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/

Unfinished Business

 

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 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/.

 

Unfinished Business

by Phil Yeats

 

Talia arrived at the Jewish Student Centre at our small-town college with another wooden picture frame—her second or third, all small, dirty, and weatherbeaten. She handed it to me.

“Got it for fifty cents at the thrift shop,” she said. “Should clean up well, but I see one problem. How do I get a photo into it?”

I turned it over and checked out the back. Like most photo frames, it had a third leg for standing it on a desk or shelf, but as she said, no obvious way to get the frame apart. The thing that caught my attention was a faint seven-digit number, 9111938, pencilled onto the back’s dark material.

Talia and I were employees of the college—Talia was an administrator in the Arts Faculty, and me a professor of chemistry. We were volunteers at the centre. We were both Jewish, Talia of German or Polish descent, she never said which, a Holocaust survivor and a devout Zionist. I was Canadian whose faith was not a major factor in my life. I left university twenty-five years earlier for military duty during World War Two. Those days were long past, but I still had terrible memories of my time on the European battlefields. I’m sure Talia’s wartime memories were much worse.

I continued turning the frame, studying at it from all angles. “A puzzle, for sure. I could take it to my office and make a more careful inspection...”

“Yes, please, but try not to alter the weather-beaten look.”

I tapped the back. “The appearance of the front and sides shouldn’t be an issue. This frame’s secrets must be hidden here.”

 

Under a powerful light in my office, I probed the back of the frame with a sharp blade. I found, after considerable effort, a seam on the bottom edge that wasn’t glued. More probing and prying produced a slight movement. The back panel slid down a quarter of an inch. I could now grip it with my fingertips and wiggle it down. A black-and-white photo and a rectangle of cardstock fluttered to the floor.

I remembered enough from my WW2 experiences to recognize the man in the photo as a member of the Third Reich’s Schutzstaffel (SS). On the back, someone had written a name (not a very German-sounding one) and an address in a nearby town.

I reassembled the frame with cardstock and photo inside and left them for Talia. I should have pushed Talia’s picture frame from my mind at this point. They were really none of my business, but I could never resist a puzzle. This was definitely a puzzle with few clues. I had the number written on the back of the frame and a name and address on the back of the photo of a Nazi SS officer.

I started with the number on the frame. My first thought was that the number on the frame was a Nazi concentration camp ID number. I cast that idea aside quickly. The information I dug up suggested the numbers were five or six digits, never seven.

I then considered dates. Could the number indicate September 11, 1938, or November 9, 1938, depending on whether the writer used the Canadian or American convention? Even a lapsed Jew like me recognized November 9, 1938, as Kristallnacht.

I turned next to the name and address on the back of the photo. Eric Smith was pretty generic, but Eric was a commonly used Germanic forename, and Smith could have been a Canadianization of the German Schmidt. The address was in a nearby town.

On the next day, a Saturday, I bought a book by a local author and drove to the address written on the photo. It was in an enclave of small bungalows that could’ve been post-war construction. I knocked on the door of #22. A young woman with two small children, one in her arms and the other hiding behind her, answered the door.

“What can I do for you?” she said.

I handed her the book. “I was an organizer of a book fair two weekends ago. Mr. Eric Smith won one of our door prizes. He gave this address and a phone number that doesn’t work.”

She sighed. “He lived here until three years ago, when he moved into a palliative care facility. We never met him, but a neighbour said he’d died more than a year ago. Looks like someone’s leading you astray.”

I retrieved my book, thanked her, and moved on to the library, where I consulted old copies of the town’s weekly newspaper. With little effort, I found a brief mention of Mr. Smith’s passing. The few details confirmed what the woman at #22 told me, gave me Mr. Smith’s age when he died, 45, and the time he lived in their community, ten years. It also said he lived alone and died with no known relatives.

If I wanted to pursue the matter, I needed a better cover story. I reluctantly jotted down the details from the obituary, closed my notebook, and returned home.

I crossed paths with Talia on the following Thursday. She glared at me and growled, “Kummere dich um dienen Kram,” before stomping off.

My German wasn’t very good, mostly restricted to technical usage, but I got the gist—stay out of my business. I tore the pages with notes about this little mystery from my notebook and deposited them in a trash can. An unsatisfactory end to my investigation—a few questions answered and several more raised. But Talia was right. I shouldn’t have charged into something that was none of my business.

 

***

 

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/

 

The Message

 Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to write something write about a picture frame from a thrift store with a message scrawled on the back.

