Reibus

February 2019 - How do you feel as you grow up, get old, lose your family and friends? Did you love your parents? Where are they? Did you have a dog you loved? Alice wondered... Darling Mum It's ten years since I left you, five years since I saw you... and far too long since you've written to me. I don't even know where to send my letters for you now. I have written to you quite a lot, at least recently. I miss you every day, every week, every year. I wish I knew where you are. You were the angel of my childhood. You were passionate and sensitive, you cared for me, took me out, dressed me up. You made beautiful dresses for me, you massaged me, you brushed my hair, you danced with me, you walked with me. As you grew old I became a carer for you, cherished you. I rubbed your feet, I brushed your hair: such soft and beautiful grey hair! We talked together and laughed together. But I know, as I grew up and visited you less, you became lonely. Your love for dad seemed to ...

She starts crying. Deeply. Painfully. Shuddering sobs which grip her whole body. Her t-shirt soaks in her tears, clings onto her body, reveals the small little tummy roll, shows off her nipples. She sweats but doesn't even notice it; drips out of her hair, under her arms, between her legs. The clock silently ticks by. 17 minutes when she can't cry any more. She rolls into a ball, as if she is an embryo, tucks her elbows in beside her, crosses her feet. She has a very bad headache; she ignores it. Her eyes are very sore; she keeps them closed. She concentrates on her breathing, and it takes her quite a few minutes to get her ordinary deep breath back. She has to get her pulse down, she thinks. 30 minutes when she opens her eyes. She knows she has to think about this. So often it happens. Something probably really small got her pulse up. Most times nothing else will happen, she can get it down, be "normal". But if the second thing happens while she holds her breath...

Tammy didn’t know what was happening. She was asleep. So painless. So wonderfully peaceful. She couldn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t speak. Why were those people hanging around? Why couldn’t she talk to them? She didn’t panic. She thought she smiled, but no-one would smile back at her.  She floated out of and over her body, watched it sleeping. She even saw people with tears in their eyes. Why? And she couldn’t talk to anyone!  She felt a lovely life, floating around in the corners of her room, able to go outside if she wanted to, visit other people in this building. She smiled at others and some smiled back. Only who were asleep. Like her. What was life? Was she still alive? Was she just asleep? She knew: yes, she knew – her body was asleep. She had time; she had to explore. She floated down the hallway, looking at people in that hallway, wondering why they looked so busy, or seemed very upset, or, occasionally, just laughed. Wonderful people! Or mayb...

February 2018 - Small cars often seem to have incidents. Some roll over. This one did.  ABC in September 2017  wrote a short article about the most dangerous cars, many of which were small cars - have a look if that interests you. This short story includes a car accident and a woman who is recovering from... what? What do you think? She'd never heard music on the farm. She heard it now, almost mute. She turned towards it. She was moving towards the road, where she had never been since she'd been here, after her own accident. It was supposed to be about recovery, yet the music outside her farm house got louder. She couldn't go onto the road. She crouched behind the hedge, crawled along, getting closer to it. She peeked through the hedge, trying to find where it was. It came from the other side of the road.  Damn ! she whispered. Then she saw it. A blue car, a small blue car, rolled almost onto its side, hidden almost in the drain over there. She gasped. She sat down...

September 2017 - Often nowadays I forget to write. I haven't written in any of my blogs for a while, and I haven't written a short story - until now, when I joined a Bachelor of Arts group through OUA and for Griffith University. My major will be "Creative Writing" - if I can do that! This prose is not a short story, but tells how my Pops got me to love reading. From that, I wrote. My grandfather was a reader. He loved books and I became enchanted with them when I discovered his bookshelves hidden behind the huge couch. Before he taught me about his own books, he bought a book each for me and my brother and sisters every birthday and every Christmas. I remember that Enid Blyton's  The Children of the Cherry Farm  (1940) and  The Magic Faraway Tree  (1943) were written before I was born, but I didn't read them until I was a preteen: around 9 or 10. Dymocks' recent book page overview describes  The Magic Faraway Tree  in these words:  "escape from th...

