I never got around to writing, but that image of a black ash figure appearing from fields of wheat stuck with me.
Meantime, I have to figure out a reason for my hero going beyond the concrete island of Mill o’ Mains in which he finds himself. What sprung to mind first was collecting a package from the Royal Mail delivery office. The delivery office is a warehouse, on an industrial estate, on the far edges of town where no one really goes unless they get their by car. It could be that the hero’s parent was ill and couldn’t get out of bed so he had to get the package for her. But there was a problem. In order to pick up a package, you need to show identification that you are the person who the package is addressed to, so that was a no go.
But I still had the set-up of an ill parent and a child who needs to do something that the parent would normally do and the image of a angel, black as ash, walking out of the fields of burning wheat. Except he’s not an angel, he’s a monster, because I’m writing horror stories, so we have a devil instead of an angel. Up to this point my story ideas had mainly been about urban children in urban environments, so why not expand my horizons and have a child who grows up in a farm. If ever a child had to put away childish things at an early age it’s surely the children of farmers who are expected to help out on the property as well as deal with all the other things that a normal teenager has to deal with.
So, I have my set up: a monster, a father, ill, and a property of crops that need protecting because without them the family has no livelihood. The mum? At this point she had left to start another life and have another family. From this, we need to set up some parameters within the story to give it a time frame (since we’re dealing with a short story structure) and, in this case, we have one day, the longest day in the year, from the time after the sun disappears over the horizon. Magic "hour" as it's known.
What about mythos? Every monster has its Achilles heel which evens up the fight between good and evil, a little bit. In this case, I needed my version of what garlic is to a vampire and, I kid you not, you will not BELIEVE what my first idea was: red diesel. I actually thought it would be a smart idea for my hero to douse himself in the fuel from a tractor in order to fight a devil made solely of fire and black ash! Anyway, my second idea was treacle, which is wonderfully disgusting and repels some humans let alone monsters. But you only want to even up the battle between good and evil a little bit. So, let’s give our hero his repellent but then he refuses to use it, thus, adding to the tension of what will follow.
At this point in the plotting of what stories would go where in ‘The Little Scary Book’ I knew that the one that preceded this was ‘Badbugs’ and, in that, a dog is killed. So let’s bring back another dog to add more tension. Surely the author wouldn’t kill off two dogs in two stories. Would he? I chose to make the dog a shar-pei (http://tinyurl.com/jt5od5u) because a friend of mine had bought one and I instantly fell in love with it. And, given their Chinese heritage, I decided to call it ‘Ronin’ meaning ‘one without master’, because he was found at a local kennel, having been abandoned.
So I wrote my first draft. It finished with Greig and Ronin returning to the house. Greig eats a bowl of cereal and then heads up to bed. From the box of cereal-which is wheat based-we see Deane’s arm reach out of the box and slam down on the wooden kitchen table and then watch as the flames start to spread. But something was nagging at me. As mentioned before, I pretty much knew what stories would be going where and had a general outline of what each story would be about, and I knew that in ‘One Adult, One Child’ we had a mum abandoning her son and husband to start again. To have two stories of mums’ leaving their families seemed wrong, worse it was simply unrealistic. But you can’t have both parents ill and both unable to get out of bed, so what to do? She’s dead. I have a friend who lost a parent as a child and had no memory of them. Who wouldn’t give anything to, if not see them again, then at least recoup memories thought to be lost forever. And let’s make her the parent that’s good with the rifle not the father, creating a genetic talent link between mother and son. Her epitaph, ‘By heart, by soul, by tooth, by nail, I did not leave you willingly’ is something I made up from a bigger speech for a ‘Braveheart’ type movie that I’ve never got around to writing and it would have gone something like: ‘We will fight them with cannons and we will fight the with muskets. We will fight them with pistol and we will fight them with sabre. We will fight them pistol and knife. We will fight them with tooth and nail and heart and soul and then, we will have won!’
With the mum now integral to the story telling the ending, with Deane appearing from the cereal box, felt cheap. The story had become more than what it started out is. Once I let go of the idea that every story I was writing needed a twist ending, the natural conclusion revealed itself. Mother and son resolved by her graveside. Her cold stone epitaph soothing his exhausted brow.
A nice ending.
A fair ending.
Especially compared to what was coming next…
‘Darkly Deane’ is one of those times when I sat down to figure out what I did NOT have as far as storytelling was concerned and what I did not have was Homeric. The hero’s journey. The protagonist who goes beyond the border of what is known into the unknown.
