Short Story Sunday: The Devil's Locker (for CBY)

 

It was bittersweet for Eduard Boivin to see the bowlines thrown across the gap to the deck of the Napoleon III. It was a chilly day in February 1866, yet the sea birds saw the steamer off with their cacophony of farewell caws. He glanced at his pass again: Le Havre to Valparaiso. He had no idea of what he would find in this new world of which he had heard so much. He overhead a man comforting his daughter in German. He promised her that they would live in a big house at a lake, and that she would be able to play with all her dolls again in no time; for now they need to sleep in her trunk. He thought about his own luggage stowed somewhere in the bowels of the ship and instinctively patted his coat. His greatest treasure was still there, in his inside pocket. He only hoped it would survive the journey south. He breathed in the smell he would come to associate with his last moments in Europe: salt, smoke and snowdrops.

 

Short Story Sunday: The Mighty Fall

Mimi Godsell could do her job in her sleep. Not because it wasn't challenging; on the contrary. Trying to lead a tour group was like herding cats. No. It was because she was so good at what she did. She knew the village history backwards -- and that was just the bits she didn't embellish to get extra tips from the double-wide men with the sunburnt wives and sticky offspring. The way to grab people's attention, and distract them from their social media accounts, was to lure them into a scandal of epic proportions.

Short Story Sunday: Crossing Mrs Hardy

I dreaded speaking to Mrs Hardy. She never seemed to be able to look at any of my ideas without lacerating it with her red pen and telling me what she would have done or what she would have liked to see. There was so much riding on this writing project – my hopes for getting into Oxford depended on her approval. It was an open secret that because her son was the head of the faculty, he took all recommendations from her seriously. So far, I had failed to impress her. She didn’t like me. I had no idea why. I tried everything: handing in drafts for her to proof, asking for extra reading homework, volunteering as a peer tutor. Nothing seemed to change her opinion of me. She’d just look at me over the top of her spectacles with that smarmy expression at the corners of her mouth while she decimated yet another of my attempts.

“Ma’am? I have a question about our assignment.”

She was erasing poetry analysis from the whiteboard. “Speak.”

I looked at her back. “I have an idea I wanted to discuss with you. For question three? I’m thinking of submitting an essay on horses in World War I.”

Her erasing complete, she turned, her eyes on her desk. “Go on.” She began stacking papers and neatening the piles of books.

“I think I’d like to look at the equestrian side of war, ma’am. Ten million horses died and I wonder how the war would have been different without them.”

“What a pointless essay topic. If they didn’t use horses then it probably would’ve been oxen, mules or donkeys. Have you given this any thought at all, Eliza?”

She never looked at me. Not once. Bitch. “Ma’am, I think it would make for an interesting...”
“You keep saying ‘I think’, but there’s little evidence to support that. Honestly, you overestimate your chances of being a success in life unless you start.”

I began to shake and felt my nails piercing the leather of my binder. “With all due respect, I think you are wrong.”

That did it. She looked up, her stacked tyre neck tinged red.

“Might I remind you that my status in this school and in the intellectual community at large suggests otherwise?” Froth gathered on her lip.

“Yes, because you bully them.” The words were out before I could stop myself. “You’re not brilliant and people are too afraid to tell you so. You squash dreams and limit potential so that you can keep telling yourself that you’re the best.” Sweat gathered along my hairline and I was sure my binder looked as though it’d been scratched by a werewolf.

Two hard lines appeared in the tyre neck. “You insolent child. Who do you think you are to insult me? You’ve been alive for five minutes and suddenly you’re an expert on what makes good writing.” She shook her head at me. “You have no say here. Get out and come back with an apology and a better topic.”

“No. This topic is the one I want.”

She reached for a pile of papers on her desk and fanned through them before retrieving one. “‘Dear Mr Hardy’ – that’s the name of the faculty head at Oxford – ‘I should like to bring to your attention the application of Miss Eliza Frostrup. Miss Frostrup is, in my opinion, an excellent candidate for Oxford...’” She paused to see my reaction and then crumpled up the letter. The paper fell into her wastebasket along with my dreams.

“Come back with an apology and another topic.”