Wednesday's Words on a Friday



The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.
If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along and read it.

This month the words are supplied by Lissa and can be found here.

This week's words are: a video clip with the sound of rain
and/or:

1. it's going to rain today
2. chasing storms
3. umbrellas
4. charmed
5. a long journey
6. trains

Here is my story: a fill-in chapter for something previously written

Bernice lay in bed in her cabin up on the mountain, listening to the heavy rain as it fell. Soon she would sleep, lulled into dreamland by the sound. 
(this video is very long, no need to listen to the whole 10 hours)

Bernice thought of many things as she lay waiting for sleep, but foremost in her thoughts was Detective Inspector Stanley Grace and his partner Irene Fargo. "Cold Cases in the file room," he’d said to Irene. That meant all the notes the coppers had taken on that night so long ago when she’d seen that man, the one who had been sweet-talking young Stephanie. Bernice was glad she’d decided to show them the old quarry and give them the old maps. Maybe something good would come of it. Seeing that crooked nose man again had given Bernice quite a fright. If the old notes had pictures in them, she could possibly point him out if Detective Stanley brought the pictures up here. “I don’t want to be going back down to the city,” she thought as her eyes began to close.

At the same time, Stanley and Irene were listening to the same rain, each in their room at the Cove Hotel. Irene’s mind wandered back many years, hearing her mother’s voice saying, “it’s going to rain today, make sure you and Charlotte take your umbrellas, when you go to watch the trains.” “But it’s so sunny, and we’ll be under the shelter of the platform roof,” Irene complained. They took the umbrellas anyway and were glad later when they had to walk home again in a sudden downpour. Their Dad was a porter at the station and he often walked home with them after they’d spent a couple of hours watching the trains and passengers….Irene’s eyes snapped open. Right there in her memory she saw Bernice. Younger for sure, but definitely Bernice. So she wasn’t connected with any of the cases Irene had first worked on before joining Stanley Grace. She was simply a passenger on a long ago train.

She closed her eyes again and the rest of the story came to her. Bernice had been wearing some odd clothes and Charlotte had mentioned it within their dad’s hearing. He’d told them, “she’s an odd duck that one, bit of a charmed life I reckon, always on the long-journey trains, 'chasing storms' she once said, Joe over there told me, never had much luggage, just always going where the storms were, always muttering something about a crooked nose.”

Detective Inspector Stanley Grace was propped up against several pillows making notes as the rain hammered on the roof of the hotel. They’d gone up and found the Scenic Retreat and had a chat with Ed and Sara Saunders. Ed in particular had been interested in the maps and the possibility of a granite seam under their section of the cliff. “Where did you get these?” he asked and Stanley told him about Bernice, the quarry, and a crooked nosed man, while Irene was helping Sara with slicing cake and gathering cups and plates while Sara filled the big teapot with boiling water. Irene had glimpsed Stephanie and recognised her from the photo in the cold cases file. Even after all this time, Stephanie hadn’t changed much.

Irene now decided she was in a hurry to get back to the city and really start digging around in all those notes and photos. She had a feeling the case might be about to crack a little.

Comments

  1. It must be very early Friday, as my Thursday is still weel not exactly brigth, but not dark either.
    This story gathers the threads in new, convoluted knots. I think I'll have to go back and re-read to follow all the ramling tracks and traces in this intriguing story.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Uglemor; I schedule these to publish at 1am on my Fridays. You may have to go back quite a long way to get to the beginning, I started this story back in 2016 I think and there have been other stories in between when the words suggested something different to me.

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    2. Ahh, this explains a lot ... both why Friday = Thursday, and why mr. crooked nose was unknown to me. I'll go in search of stories way back then. A bit of a bother that you do not use tags ;) It migth take me some time.

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    3. Uglemor; I don't know how to use tags, didn't learn because I never thought I would need them, but a suggestion from another commenter might help me figure it out.

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  2. I can't remember if I had read the previous story but this sounds like a good fill-in and mystery

    have a lovely day.

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    Replies
    1. lissa; you haven't read from the beginning which is way back in 2016, if you have time to trawl through my archives you might find them all, but it will take a long while. The original first chapter was called Tom's Memories but I changed it later to something else.

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  3. I remember this story. Thanks for tipping me off so I didn't listen to 10 hours of rain!

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    Replies
    1. Val; that rain might have sent you to sleep if you listened to the whole thing. I'm not sure if you were around for the very beginning of this story. I'm almost positive it began in 2016, with a chapter called Tom's Memories.

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  4. Ah the case is about to crack, I must catch up on the other pieces to it :)

    XO
    WWW

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    Replies
    1. Wisewebwoman; there's a long way to go before the case cracks, but there are chinks beginning. I'm purposely NOT using other sections already written because I'm hoping it may be a book one day.

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  5. I do hope that the case does crack, and have loved reading the pieces to it. Thank you.

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    Replies
    1. Elephant's Child; only tiny cracks so far, the case won't crack wide open for some time yet. There are pieces written that I won't post here, because I'm hoping it may become a book.

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  6. How nice when pieces fall together. I need to go back also.

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    Replies
    1. Arkansas Patti, several others have mentioned going back, so I'm going to have to do the same and let you all know the dates of different parts of it.

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  7. It's always nice when there is a solution, i can only imagine the frustration of working a case and coming to no satisfying conclusion.

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    Replies
    1. messymimi; I like solutions, but I'm not good at writing them, so there'll be quite a few more chapters as I try to work things out.

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  8. Now I need know what kind of cake did they have.
    Coffee is on

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    Replies
    1. peppylady (Dora); possibly apple and cinnamon teacake, one of my own favourites.

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  9. It would be nice at some point if you gathered all the weekly stories up and put them on a page of their own so we could start at the beginning and reread the story...it's a good one.

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    Replies
    1. only slightly confused; it would be nice, but it could take a lot of time finding them all. Of course, I could just type out my printed copies, there's about 25 "chapters"

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  10. How cool to include a soundtrack of rain to accompany our reading of this story. It added another layer of reality to your tale. Great job, as always. (And I LOVE the idea of you tagging the various parts of your stories or putting them on a separate page so it's easier for us to follow them.)

    Have a super weekend!

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  11. Susan; I don't know how to tag the pages for easy finding. I could type out my printed copies and post that, but putting it on a separate page for easy finding is also something I don't know how to do. Suggestions would be helpful.

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    1. It'd probably be easiest for your readers if you created a new page on your blog for your stories. Then you could have a tab up top that says something like "Stories" (Yeah... I'm real creative. HA!) and you could create a separate post that you can add to as you go along for each of your stories. Or you could make a separate page for each story. Either way would work well. Right off the top of my head, I don't remember exactly how I set up the page on my blog for "Hot Flashes and Cold Lemonade," but it must not have been too difficult if I did it. :) If you do a Google search on making new pages on Blogger, you should find simple directions.

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    2. Susan; I'll have a look around on the 'design' page, there might be a clue there, if not, I'll google.

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