Thinking of that border immediately made me think of where I grew up, in Mill o’ Mains, on the outskirts of Dundee in Scotland. It was literally a concrete island completely surrounded by a moat of road called Hebrides Drive (Here’s a pic of said road from back in the day: http://tinyurl.com/zv85y7n )
On one side of us ran a stream (or ‘burn’ as we call it in Scotland) and on the other was fields of wheat. And it was thinking about those fields of wheat that triggered off a memory of an idea I had for a story once. In this story a group of boys were playing football by fields of wheat when a fireball appeared in the sky and plummeted into the wheat causing the field to explode into fire. From the fire appears this man, black as ash, who casually walks past the boys and continues on his way. It turns out that this ‘man’ is an angel who has come to earth to right some wrongs rather than sitting up in heaven doing nothing. Several other angels descend to find him and take him back as quickly as possible before his presence becomes known. It’s a story I never got around to writing, but that image of a black ash figure appearing from fields of wheat stuck with me.
Meantime, I have to figure out a reason for my hero going beyond the concrete island of Mill o’ Mains in which he finds himself. What sprung to mind first was collecting a package from the Royal Mail delivery office. The delivery office is a warehouse, on an industrial estate, on the far edges of town where no one really goes unless they get their by car. It could be that the hero’s parent was ill and couldn’t get out of bed so he had to get the package for her. But there was a problem. In order to pick up a package, you need to show identification that you are the person who the package is addressed to, so that was a no go.
But I still had the set-up of an ill parent and a child who needs to do something that the parent would normally do and the image of a angel, black as ash, walking out of the fields of burning wheat. Except he’s not an angel, he’s a monster, because I’m writing horror stories, so we have a devil instead of an angel. Up to this point my story ideas had mainly been about urban children in urban environments, so why not expand my horizons and have a child who grows up in a farm. If ever a child had to put away childish things at an early age it’s surely the children of farmers who are expected to help out on the property as well as deal with all the other things that a normal teenager has to deal with.
So, I have my set up: a monster, a father, ill, and a property of crops that need protecting because without them the family has no livelihood. The mum? At this point she had left to start another life and have another family. From this, we need to set up some parameters within the story to give it a time frame (since we’re dealing with a short story structure) and, in this case, we have one day, the longest day in the year, from the time after the sun disappears over the horizon. Magic "hour" as it's known.
What about mythos? Every monster has its Achilles heel which evens up the fight between good and evil, a little bit. In this case, I needed my version of what garlic is to a vampire and, I kid you not, you will not BELIEVE what my first idea was: red diesel. I actually thought it would be a smart idea for my hero to douse himself in the fuel from a tractor in order to fight a devil made solely of fire and black ash! Anyway, my second idea was treacle, which is wonderfully disgusting and repels some humans let alone monsters. But you only want to even up the battle between good and evil a little bit. So, let’s give our hero his repellent but then he refuses to use it, thus, adding to the tension of what will follow.
At this point in the plotting of what stories would go where in ‘The Little Scary Book’ I knew that the one that preceded this was ‘Badbugs’ and, in that, a dog is killed. So let’s bring back another dog to add more tension. Surely the author wouldn’t kill off two dogs in two stories. Would he? I chose to make the dog a shar-pei (http://tinyurl.com/jt5od5u) because a friend of mine had bought one and I instantly fell in love with it. And, given their Chinese heritage, I decided to call it ‘Ronin’ meaning ‘one without master’, because he was found at a local kennel, having been abandoned.
So I wrote my first draft. It finished with Greig and Ronin returning to the house. Greig eats a bowl of cereal and then heads up to bed. From the box of cereal-which is wheat based-we see Deane’s arm reach out of the box and slam down on the wooden kitchen table and then watch as the flames start to spread. But something was nagging at me. As mentioned before, I pretty much knew what stories would be going where and had a general outline of what each story would be about, and I knew that in ‘One Adult, One Child’ we had a mum abandoning her son and husband to start again. To have two stories of mums’ leaving their families seemed wrong, worse it was simply unrealistic. But you can’t have both parents ill and both unable to get out of bed, so what to do? She’s dead. I have a friend who lost a parent as a child and had no memory of them. Who wouldn’t give anything to, if not see them again, then at least recoup memories thought to be lost forever. And let’s make her the parent that’s good with the rifle not the father, creating a genetic talent link between mother and son. Her epitaph, ‘By heart, by soul, by tooth, by nail, I did not leave you willingly’ is something I made up from a bigger speech for a ‘Braveheart’ type movie that I’ve never got around to writing and it would have gone something like: ‘We will fight them with cannons and we will fight the with muskets. We will fight them with pistol and we will fight them with sabre. We will fight them pistol and knife. We will fight them with tooth and nail and heart and soul and then, we will have won!’
With the mum now integral to the story telling the ending, with Deane appearing from the cereal box, felt cheap. The story had become more than what it started out is. Once I let go of the idea that every story I was writing needed a twist ending, the natural conclusion revealed itself. Mother and son resolved by her graveside. Her cold stone epitaph soothing his exhausted brow.
A nice ending.
A fair ending.
Especially compared to what was coming next…
