Essays & Posts
Welcome to My Strange (and Slightly Twisted) Mind!
Stories, essays, and now novels… Anything I write seems to come out slightly off-kilter, either paranormal (as in the strictest sense of the word – outside normal) or outside the norm… which is, strictly speaking, ALSO paranormal. Hmm.
But I digress.
Some people ask, as they do of all writers, where I get my ideas. Sometimes they come from snippets of thought, memories of dreams, and bits of overheard conversations, all tumbled about in my sub-conscious like a blender, coming out completely different, exaggerated, and oftimes weird story smoothie.
So here you have it. Occasional stories and essays, observations, thoughts about things I am working on, heck I might even throw some of my artwork up here.
My page, my story. Deal with it, okay?
Short Short Story
Mothman
“Dern moths,” old man Hinkle muttered under his breath as he rummaged through the shed for a can of Raid. He impatiently batted at a faint fluttering at his ear. “Gets worse ever’ year!”
His gnarled fingers closed around the can and he let out a wheeze of triumph.
“Get a load of this, you…” He turned, raising the can high.
The room darkened as if something blocked the sun and the tiny fluttering in his ear became a roar.
“What the…” He stood still and stared in shock as thousands of moths filled the small shed like a living cloud.
The dark mass paused as if considering the old man standing with his arm raised, hand still clutching a can of pesticide.
Hinkle growled past his disbelief and lifted the can high.
The moth cloud poured on him. Thousands and thousands of moths covered his face, quivered in his ears and up his nostrils, climbed through his disheveled grey hair. They covered his hands, fluttered down the loose collar of his shirt and wriggled up the sleeves.
An unrecognizable sound emerged from the center of the writhing cloud. The old man gasped for air and swallowed a score of the winged horde.
The mass, barely recognizable as a human figure, swayed unsteadily and collapsed.
Wings fluttered, Antennae quivered. The mass below twitched and stopped moving.
The moths cheerfully disengaged and flew way.
Silently the last dying moths crawled out of his ears and mouth, creeping over his open eyes and lay on his papery skin, their wings opening and closing slowly, until even that movement was stilled.
The shed was silent. The sun slanted through the open door, climbing over tools and shelves and bags of fertilizer, and over the still figure of one cranky old man who never did like moths.
Copyright 2003, Susan Quinland – uploaded 2/22
Pyrography (Wood Burning)