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.

 

***

 The Message

by Cathy MacKenzie

 

“Mom!” Jimmy yelled. “I thought all the Christmas decorations were put away.”

Elise’s voice echoed from the top of the stairs. “They are. What are you talking about?”

“You’ve got a Christmas picture on the table, and it’s February.” And it’s of that damn Sprite, Jimmy thought.

His mother appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “What picture?”

Jimmy pointed to the dining room table. “That one.”

“Oh, that. Picked it up at the thrift store yesterday. Two ninety-nine. They’re trying to clear out Christmas stuff, I guess.”

“We don’t need it. We have enough pictures of that guy.”

“Jimmy, such language!”

“I said ‘that guy.’ I didn’t swear.”

His mother waved him off. “Even if I didn’t want Sprite’s picture—which I do—the frame’s worth at least nine ninety-nine.”

“We have enough frames. Boxes of them in the basement. Dad’s gonna be pissed when he sees another one.”

Elise laughed. “Then it’ll be our little secret.” She gave him a sly smile before heading back upstairs.

“Jeepers,” he muttered. “Why...”

He went to the dining room. Hated touching the thing but picked it up anyway. Sprite stared at him with that expression. That knowing look. Like he could see everything Jimmy had ever done. Sprite’s mouth was weird, though. His lips were pressed tightly together as if physically holding words back. Jimmy was glad the thing was behind glass.

All the sprites looked that way. Every. Single. One.

What was it with these things?

He turned the frame over. The backing was loose. “Cheap,” he mumbled. “Not worth nine dollars. Not even two.”

He picked at the tape holding the backing to the frame. His fingers kept going—peeling, peeling, peeling.

The cardboard fell off.

A small envelope dropped onto the table.

Jimmy picked it up. Glanced around. Made sure his mother hadn’t come back down.

He felt something inside. Tore open the side.

A small card. Heavy stock. About two inches by three. Green.

He flipped it over.

I still watch what you do!

Jimmy dropped the card. Looked back at the frame on the table.

Sprite’s expression had changed. Still that “knowing” look, but now he smiled.

 

***

 

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/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take a Left

 

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. Today’s tale comes to us from Val Muller, author of the kidlit mystery series Corgi Capers.

Take a Left

by Val Muller

“Number 31!” the MC called, holding up a ticket from the bowl.

Ryan stood up and held up his ticket .”That’s me!”

He walked to the front table to retrieve his prize, a picture frame that had been repurposed in whimsical cats of various styles, a trendy decoupage. “Enjoy!” the MC told him. “And all of the cats at Katty Kafe thank you for your support.”

Ryan returned to his seat, wondering where in the world he was going to put such a frame. Like most of the donated goods, this raffle prize had been purchased and repurposed—bought from a thrift store, or maybe donated. The glass front was missing from the frame. What would he do with it?

At the next table, a caged cat wailed in protest. Several of the picnic attendees had brought their cats, and the animals weren’t happy about it. Ryan had only come at the request of his attractive neighbor, who now was nowhere to be found.

A volunteer was circulating around selling 50/50 raffle tickets. Not wanting to have to stay until the drawing, Ryan flipped the picture frame over and pretended to be studying it carefully. After the ticket seller passed by, he noticed something scrawled on the back of the frame. It looked like it had been written before the decoupage. Ryan squinted. The words were in an old-fashioned cursive:

Take the one on the left.

He looked up instinctively. There were two doors to the event hall. The one on the right led to the bake sale. The one on the left led outdoors. He thought of his attractive neighbor and took the one on the left.

At the stoplight home, he maneuvered into the right lane and prepared to take the most direct route. But he glanced at the picture frame sitting on the passenger seat. He put on his left turn signal instead and took the scenic route home.

Later that night, trying different spots for the picture frame, he decided to splurge and order pizza. When the delivery came, they accidentally doubled his order. He stuck his pizza in the oven and brought the extra pie out into the hallway of his apartment. Maybe Emily had a good reason for not coming to the picnic, despite asking him to attend. Her looks gave her a second chance. Maybe a free pizza would make him more appealing to her. But as he approached her door, another door opened down the hall. It was the girl in apartment 3. He hadn’t met her yet, but he’d seen her getting her mail and coming in from a jog now and then. She had moved in less than a month ago. She bent down to pick up a package that had been delivered to her door earlier.

