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Candlelight
- 30th October 2017
- Category : Uncategorised
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Our Story of the Week is a haunting story from the writer Greg Forrester.
Greg started writing in secondary school, producing four chapters of a clear Lord of the Rings rip-off, that, ‘thankfully’, no longer exists. Since then, he’s continued to pursue his passion, earning creative writing degrees from the University of Sunderland (undergraduate) and Newcastle University (postgraduate).
Greg’s writing has been greatly inspired by his favourite books – from One Hundred Years of Solitude to His Dark Materials, from Skellig to The Shadow of the Wind. He builds his magical realism stories from his own unique experiences and perception of the world.
In Candlelight, Greg weaves a tale of family traditions and disillusionment. As this haunting story illustrates, some things really are better left in the dark.
Enjoy!
‘I can hear my brothers, my uncles, my great-uncles hammering away in the mines twenty floors beneath us. Candlelight toys with the dining room and for a second my world becomes dark.
Grandpa begins, spewing out the same rhetoric he does every time the three of us are together. His hands are stained from years tending to the oils; candlewax hangs like dew from the hairs on his arms. ‘Today is a great day, a momentous day.’ He looks straight at me. ‘Charlie, lad, it is a day you will never forget.’
I don’t have to close my eyes to imagine Sarah’s screams at the far end of the hallway.
Every family has their own traditions, their own little quirks that make sense only to them, and we’re no different, though perhaps we take ours a little more seriously than most. This is how it started.’ Read more…