A Golden Opportunity (continuation)

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to continue with last month’s prompt (a story told through a camera, any type of camera in any circumstance). This next story will be what happens AFTER what is told through the camera. This week’s story comes from the pen of Phil Yeats.

In April 2024, Phil published The Body on Karli’s Beach, the third book in his Barrettsport Mysteries, a series of soft-boiled mysteries set in a fictional South Shore, Nova Scotia town. For information about these books, The Road to Environmental Armageddon, his trilogy about the hazards of ignoring human-induced climate change, and his latest, a novella titled Starting Over Again: A Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy visit his website: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/.

  

A Golden Opportunity (continuation)

by Phil Yeats

 

Detective Sargeant Sam Taylor was off chasing down information on Matt MacDonald and Chris Martin. Detective Max Beech began filling in the details of their victim, Percival Smythe Jones, while he waited for reports from the coroner and the crime scene officers.

Max was a successful detective but known as a maverick in the Halifax Police Department because he charged off following his hunches while he waited, sometimes what he considered inordinate lengths of time for those official reports to make their way to his desk.

Today, however, he was behaving himself, searching for information on their victim’s life from his graduation from a small Squamish, BC college to his demise in his upscale condo in Halifax. The two events were a long way apart, in both kilometres and years.

After graduating from college with a science degree, he enrolled in a course at a Vancouver technical college that provided him with certification as a mineral prospector. After that, Max lost his trail until he showed up again several years later, listed as vice president in charge of prospecting at a gold mining start-up whose stock price rocketed ahead before fading into oblivion. Then his trail went dark again.

He had the fancy apartment, a Lamborghini sports car and an almost new Hummer electric SUV. His father denied subsidizing any of Perry’s activities after his second year at college.

“So,” Max said to Sam after a day trolling for data, “where did he get the money?”

“Can’t answer that question, but I learned things from Chris Brown, the geology student living in Australia.”

“Don’t hold me in suspense.”

“First, he has the photos and will send them to us. But more important, he said they were all similar to the one we have. What puzzled Chris was that he knows Perry several shots that zoomed in on the scar on the hillside. He never showed them to us, but after the visit to that viewpoint opposite the landslide, Perry changed. He became less of a pest, sort of off in a world of his own with a sudden interest in geology.”

“That is interesting,” Max said as he searched his computer for information on faculty members in the Dalhousie University Department of Geology. “Which one should we contact?” he said when he found a page with faculty members and their specialities.

“Talk to the head, I guess, see where that leads us. Should give us a contact at the University of British Columbia.”

Max nodded. “That’s your job for tomorrow.”

“It’s early afternoon on the West Coast. I could bypass Dal and go straight to UBC.”

“Fine, give it a shot. I have something to do this evening, something that’s best done alone. We’ll get back together in the morning and compare notes.”

An hour later, Max arrived at an apartment hidden away up an exterior flight of stairs behind a vape shop in a rundown part of the city. He rang the bell and a few seconds later heard a click as a servo motor released the door lock.

Inside, a voice called out from another room behind the apartment’s sparsely furnished main room. The kitchen area in this great room had a counter with a single stool and a few utensils, dishes, pots, and pans. Many were in the sink, unwashed; others were stacked on the counter. The rest of the room contained a single recliner chair with a small side table, tucked away behind the main door.

Another click released the door to the back room, and Max entered a small room cluttered with electronics on shelves and a large desk. A chair on wheels in front of the main computer terminal was its only other furnishing. A baby-faced but bald young man swiveled around. “Hello, Max. What can I do for you?”

Max only knew him by Min, the name he laughingly gave himself when Max saved him from a suicide attempt when he was a teenager. Under Max’s tutelage, and often with Max’s financial support, he finished high school and three years of university. He appeared again four years later, when Max needed the help of a computer wizard to solve a case.

Min sat silently, brow furrowed, for a minute after Max described his problem. He swivelled to his keyboard and tapped away for several minutes. “Right. This shouldn’t be difficult. Meet you at, say, seven tomorrow for dinner at the trattoria.”

Min was sitting at a table with a glass of red wine in his hand when Max arrived at the restaurant. A waiter arrived with a glass of wine for Max.

“These two are on me. I expect you to pick up the tab for the rest of our meal as payment for a job well done.”

Max nodded. This was their normal arrangement—a small payment for the information Min extracted from the world of computer networks.

