Guest Storyteller – Page 5 – Sarah Potter Writes

September’s Guest Storyteller, Leigh Ward-Smith

Leigh Ward-Smith has a journalism and editing background, but fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction occupy most of her current brainspace. She blogs at Leigh’s Wordsmithery but also tweets, tweaks her wordcraftery, and sometimes opines on Twitter @1WomanWordsmith or on Facebook.

[quote] “I credit Serendipity with helping me discover Sarah’s blog, for which I’m very grateful, and I thank you all for taking the time to read my work”.

Out of a group of genetically enhanced humans with canid capabilities, a female and male study subject battle for dominance with increasing aggression. One researcher monitors them from a distance, mindful that the study could spiral out of control but determined to see who will emerge as Alpha.

The Enhanced: Prologue

“Observation is the most pervasive and fundamental practice of all the modern sciences, both natural and human.” — Histories of Scientific Observation, edited by Daston and Lunbeck

Brandon tore a clot of hair from Thea, not appearing surprised when she snarled. She wasn’t one to whimper. By arching her back she’d managed to get them to pinwheel a few times, but then he splayed across her again, his panting animal form struggling to pin hers.

“Stay down, bi—”

With another strong upthrust of the broad, muscular plain of her back, Thea flipped Brandon’s bulk just far enough away for her to roll opposite and get partly upright, but still lupine. If she could have expressed herself in human terms in that instant, she’d have said that a lone instinct seized her mind by its muzzle and shook it violently side to side. The buried impulse rose up, gutturally thumping and pronounless:

Rip throat. Rip throat. Rip throat.

When she twisted her tongue out, grazing her mouth’s corner for a tentative taste, she found salt and grit mingling with thready saliva.

“You can’t get away, T.” Brandon talked his tough wannabe talk as he took a half-step backward, never lifting his eyes from the forest floor. “Give it up.”

Even though she glared and gnashed bared teeth, he kept up the chatter. At a distance.

“C’mon, show me your yellow belly,” he called, his scratched-up lips peeled back in a grin.

That must have raised all kinds of hackles, fully human and otherwise, for she loped the since-blossomed distance in a hummingbird heartbeat. A miniature maelström of organic materials whorled the air in her quick wake.

Brandon had no time to prepare. Either repulse or countermove. With Thea’s head cocked to the side like that, it appeared that she had gathered some grim satisfaction from his shocked yelp, which also hurt my quotidian ears, even at this distance. With the finely calibrated instruments in my use, I could even measure, calculate, and record the give and recoil of the cypress that caught Brandon in the shoulderblades and mid-back. From the handheld, I saw that it wrested 89% of the oxygen from his barreled chest in an anguished “arhhhh.” Even the trees seemed to give credence to the rightness of research subject 209B’s counterattack.

She has to knock down this whelp a few more notches, I thought as I watched from my blind hunkered down with long-range binoculars, barometers, and the like activated—yet organically disguised—to measure everything from wind speed to body heat to brain-wave activity through utilizing an MRI machine, which included an MR angiogram to measure arterial and venous flow. Some might remember such previously stationary and cumbersome devices from the history files, but ours was a portable ultra-long range resonance imager that could measure brain activity, flow, and structures at up to 1000 meters. And getting better all the time.

Of course, subject 5157R was unwise to challenge Thea’s pawed-out pecking order, her rightful place, among this branch of The Enhanced.

My current research subjects think that the vast, burgeoning newly engineered world is theirs to claim through the bravery born of their genetic gifts. Their enhancements are the spoils of R and D. Including robust physiological and psychological make-up, these cases have been shown to be evolving at speeds never before seen in my previous benchwork or in a literature review done by my colleagues Tolk and Pinell at the Solar University of the Americas. The subjects’ already manifest, and manifold, puissances were in fact palpably expanding. The clinical trial was no longer controlled by us, the Kingdom Animalia Plus Research Group. Our former intellectual quarry—unwittingly surveilled subjects—were not mere guinea pigs. They had turned around and slaughtered just about every expectation, every illusion of scientific control and decorum.

