Victoria Pearson Archives - Victoria Pearson

30 Day September Glow Up Challenge

Introducing my 30 Day September Glow-Up Challenge, designed to get us feeling happier, healthier and fitter in time for spooky season.

I’m feeling loads better in terms of my shoulder injury recovery (I managed a lot of climbing with youngest in the park today, and I’m feeling confident I can handle pole class on Tuesday). It would be easy to slip back into being a bit sedentary now that I’m no longer in pain though, so don’t really need to continue the physio (I am going to be continuing with it for a while anyway, to be sure it’s healed, but the pain isn’t there to prompt me to anymore).

The Rot

The ice caps are melting. The humans knew about it for ages, but, despite all their gadgets and inventions, they’re slow to learn. That used to work in our favour.

Our people weren’t worried when old diseases, long since extinct, started reappearing again. We are small in number, and solitary creatures, so there was still plenty of blood to go around. They breed so quickly, even if a few million were wiped out by plagues, there were still billions more. And it’s not like we can catch their diseases, not even if they live in the blood we drink. It wasn’t our problem.

Resolution

As you probably know, I’m not really one to make a resolution. And don’t get me started on New Year, New You! marketing emails. This poem is more of a promise, really, to myself. Maybe make this your resolution too.

Resolution

My only quest 
for the new year
is to hunt my happy

I will seek out my song
and find the light that reflects 
from the broken dark
I will slay my demons
with a sword of laughter

I will not seek to be more than I am
to please anyone but myself
Instead I will learn to love 
every facet of who I already am

And know that is enough

My resolution this year
is to live fully 
rebelliously joyful

And taste every moment.

Invisible

I don’t really know where this story came from. I guess since it’s Solstice today, I am pondering the nature of the festive season, and how it impacts invisible people. It doesn’t have a happy ending, but neither did The little Match Girl, which heavily inspires this story I’m, at least temporarily, naming Invisible.

Invisible

Jack is as old as the wind, and a little older than the hills, and his beard could be no whiter.

His touch is cold enough to kill, so he bundles himself in thick furs and hide mittens. He won’t risk it happening again.

He can see her face even now, the invisible little match girl, lighting tiny flames to keep the cold away.

A Moment

Is A Moment a piece of flash fiction? Is it a scene in a much longer story? Is it a poem trapped in a cage of prose? I’ve no idea. But sit with me a moment and I’ll tell it to you, and you can decide.

Barefoot, she stands in the snow under the neon orange light of the lamppost, fingerless gloves hanging in tatters to hands that are gnarled by years of toil. She draws on the damp toothpick roll-up ferociously, drawing the thin blue smoke into her lungs as if it can warm her from the inside out.

Once Bitten

She can feel me watching her. Her unease has been rising steadily over the 20 minutes I’ve been tracking her, I can hear her heart speeding up, her breath catching a little, the pulse in her delicate, delicious neck throbbing a little faster from all the way across the street, 50 yards or so behind her.

Blue and Green

We labour under the midday sun, stumbling over the cracks in the parched earth. There is never enough water.

They say this was an ocean once – water as far as you can see in any direction. I can’t picture it. All we have here are the bleached skeletons of long dead beasts that roamed this place long ago. And the plastic. Everywhere the plastic.

TBR – Mid-Week Flash 106

My 11th hour offering for Week 106 of Miranda Kate’s mid-week flash challenge. This weeks photo prompt is of a bookstore/library in Yangzhou, eastern China, taken by photographer Shao Feng. If you want to join in with mid week flash, The General Guidelines can be found here, or you can join the Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

TBR

When you first die, no one explains what has happened. You’re just in a queue, like you’re waiting at a bus stop. No one speaks. No one makes eye contact. So you wait.

Just when you think you can’t shuffle your feet or shift your weight anymore and you’re seriously considering tutting or something, you reach the gates.

Character Interview

Gloria Nelson and Dr Charles Prinze

This character interview originally appeared on Suz Korb‘s blog, and it was a tricky write, because obviously Gloria and Charles are not at liberty to discuss their job, so wouldn’t take part in an interview like this. I really liked the dynamic between them in it though, so I thought that despite the obvious clumsiness of the opening, it was worth putting up here for readers that like these little extras. it contains very minor spoilers for A Tale of Two Princes, and is set before A Tale of Two Princes but after my current work in progress, working title: Malcolm The Were-Fox.
Victoria

Today we will be joined by Dr Charles Prinze and social worker Gloria Nelson, both of whom work for an oddities and anomalies hospital. I’m not entirely certain what that is, so I am hoping to find out more in this interview.

The couple arrive, late and fairly breathless, to the cafe we are meeting at, still dressed for work. Dr Prinze is in his white lab coat and green scrubs trousers. He looks too young to be in charge of an entire ward, despite his three day stubble and the hint of grey at his temples. Ms Nelson is in head to toe blue scrubs, and she has several pens sticking out of her afro. I’m not sure if she is aware they are there or if she has forgotten. Dr Prinze looks serious, tired, like he has just come off a night shift. Ms Nelson is his opposite, bright smile and a bounce in her step like coming here is the highlight of her day. I get the immediate impression that her smile is as much a part of uniform as her scrubs.

I have been pre-warned that their time with me is short today, so as soon as they sat down and coffee has been ordered, we dive straight in.

Tell me about your job?

Dr Charles Prinze: Well, we work in a very special hospital called-
Gloria Nelson: Wait, are we allowed to say the name of the hospital?
Charles: You don’t think we should?
Gloria: Best to err on the safe side, I’d say. You know what they’re like.
Charles: I thought the rules had been relaxed for this interview?
Gloria: Well obviously. But still, we don’t want to break any confidentiality rules or anything. Perhaps it’s safest to say that we work in a hospital that deals with aliens, supernatural beings and other oddities, like they said we could, and leave it at that.

Gloria: Oh yes. Take Malcolm for example. Lovely lad, more humane than any human I have ever met, but he definitely comes under the supernatural umbrella, being a were-fox and all.
Charles: And then there’s the ETs. All aliens that want to seek political asylum on earth have to be quarantined first. It’s our job to look after their health care and screen them for obvious signs of disease or parasites before they can move into the asylum centre.