“Percival Smythe Jones is a con man, a thorn in the side of his father, a prominent politician. Daddy Dearest spends a lot of time and money keeping young Percy out of the limelight. It started with Percy’s mining venture, the one you mentioned to me. Good old-fashioned gold mining scam. You spike some preliminary drill samples with traces of gold, or alter the results of the sample analyses, generate interest in the market that drives up share prices, then when followup cores come up empty, share prices plummet. Meanwhile, you’ve sold your stake and the top of the market and disappeared.”

“I’d guessed that was the outcome, but there was no fuss from investors or legal ramifications.”

“That’s because Daddy Dearest paid off the disgruntled investors and hushed it up.”

“Doesn’t sound like that gives me a motive for murdering Percy, unless his father did him in.”

Min ignored Max’s suggestion. “Next chapters get more interesting. First, he multiplied his ill-gotten fortune several-fold speculating in bitcoins. Then he started a new venture.”

“Another stock scam?”

Min shook his head. “More diabolical. He started a privately funded investment fund that promised huge gains for investors willing to bend or break rules to find or generate sure bets.”

“Sounds illegal.”

“Very, but also well hidden. And if anything goes wrong, they can’t go to the police. They’d be implicating themselves.”

Min tapped the man-purse slung over his shoulder. “It’s all in here, for your use but not for public consumption.” He smiled. “My methods are not always strictly legal, and you’d be implicated.”

“So you’re giving me a number—”

“—twenty-seven potential perpetrators, plus Daddy Dearest, who could have orchestrated a hit.”

“Useful, but it doesn’t solve my case.”

“True, but don’t despair. After I’ve enjoyed my dinner, the first proper meal I’ve had in weeks, I’ll provide you with a summary of my findings.”

“But not the perpetrator,” Max said.

“Verbally as we leave. You’ll have to prepare your case with admissible evidence before you make a bust.”

 

***

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

 

Revelation

 Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to continue with last month’s prompt (a story told through a camera, any type of camera in any circumstance). This next story will be what happens AFTER what is told through the camera.

This time, it’s Cathy MacKenzie’s turn. Her writings have been published in almost 400 print and online publications. Check out her website (www.writingwicket.wordpress.com) for further information on her works.

This is a continuation of her previous Spot Writers story.

 

Revelation

by Cathy MacKenzie

 

Jimmy couldn’t keep secrets for long. He just had to tell his father about the mermaid. But he’d had to wait for the right opportunity, when his father was in a good mood and his mother wasn’t around.

Tonight was it! His mother had her book club meeting and would be gone at least two hours.

His father was hunched over the kitchen table, his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose as he scrolled through his tablet.

Jimmy sat across from him, still wearing his heavy winter parka. His dad was Sir El Cheapo when it came to the thermostat.

“Dad?”

“Mmm?”

“I saw something on my way to school last week. Over on Lincoln Street.”

“Yeah? You did? Traffic’s a mess over there. Construction crew leave a hole in the road again?”

“No,” Jimmy said, leaning forward. “A mermaid, Dad. I saw a mermaid in a snowbank.”

Bob’s thumb paused on the screen. Seconds later, he let out a snort. “A mermaid. On Lincoln? Must have been a store mannequin, Jimmy. Or a discarded Christmas display.”

What! Jimmy thought. What was his father insinuating? A mermaid could be found in any snowbank, just not on Lincoln?

“It wasn’t a Christmas decoration. Nor was it a mannequin. It was alive.”

His father still didn’t move, his eyes glued to the screen. Jimmy had caught a glimpse of the screen. His father was checking his stocks. Had he made a ton of dough? Jimmy knew a bit about the stock market.

He waited for a reply that never came and then had to break the silence.

“She was stuck in the snow. It was a huge bank. Her tail was a deep, gorgeous green. With other colours too. It kinda flopped around, like a whale or something.”

His father finally set the tablet down and rubbed his eyes. “Jimmy, we live in the middle of a concrete grid. The closest thing to a mermaid around here is the frozen slush at the bottom of the harbour. Your mind is just trying to fill in the blanks because the city’s so grey this time of year.”

“You didn’t think it was grey last August,” Jimmy said.

His father went still.

Aha, gotcha! Jimmy thought.

Bob reached for his mug, but his hand hovered over the handle for a second too long before gripping it.

“The night we walked home from the pier,” Jimmy continued. “Remember? Near the shipping containers? You stopped dead in your tracks and stared into that narrow gap between the concrete and the water. You didn’t move for three minutes. You didn’t even blink.”