I wrote the poem  "Time to forget"  back in  February 2014 . It's included in this prose. Does this sound like someone you know? She had nothing important to think about. Everything which had been valuable to her had gone. Including her children. They didn't even talk to her now. Lee could remember her history, but it no longer meant anything to her. She remembered her childhood. She knew that she had loved it, but now her parents were dead. Her husband had vanished, wherever she didn't know and didn't care. She had never disconnected the bond between her children and him; she had - then - felt that was important. However they now took him in, she didn't care about. Her only friend was her dog. Beautiful, she thought. She was 13 human years old, but in dog years she would be 91. Or maybe a bit older. Jess would die this year. Maybe. But Lee'd read a poem. She opened her favourite internet website, found the poem. She had loved it. Maybe it was...

Anita felt very grumpy. She had to go up to the local hospital for another test, but she didn’t really believe that they would find anything unless they did the real tests. She knew, she thought she did, what might be in her body, but she had sighed, got frustrated, even got angry, when she’d been up there before. No, they didn’t find anything, and yet she could tell them why her stomach was painful, why she had backaches, why her legs cramped, why there were hours when she couldn’t even see. Every single day she woke up early in the morning in pain, curled up with her stomach feeling like it was due to burst out, her head feeling like a migraine after putting up with the rest of her body for so long – and she believed that! She would lie on her side and concentrate on breathing in, breathing out, long slow breaths which she hoped, every day, would relieve her pain at least a little bit. It was a week since she’d last gone up to the hospital, to Emergency. She’d given them her ...

This seems like how I felt around about this time. There are other stories I wrote this year, similar things. Have you ever felt this way? It was a volcano, waiting to erupt in her body. Her vision was getting blurry. She started to lose her balance. She knew something was terribly wrong, but she didn’t know what it was. It felt like a volcano. It must have been. Her double vision crept over. She could not walk or write. She couldn’t pick up her mobile. She looked out of the window, trying so hard to see what she could have seen every day. She couldn’t. It vanished, into somewhere that she didn’t know. She felt scared. Her blood pressure rose. She was angry. She felt rage. Her body curled up, and she couldn’t stop it. She felt a tremendous headache that wouldn't stop. Please, she cried to herself, please, I will lose consciousness! She lay down on the floor, closed her eyes, tried to regain her breath. Tears ran out of her eyes, across her face, onto the fl...

I had the very good fortune recently to attend a Gunnas Writing Masterclass with Catherine Deveny. Catherine's irreverant and humorous presentation makes this a must-do day for new and existing writers alike. During the day we had timed writing periods, and for the last one of these sessions we selected picture and word cards, not unlike QWC's "Morning Glory" sessions and wrote for 10 minutes. I happened to draw the words "Alice in Wonderland" and a picture of two entertainers in an old-fashioned balancing act with two bicycles. This is my "10 minute fiction", which also was published on Catherine's website for a short while. Once upon a time in Wonderland, Alice was sitting quietly under her favourite tree, reading her book, when she looked up and saw the Mad Hatter bouncing down the road towards her. "Whatever is the matter?" she called out. "The circus," he shouted. "The circus is here and I'm going to be ...

I wrote this short story on 8 August 1987. It was shut up in my papers for a long time, and now it's the first time it's been published online!  When Anna came into my life, it was like a fresh breath of spring. My being came alive, pulled back from the abyss of my own creation as I failed to accept divorce from a wife I thought was my world. I didn’t eat properly; the weight I had lost had only increased the age of the reflection staring back at me, hollow-eyed, from the mirror. Routine had become automatic, which was probably the only anything domestic got done. But I had my work, and in that I lost myself, becoming obsessed with making a dollar any way I could. Even though I had no-one on whom to spend my accumulating wealth. Anna appeared in my office one overcast day, in answer to an ad I had placed to rent out the room over the shop. She was not the first one to apply, but she had a presence, a strength of personality that made itself felt despite her shy ...