She was not attractive like Emily, but she had a kind face, and she looked up at him with a smile. The pizza box in his hand grew heavy. “The delivery guy accidentally gave me two,” he rehearsed in his head, willing himself to step out of his comfort zone. “No,” he admonished himself quietly. “Tell her your name first. Hi, my name is Ryan, and I guess we’re neighbors,” he practiced with barely moving lips. Was she looking at him? He couldn’t tell, but if he was going to say something, he had about half a second.

He heard Emily’s door open to his right. He had to choose.

“Hi, my name is Ryan,” he said, holding up a pizza box in welcomebto the new neighbor he’d chosen, the one on the left.

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.ca/

 

Of Dreams and Frogs

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to write something starting with “he or she started the new year with…”

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.

 

 Of Dreams and Frogs

by Chiara De Giorgi

Created with Canva

Elsa Mon, the beloved paranormal romance writer, started the new year with a dream.

In the dream, she found herself in the clearing in the woods, the one she sometimes liked to visit to play the violin. She was sitting on a fallen log and was surrounded by frogs. It was a beautiful day, and there were frogs everywhere: countless frogs of every size and shade of green and brown, complementing the colors of the grass, the bushes, and the leaves of the trees. They croaked and hopped about, and Elsa instinctively knew they were in a good mood. It was a happy croaking. Elsa wondered why there were so many frogs in the clearing, far from a pond or a stream or any other place frogs normally lived. She would have checked Wikipedia, but her phone wouldn’t connect. Still, she seemed to recall that frogs generally lived near water (if not actually in it).

When she woke up, she remembered the dream perfectly, along with the feeling of serenity paired with perplexity it had left her with. She went to have breakfast and, while crunching on the butter-and-chocolate cookies the librarian, Miss Underwood, had given her, she thought about it.

“If the dream left such a vivid impression on my mind,” she said out loud, mumbling around a piece of pastry, “it must have a very specific meaning. But what?”

“Ah, who knows?” sighed the sugar bowl in the middle of the table. “What was the dream about?”

“Stranger!” Elsa exclaimed, addressing the sugar bowl. The Stranger was a peculiar creature, capable of transforming into any being or object. Lately, she had been spending a great deal of time with Elsa.

“There were lots of frogs in my dream. Nice and chatty, not aggressive at all.”

Immediately, the Stranger transformed into a small, talking plush frog.

“Croak!” was the first thing she said, hopping around the teapot. “You were visited in a dream!”

“By frogs?”

“Certainly not. Why would frogs visit you? No, it was someone… or something pretending to be a multitude of frogs.”

“Huh? And why would someone… or something pretend to be a multitude of frogs?”

“Out of politeness.”

“What are you talking about? Politeness? And who would ever do that, anyway?”

“Ah, that I don’t know. Surely someone… or something that wanted to leave an impression.”

“Well, in that case, they succeeded. But I still can’t understand the meaning of this dream. Or this visit, whatever.”

“Maybe it was someone… or something that didn’t want to frighten you.”

Elsa went pale and set her teacup down on the saucer. “Do you think it could be something frightening?”

The plush frog managed to shrug and turned into a pink clothespin.

“I’ll go talk to the Squatters about the dream,” Elsa decided. “Maybe one of them will have a good idea about it.”

 ***

The Squatters were a small community of spirits who dwelled in the haunted house on the edge of the cheerful village of Willow, where Elsa lived. Elsa had become friends with them after acquiring the Sight… but that is another story.

When she arrived there (accompanied by the Stranger, who had insisted on presenting herself in the form of a bulky cuckoo clock), the Squatters greeted her and wished her a happy New Year.

“Happy New Year to you too, all of you!” she exclaimed happily. She hung the cuckoo clock on a hook in the wall and dropped into an old, shabby green armchair, which raised a small cloud of dust.

“I had a dream last night, and I’d like to know what you think.”

“Oh! A dream to be interpreted!” exclaimed the witch Wilhelmina happily. “Such a magical thing!”

“Such a demonic thing!” grumbled Sister Elena of Cremona.

“Don’t say that,” Wilhelmina scolded her at once. “Dream interpretation is mentioned in the Bible as well.”

Without waiting for any further reaction from Sister Elena, she turned back to Elsa. “So tell us, tell us: what was the dream about? Did you dream of a silver knight with a golden sword?”

“Or a giant squirrel throwing acorns at you?” asked Zinny, the Buddhist monk.