“I thought I saw a seal,” Bob said, his voice flat. “It happens. They wander into the basin sometimes.”

“Seals don’t have fingers, Dad. And they don’t hum. I heard it too, just for a second. It sounded like... Like a radio station from somewhere far away. Like static.”

Bob looked away, staring at the reflection of the kitchen lights in the window. “Lincoln is a busy street,” he finally said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “People don’t look at snowbanks there. They look at their feet or their phones.”

“I looked,” Jimmy said.

Bob turned back to his son. “But you’re a weird kid!” He laughed.

“But I saw the same mermaid last summer when we were at that cottage.”

“You did?”

“Yes, but I never told anyone.”

Suddenly, his father was interested. “Did she recognize you?”

It was Jimmy’s turn to gaze into the distance. “Funnily, I don’t think so. And I forgot to ask. We had a long conversation, though.”

His father laughed. “Best to keep those things to yourself.” He picked up his tablet again but didn’t scroll.

Jimmy waited for something—anything—to happen. He had an inkling his father was going to speak again.

“Was she... Did she look okay?” he finally asked.

“I think she just wanted to be back in the water, where she belonged. Mermaids aren’t supposed to be in snowbanks, you know.”

His father coughed. “Good. Let’s hope it’s an early spring.”

“I think she’s probably gone by now, Dad. It’s been a week. I think we’d know by now if someone else saw her. Wouldn’t that be on the news?” Jimmy wondered why he hadn’t gone back to check.

“Hmm, I suppose so, Jimmy. But, still, let’s keep this to ourselves, okay? I don’t think your mother needs to hear this.”

Jimmy was hesitant. He wasn’t good with secrets. And now he had to keep the same one again? He feared it would burn and burn within him until he blurted it out loud.

 

***

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com
Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com
Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

 

Someday

 

Welcome to the Spot Writers. This week’s prompt follows the prompt from last month, which was to tell a story through a camera. The prompt for this month: tell what happens after. In the story from last month, the camera showed the early life of a family dog, first injured and then lost after being startled by fireworks.

Someday

by Val Muller

Ella sat I the basement, listening to the base of the sub woofer. She was watching a war film—well, she wasn’t actually watching it. She had chosen it for its loud soundtrack—for Charlie. The loud sounds helped drown out the fireworks of Independence Day. He was old now. Likely he wouldn’t be able to run off so fast anymore, but he could still be scared.

Ever since the summer he ran off during the fireworks, most of the family gave up the holiday. Sure, they did cookouts, but they generally came back home before the big displays. It was bad enough that neighborhood displays stretched out over the week. Only Henry was out with friends, as he usually was. Maybe he had been too young when Charlie ran off. Maybe he didn’t remember the worry and the stress.

Ellen turned back to her sketchbook. In it, she was finishing the cross-hatching on a sketch of Charlie sleeping in his bed, a brilliant display of fireworks in the background of the drawing. But they weren’t ordinary fireworks.

On the next page in her sketchbook, she started her blueprint. It was a grand light display, one that would presumably be lit by drones, each programmed to light in silent precision. No explosives, no smoke, no terrifying sounds, no lost animals. She was only going into her junior year, but she already had her college essay drafted for the school of engineering she hoped to attend. It was an essay about the night Charlie disappeared and her plan to use drone technology to change the standard for holiday illumination displays.

In his bed, Charlie stretched, then curled up again. Ellen smiled sadly. She doubted Charlie would be around next summer; this was likely the last Independence Day she had to hide him from the fireworks, but he would always be in her heart as she pursued her dream. The technology was nascent now, but she would bring it to full fruition. Her name would be in the textbooks one day, a pioneer of electronic pyrotechnics. In fact, she would write her own book one day, likely as part of her dissertation. She would make sure it was published to be released on the 4^th of July. And it would be dedicated to Charlie.

**** 

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/
Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com
Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

 

Elsa’s Paranormal Journal

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to write a story that’s told through a camera. It can be any type of camera in any circumstance. 

This week’s contribution comes from Chiara De Giorgi. Chiara is an Italian author and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. She writes fiction, with a focus on children’s literature and science fiction.