And it was there that I began my research chronicle, prepared for those learned ones who would tread after me, if any did. It was impossible to begin at any other place than at 209B Thea’s climb to extended dominance among The Enhanced.

Sarah says: Thank you so much, Leigh, for your awesome contribution as this month’s guest storyteller. I wish you every success with writing the novel to follow this prologue, and look forward to seeing the finished product.

To read more of Leigh’s writing, which embraces speculative, dystopian, and science fiction, do visit her blog, Leigh’s Wordsmithery.

You can also find the links to previous guest storyteller posts at https://sarahpotterwrites.com/guest-storytellers-2/

August’s Guest Storyteller, Blondeusk

Bio: Blondeusk has always loved writing stories and has spent hours day dreaming of one day seeing her books on the shelf in Waterstones. On her 40^th birthday Blondeusk woke up and decided that she had done enough dreaming and it was time to take action on making her dream a reality.

Sarah says: Blondeusk, welcome to my blog and thank you so much for guest storytelling this month. Whilst you’re here, I’m going to take the opportunity to tell people the success story of your blog, Blondewritemore. As a complete novice to blogging, Blondeusk created her blog in April of this year and already has 200 followers (probably more by now!). This must have taken some hard work and determination to achieve in three months, and I know she’s beavering away with equal determination at her first novel.

The extract below is from one of her stories: a thriller about two women; a captor and a prisoner who become friends and use their bond to break free from their respective confines.

Extract from’ The Beautiful Prisoner’

The door to her attic prison cell opened slowly and Kim watched the blue plastic tray come into view. As usual the two bony white hands that gripped the tray tremored slightly which made the china plates of food rattle.

‘Thanks’ Kim said, standing up to accept the tray and smiling graciously at the timid looking face in the dark unlit doorway. The face silently nodded and waited for Kim to step away from the door, so it could be locked and bolted again.

As Kim sat down on the floor, the door was shut and the three bolts screeched angrily as they were forced back across the thick wooden door. Heeled footsteps moved from the door and gradually faded away.

Tray time was Kim’s favourite part of the day. The meal today was chicken casserole, creamed potatoes and peas. It was a sizeable portion and filled a hole within her cavernous stomach. She ate with speed in case one of her captors decided to come back and take it away from her.

After licking the plate clean she sat for a while on the dusty floor boards until she felt sleepy. Soon enough her eye lids started to grow heavy and she crawled onto the small mattress. It didn’t take long for her mind to transport her back to the night of the accident. Her brain had no other dream material and so every time she slept she relived the same scene.

She was back there, lying twisted and broken in the middle of the road, on that hot and sultry evening in July. An eerie silence had descended the road. The birds in the trees had stopped twittering and the sheep in the field opposite were no longer bleating.

Craning her neck she could see the steam vapours from the silver car’s bonnet twirling up into the air. The monstrous car was wedged into a huge bush and there was no sign of life from the driver inside. It had happened so fast. One minute she had been walking along the pavement texting her friend, the next minute there was a roar of an engine, tyres skidding across the road and she was being catapulted into the air.

She lay back and grimaced at the pain emanating from her legs. Suddenly the driver emerged from the car and staggered towards her. He was a tall dark-haired man dressed in a crumpled pin stripe suit. In silence he crouched over her and looked at her sternly with angry dark eyes. After a moment of thought he bent down and scooped her off the road with his crater-like hands. The ground fell away as they lifted her high into the air.

Over his shoulder she watched the giant boot of the silver car rise revealing its dark mouth. As he turned towards the boot, with her in his arms, she started to struggle but it was futile, her body was broken. He reached the boot and placed her inside. As he leant over her she could smell the sweet smell of alcohol on his hot breath.

The boot closed firmly and darkness enveloped her. She started to scream when the engine of the car started.

Kim awoke screaming ‘NO PLEASE STOP!’ Her face was damp with sweat and her heart pounded hard in her rib cage. This has to stop she thought getting up from the old mattress, there has to be a way out of this prison.

