Rebecca's Rambles…

For literary lovers November is one of the most memorable months of the year: NanoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I was asked if I wanted to be a part of this fantastic project, and of course I said yes!

The idea is that a group of eight bloggers will contribute one chapter each using Rory’s Story Cubes to guide the narrative. You can read the first chapter from blogger, Sonny and Luca. Here is my contribution of the second chapter:

Chapter two

The house, ‘our house’. We’d only been dating for the past seven months or so, but it had gotten serious very quickly. We met in Area 47 and she was a lot like me; a deterrent of the pollutionators, sharing very much the same vision. Since the great lightning war men and women didn’t quite interact the way they once did so this chance meeting was what we both coined ‘fate’. Everything had completely shifted since that war, including the laws of the land.

I felt my wrist but it was bare. This is odd, very odd, I never take it off. My identity signet ring was also missing. Strange. A clap of thunder rumbled in the sky; I had to get back soon, before the curfew. But how on earth had I ended up in the waste land? Or what seemed like the waste land. The bin man had been of no help. We had to call them men but we all knew them as something different. They were never made to be helpful or polite, but now, how I wished you could hit playback on one of them and retrace my steps. How did I get here? So many questions and no answers; just a thumping headache and a smelly leather jacket for warmth.

I opened up the notebook once again and…

This is daft! How can I make sense of the old human way of writing, it is all gibberish to me. Though I can understand some of their drawings. The creased pages all have some kind of symbol, or marking. It was two small theatre faces. I’d studied these in the early years and apparently a man called Shakespeare had influenced the arts and drama culture of forgotten London. Royal characters living in castles and lots of other (what I considered) nonsense. This world was certainly no fairy-tale now. Who on earth owns this? Everything had been removed since those days and been kept under strict lock and key. One thing was certain, they’d be wanting it back.

Zzz…Zzz…The worn leather jacket was glowing a dim green colour and vibrating furiously. Anonymous. A faint whispering voice, female, “meet me at the sunny face archway. Use the light on this phone to signal your arrival. Head towards magnet town if you don’t know the way, don’t speak to anyone.”

That certainly made no sense. For one, these old mobile phones weren’t meant to exist anymore let alone work! I put one foot in front of the other and followed the sign.

***

Make sure you visit the Waterstones website and check out the 2013 book shortlist from the finest authors.

Find the next chapters here..

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight