Tag Archives: Ghost

Storm #writephoto

Thursday photo prompt

storm

 

It’s lonely up here, one doesn’t meet humans too often, mostly the locals are ravens and rabbits and moles, and the occasional eagle. But I like it, this is my place, where I dream, and remember. There are sweet memories, and also dark and stormy ones.

Yes, there is a storm coming this way now. I love it, the low clouds, a drop of rain here and there, I can feel the strong winds already, snaking through my empty eye sockets, resonating in my skull. “The Old One”, used to call me the villagers, when there was still a village nearby, long ago.

Nowadays the Old One merely enjoys the peace, and the storm.

Forgotten #writephoto

Thursday photo prompt

forgotten

 

No, we haven’t forgotten: through this gate we walked, you and I, when the wall was new, the grass so green, and the sky so clear. We believed, the future was a wide alley, bordered with roses, your hand in mine, our eyes to the horizon.

Then came the clouds, and the blizzard, metal locusts. I held the shield high, and you were safe. That haven would not be taken. But outside, down in the valley, beyond the wall, the hordes of demons attacked, days after days. We could no longer breath, they scorched the earth, killed everything. The companions and I retreated, and stood by the gate.

There we died, one by one, till the sea of Evil receded. The last one who stood tall, alive, you know. He’s your Lord now, a Saint, in shining armour.

I, haunt these woods, remembering the day, when we crossed the gate.

Mists #writephoto

Mists

fog

 

The ground was frozen, and as he looked up at the pale disc of their star, recognising the landscape in the mists, inhaling the air, he remembered the desert, the infinite sand, the temples in the dunes. He was back. After all these years. Who would recognise him now? He had been a young man then, almost a boy still, who liked to play in those fields, who enjoyed feeling his growing strength, his supple body… He remembered their departure, the colours of the flags, the hymns, the long line of young men, just like him. He remembered her face, the laughter, the cries, the prayers – the wind in her hair.

He remembered the sand, rivers of blood flowing in the sand, the scorching heat of the day, the frozen nights… So many dreams scattered to the desert winds. Now, he was alone, perhaps the only one to have come back.

But who was left who would recognise this ghost, lost in the mists?

 

More gold… #fivewords

Weekly Writing Prompt #118

Gold-stack

He was buying, and all this gold he would bury, deep in the cellar of the ghost’s house, the one he had bought, shortly after his trial. He would have his revenge, but, for now, feeling no cold, nor the pinch of hunger, he would sit at his desk, from dawn to dusk, scrutinising the markets, watching the rate, buying.

For the ghost had left him a fortune, and hardly interfered with his life. The house, the cellar, the ghost, the gold… His dream would become true.

Inspired by #fivewords, and the big bubble!

Picture: gold stack, via The Gold War

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The Prompt

img_20160817_135721170

 

So many faces, so many objects, coming to us from the past; some strangely familiar, others, forever enigma, forged by minds we cannot decipher, or from individuals so distant in time that their language is forgotten. We parse, think, and chose, the ones we can retain, remember, the ones that inspire us, or invite us to reflect on our own time, to extend our dreams.

We meet them on the street, in the eyes of passers-by, in the windows of small shops whose purpose is uncertain. Or in museums, already acknowledged by some unknown collector or curator, half-way between celebrities and relics…

From time time, our mind captures one of those that are different: the still vibrant ghost of a powerful spirit, who, perhaps, has not spoken her last words.

Photo: Clocktower, Göttingen

#FiveSentenceFiction: Falling

fallingAt their school she had a poor reputation: a girl who “went” with men, and of course, he could not care less, what he felt was her kindness, the softness of her lips, the smile he wanted to drown into…

Later, much later, he looked for her, without realising it, he was now a writer, and this masterpiece needed a hero – so he reinvented her, and, kindly, she reappeared, transformed, the lover of his youth.

Like Pygmalion, he fell again for her, and this time, she would not let go.

At first he was surprised, charmed, expecting, and called her by the name he remembered, the name of their childhood.

And now he was enslaved, fallen back in time, the prisoner of his beloved ghost.

 

Ghosts in the City #WritersWednesday

Pont Neuf, de la rive gauche They walk, silent and invisible, through the crowd of passersby, only seeing that today the living are outnumbering the dead. She smiles at him, a smile that would have sent him to paradise, not long ago: he smiles back, they get closer, and once again they become each other, one spirit.

They follow their preferred route, along the river, watching the past flow by, besides ancient statues, over bridges overflowing with memories. He senses her, deep inside himself, the stir of her tender and beloved soul, embracing his.

In front of Henri IV, on the Pont Neuf, they stop, not because of exhaustion, for they don’t feel physical effort, but to look again at the little island where, one night, he had possessed her, her living, beautiful body, goddess and witch, with a hunger that defied evil. She, then, had taken his blood, making him hers, enslaving this boy who had dared make her human again.

So they chose their destiny, eternal lovers in the city of light.

#FiveSentenceFiction: Devotion

“True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life,

through devotion, to something beyond himself.”   ~ Henry Miller

(Quoted by Una Tentazione)

Melissa In his sleep Melissa was talking to him about higher mathematics, about the marvels she was learning with her new teacher.

Her new interest in physics amazed him, his recollection of her was of a rather simpler type of girl: how she had changed, his school sweetheart…

But he was trying to follow, she was so keen for him to understand, she was talking with passion, of their future, of the new sense of her own existence, of her search for him.

She said she would never give him up, she was learning to achieve something: to reach him in his world, the world of the living.

In his dream, her devotion was palpable, as real as her presence, and he did not want to let her go.

The story of Melissa and Julian is told here.

#WritersWednesday: 17 October – Back to School

 She said she would meet me in the old town, so we planned to stop there on the return journey from Italy. Very little had changed in the centre of town. I explained to Sarah that I would meet Mel near my old school: this was after all our old ground, twenty years back. Sarah smiled, letting me indulged in this fantasy. We agreed to meet after an hour, at the nice terrace in the town square, and have dinner there. So it was that I walked those narrow streets again, retracing my life, the life of a younger man, a new spring in my steps, as I approached the old walls. The gate was shut, it was Friday night, and, besides, the summer recess. I saw no one, there was no traffic here, the street was emptier than I could remember. I walked a little up the street, then around the corner, and saw the house where my parents had lived. Then I sensed her presence, well before I saw her. The shop in the corner had been a grocery combined with a bicycle repair shop, and was now gone. In its place was a solicitor’s office, but the little recess I remembered well was there: often I had parked my bike there, and sometimes Mel had been waiting for me there too. And there she was, standing in the semi darkness, hood down on her face, wearing a long dark robe, like a monk’s. I came closer, the dim light showing none of her features. I said: “Tell me you’re real”, and she replied, in a voice I recognised immediately: “as real as you, I have just been dead for longer than you, is all.” I sighed, we were silent for long minutes, images from our past flowing in my mind. Then I could smell her scent. And I was back then, all those years, waiting for her on the steps of the school, admiring her legs, her smile, ignoring the jealous looks of my friends and the other girls’ giggles. She then said: “You have not changed: you always get me wet, even now!” I blushed. Mel had been dead for nearly twenty years, yet she sounded so lively. I took a step towards her, slowly. She laughed, her sunny girl laugh, full of life. I stood now so close. I knew it could be but a mirage, the ghost of my friend. Then I heard Sarah’s voice: “You have been here for nearly two hours, there is nothing in that corner Julian, just you”. And she was right.

times past

all dreams extinct ~

fallen angel