You can find the links to previous guest storyteller posts at https://sarahpotterwrites.com/guest-storytellers-2/

July’s Guest Storyteller, Richard Sutton

Richard Sutton, writer, guitar picker, sailor, one-time adman, ski mechanic, tree planter and Indian Trader; spent his young life all over the West Coast states, eventually settling in New York and New Mexico. He began writing novels in 2005. Since then, seven books and many short stories have passed beneath his fingers on the keyboard with five currently available in both print and all eBook formats from a variety of booksellers. He’s said that he writes to “get the odd voices out of my head and onto the page”. Working in a variety of genres, from historical fiction and fantasy to scifi and mystery, the range of his writing implies he’s got many voices competing for his attention up there.

Image: Deep cedar & redwood groves of Northern California used with permission of Mathew Mills — Image of deep cedar & redwood groves of Northern California used with kind permission of Matthew Mills

The excerpt below is from his current project-in-process: a Young Adult novel called On Parson’s Creek, set in the Pacific Northwest, beginning the Summer of 1967. It’s the story of what happened when a “new kid” moves out to the woods and finds some things beneath the cedars that nobody really wants to talk about. So, of course, he’s dragged into discovering who or what, exactly, is making its home near his. It’s a departure for Richard to write in first person, but quite a bit of the novel is memoir. The rest of it comes from his usual “what-ifs” sprung from ideas he had then and now. It’s in beta reads and editing and he expects he’ll have it ready next year or possibly this fall if the betas don’t toss out too many more suggestions.

Excerpt from On Parson’s Creek

A new kid at a new school discovers things in the woods that his new neighbors wish he hadn’t…

I was sixteen the first time we crossed the culvert over Parsons Creek. It was just my luck. My tenth grade school year had just ended when Dad told me that we were moving to a cabin out in the cedars. The news didn’t bring a smile. After moving almost every year since I’d been in school, being “the new kid” was getting old. We’d actually lived in one place during all three years of Junior High and my sophomore year in High School, so I’d started to feel comfortable. Me: Jack Taylor — settled. Like I finally belonged somewhere. Somewhere I didn’t have to try and fit in. I should have known it was much too comfortable a feeling to last for long. So, here we were: uprooted again, according to some unexplained schedule. As we slowed to look at the creek, I’d already started trying to figure out a new angle.

We were staying in the same state this time. Not too far from my school friends. We’d also been out that stretch of highway many times on McKenzie River fishing trips chasing the wily Oregon Steelhead Trout. At least the scenery would be familiar. I wondered how it would feel going from a school with seven-hundred in my graduating class to one that graduated only ninety-six the year before. I’d done my research on the new digs, which helped lower my expectations as my first day at a new school approached.

I was used to feeling all nervous whenever we were about to finish a move, anyway. Running down my mental notes of “how-to-be” and “who-to-be” possibilities always occupied my brain until it was exhausted. I wasn’t a typical, well-adjusted kid. Each time I approached a new school in a new town, I tried to get it right. I tried to toss those behaviors that had been troublesome before and find new ways to fit in. It felt like hitting the ground running. Sometimes this led me to all kinds of interesting information and gossip, which I would consider carefully for anything of value before finally falling asleep each night during the school week. I had developed a “new kid checklist” in my head. It was very important to determine who the major assholes were as soon as I could, and what especially annoyed them. That meant planning how each day’s between-class activity would take place. I felt it all hanging over me like a gigantic pile of garbage I had to pick my way through. Since I was supposedly used to it, I also felt a little guilty that it still bothered me after all this time. It’s not easy watching your life unfold from an arm’s length away.

As usual, that morning we were late to our own arrival. We’d overshot the driveway, so Dad backed the car over the culvert and uphill to where the driveway opened at an angle, to the brush along the roadside. He pulled in and our first view of the house was suddenly blocked by three deer, running straight at us. One of them lost its footing, skidded in the gravel and had to jump straight onto the hood of the truck. Dad stomped the brakes with a shout and we all cringed back, thinking it was going to come through the windshield. Instead, it jumped off and joined the others, shooting off into the brush on the other side.

“What in the name of…” Mom nudged him, so he tuned it down, adding, “Sheesh! Never saw that during daylight hours. Ev’rybody Okay?”