“Were you at sea, with an enemy submarine chasing you?” asked Olga, a retired Russian spy.

“No, no, none of that,” Elsa said, laughing. “I was in the woods, surrounded by… frogs.”

“Frogs?” repeated Sister Elena. “Frogs! That’s an omen of misfortune!”

She stared straight at Wilhelmina. “Speaking of the Bible… a plague!”

Elsa went pale. “You think so?”

“Of course! And obviously, if we absolutely must interpret your dream... you represent Egypt. Or the Pharaoh. Or both. In any case, it’s not a good sign.”

“But… but—”

“Oh, that’s enough. I’m not saying another word about this business,” the nun snapped. “I’m going for a walk around the village, looking for souls to bless.”

Elsa shot a perplexed and slightly frightened look at Wilhelmina. “Wh-what… what do you think?”

“Well then,” replied the witch, tapping a finger against her chin. “A long time ago, tarot cards included a frog, but it was removed because the frog kept jumping out of the deck.”

“Cuckoo!” went the clock.

“Um… are you sure about that?” Elsa asked, doubtful.

“Oh, who cares,” Wilhelmina replied evasively, waving her hands. “Hey, tell me: were the frogs in your dream damp?”

“I… I don’t remember. Why? Is that another omen of misfortune?”

“Why would frogs be damp if they’re far from water?” cut in Tony, Al Capone’s plumber.

“Maybe they sweat,” observed Zinny the Buddhist monk. Then, before anyone else could speak, he added, “I think frogs are a good sign. You see, they don’t ask themselves why they live as frogs. They just do.”

“And what would that mean for me?” Elsa asked.

“Well, obviously... you have to become a frog.”

Elsa frowned. “Eh?”

“You’re all wrong,” Mercy cut in at that point. When she was alive, she was the head cook on a pirate ship. She died defending her stew from the soldiers who boarded the ship she was on. “This isn’t a dream full of omens, neither bad nor good.”

“Really?” Elsa brightened for a moment. All things considered, if the dream had no hidden meaning, she almost preferred it that way.

“No ma’am!” said Mercy firmly. “Quite simply: you were hungry. I’d make you a nice plate of fried frog legs, but… I don’t have any frogs in the pantry at the moment.”

“Sure,” Tony whispered to Zinny. “That’s the only reason.”

Mercy heard them snickering and shot a murderous glance in their direction.

“Don’t you think that… my dream could somehow mean that this year I’ll finally meet true love?”

“Huh? How?”

“Cuckoo? Cuckoo!”

Elsa felt herself blush slightly.

“Well, you see… it’s something I desire deep in my heart. And after all, fairy tales tell of frogs that turn into princes when they’re kissed.”

“Did you kiss a frog in your dream?” Wilhelmina asked.

“No,” Elsa said, shaking her head, “but—”

The Squatters exchanged glances. The Stranger turned into a butterfly and fluttered among them.

“I suppose that—”

“Yes, indeed.”

“It could be.”

“Why not?”

“Frogs transform. They start out as tadpoles and then become something completely different.”

“Like butterflies.”

Everyone followed the Stranger with their eyes.

“Yes, but she dreamed of frogs.”

“So?”

“How do we connect frogs with love?”

“Do we have to?”

“Elsa wants it.”

Elsa cleared her throat. “It’s not that you have to—”

“Silence! Your subconscious guides your dreams, so if you want love and you dream of frogs, there must be a connection.”

Elsa fell silent in the face of such a compelling argument. Everyone fell silent, in fact. At that moment, Sister Elena of Cremona came back in.

“Well hello! I’m back! You’ll never guess what happened while I was out! I blessed a fellow walking his dog near the main square, and my blessing was a bit stronger than expected. Hee hee hee… I stirred up some wind and a business card flew out of his pocket. He didn’t notice at all, and of course he didn’t hear me when I called after him.”

With an exaggerated gesture, Sister Elena pulled a small card out of a fold in her habit and handed it to Elsa.

“Dentist Victor Sweettooth… and?”

Sister Elena hopped and did a little twirl. “Turn the card over!”

Elsa looked at the other side of the dentist’s business card.

“The symbol of his clinic is—”

“A frog!” all the spirits exclaimed together, crowding around her.

Elsa burst out laughing.

“You’ll have to find an excuse to make an appointment with him,” said the Stranger, taking the form of a talking hammer. “Maybe,” she added with a thoughtful expression, “one of these days you’ll break a tooth…”

 

 

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/