The Poisoner's Kitchen

I've been entering local and national writing contests lately. Most have hundreds of entrants, and little hope of winning. But that's okay, because winning isn't my main objective.

These contests have been a great exercise in writing outside my comfort zone. I am a slow writer and the contests have deadlines that are anywhere from a day to two weeks, to a couple months. So I am learning to write faster and without fretting over every word, punctuation, or idea.

Almost all of the contests provide a prompt or theme, which helps stretch my imagination, come up with ideas very quickly, and find new ways of thinking. 

"The Poisoner's Kitchen" arose from a contest where the prompt was given the same day of submission. 

The story had to start in a kitchen in the early morning. The character has to fake a skill where the results turn out much better than expected. 300-400 words.

I meditated upon the prompt while I did the dishes. I wrote a first draft in 2 hours, went over it in my head while I walked the dog and did random housework. I came up with an ending, edited as quickly as I could and sent it off before picking up kids.

It was so gratifying and had a lot of fun writing it. Here it is, in its thus-far, unedited form:

The Poisoner's Kitchen    

Hanging from the low-slung rafters were herbs, like in any kitchen. But here, there were also drying toads and purple-headed flowers.

The girl’s mistress was ailing in bed with something their concoctions had not yet cured. From her bed, she gave the girl instructions to only mix Her Majesty’s infertility tincture, nothing more.

So when the short, round, lady’s maid glided in, looking on her with an imperious gaze, Marguerite should not have taken the leather gloves.

“On a day as hot as it is, I can have them ready and dried just before Vespers,” she told the maid.

“No, I will return at half past None,” the porcine woman said. “And my mistress demands they not to take effect immediately. It must take slow.”

Marguerite wanted to correct the Florentine’s French, but she held her tongue and began at once to think of some other way to get one over on the Florentine lady’s maid upon her return.

Marguerite had never laced gloves before. She knew it was a tricky business, but she had no desire to be sent packing back to the Provencal countryside to care for her drunk uncle and his dirty, lice-ridden brood. Besides, she knew how pitiless and brutal the Italian could be-and how impatient.

As soon as the maid left, she used the small iron tongs to take the digitalis flakes from the waxed paper. Was she to crush and sprinkle it? Or make a liquid attar of it? She made an educated guess and did her best. She even rubbed the gloves with jasmine oil for a pleasing smell, careful all the time never to touch the gloves herself.

She hung them out to dry where the sun beat down.

At half past None she went out to check on the gloves. They still looked dark with dampness in spots. She reached out a hand and felt the glove was just dry enough.

The Serpent Queen’s maid returned to find the girl from the Provencal countryside frothing at the mouth, taking her last gasp.

“Ragazza folle,” she hissed.

Coming Home-Short Fiction

 COMING HOME:

December 2020 Writing Contest: Hallmark Christmas Romance entry
and a winner of the Westerville Arts Council 'Celebrate the Arts' writing contest

The house looked alien to her after thirty-eight years away.

The sparse, yellowing grass and stunted palm trees seemed outlandish compared to the cold, inorganic habitat she had gotten used to. The yucca plants looked healthy and still grew out of the pebbled beds along the walkway.

A Christmas wreath hung on the door. The smell of the pine assailed her senses, so unused was she to little more than the acid-sharp smell of metal and the chlorine-tinged scent of regulated air.

Like her, the house did not look like it had aged almost four decades.

Christmas lights twinkled in sequence around the windows, and while they filled her chest with warmth, they also amused her, whisking her right back to the Georgiana and the blinking lights that communicated with the crew. Of course, the effect of the festive-colored bulbs was markedly different from the glaring, red warning of the Vital Systems Alert indicator, or the multicolor blinking of the air pressure sensors.

She had tried to make the Georgiana a temporary home. She had taken a few mementos, cozy footie pajamas, and even some artwork done by her nieces. But she missed unexpected things like the feel of carpet beneath her feet, weather, and variations of color.

But it was Jiro she missed the most.

She never expected their separation to be so painful. They were used to long intervals apart. After all, the second year and a half of their relationship had been long distance. When they reunited, it was always as if no time at all had passed.

