A spooky Lucie flash fiction story for October! Early Halloween. ;)
LONDON, 1897
“There are many kinds of ghosts,” Jessamine said, “but they tend to fall into three categories. You have mostly known ghosts like me, who are kind and beautiful and have wonderful personalities.”
Lucie almost snorted, but luckily Jessamine didn’t seem to notice. They were in the courtyard of the Institute, where Lucie was playing, and avoiding her family. Woolsey Scott was coming over for tea, and they were busy straightening up and putting away the silver — like all werewolves, he was allergic. Lucie didn’t mind Woolsey Scott, except that like most of the adults who visited the Institute he was tremendously boring, and also when he looked at her she felt that he was judging her for her untidiness and her ink-stained fingers. She had snuck off to play in the garden, and when nobody had come to fetch her, she decided she was safe.
Perhaps they assumed the coming rain would drive her back inside. The sky was thick with leaden clouds, and while the rain held off for now, the air contained that particular scent that meant it was inevitable.
She had made up a game to go with a story she had been composing recently. It was about a well-brought up young girl who was forced to become a pirate queen to save her kidnapped parents, and discovered she had quite a knack for it. She ran around the garden, weaving between bushes, imagining the she was a pirate queen whose sailors had whipped up a mutiny. The key was to look deeply distressed, extremely tragic, then spin around fast, stabbing out with the stick she was using as a sword.
She had stopped to decide whether the pirate queen should sport a silver mask or a black one when Jessamine, the Institute’s resident ghost, came floating down from an upper window like a torn page falling in a breeze….
Seguir leyendo
