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rosanicusNo. 2: TRUST ISSUES
Amusement Park | Role Reversal | “You got away with the crime while the knife's in my back.” (Charlotte Sands, Rollercoaster)
ALTERNATIVE: Finding Old Messages
I wish I knew where this came from or where it was going but I enjoyed writing a little bit of melancholy spookiness for early October!
531 words, Ginger, post-Black Peril
The old hut they’d made camp in for the night was a holdover from before the war, perhaps even back in the days of old Queen Victoria. Algy had knocked on one wall, made a face, and decided he would take first watch on the Auster. Ginger couldn’t blame him. It was a dismal old place, only preferable over the wild outdoors for the cover it provided from an incoming storm.
Biggles took it all in stride, of course. Ginger was beginning to wonder whether anything would ever truly faze his new mentor, although he had seen him annoyed, frustrated and elated by turns in the few months since he’d taken up with him and Algy. The boss had simply spread out his bedroll in a seemingly dry corner, laid down and went out like a light. It was almost impressive, the way both he and Algy could fall asleep anywhere. Ginger hoped fervently that he’d pick up the knack for it sometime soon; he turned over once again and groped at the sackful of clothes he’d pressed into service as a pillow.
He drifted into a state of half-sleep which was neither restful nor comfortable, leaving him with a dreadful sense of vertigo as he dreamed, eyes still slitted open, of falling down a flight of stairs.
“Bugger this for a lark,” he mumbled, scrubbing at his eyes. He sat up and looked once more around the desolate hut. It really was a miserable specimen, but Ginger saw it with new eyes in the beam of moonlight which cut through the half-shuttered window. He believed in ghosts in the same way most boys did; rattling chains and ragged cloth fluttering in ethereal winds. But the hut itself seemed almost ghostlike in the dim, white shine of the moon.
Rising slowly to his feet, Ginger pulled his coat closer around his ribs and stepped closer to the far wall. Biggles made a blurry sort of noise as he moved past, then settled again. Ginger froze, then forced himself to relax. Biggles wouldn’t be like his da after a long night. The worst Ginger could expect was a firm reminder to get back to sleep.
The wallpaper at the far corner of the wall was peeling away in long strips. Ginger, possessed by an odd urge, pulled at the closest loose edge. The paper felt revolting, damp and rotting; the smell of mould amplified tenfold as Ginger dropped it in disgust.
The wall behind was well-lit by the same beam of light which cut through the windowpane. Tucked into a crack between two wooden slats, Ginger could see a folded scrap of paper. He felt trapped, somehow, in the same way he did in dreams. He reached out and pulled the scrap free.
It was damp too, but not quite so revolting to the touch. An old message, he supposed, locked away for decades. He wondered at the care someone must have taken to squirrel it away.
The trouble was, even as he squinted down at the paper with interest, hoping for some minor intrigue to while away the midnight hours, the message was gone. Time and damp and circumstance had erased the marks from the paper until nothing remained.
Amusement Park | Role Reversal | “You got away with the crime while the knife's in my back.” (Charlotte Sands, Rollercoaster)
ALTERNATIVE: Finding Old Messages
I wish I knew where this came from or where it was going but I enjoyed writing a little bit of melancholy spookiness for early October!
531 words, Ginger, post-Black Peril
The old hut they’d made camp in for the night was a holdover from before the war, perhaps even back in the days of old Queen Victoria. Algy had knocked on one wall, made a face, and decided he would take first watch on the Auster. Ginger couldn’t blame him. It was a dismal old place, only preferable over the wild outdoors for the cover it provided from an incoming storm.
Biggles took it all in stride, of course. Ginger was beginning to wonder whether anything would ever truly faze his new mentor, although he had seen him annoyed, frustrated and elated by turns in the few months since he’d taken up with him and Algy. The boss had simply spread out his bedroll in a seemingly dry corner, laid down and went out like a light. It was almost impressive, the way both he and Algy could fall asleep anywhere. Ginger hoped fervently that he’d pick up the knack for it sometime soon; he turned over once again and groped at the sackful of clothes he’d pressed into service as a pillow.
He drifted into a state of half-sleep which was neither restful nor comfortable, leaving him with a dreadful sense of vertigo as he dreamed, eyes still slitted open, of falling down a flight of stairs.
“Bugger this for a lark,” he mumbled, scrubbing at his eyes. He sat up and looked once more around the desolate hut. It really was a miserable specimen, but Ginger saw it with new eyes in the beam of moonlight which cut through the half-shuttered window. He believed in ghosts in the same way most boys did; rattling chains and ragged cloth fluttering in ethereal winds. But the hut itself seemed almost ghostlike in the dim, white shine of the moon.
Rising slowly to his feet, Ginger pulled his coat closer around his ribs and stepped closer to the far wall. Biggles made a blurry sort of noise as he moved past, then settled again. Ginger froze, then forced himself to relax. Biggles wouldn’t be like his da after a long night. The worst Ginger could expect was a firm reminder to get back to sleep.
The wallpaper at the far corner of the wall was peeling away in long strips. Ginger, possessed by an odd urge, pulled at the closest loose edge. The paper felt revolting, damp and rotting; the smell of mould amplified tenfold as Ginger dropped it in disgust.
The wall behind was well-lit by the same beam of light which cut through the windowpane. Tucked into a crack between two wooden slats, Ginger could see a folded scrap of paper. He felt trapped, somehow, in the same way he did in dreams. He reached out and pulled the scrap free.
It was damp too, but not quite so revolting to the touch. An old message, he supposed, locked away for decades. He wondered at the care someone must have taken to squirrel it away.
The trouble was, even as he squinted down at the paper with interest, hoping for some minor intrigue to while away the midnight hours, the message was gone. Time and damp and circumstance had erased the marks from the paper until nothing remained.