They had met at the University of Kyoto during her international fellowship program. He was marine biology, she was physics. Days in Kyoto parks, temples, and the university libraries. Nights sharing kaseiki ryori, and reading to each other on the pillow-laden futon in his apartment.

She lifted her arm to knock at the door, but she changed her mind and grabbed the door handle—another strange sensation, to open a door manually. Her legs weakened at the emotions roiling inside her, and she reached out for the wall. It wasn't only the return to normal gravity that made her unsteady on her feet.

She remembered their first kiss. She had thought it would never come. He was so shy, such a gentleman, not like the men she had dated back home in the U.S. They were at a sushi bar, nestled in a booth side by side. He reached for the wasabi. It may have been her who leaned in to make his reach a kiss. That first kiss, and the way he nuzzled her cheek afterward, sustained her through every absence thereafter.

The length of the deep space survey mission meant six years of cryosleep each way. She told him she would understand if he couldn’t wait for her. But he had. She had watched him age through the video messages he sent for each week of her sleep. She relished those images and his one-sided conversations during the many years of the mission’s blackout communication. When she woke up the second time, another six years later, his salt and pepper hair had made him look that much more distinguished, the crease above his left eyebrow had deepened to be that much more endearing. They remained who they were in each other’s eyes.

He had stayed in this house waiting for her despite the drying landscape around him, their friends moving to the ever-dwindling greener lands, and the places with more abundant water.

She walked the hallway, passing the antique Chinoiserie mirror, the Edo-period wall panel they had chosen together before leaving Japan. She paused at a framed photo of her and Jiro, taken just before she left. Their brindle mutt, Nova, sat between them. On the console table was a flowerless vase, some unopened mail, and a photo of Jiro and a new dog, Atlas. A dog she had never met. Further down the hall hung another photo; Atlas graying around the muzzle, Jiro with lines between his brows and crisscrossing the hands that cupped the dog’s face.

She could see the flickering light of the fire from the den, hear its crackle and pop. She imagined she felt its warmth already kissing her skin.

She turned into the room, and there, sitting on the ratty brocade loveseat, was an old man. There was no denying it. His skin was sallow and sagged, but his dimples were just the same, as was the crinkle above his left eyebrow. He stared back at her with the same sense of wonder she was sure she exhibited.

“Mallory?” Jiro whispered as she turned into the room.

“Yes. It’s me.”

And before he could rise, she raced, on still-unsteady legs, to throw herself beside him and into his open arms.

This house was a vessel, as sure as the Georgiana had been. It was in his arms that was home.

Short Story Woes

I wrote "The Ruins" many years ago and I loved it. 
It is about a middle-aged British couple, Ted and Peggy, who travel to India on holiday in the early 1970s. The setting is primarily Chittorgarh Fort in Rajasthan. Chittor Fort is a beautiful, massive complex that rises above the plains and spans almost four miles, encompassing a village, the remains of a palace, several temples, and many towers.

The couple experienced a disturbing tragedy a number of years before that continues to affect their lives and culminates in an emotional incident among the crumbling ruins of the fort.


I worked hard on "The Ruins." I submitted it and it didn't get accepted. It didn't even garner good rejections where they encourage you to make some changes or try again later.
Fast forward some years and I am part of another writing group and I have to submit something for critique. 
My story goes over well enough and the main suggestions from five different people skirted around the same issue--I love when that happens! It makes revising easier to know where the problem lies. But I still have a lot of work to do exploring the emotional arc of the two main characters.

And... I'm not so in love with it anymore. It's probably on its 5th draft by now. 

Hopefully you don't know these people:)

The characters are like grandparents; I love them, but do I really want to sit and listen to their stories and advice and put up with the weird medicinal smells emanating from their bedroom? 
Or, maybe it's like a marriage, where you forget what drew you to a person so many years before and maybe you don't even really know the person anymore.

However, I made a commitment and put a lot of work into this story and I don't want to abandon dear Ted and Peggy. So, I will persevere and attempt to figure out where their story leads.