  

Elsa’s Paranormal Journal

by Chiara De Giorgi

Created with Canva

 

 ~ Entry 1 ~

I’ve decided to start this diary. Not out of nostalgia, nor for posterity: just to keep track of my bizarre adventures in case they turn dangerous. Ever since Mr. Khamose gave me the Sight, everything has changed. That’s right. The Sight... A gift? A curse? In any case, an open door between this world and the one that comes after. And apparently, I’m not the only one who can see what lies on the other side...

Last week I set an assignment for my creative writing class: to wander around the village, take photos, and weave a story from what they captured. Most of them brought back sunsets, the graffiti in the underpass, the goldfish in the fountain in the main square... the usual stuff, basically. But Lydia, our quiet, gothic high schooler, silent yet sharp observer, came up with something completely different.

Her photos were eerie and sometimes unsettling. Shadows that looked wrong, as if they were too long, angles too sharp... as if she’d photographed a glitch. One showed a blurred movement in the park, something crouching over a bleeding rat. Another, a selfie of her dancing, with her arm wrapped around... nothing. Just empty air.

She told a story about vampires. I praised her creativity, of course. But then she looked at me, unflinching, and said: “You might see them too, if only you looked.”

“Your books would certainly improve too,” she added under her breath.

My breath caught in my throat. What did that mean? What did she know?

Today, we met up after school at the library café, a place that smells of old books and burnt coffee. Lydia got straight to the point.

“I saw you with the Stranger,” she said. “That creature who changes her appearance as the weather changes.”

I almost choked on my latte. The Stranger: a shapeshifter, a unique and special creature who comes and goes as she pleases and each time turns my life upside down, for better or worse. Anybody can see her, no matter how she presents herself: a teapot or a gardener or a teddy bear… even a bus, once. But nobody can tell what she is, as far as I know.

“How…”

“I see things,” she said with a shrug. “I always have. Ghosts, mostly. But also those who pretend not to be there. Vampires. Werewolves. The old spirits are rather boring.” She wrinkled her nose. “When I was thirteen, I didn’t go with the others to the haunted house for the rite of passage typical of this village. I knew I’d see things, and I didn’t want anything to do with the gloomy souls in that abandoned house.”

I laughed. “The Squatters aren’t gloomy. Sister Elena is always trying to convert Zinny, the Zen monk, but she never gets anywhere with him… and you’d never believe who her best friend is: Olga, a retired KGB assassin!”

Lydia’s eyes lit up. “Are you serious? You mean they’re cool?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “But there’s another reason I wanted to see you. Lydia, I need help. There’s a ghost who’s been… murdered. Or so it seems. I’m trying to find out what happened and I think… I think you can help me.”

She didn’t hesitate. “I’m in,” she said.

Tomorrow, I’ll introduce her to the Squatters. If anyone can help me solve this mystery, it’s a girl who dances with vampires.

And if things go wrong? Well. At least this journal will make for a hell of a story.

Elsa

 

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

A Golden Opportunity

 

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to write a story that’s told through a camera. It can be any type of camera in any circumstance. This week’s story comes from the pen of Phil Yeats.

In April 2024, Phil published The Body on Karli’s Beach, the third book in his Barrettsport Mysteries, a series of soft-boiled mysteries set in a fictional South Shore, Nova Scotia town. For information about these books, The Road to Environmental Armageddon, his trilogy about the hazards of ignoring human-induced climate change, and his latest, a novella titled Starting Over Again: A Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy visit his website: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/.

 

 

A Golden Opportunity

Phil Yeats

 

The victim’s condo was elegant, sparsely furnished with high-end furniture and devoid of keepsakes. The sole exception was a photograph in an exotic-looking wooden frame of three young men, none of them the victim, in a forest setting.

“Anything on the identity of our victim?” asked Max Beech, the senior detective who’d been called in from vacation to take on the case.

“Nothing on the body, and nothing personal in the condo except a single photo. The place is sterile, like an upscale Airbnb,” said Samantha Taylor, the officer in charge until the chief intervened. “We showed a tidied-up mugshot of the victim to the condo manager, who identified him as Percival Smythe-Jones, listed as the owner since the building opened four years ago.”

“Smythe-Jones. Why does that name sound familiar?”

“Reginald Smythe-Jones, Minister of Transport in the federal government.”

“Could he be the victim’s father?”

Sam nodded. “According to Reginald’s official government bio, he’s a widower with three daughters and a son named Percival. The chief said I was to leave contacting him to you.”

Max scowled, wondering why the chief wouldn’t let Sam contact Smythe-Jones. It was such an obvious first step. “Anything else I should know?”