I replied, “They must have been spooked by something. Scary. Maybe we should keep our eyes open pulling up. Who knows what’s up there. Maybe a bear?”

No bear. Still, despite the jarring welcome, the fragrant tang of the Red Cedar grove where the A-Frame cabin nestled felt like a good sign as I climbed out of the back seat of Dad’s panel truck. The movers, parked between trees up past the house, were already unloading boxes and lining them up on the long, decked porch. As I climbed out of the back seat, there was a sudden, shuddering crash as the roll-down back door of the moving van hit the deck. I figured that must have been what had spooked the deer.

The house itself, sat in almost full shade as Mom and I carried the dishes and other breakables from the car. Dad stood there, rubbing his chin with one hand while his finger traced the deep crease where the deer’s hoof had struck the hood. Out through the trees, I could see where the hilltop fell away and clear, sunny light filled in between the crowded trunks. Douglas firs and a few dark hemlocks mixed in from the creek side and wrapped completely around the small cedar grove at our doorstep. It looked like an island in the forest.

Sarah says: Thank you so much, Richard, for your guest storytelling contribution for this month. I thought your excerpt was really atmospheric and I could almost smell those Red Cedars. Also, I really felt for the poor boy (you) continually being uprooted and having to start over again at a new school, year after year. I’m sure that many Young Adult readers going through the same thing today will identify with this. Wishing you the best of luck with this novel.

You can find the links to previous guest storyteller posts at https://sarahpotterwrites.com/guest-storytellers-2/

June’s Guest Storyteller, Dave Farmer

Dave Farmer escaped the crowded industry of the West Midlands, England, and enjoys the big skies and open country of rural Cambridgeshire every day. Although his Midland accent has softened he still refuses to pronounce it ‘parth’ and ‘barth’ because it doesn’t feel right in his mouth.

When not writing, he resumes the hunt for the perfect sandwich, plays with the family dogs, and discusses how to survive the end of days, should it ever happen.

To find out more you can read posts on his blog, www.davefarmer.co.uk, where he shares his thoughts and ideas of the world around him.

And yes, Cambridge is as posh as everyone thinks.

Sarah says: Hi Dave, thank you so much for guest storytelling this month. I’m a great fan of your blog: especially your wry observations re human behaviour, as well as your scarier stuff about zombies and the like.

For those of you who aren’t already followers of Dave’s blog and are unfamiliar with his work, he writes speculative type “what-if” fiction that concentrates on things such as courage, loyalty and friendship, but with an apocalyptic slant. Below, is a short extract from his novel-in-progress.

Extract from The Range & Chapter 2 called 2.47

When the video started, the footage was blurred and shaky.

Trees lined a busy intersection. Traffic chugged around pedestrians as they crossed the road. After several seconds of watery blue sky, the sun low on the horizon, a pale-faced kid with chubby cheeks filled the screen. He grinned then panned the camera over a statue of a naked guy stood next to a horse.

‘Lou, that’s Pont d’Iena, right next to the Eiffel Tower. We went there on a school trip, remember?’ I glanced up at her. ‘Sure Denise sent the right link?’

‘Yeah, keep watching.’

After half a minute I clicked pause. ‘Seriously, Lou? This is boring. Denise must be laughing her arse off.’

‘She says it happens at two forty seven. Play it.’

We watched more footage of trees and people talking into the camera – two girls around five or six years old with, who I assumed were, their parents taking pictures with their phones. The sound was choppy and out of synch. I tried to change the quality with the controls below the video but it was stuck on 360p.

It happened before then. I don’t think anyone else spotted it. The younger of the two sisters wore a sleeveless yellow dress with white lace around the neck. Her long brown hair was woven into two neat plaits tied with wispy pink ribbons.

She began to fidget and her bottom lip quivered. She reached up to grab her mum’s hand. Her eyes widened before she buried her face against Mum’s hip. At 1.31 the camera panned around.

Crowds rushed across the busy intersection. A FedEx truck slammed into a small group of children. The impact knocked them into a surge of screaming tourists.

No one stopped to help them.

