Creative Writing Series 1

I've decided to write a series of short stories and post them regularly on my blog. This is an effort to get into the habit of updating more frequently. So I went onto creative-writing-now.com and used their story starters to get myself started. I hope you all enjoy them and would love to hear your comments and reviews of my work.

1.     A stolen ring, fear of spiders, and a sinister stranger.

Anna fingered the finger where her mother’s ring used to sit. It had been a beautiful ring. Gold with a black stone surrounded by white stones. Before it had been stolen, it had been her mother’s engagement ring. Although her mother had never been married it was still something which had adorned her mother’s hand since before Anna had been born.

Upon moving halfway round the world to Melbourne, Australia, her mother had given the ring to her as a token to remind her of home. Her mother would laugh at her for the loss of the ring, tell her she should be more careful with her belongings perhaps, and not to trust the “friend” who had taken it.

There was no sentimental value to the ring. An old suitor of her mothers who had proposed and after a few months engaged had been hit in the face with the damn thing. Then her mother had remember that she had bought it with her own money and promptly demanded it back.

Still, the guilt of losing something which was not her own nagged at her and would continue to do so until she confessed the story to her mother.

This new country was a scary place to be without her mother. It had always been the two of them and adjusting was hard. Not that she was alone. She did have cousins who lived nearby, but she barely knew any of them. Her only contact with them before moving here was through an old senile member of the family who was always telling of them but she hadn’t actually spoken to any of them.

The climate alone was vastly different to home. At home it was warm for only a few days in summer and nowhere near the temperature here. She had needed to replace most of her wardrobe within the first few days of arriving.

The neighbour across the street hadn’t minded that. He would stare whenever she left the house and had asked her out numerous times. She wouldn’t have minded if it was for the pig-headed, grossly sexist comments he would make.

He was amused whenever she opened the mailbox at the end of the drive and scream as a mammoth spider lurking at the other end would come scuttling out. She wasn’t afraid of spiders. She wasn’t. But these things were not like the spiders at home. No, these were double the size and hairy. And when they came crawling out of her mail box she wasn’t expecting them. Of course that would make her scream.

What made it worse was that he would just stand behind her laughing. Trying to hide it of course, so instead it would come out as a snort. Possibly one of the most unattractive noises imaginable. It was just a shame that his looks weren't as unattractive as the rest of him.