“The photo. Here’s a shot I took with my phone before the crime scene squad shooed us out. Two things. Trees beside the figures and in the immediate background suggest a forest scene, but farther back the scene is barren. Could be a quarry or a strip-mining site.”

“And the second thing?”

“The lab guys say there’s a handwritten date on the back that suggests it was taken five years ago, and three names. Mike Brown, Chris Martin, and Matt McDonald. No prints other than the deceased’s.”

“While I’m chasing Smythe-Jones around Ottawa, you can continue looking after the crime scene investigation and then locate those three. I have a feeling that the solution to this investigation may revolve around this photo.”

Sam laughed. Everyone on the force knew Max’s hunches often contributed to his stellar success rate.

“A crime solved through the lens of a camera,” she said.

Max sighed as he left the crime scene. He’d much prefer sifting through the meagre debris at the scene than phoning the Right Honourable Reginald Percy-Jones, but orders were orders. Outside the condo building, he placed a call to Smythe-Jones’s office in Ottawa. No one answered, so he left a text message and copied the message to an email. His next stop; the crime lab for a look at the photograph and picture frame.

His phone rang outside the crime lab. Smythe-Jones got right to the point. “Busy, on my way to an important meeting. I can give you ten minutes, no more.” After Max explained the reason for his call, Smythe Jones said, “The lad is a great disappointment. Haven’t seen him for five years, and you’re calling me from Halifax, right?”

“That’s correct. We need someone, preferably a family member, to identify the body.”

“I don’t have time. Call my daughter, Emily Smythe-Jones. She lives in Nova Scotia.” He gave Max a phone number and broke off the call.

“Jerk,” Max said to the empty hallway before dialling the number.

“What a jerk,” Emily said after Max explained the purpose of his call. “I’ll never understand why voters in Toronto support him. He thinks because I work from home with two small kids, I can drop everything and run his bloody errands anywhere on the east coast at the drop of a hat.” She paused for a breath. “Tell me where to meet you. I can be there in an hour.”

 

After Emily identified the body, Max asked her a few questions, starting with, “Your brother was estranged from his father?”

“You could say that, but the reality was much worse. Father hated Percy, his youngest child and only son, for as long as I can remember.”

“Any explanation for why he felt like that?”

“He longed for a son, someone who’d take over his property development empire when Father went into politics.”

“It didn’t work out that way.”

“No. Percy is, sorry, was, a gentle soul, not someone who’d be successful in the cutthroat worlds of property development and property management.”

Max switched topics. “Have you ever been to his apartment?”

“Many times, the most recent was about a month ago.”

“Would you describe it as austere?”

Emily’s furrowed brow and silence for a few seconds suggested trouble processing the question. “Not a lot of knick-knacks because he had few friends and little social life, but his computer was always on his coffee table with papers strewn all over the place.”

“Cell phone?”

“Usually on its charger on the equally cluttered kitchen counter. He never seemed to wash his dishes.”

 

At the station, Max typed up his notes while he waited for Samantha. She arrived and plunked herself down in his visitor’s chair. “Had a conversation with Mike Brown in Vancouver. He, Chris Martin, Matt McDonald, and Perry Jones, as he called our victim, were students at a small college in Squamish. That’s near Vancouver. He, Chris, and Matt were friends. Perry, to use Mike’s words, was a pain in the butt, always poking his ugly mug in where he wasn’t wanted.”

“And.”

“They were talking about a recent landslide when Perry arrived. Chris, who was a geology buff, had just said something about wishing he could visit the scene, and Perry must have overheard him. The next morning, when Perry arrived outside their dorm wing with a Hummer, they had little choice. They climbed in and headed for the slide location not too far from Squamish. It wasn’t visible from the road, but Perry seemed to know the logging roads and other tracks in the area, and they were soon across a little valley from the slide.”

“What about the photo?”

“Mike recognized it, confirmed it was a photo of hm and his two buddies. Said Perry had a camera with an enormous telephoto lens. He took many photos, sent about fifteen to Mike and his friends a few days later.”

“Does he still have them?”

Sam shook her head. “Mike said he’d look, but he wasn’t optimistic. He said he deletes photos that don’t interest him. But he told me, Chris may have kept them.”

“Can we contact Chris?”

Sam nodded. “He lives in Australia, but Mike gave me his email address. Already sent him a message.”

“And the third guy, Matt?”