The camera jolted and swung as people were swept down the road. Half way across the bridge the chubby kid stopped. The camera angled down and appeared to lift off the pavement. A head appeared and two arms reached up. Traffic slowed to a crawl, an orchestra of horns wailed like sirens of panic. In contrast to the solid Eifel Tower the crowd beneath it moved in waves. Large groups split and reformed, a tsunami of screaming people hemmed in by the bridge. Dozens were forced over the side before a gap opened in the stampede.

This new wave showed no signs of panic or fear. At the centre of the group a man in a blood soaked shirt jerked upright and collapsed. Blood pumped from deep lacerations on his neck and his right forearm was missing.

Behind him two teenagers with bloody faces carried between them what looked like the survivor of a tiger attack.

At 2.47 the camera focussed on a young girl. Her dainty yellow dress was smudged with dirt and drops of blood. A plait had lost its ribbon. Frayed hair floated in the breeze. One arm was raised to grip a hand. The rest of her mum had been left behind. The girl turned and stared at the camera with milky yellow eyes.

I felt Louise’s hand clamp down on my shoulder.

The girl had no throat. She opened her mouth once or twice before moving off with the rest of the crowd, still holding the hand.

My other flat mate, Karla, threw back her chair and puked into the sink.

‘Turn it off.’ Louise’s voice sounded a million miles away.

My hand on the mouse wouldn’t respond.

‘Sam.’

Louise slammed down the laptop screen.

The touch of her steady hand on mine made me jump.

I couldn’t stop trembling.

I looked at my friend’s white faces and knew they too could smell fear’s foul breath.

You can find the links to previous guest storyteller posts at https://sarahpotterwrites.com/guest-storytellers-2/

May’s Guest Storyteller, Cybele Moon

“Not all who wander are lost” – or have attention deficit disorder

By her own words Cybele Moon is a somewhat introverted but passionate traveler in many realms, seeking old bones and philosopher’s stones, – and other such treasures! History, astronomy, and paleontology have been among her interests.

She loves to wander off the beaten path in search of adventure and is a great friend of Murphy who states “when all else fails, read the instructions” — or in this case refer to the map. Just ask her daughter, the navigator and keeper of time, who, by the way, is a grand travel companion and never misses a train.

She was an English Lit major in college way back when, and has always had a fervent love for the written word. At the same time she also enjoys photography and so began a quest to create visions and tales that complement each other.

An Extract from Niamh’s dream journey (Tales of the Tuatha)

She had followed the stag down from the knock until it disappeared into the grove. The people of the Sidhe were near. She could feel them as Aine’s red mare climbed the hill, spreading her bright cloak across the star scattered sky and the trees below. For a few moments there was silence before the sweep of light awoke the birds to their exaltation. The sacred spring was deep in the forest and any who drank from it were granted great wisdom. Not all had the eyes to see it, but she was, after all, a daughter of the Tuatha.

As she followed the way deeper into the woodland, Niamh became confused. She looked at Etain’s map. So, was it right or left at the tree by the little stream? Something was definitely wrong and nothing looked familiar. Should she go back to the beginning? She untied the small pouch on her belt that contained her dreams to make sure she wasn’t confusing one with another, but the purse slipped out of her fingers. All the dreams spilled out onto the path and went spinning backward into the soft curve of the early morning mist. “Now I’ve done it!” she thought.

She retrieved one that had rolled up against a tree. This as going to be very troublesome she thought as she held onto it tightly. There had been nine dreams in the pouch including the one that had begun her quest in the early morning light — and still no spring was in sight! She didn’t even think she could find her way back to the mound, and she couldn’t return without her dreams! How could she have been so clumsy?

As she searched the thicket she suddenly found herself standing by a shining lagoon. Everywhere there was the glint of gold!

Sarah says: Thank you so much Cybele for this beautiful tale, told in traditional storyteller style, and for your magical photographic illustrations.

And fellow bloggers, you can read the ongoing Tales of Tuatha from the beginning, as well as lose yourself in more of these illustrations at Cybelshineblog, where she calls herself Dune Mouse, which I think is a lovely name for a creative introvert!

For a catch-up read of previous stories, please do visit my page https://sarahpotterwrites.com/guest-storytellers-2/

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