Witch’s Chair

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Cernunnos, Mosaïcultures Internationales, Montreal Botanical Gardens, 2013That Cedric and his horned serpents!

But then he’s always been an odd one. Those eyes! One green, one white!

Is it true that means he’s a witch? Or half-witch, seeing as only one eye is white.

The girls go mad for him. I don’t understand it. He’s nothing but an uneducated lout who likes playing in the dirt.

And that punk hair! The stupid hat!

Those serpents drive me crazy. Why couldn’t he have rabbits or guinea pigs like any normal person? I have to call him twenty-five times a day to come and get them out of my vegetable garden.

You wouldn’t believe how arrogant he is, the way he struts about town as if everyone has nothing better to do than look at him. Well, he’ll find out soon enough he won’t always be a pretty face (if you’re the sort of person who thinks that kind of tough watch-me-climb-out-of-the-earth face is pretty).

The chief of police is insisting Cedric undergo the witch test.

Cedric says Continue reading →

Pushing Through To The Back Of The Bus

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When Terry begins scrolling through her phone, none of the photos she finds are hers.

Only seven this morning. That’s a blessing. Sometimes there are as many as two dozen. At first (two months ago? four? more?) she’d deleted them as quickly as they came in. But now she checks each one.

There’s never anything extraordinary or striking about the photos, nothing indecent that would prove embarrassing if the people in them were identified. In fact there are no people in them.

She’s done everything possible – changed her ID, the app, her password, had the store clean the phone and return it to factory default, and even bought a new phone. Still the photos keep coming.

And her photos?

She no longer takes photos. They don’t show up on her phone anyway. The only photos she sees are someone else’s.

She goes through the seven photos as she eats her bowl of cornflakes. Taken from Continue reading →

Afternoon Tea at Hotel Parrott

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She is a most admirable woman. Everyone says so. Always so kind and generous to those less fortunate. What charity! What munificence! What benevolence!

She picks the silver tea spoon up from the white tablecloth, polishes it with the linen napkin and smiles at her reflection in the spoon’s bowl. She really can’t think of anyone more deserving of admiration than herself.

She always thinks about this on Sundays for Sunday is the day she distributes her largesse.

Every Sunday she invites – she likes to think of it as ‘sponsoring’ – some impecunious young man to afternoon tea at Hotel Parrott.

This week’s fortunate fellow is a philosophy student. He’s clean, which has not always been the case with some of the young men.

How he’s tucking in! The cucumber sandwiches, the petits fours, the tarts, the scones, cream and jam.

More? she asks.

He can’t manage another mouthful but she urges him on. More! she says. More! More!

How grateful he’ll be, how he’ll thank her. That’s only right of course.

And as for him? He forces down the last cranberry scone and gazes through the window, admiring the blue rooster in the square. So proud and calm on his plinth.

More! she says, waving to the waitress to bring another plate of scones.

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*****

2016 is my Year of the Blurt. Each week I’ll try to take advantage of odd spare moments to write a quick Blurt which I’ll post Thursday mornings. Probably the Blurts will mostly be fiction, but who knows!

 Thank you for dropping by to read this week’s Blurt. It was inspired by the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge: Admiration.

The photo is of “Hahn/Cockerel” by Katharina Fritsch, Trafalgar Square, fall 2014.

Please note: all material on this website, except for comments by others, is © Susi Lovell

“Ghost Coat” in the New Quarterly

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I’m delighted to announce that my story “Ghost Coat” appears in The New Quarterly‘s spring issue “The Trickery of Spring.”

I started this story in Nancy Zafris‘ workshop at the Kenyon Review Writers’ Summer Workshop. And finished it three years later while working with mentor Caroline Adderson during the Wired Writers Workshop at the Banff Arts Centre.

I feel so lucky to have worked with two phenomenal mentors.

How many drafts? Oh, the variations this story has been through!

 

If Not The Ghost Man, Then Who?

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I know Oliver claims to have been the first to see the ghost man, but in fact it was Tommy.

Tommy was heading home for breakfast with two brook trout he’d caught in the stream that meanders through the town when he caught sight of the ghost man emerging from the forest.