“Mike didn’t have a contact for him.”

“Check with the college. We need those photos. We’re looking at a landslide, not a quarry or a strip mine. If we can stare through the lens of that camera, we’ll learn something important.”

 

to be continued

 

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

 

Through the Lens: The Mermaid in the Snowbank

 

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to write a story that is told through a camera. It can be any type of camera in any circumstance.

This time, it’s Cathy MacKenzie’s turn. Her writings have been published in almost 400 print and online publications. Check out her website (www.writingwicket.wordpress.com) for further information on her works.

Cathy is continuing with more tales about the Grimes family (another novel in the future).

 

***

 

Through the Lens: The Mermaid in the Snowbank

Cathy MacKenzie

 

Jimmy stared through the camera lens. The sight confused him. When did mermaids appear out of snowbanks?

He pinched his arm. He touched his chest, feeling the thumping through the thin fabric of his jacket. Yep, still kicking! And he wasn’t in a dream.

It was warm for March, the large snowbanks slowly melting. It had been a brutal winter. Many school days had been cancelled, some even the night before school was to start the next day. Days he was stuck in the house with his mother—always an unpleasant experience, even worse if his father wasn’t at work. He couldn’t wait to finish growing up and leave home. Start his own life. He wasn’t interested in girls, not yet. Still didn’t have a girlfriend. But that was okay.

He peered through the lens again. He shook his head, ensuring again he wasn’t in a dream. Nope. He wasn’t in bed. He was outside, trying to get some neat winter photographs with the camera his parents had given him for Christmas. He might like to be a photographer when he left home. That would be an easy career.

He shivered at the sight of the mermaid, who was sitting in the snowbank the way a person sits in a bathtub: slightly leaning back, arms propped on the sides. Her tail, a deep iridescent green, had disappeared into the snow. Seaweed weaved throughout her long hair.

Jimmy moved the camera to the left. To the right. The street was empty. It was 7:25 on a Thursday morning, and apparently, he was the only person in the entire city who had noticed the mermaid.

He turned the camera back at her. She was looking back at him.

He raised one hand in a small, uncertain wave.

She tilted her head. Then she raised one hand and waved back, copying him exactly as if she were his reflection and the snowbank the mirror. She wasn’t the same mermaid he’d seen during the summer.

Jimmy considered his options. He could keep walking to the bus stop, pretend this hadn’t happened, and spend the rest of his life knowing he’d walked past a mermaid in a snowbank. Or he could stay and talk to her.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice was normal—disappointingly normal as if a substitute teacher talking to a student.

“Are you—” He gestured at the snowbank, at her general situation.

“Stuck? Yes. The snow is melting but not fast enough.”

“How did you get here?”

“That little causeway going to the park flooded. Remember when we had that heavy rain and the snow started to melt?”

“Yeah, I remember.” He remembered the rains and then how it snowed again for another couple of days, bringing back more snow as if it had never disappeared. Everyone had thought spring was on the way until that last downfall.

“I went farther than I intended.” She glanced down at the snowbank. “Much farther.”

“The causeway’s down the road.” He pointed. “Or did you come from behind the house, from the lake?”

“I’m aware of the location of the causeway. I somehow ended up in the pond. And then here.” A pause. “It was a very unusual February.”

Jimmy stood on the sidewalk and continued to stare at her through the lens. She stared back at him. Neither of them seemed to know whose turn it was.

“I’m Jimmy,” he finally said.

“I don’t have a name,” she said. “Not one you could pronounce. You’d need gills.”

“I could try.”

She made a sound. Like someone dropping a handful of marbles into a fish tank while gargling.

His nose started running. He swiped at his face with his free hand. “I’ll call you—I don’t know. Something.”

“People have called me Peggy before. Or Margaret.”

“You don’t look like a Peggy or a Margaret—oh, did you come from Peggy’s Cove originally?”

“Peggy’s Cove? No. Where’s that?”

“Never mind.” He didn’t want to get into a discussion of Peggy of the Cove. Much too long a story.

She seemed unoffended. “What do I look like, then? What name would you give me?”

He pondered for a few minutes. Had the mermaid he’d seen that one summer have a name? He wondered if she were still alive. “Anita,” he finally said.

“Anita,” she repeated, testing it. “That’s a terrible name.”

“It’s a great name.”

“It sounds like a sneeze.”

“Agnes sounds more like sneeze-name. Do you like that one better?” Jimmy asked.

