Winter Woes
Fortuitous Tide
Reminder: Free short story – see below ‘A Pearl for Your Enjoyment’
Extracts from my next novel referring to the Australian Light Horsemen during World War 1, have been sent off to an active member of the current Australian Light Horse Association for validation of its content. After months of absorbing the Light Horsemen history, I appreciate having this source, over one hundred years later, to ensure I have treated those brave men with respect and honour.
Current Weather and Tides
Winter has swept in upon us stealing our balmy warm 5am day-breaks and extended evenings when outside chores were a pleasure. Knowing winter has a purpose in life does little to help me accept the cold chilling dark mornings. I can hear many of you, from colder areas than my home, laughing at this whimp. Laugh all you want but I am with the polar bears – it’s time to hibernate.
Keep safe, Keep smiling, Keep reading, Keep writing.
Elizabeth Rimmington
www.elizabethrimmington.com.au
facebook.com/elizabethrimmington.author
A Pearl for Your Enjoyment
The class was offered a writing prompt: ‘She changed the channel, bored with the program she’d been watching, catching her breath at the image that filled her screen.
ELLEN’S DILEMMA
She changed the channel, bored with the program she’d been watching. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the image that now filled her screen. Ellen’s feet jumped back of their own accord, almost upsetting her balance. She gasped. The gaze of the dark eyes seemed to drill deep inside her skull. She felt the colour drain from her face. Bony hands clutched at her chest – at the pain like the thrust of a hot poker – each inhalation of air became pure torture. She closed her blue eyes shutting out the face, but the vision remained behind the clenched eyelids.
That’s him – that was the man. The man she saw when she stood within the shadows while enjoying the cool scent-filled garden late one evening less than a week ago. She remembered clearly that face and those narrow eyes above the knife dripping blood. Ellen again felt his gaze burning a hole right through her. How could she forget the hate-filled expression spewing its venom into the air at the time? How could she forget her terror?
It was the same face but not as it looked now with its open smile and bonhomie attitude on the television in her lounge room. The calculating eyes remained the same. She’d swear on a stack of bibles it was the same man who had stood over the body under the lamplight on the night. She assumed he had not seen her but those eyes boring into hers now made her stop. What if he had seen her?
What was he doing mixing comfortably on the television with the leaders of the town as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth? Ellen knew better.
The vision disappeared replaced by an advertisement for some amazing cleaner. It would take a lot more than the greatest cleaning product to rid the town of the man she knew full well had stabbed a poor girl to death.
Self-disgust washed over her. Her head dropped in shame at her cowardice. Ellen recalled her denial of having seen anything, to the nice police lady who came questioning all in the neighbourhood. For all her repugnance at her weakness, Ellen knew she still did not dare to report him to the law. She consoled herself; anyway, who is going to believe a half-blind, senile old woman against an upright citizen on the television.
With haste, she shuffled around the inside of her house shutting and bolting all the windows and doors.
THE END
