Flash Fiction: Seeing the Light

This story was written for the 7 November Flash Friday competition. After “Memento Mori” – the one I wrote for 31October’s competition – I wanted to do a more lighthearted story. The prompt was the photo and “treasure”.

Seeing the Light

After a while you get used to the ghosts at the station. The soldier with blood all over his uniform. The pickpocket who doesn’t know he’s dead. The ancient king with his grave treasures. Philip. The ghost train passes here once a month. Anyone who’s here nearly dies of fright when it rushes by, the ghosts all howling. I guess it’s a bit like being stuck on a rollercoaster.

Sullivan went into the light last week, but Philip has been stuck here since the first train to enter the station ran him over. He always goes on about how trains were better in his day, but doesn’t mind the current ladies’ fashion, though. He’s always bothering me while I’m sweeping.

When the clock strikes midnight, I hear the train and I step out onto the tracks in front of it.

And then I’m stuck sweeping again with Philip muttering in my ear.

Maybe next week I’ll see the light.

Chef at the Trans-Siberian rail wall, between Moscow and Khabarovsk. CC 2.0 photo by Leidolv Magelssen.

You can read more flash fiction over here.

Flash Fiction: Seeing the Light

This story was written for the 7 November Flash Friday competition. After “Memento Mori” – the one I wrote for 31October’s competition – I wanted to do a more lighthearted story. The prompt was the photo and “treasure”.

Seeing the Light

After a while you get used to the ghosts at the station. The soldier with blood all over his uniform. The pickpocket who doesn’t know he’s dead. The ancient king with his grave treasures. Philip. The ghost train passes here once a month. Anyone who’s here nearly dies of fright when it rushes by, the ghosts all howling. I guess it’s a bit like being stuck on a rollercoaster.

Sullivan went into the light last week, but Philip has been stuck here since the first train to enter the station ran him over. He always goes on about how trains were better in his day, but doesn’t mind the current ladies’ fashion, though. He’s always bothering me while I’m sweeping.

When the clock strikes midnight, I hear the train and I step out onto the tracks in front of it.

And then I’m stuck sweeping again with Philip muttering in my ear.

Maybe next week I’ll see the light.

Chef at the Trans-Siberian rail wall, between Moscow and Khabarovsk. CC 2.0 photo by Leidolv Magelssen.

Ghosts, Beanstalks and Spinning Yarns

Writing Ramblings
This has been quite a week! With the winter quickly drawing near, it’s definitely getting more difficult to work at night. But those who have seen my tweets in the early morning, would have noticed that I’m getting some writing (and studying) done before work. Not that I’m suddenly getting up earlier, mind you, but starting work later. This gives me at least half an hour of hustling on my writing before leaving for work. In that time I’ve managed to finish the next draft of a WIP in which I’ve used Jack and the Beanstalk for inspiration. I’ve now sent it to a few friends to read and comment on before reworking it and hopefully getting it published. I’ve also finished and sent in another piece for South African publication and holding thumbs it gets accepted.

I’m also busy with a few other shorter pieces which I’ll be working on while the “beanstalk” WIP hangs around in a drawer for a week or two.

Zombies! Ghosts! And other Study Ramblings 
My other focus this year, of course, is also my studies. I have another Great Library Quest planned for this weekend, with a lengthy to-do list (and a proper study music playlist).

I’ve also had such a good laugh this week while working on my essay for later this year. The dry humour of the writer of the Eyrbyggja Saga never fails to crack me up. One part which especially cracked me up is in chapter 54, entitled “More Ghosts”, after a party of men go out fishing and drown.

Their ghosts return to the homestead night after night to sit by the fire:
Thorodd and his men walked across the main room, which had two doors, and into the living room. They ignored the greetings people gave them and sat down at the fire. The people ran out of the living-room, but Thorodd and his men stayed on until the fire began to burn very low, then went away. As long as the funeral feast lasted this continued: every evening the drowned men would come to the fire. It gave people at the feast plenty to talk about, but some of them thought it would stop once the feast was over. 

Quote taken from Eyrbyggja Saga, translated by Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards, published by Penguin Classics.

Norsemen Landing in Iceland, by H. A. Guerber

Really Big News and Zombies

On 6 January I wrote a post called “Big News and Zombies” about a medieval symposium being held later this year. Well, I read, researched, wrote, edited, wrote again, changed my mind, started from the beginning and at last handed in a proposal for the theme “Mortality and Imagination: The Life of the Dead in the Middle Ages andRenaissance”.

This week I heard that “The Walking Dead of Fróðá” has been accepted! (Did happy dance and had a celebratory coffee, of course.)

So, in the next couple of months (the conference is at the end of August) I will be working full-speed ahead on this as well to try and get it perfect (and short enough to fit into 20 minutes).

But, for now, I can tick off one task from my “Finish Year” list and stare at the beautiful pictures of Mont Fleur, where the conference will be held. 

Mont Fleur, South Africa

Big news... and Zombies

Drum roll, please (or vuvuzela if you are so inclined, but I would prefer drums. Or bagpipes)…

The big news I have is that a big medieval and renaissance studies symposium is being held later this year – and my study leader has asked if I would like to propose a paper to read there. (I did a happy dance and then, very professionally said ‘yes’.)

To top it off, the theme for this year is “Mortality and Imagination: The Life of the Dead in the Middle Ages and Renaissance”. Of course I will have to do something with all the dead, undead and ghosts you find in the Icelandic sagas! I’m leaning towards the Eyrbyggja saga (Saga of the Ere-dwellers), in which many ghosts, corpses and undead feature. The zombie apocalypse, saga style. And, like another professor once said: “Gore can also be fun”[1].

For instance, take this quote from the saga (Chapter 53):

But when two weeks of winter were worn, the shepherd came home on a night, and went straight to his bed and lay down, and in the morning when men carne to him he was dead. So he was buried at the church there.

A little after that great hauntings befell; and on a night as Thorir Wooden-leg went out for his needs,

and turned off aside from the door, when he would go in again, he saw how the shepherd was come

before the door. Then would he go in again, but the shepherd would nowise have it so; and Thorir was

fain to get away, but the shepherd went at him, and got hold of him, and cast him homeward up against the door. At this he was affrighted exceedingly; yet he got him to his bed, and he was by then grown coal-blue all over.

Now from this he fell sick and died, and was buried there at the church; but ever after were the twain,

the shepherd and Thorir Wooden-leg, seen in company, and therefrom were folk full of dread, as was

like to be.[2]

This is also big news for me because, if my paper gets chosen, it will be the first one which I give at such an academic get-together. And sometimes you just need someone to believe in you enough to ask something like this to make you believe that you can actually do it. 

So, for the next year, there will probably be a lot more mythology, sagas and folklore posts on the blog. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do!

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[1] We were busy with Frankenstein as part of Literary Theory and one student asked why we were doing such a “gory book”. In her dry way the professor simply smiled and said “because gore can also be fun”. And then people wonder why I love my studies…

[2] Translation by William Morris. This and other Icelandic Sagas can be read and downloaded at the Icelandic Saga Database: http://sagadb.org/