She looked at him for a long moment. “No, Anita’s better.”

Jimmy stepped closer. Up close, the seaweed situation was more complex than it had first appeared. There were also two small crabs in her hair. He decided not to mention them.

“So,” he said, “what happens when the snow melts?”

“I go back to the water, presumably.”

“And until then?”

Anita looked around.

Jimmy moved the camera, viewing through the peephole what she saw: the empty street, the two rows of almost identical houses, the ice and snow, the grey March sky.

“I wait, I suppose.” She seemed perfectly comfortable with this answer. “I’ve waited in worse places.”

“Are you cold?”

“I’m a fish.”

“Half fish.”

“I suppose.”

Jimmy thought about the crabs in her hair, whether they were alive. He thought about being late to school, which didn’t seem to matter anymore, and about his parents, who definitely couldn’t know about this, and that he was standing on a public sidewalk having a conversation with a mermaid named Anita, who was sitting in a snowbank and did not seem to find any of this particularly remarkable.

“Do you want anything?” he asked. “While you wait. Are you hungry?”

“Do you have fish?”

“Not on me.”

“What do you have?”

He thought for a moment. What did he have?

He shrugged off his backpack and carefully set down the camera.

“Let’s see,” he said, rooting through his bag. “I have a peanut butter sandwich, an apple, and a little bag of Goldfish crackers.” He held up the bag of crackers. “You’d probably like these. They’re in the shape of fish.”

Anita stared at them for a long moment.

“They’re not real fish,” Jimmy said quickly.

“I know what a Goldfish cracker is,” she said. “I’ve been in this lake system for a long time and see a lot of things.” She held out her hand.

He poured some into her palm. He picked up his backpack and carefully put the opened bag of crackers into one of the smaller pockets so the contents wouldn’t spill out. After repositioning the backpack on his back, he picked up the camera and peered through the lens.

She had eaten most of the crackers by this time. “They taste a bit like cheese,” she said finally.

“Yeah,” Jimmy agreed. “A bit. Fake cheese, I think.”

He glanced down the street when he heard the bus. “I’m going to miss the bus,” he said.

“You should go.”

“Yeah, I should.” He didn’t move. But one of the crabs in her hair shifted position. He adjusted the lens so the object was magnified. It looked huge—and dangerous.

He crouched down. The bus didn’t come down this way, but someone might see him when it reached the corner.

“Do you do this a lot?” Anita asked.

“What? Finding mermaids in snowbanks?”

“No, skipping school.”

What to say? He didn’t like admitting bad things he did. “No, not really.”

“So you do!”

“Well, I did a couple of times.” He thought about his life: his parents, his small room, the walk to the bus stop five mornings a week. Meeting the same kids waiting for transportation to another boring, dull day in the classroom. Where was his real life?

Anita nodded. “You kids always do.”

He adjusted the lens back to normal and aimed the camera back at her. She was looking down the street. The sun was getting warmer. He figured some of the snow would be gone by the end of day. The snow around her tail was definitely softer now.

How had he forgotten to take pictures? He needed some sort of proof this morning had happened. What better than a photo?

He snapped. She didn’t seem to notice.

He pointed the camera to his watch, sighed, and sat at the curb.

“Tell me about the lake,” he said, the camera still aimed at the mermaid. He’d always wondered of its mysteries. Maybe she knew where his siblings had gone.

Anita looked at him sideways, a look that might have been the mermaid equivalent of a human’s smile. Then she settled back against the slowly melting snowbank, folded her hands in her lap, and began to talk.

Jimmy listened.

This day would never repeat itself. School was always there.

Someday he might tell his father about meeting her. He knew his father liked mermaids. He giggled. But maybe not: the word “secrets” existed for a reason.

 

***

 

The Spot Writers:

 

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

 

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

 

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

 

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.ca/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strawberry Fields

Welcome to the Spot Writers. This month’s prompt is to write about a picture frame from a thrift store with a message scrawled on the back.

This week’s contribution comes from Chiara De Giorgi. Chiara is an Italian author and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. She writes fiction, with a focus on children’s literature and science fiction.

 

Strawberry Fields

by Chiara De Giorgi

 

Created with Canva

When I got home with a lovely picture frame from the antique shop and opened it, a small note slipped out. I didn’t know then that it would be just the first one.

