Writing Prompt 44: Wraith
The Stranger
Reading the story I wrote in response to this week's photograph, I’m struck by how little it relates to the image itself. And then I look again and see the face thrown into shadow and all at once I know where the story came from.
I often wonder if all the stories we want to write are already inside of us, waiting to be uncovered.
Is the act of writing like the work of an archeologist?
The writer carefully reveals the story, bit by bit, scene by scene, character by character, using words and phrasing to create something whole and complete. I think it might help your writing knowing the story you want to tell, is already held inside of you. The pressure’s off. Your job is to let it surface and breathe and use your writing skills to make it a piece of work someone else might want to read.
Until next time.
When he walked through the door after several months away, she hid behind her mother’s legs.
The strange man with the haunted gaze reached out to her mother and clasped her hands. Her mother stepped forward, leaving Madeline behind to stand by herself. Her mother wrapped her arms around the stranger’s neck and their lips pressed against each other.
The man’s face disappeared into the mass of her mother’s bouncing curls that gleamed clean in the sunlight. The stranger kissed her mother’s neck and whispered quiet things that made her laugh.
Madeline moved back towards the kitchen door.
The stranger had his hands now around her mother’s waist, one hand slipping up the back of her top. Madeline stared unblinking until tears forced their way out.
She sniffed, wiping away a thin drizzle of clear mucus with the back of her hand, wiping it down the front of her new dress, the dress her mother had made from an old Butterick pattern. Heat rose through her body, tensing all the muscles in her shoulders. The fabric of her dress began to stick with sweat to her body.
At the sound of her sniff, her mother and the stranger broke apart and turned towards her. The stranger hung his arm around her mother’s neck and pulled her body next to his.
"Hello sweetheart," he said, bending down to Madeline. "You’ve grown so tall. Where did little Madeline go?"
The sun shone through the kitchen window, throwing the stranger and his smile into deep shadow. Madeline clenched her hands into tight fists.
"Go away!" she said. "Leave my mummy alone!"
The stranger turned his head to her mother.
"I told you," said her mother. "She doesn’t know who you are."
Story first posted in November 2019 // Photo: Tanya Clarke 2014 at The Making of Harry Potter, Leavesden, UK.
