EXCERPTS
Novel Excerpts
Marilee Newell - The Dragon's Tale
Suddenly, in a blur of colour the dragon swooped down, hovering like a Vulture over Morgan's balled-up form. Quick as lightening, it snatched her up by the back of the cloak with its pointy teeth. Head bent, the girl dangling from its mouth, it flicked its long neck into the air with the wild jerk of a carnival elephant flipping up its trunk, and let her go spinning through the sky like a little red-haired acrobat. As she came back down, it threw its scaly head back, snapped open its enormous crocodile mouth, and caught her in the back of its throat. Then, flapping its butterfly-wings three times (as if to aid digestion) it swallowed her down like a lump of sugar and flew off towards the Cacklebrand Forest.
Kirsty Lee - Jasper and the Sacred Sceptre
"He walked to the front door and there sitting lonely on the doormat was a large package wrapped in brown paper, tied up with string and sealed with red wax. He picked it up and planted his large behind in the tatty brown armchair in his sitting room. He didn't recognise the scrawled handwriting, and the smudged postmark on the corner didn't offer any clue as to its sender either.
He reached for the scissors and cut through the string and the paper. Inside was a letter and attached to it was an inch-thick wad of handwritten pages all held together with an elastic band. His eyes scanned down to the name at the bottom.
“Percy,” he muttered. “What does that feckless waster of a brother want?”
He lifted himself to the edge of the seat and was about to get up and throw the whole lot into the bin. ‘After everything that's happened why should I read it?' he thought. But his curiosity of what Percy had enclosed in the multitude of pages coerced him to read what his brother had to say."
That evening I had special plans, and I was immensely looking forward to my evening at home. There was a Barney Miller marathon on Nick at Night and I find Detective Sargent Chano Amenguale really hot. I got home, put a potpie in the oven and took a long bath while my dinner cooked. By the time the oven timer dinged, I was on the sofa, remote in one hand and a bottle of chardonnay in the other.
I am one of the last people in this country to still have an answering machine rather than voice mail. I just don't see the point in paying $4.76 a month for a service when I already paid $200 in 1986 for a machine that will do the same thing, and take up an entire coffee table. I looked over to this wood veneer monstrosity and the light was blinking. I flipped the switch and listened to the panicked message.
"Uh. Hi Brenda? It's Trudy. Overdose. Need to go to the hospital." Then a dead line.
Damn it. Barney Miller was starting. I sat back and tried to concentrate on the wacky antics of a police station in the 70's, but instead of feeling the polyester vibe, I kept thinking about Trudy shoveling thousands of little green pills into her mouth. She ruined every weekend by existing and making verbal contact with me at work, and then she ruined my evening as well by threatening not to exist.
I couldn't concentrate on the television. I ate my potpie and half watched Wojo's ass swinging back and forth (truth is, I have the hots for the entire cast of Barney Miller, although I'm still on the fence about Abe Vigoda).
I picked up the phone and dialed 911. The emergency operator answered, "What is your emergency?"
James Hopkin - I'll be watching you
Mike stares into the bathroom mirror in disbelief.
He knows that he died three months ago. He'd been balancing on the banister at the top of the stairs. Trying to squash a spider on the ceiling with his slipper. He'd missed, and accidentally nudged the spider. It'd dropped down and landed on his nose. Mike's whole body had started to convulse with repulsion. He'd flung his head from side to side, shrieking and spitting so he didn't swallow the horrible creature. His socks slipped on the varnished banister and Mike had fallen backwards. His neck snapped down on the stairs. He was killed instantly.
Murdered by a spider, Mike thinks. What a joke. Poetic justice I guess.
And where was that homicidal spider now?
Mike had no idea.
Christiana Worley - The fear of not flying
When I got to the top of the watertower, Fleet, Morris and Jethro were already there. Jethro was sitting cross-legged a few feet away from his brothers, playing with the sole of one of his sneakers, which had come loose and flapped when he walked, the rubber folding under the shoe so that he stumbled every few steps. Jethro's mouth was open and a string of drool was forming in the corner.
The wind suddenly whipped the saliva off his mouth and it stretched in a string away from his face until it broke, leaving a piece hanging down, wobbling in the air until he slurped it up without moving his hands.
“Thai.” I shook my head out of my Jethro-trance and turned to Fleet.
“What?” I said.
“I'll explain the rules,” Fleet said.
“The rules of what?” I said.
“Flying chicken,” Fleet said.
'I walk through the night, growing hot, and growing cold. Stumbling through creek beds, blackberry bushes, and forests of brittle pines. I leave strings of torn skin on branches. I'm climbing, always toward it, digging my fingers into the hillside for purchase. Hand over hand, I scale the slope, clinging to outcrops of rock and exposed roots. Each time the fragrance hits me, I fill with joy, and ache as though I'm a reflection, on the way to meet and touch my face. It balloons in my body, making my senses sore.'
Every time I walk along these city streets, I'm aware of all the people, their preoccupations. Little snippets of thoughts dart into my head as I brush past them: shopping lists, complaints, sexual fantasies, plans for the day, anxieties. I should get it in several languages, I suppose, but I feel rather than hear it. It's draining and tiring, picking up all of this. Day after day, soaking up the emotional detritus of strangers. I can block it out, of course, otherwise how can I live normally? But since you've gone, it's been harder to protect myself. My sensitivity is making my daily life unbearable.
Hope Jennings – A Prodigal Daughter
Having recently graduated from a respectable London conservatory, Mina merely assumed she'd come to live with her aunt as a lady's companion. Thus, the girl dutifully visited all the museums and typical Parisian landmarks, attended countless dull soirees, dressed in prudish ensembles, and generally made herself as unremarkable as possible, thoroughly disappointing her aunt's high expectations of her. Whenever Rosalie invited for tea all the most fascinating, scandalous people she could find, her niece would indiscreetly yawn and excuse herself with a polite smile, disappearing to spend a solitary afternoon in the Jardin des Plantes, always coming home with the same studied sketch of an ape sorrowfully staring back at her through the bars of his cage. Aunt Rosalie would have forgiven the sketches, the clothes, the limpid ennui, if she'd known they were a cover for Mina's double life. In fact, she would have been quite pleased if the girl had thought to confide in her, but then, one would inevitably lose the thrill of an illicit romance with a married man twice one's age if condoned and even encouraged by one's seventy-six year-old aunt.
I saw my Grandma and Aunt Cyndi, my older cousins, and another man in a black suit at the front of the room. None of them were smiling. Everyone was passing around boxes of Kleenex. I sat in an uncomfortable chair next to Grammy in the front row. After just a few minutes, the wood was digging into my skinny legs. I looked around the room. Everyone was crying. Before that day, I thought only kids were allowed to cry, and it was scary to see that wasn't true. The room smelled like flowers and my gram's old lady perfume. I wondered if they sold separate perfume for old ladies. My mom never smelled like that.