On the note, handwritten in an old-fashioned script all curls and long loops, with ink that had turned brown over time, were these words: When the moon smiles with clenched teeth, seek what has no roots nor roof. It is not wind, it is not rain, but it comes all the same, with a surprise in store for you.

I smiled. It seemed like a nursery rhyme or a riddle. I’ve always been fascinated by things from the past, so I didn’t throw the note away. Instead, I pinned it to the fridge with a magnet. Passing by it several times a day, maybe I’d solve the mystery.

The second note was waiting for me inside an old science fiction novel I borrowed from the library a few days later. Typed on an old typewriter (the ‘o’s were smudged with ink inside, and the ‘t’s were misaligned), the message read: The sky is not as blue as you think. It’s just a veil, thin and slow. Wait for it to tear, and you’ll see who has been waiting for you for so long.

Well, at least, talking about tears in the sky, it was consistent with the book’s theme! When I got home from the library, I placed the book on the side table next to my reading chair and pinned the note to the fridge, next to the first one.

The next day, returning from the greengrocer’s, I set the bag of apples on the kitchen counter. One apple rolled out and fell to the floor, taking the others with it. Oh well. I wanted to make a pie anyway, so a few bruises didn’t matter. I picked them up and placed them in a bowl, then shook the bag to make sure it was empty. A third note fluttered out, gliding onto the counter next to the bowl of apples. This one had been written with a blue marker. Though handwritten, the letters were very neat, in uppercase print. I read the message: The trembling light is not a star. It’s an eye peeking, curious and beautiful. Don’t hide: smile and wave. They’ve traveled far to see you… you, of all people.

I smiled at the naivety of these verses, but I also furrowed my brow, puzzled. To quote Ian Fleming: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, it’s enemy action.” Who was sending me all these messages, and why? What did they want from me? I just didn’t understand. I frowned as I pinned the third note to the fridge with the others and tried to read them together. Moon, sky, and stars… they seemed to share a theme, but the meaning eluded me. I tried to memorize the lines, letting my brain work on them as I slept.

A couple of days later, autumn abruptly gave way to winter. Outside, a biting wind blew, and my wool cloak wasn’t enough to shield me from the cold. I pulled out the secondhand coat I’d bought at the end of the previous season. “What if…?” I wondered. But no, I’d taken it to the cleaners. If there had been a note hidden in one of the pockets, it would be gone by now. And yet…

Do not fear the circles in the wheat: they are just poorly drawn hugs. Those who arrive do not ask permission, but bring sweets never tasted before.

For some reason, this one annoyed me. It was printed on an old continuous-form paper, the kind used with early printers, with those dot-matrix characters. And that mention of crop circles seemed to wink at my love for science fiction. I’m often scolded for not having my feet on the ground, for reading too much fantasy… surely someone was mocking me. For a moment, I was tempted to crumple up this note and the others and toss them into the fireplace. But at the last second, I changed my mind and pinned it to the fridge with the rest. Someone wanted to make fun of me? Fine, let’s see how far they’d go!

Returning home that afternoon, I immediately noticed the doormat had been moved. Hard not to: the step had a different color where it was exposed to sun and weather compared to the area usually covered by the mat. I looked around, but of course, there was no one in sight. I nudged the mat back into place with my foot, and the fifth note appeared. This one was actually a small postcard. The image was a watercolor drawing of a strawberry field. However, the strawberries were blue, everything that was supposed to be green was yellow and what seemed to be the sky was lime green. Before reading the message in the back, I looked around again. Still, everything was motionless and silent. I did live on a quiet street, after all. I huffed, scowling, put the key in the lock, and went inside. I took off my shoes and coat and went to look out the window on the other side of the house. There, too, everything was still: the trees had lost almost all their leaves. Brown, yellow, and orange, they formed irregular patches on my small lawn. I huffed again and turned the postcard over to read the new message.

It’s not a dream, it’s not a trick. It’s 3:33 when everything changes. Look up, don’t lower your gaze. They’re coming with summer in their pockets.

Instinctively, I glanced at the clock: 3:32. The moment the next minute ticked by, a purple light flared in the sky outside the window and filled the room. Once my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I saw a small, shimmering saucer at the center of the violet halo. Dead silent, not even a vibration. The postcard slipped from my hand, and my jaw dropped, but the surprises weren’t over yet. A new message appeared in the space between me and the saucer. In glowing letters, it read: We’ve finally found you. Would you like to come see our galactic strawberry fields?

 

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/