My account at Nanowrimo is all updated with my new project and can be found here: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/quothvictoria
I am Municipal Liason for Milton Keynes once again so I will be making plans for Write Ins at Central Library in Milton Keynes for each Saturday in November. There will probably be other meet ups and writing related adventures which will be posted about here: http://nanowrimo.org/regions/europe-england-milton-keynes
My Ella story that I had started at a previous Nanowrimo has stalled. I still like the story but I just can't seem to write write the darn thing! So that's going on hold for this new project for November.
I'm going to post below an old story that I wrote for the Speakeasy writing competition in 2012. I won 3rd Prize! I still have the certificate. It was a very proud moment for me. It was strange re-reading this story because it's quite an eerie tale and I didn't think I was that good at writing stories like that.
I hope that you enjoy reading it.
ttfn.
When I was seven years old I found a mermaid in my paddling pool.
That summer the sky had been grey so often that I had started to imagine that I would never see the sun again and the sky would never ever be blue. There had been one proper summer day that year where the sky had been aquamarine blue and my skin had been scorched lobster red. That day my dad had pulled the paddling pool out from where it had been lurking in the shed. The pump had broken halfway through inflating it and my dad had refused to admit defeat and his face had gone a strange shade of scarlet after he’d inflated the paddling the rest of the way with his own breath. He’d refused to deflate the paddling pool afterwards, even when the sky turned pebble grey, as he didn’t want all his breath to go to waste. I had lots of fun in that pool while the sun shone. I taught all my toys how to swim. Though they weren’t very good pupils and only a few really got the hang of floating. Most became soggy and sunk down to the bottom of the pool to lie there like shipwrecks. When it had started to rain I abandoned the paddling pool and hid inside to play. The paddling pool was dragged to the side of the garden underneath the hydrangea plant where the red flowers rained petals down upon the still water.
To be honest, I had forgotten that the pool was still out there in the garden. The rain falling nearly every day of the summer kept me inside and entertaining myself with anything I could. Eventually I had read, watched and played with all I could inside the house. When the rain had let up into a sad drizzle, that I convinced my dad wouldn’t cause me to catch some terrible illness, I put on my red raincoat and red wellies to go play in the garden. I skidden through what had once been grass, but what was now mostly mud, and had some vague plan of pulling out the paddling pool and setting a paper fleet afloat on that stagnant sea. I pushed my way through the sodden leaves of the hydrangeas. It was almost night-dark under the hydrangeas; the light that filtered through the wet leaves was green and soft. I took hold of the rim of the paddling pool and tugged it.
There was a shriek and I stopped tugging.
I shuffled further forward into the damp gloom, pushing aside dripping wet red flowers. It was like pushing into a damp cavern of red flowers and green leaves. The further I pushed in the more it smelt like wet earth and green mould.
Sitting in the paddling pool was a mermaid.
To be honest I don’t know if ‘mermaid’ was the correct term to use but it was the most fitting at the time and the first word that came to my mind. The mermaid had a grey tail like that of a fish and a body like a scaly monkey. It had large black eyes and it hissed when it saw me. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I stared at it a bit as it thrashed and swam round and round the paddling pool. I made a decision and leant over the edge of the pool the next time it swam past me.
“Hello.” I said.
It stopped swimming and looked up at me. It’s tail twitched back and forth in the greenish water.
I kind of wanted to keep it. Maybe put it in a bucket and keep it as a pet in my room and feed it tuna sandwiches. It was so small I was sure my dad wouldn’t mind me keeping it.
I reached out a hand to the mermaid but it hissed again and splashed to the other side of the paddling pool. “Sorry.” I pulled my hand back and kept both my hands shoved deep in the pockets of my raincoat. I stayed quiet. All I could hear was the sound of rain hitting leaves and the splashing of sloshing water as the mermaid moved slowly back and forth in the paddling pool. It looked lonely.
“Mum told me once, before she went, that all rivers lead to the sea. All of them. Like roads.”
The mermaid just stared at me with eyes as large and black as a seal’s. I remember feeling like it was waiting for me to help it. To do something for it. I remember thinking that I could help it.
I knew I needed to get the mermaid to a river. But Dad had always said I wasn’t to go outside of the garden. There was a busy road outside and the cars went really fast around the corner, that’s what he always said. I knew that all rivers met the sea eventually, and there was a river by the church. That wasn’t too far away. I’d walked there with my dad to visit mum’s grave. I knew where the river was. The river was where mum had her accident. It had been raining that night and it had been wet and cold. I remember it was really wet. Mum slipped on the bridge, that’s what I was told. She slipped and fell. Dad was lucky to have arrived when he did or I might have fallen in as well. That’s what I was told. The rain had been really, really heavy that night. The river had been high and the waters had churned and bubbled like a giant had been furiously stirring them with a whisk. I remember that. I remember Dad’s warm arms around me as I watched the bubbling water. Not much else is clear from that night except that. It was still raining when Mum was buried. The mud had stuck to my new shoes.
I decided that I would help the mermaid get home. Once the mermaid was in the river it could swim home. I told the mermaid this. It flipped it’s tail and nodded. I found a bucket in the shed. One from a holiday at the seaside back when mum and dad shared a bedroom without shouting. I liked that holiday. I still had the shells I had collected in that red plastic bucket on my windowsill in a row.
I scooped the mermaid up into the bucket with as much water as I could at first, but then that was too heavy and I had to tip some back into the paddling pool. I said sorry to the mermaid for sloshing it around so much. It looked up at me with big eyes as black and shiny as new school shoes and blew bubbles.
I pushed open the garden gate, I was tall enough to reach the latch easily. I held the bucket handle with both hands and walked up the pavement towards the church. I walked carefully, trying not to slosh the water in the bucket too much. The mermaid darted back and forth in the bucket.
