Samhain

As it's Samhain, or Halloween, here's a wee story for the season...

Samhain

 

The light is fading. Burnt orange, matching the leaves, the sun sinks closer to the horizon. I almost believe it will hiss as it kisses the water of the loch; my lips curl upward as this fails to happen.

There is a vague shape in the sky, sort of an anti-shadow, as the moon begins to assert its dominance. A shape wheels across the sky, flitting through the light.

The air has a greasy feel to it. The static charge is high, causing the hair on my arms to rise as though in response to an ancient calling. I feel the pull inside me, hooking into every fibre of my being.

The sun passes its limit, disappearing below the waves. For a few moments, stray ripples of light remain to colour the water; then it is gone, leaving only blackness behind.

Darkness falls, an absence of light punctured by pinpricks of starlight. The temperature falls, cold drawing in close. I can feel it, the closing in of…something.

It is Samhain, you see, the night of the year when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest. I can feel it, bulging in places and stretched almost to breaking point. It reminds me of a plastic bag that is overfilled, the material stretched taut and almost transparent, ready to tear.

Like now.

A soft splash murmurs across the water, some unseen fish breaking the surface. Ripples spread outwards, mirroring the ripples I feel in the surface of reality.

I stand there, allowing the night to wrap me in a velvet embrace. I can feel…things…moving just outside my perception. Hunting, searching, looking for a way to bridge the divide.

I shiver. The moon is full now, casting silver light across the waters.  I feel a tear begin in the veil and close my eyes. A presence leaks through, liquid and alien. It settles on me and soaks into my being, imposing its will on mine.

Calmness suffuses me. I am expecting evil, inhumanity, something; not this.

My innermost desires and thoughts are laid bare. Stripped of all obfuscation and examined, I almost cannot feel the pressures that are applied.

It is over almost before I know it has started. The presence is gone, leaving behind nothing but a hollowness inside.

I feel my smile grow without it touching my eyes. I know how to fill that emptiness the presence has left behind. I feel a purpose suffuse me.

I start to walk. Away from the loch, back towards the town. My smile grows as my steps quicken. The hollow feeling is soon to be banished, at least for a while.

As I walk, the knife drops from my sleeve and into my hand.

Point of view

I joined a writing group last week, after struggling with a bit of stagnation in my writing. I wouldn't call it writer's block, as I still managed to churn out a reasonable word count; the problem was when I re-read it, it sounded dull and wooden.
Part of the writing group involved the usual prompt to create something for the next meeting. It was a list of seven words and a brief to write either a piece of prose or a poem using five or six of them.
I tossed a few ideas around, and scrapped them all as dull and clichéd, before trying something new.
I set out to write a deliberately short (i.e 1,000 words or less) piece of flash fiction. The major difference was in my choice of point of view. For this work, I chose to write in the second person. Voila! My fingers flew, the ideas came and in just over an hour I had a coherent story of exactly 1,000 words.
After leaving it for a few hours, I had a re-read and tightened it up, managing to get it down to 950 words. I do plan a second re-write, as I think it would benefit from some more tweaking - I need to change a few details to better fit the story, I think - but it was remarkably clean for a first draft.
Using this point of view (and its not a commonly used one) was quite constrictive but this seemed to enhance the creative flow rather than hinder it. It forced me to re-evaluate the way I used the language, and enforcing a short word count also helped add to the story's punch. With no spare words for padding, I had to ensure that every word would count.
I would recommend everyone try using a different POV to improve their writing, and pick one that is not a mainstream choice. So, no first/third-person. You could try first-person present, second person (as I did), or any of the others. (Do a quick search online; you'll be surprised by just how many options there are!)
Or you could choose something other than a person for your POV. A murder seen from the point of view of a knife, perhaps? Difficult to pull off, I think - I'm not a fan of animals or non-sentient objects being major characters generally - but doable. And the point is to get yourself thinking about the language and how you use it.
If you really want a challenge, you could combine both and write for an unconventional protagonist from an unconventional point of view!
So there you have it. Give it a whirl, you might be surprised at the results.