He’d wolfed down two helpings of french toast before he thought to mention the ghost man to his parents.

Word spread in no time. By elevenses there was quite a crowd in the park where the ghost man had installed himself on the bench beneath the big old oak.

No, that wasn’t the ghost man. This fellow was far too solid to be a ghost man. But if not the ghost man, then who?close-up of bannister finial

“The mushroom man!” said the mayor.

Of course! Of course!

The first thing they all noticed about the mushroom man was obviously that he was extraordinarily pale.

Of course he’d be pale, they told each other, with the forest so dense and tangled that no sunlight could penetrate. (But really, how would they know? Which of them had ever dared venture into the dark, dank, silent forest?)

The second thing was that he looked at them with eyes that saw more than they were comfortable with.

The third thing? That Continue reading →

At Dinnertime, As The Crows Gather

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She’s decided on macaroni.

What could possibly go wrong with macaroni? All you have to do is to boil it, then smother it in cheese sauce.

It’s absolutely essential that nothing go wrong.

Jon, Timothy, Sol, Freddie, Barry, Hugo, Ryan… what disasters she’d had with the meals she’d cooked for them.

Martin would eat her macaroni and love it.

She opens the fridge door, takes out cheese, cream, pepper, then pulls out the drawer for the cheese grater, a kitchen utensil she’s always been fond of.

No, no, Martin is absolutely not a shredded cheese guy. He’s more spicy tomato.

She replaces the cheese and cream in the fridge. Reaches for the last two tomatoes that remain in the plastic tub, some red pepper. She slices the slimy soft edges off the red pepper.

A soft rustling sound outside.

crowIt’s only the crows. They always gather around dinnertime. In the trees, on the Continue reading →

Need A Creative Boost? Wild Write!

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This year I set out to write a ‘Blurt’ – what I now think of as a ‘Wild Write’ – every week. I wasn’t very precise about what I intended, just that I wanted to make the most of a few spare minutes by writing something new (most likely fiction) that I would commit to posting on my blog.

Why?

I was looking for a creative boost.

I needed to find a way to look afresh at my collection of stories and novella. I’d been working on them for quite a while and they had become just too familiar. I was hungry to get into new stories but wasn’t prepared to commit a lot of time to new material as my priority was to finish the collection.

I was nervous! Would I be able to write something quickly that could be made public? Was I crazy to go against the advice of people far more experienced than myself?

“Don’t waste time on a blog,” I’d read. “Focus on your ‘real’ writing.”

“Don’t post stories on your blog as they will then be considered published and no journal will accept them,” was another piece of advice.

But I decided to go ahead all the same.

With just over Continue reading →

See The Future In An Apple Peel

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1.

Marnie leans forward and gazes into the translucent sphere. A sky blue thread and a wisp of gold drift through the crystal ball.

“What do you see?” she whispers.

“A handsome young man with golden hair, piercing blue eyes and…”

Marnie leaps to her feet, sending the chair toppling backwards. Jeremy? No! It cannot be! Never!

2.

The cards are worn and creased. They are not easy to shuffle. A couple fall out of the pack. Marnie picks them up, shuffles again.

“Focus,” says the young woman with the long shining hair, tapping the ash off her cigarette on to the floor.

Marnie focuses…his wavy dark hair, the tattoo on his left…

She places Continue reading →

The Illuminated City

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Beaver Lake, MontréalIt was a bitterly cold night and the bus was late. The young lad in the bus shelter checked the bus timetable again by the flickering light from a nearby lamp post.

He shoved his hands deep into his jacket pockets and looked at the girl in the jeans ad on the side of the bus shelter.

What a mane of blond hair! What plump lips! What a deliciously curved waist! What shapely hips! What he would give to have a girl like her to take to the school prom next Saturday. The jeans clung to her long legs, smooth as melted chocolate.

“What are you staring at?” snapped the girl in the ad. “I’m sick and tired of people always staring. Haven’t they got anything better to do?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to.” He wished he had a cigarette. He wished he smoked. “The bus is late,” he said.

“It’s always late.”

A light ripping sound, nothing more than a whisper really, and she Continue reading →