“I’m sorry.” I told it as it knocked against the side of the bucket.
“Hello Maria... What are you doing out by yourself? And in such weather too.”
I froze. I remember how cold I felt and how still I stood. I could barely move my head to look up to see who it was talking to me.
It was Sarah-next-door. She was frowning at me but smiling at the same time like she wasn’t sure what to do next.
I smiled her my biggest smile.
“I’m going to the river with dad. I forgot my bucket. So I ran back to get it. Dad’s waiting up ahead.” I lied.
She relaxed. I could see her shoulders slump. “Well it certainly is good weather to see the ducks. Have fun.” She waved with the hand that wasn’t holding her green umbrella and left me.
I took a deep breath. “That was close.” I told the mermaid in my bucket. I kept walking towards the church and the river. The rain began to fall harder. Other people passed me but they were too busy keeping hoods and umbrellas up to notice that I was by myself.
I had come this way before with my mum, but then it had been dark. It had been late. Very late. I remember being really sleepy and asking why we had to go now and why not in the morning. I don’t remember if mum had answered, I think she just held my hand tighter and pulled me along faster.
I could see the river now. I told the mermaid and I think it was happy; it flipped it’s tail in what looked like a happy way and bared it’s needle thin teeth at me in a way that looked a bit like a smile.
I stepped off the pavement and on to the squelchy mud. I didn’t want to go onto the bridge. The bridge was dangerous. Mum had slipped on the bridge. I could see it through the heavy iron grey raindrops. That bridge. The clouds above made everything dark. The hood of my raincoat covered my ears and softened the sharp sound of the rhythmic raindrops. All sounds became dull. I looked away from the bridge and carefully walked down the grass to the river. The grass stopped and turned to mud near to the river. The handle of the bucket was cutting into my hands. I put the bucket down and looked down at the river to work out what to do next. The bank was much steeper than I had realised and was liquid mud. It looked like a quicksand pit I had seen in a film once, but brown instead of yellow. I stepped down one foot and it was swallowed by the mud with a horrible sucking sound. I tugged and tugged at my foot, panic making me feel sick as the mud wouldn’t give my welly back. I pulled at it but then I felt myself slipping and I I could see that thick dark mud sucking me down like in the film I’d seen and I leapt back, leaving my welly in the mud. It stood upright and started to fill quickly with rain. My tears felt hot on my wet cheeks. I couldn’t go down the riverbank. I looked in the bucket and the mermaid looked back at me. I was all it had.
“I don’t like this.” I told it. It bared it’s teeth. I picked up the bucket and walked towards the bridge. My sock got soaking wet really fast and made a weird sound every time I stood on it. Having only one welly made me walk weird. The bucket had become really heavy. I had to drag it up to the bridge and it scraped over the ground with a harsh sound that made me shiver. I got onto the bridge. There was a gap between the railings that I could fit the bucket through. I could pour the water and the mermaid through that gap and it would be in the river and it could swim away. Far away.
“Maria!”
My head whipped up. That was my dad’s voice. He sounded angry. He sounded scared. My hands tightened around the thin plastic of the bucket. I had heard him use that voice the last time I was on this bridge. That night he had shouted out my name and my mum’s. He had shouted a lot and so had mum. I remembered how they had shouted so much and how much I had cried while hanging on to the railings like the cold wet metal was the only thing that was keeping me there. And holding on tight had kept me there. Mum had tried to pull me away from the railings. She’d tried to pull me away, drag me away, but I wouldn’t let go. She’d let go of the suitcase she was holding so that she could use both arms to drag me away. That was when dad had caught up. He didn’t want me to go away.
I sat on the bridge, the bucket in my lap and stared at the rushing and bubbling water that sped under the bridge. The rain was still falling and it dripped off the end of my nose to fall into the bucket and onto the mermaid that was still inside. The rain filled the bucket up and the mermaid was getting closer and closer to the rim. I heard the heavy splashing sound of my dad’s footsteps as he ran to me. He didn’t have an umbrella.
On that night he hadn’t even had a coat.
“Maria.” He knelt down beside me. His eyes were wide and he was shaking. He kept not looking at the churning river below my swinging feet. “What are you doing here? Why here?”
I hugged the bucket. The mermaid thrashed in the water within the bucket that was being disturbed by the heavy falling rain. I was glad dad wasn’t shouting anymore. He had shouted so much on the bridge that night. Mum and him had shouted and shoved at each other and had been so close to the railings where I sat with my bucket.
I squeezed my eyes tight shut.
The falling rain was just like that night. I remembered watching the rain fall so hard that it bounced off of the bridge. I remembered watching my mum fall from the bridge, any sounds that she could have made being drowned by the sound of the rain. I remembered my dad standing on the bridge, staring down into the water.
“Maria... Sweetheart. What’s wrong?”
“I’m saying good bye.”
The mermaid looked at me. I saw it fidgeting. Thrashing within the confines of the bucket. It was small and wiry, more like a monkey than a sea princess, and it was beautiful. I pushed the bucket from my lap and through the gap in the railings. I leant forward to watch it fall and I felt dad wrap his arm around my waist to keep me safe. He always wanted to keep me safe. I watched the bright red bucket tumbled into the river and bounce and crash through the fast current. I think I saw the mermaid wave and disappear under the foam. The red bucket sank from sight and I never saw it or the mermaid again.
I let go of the railings I had been holding onto so tight that my fingers had turned white. I climbed into my dad’s lap and cried great heaving sobs that left me wrecked and shaking. Dad carried me home and never asked why I had been on the bridge that day.
I never asked if he had seen the mermaid.
We never mentioned the bridge.
End.
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