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Clearing out the Cobwebs

I sensed the presence of something else.  The  inside  room of the Pit was a very strange room. With only one window - opening to the inside of our flat, and no view of the outside - it possessed a mood of staleness and abandonment. Mould was still creeping up the walls, a problem which had driven Tommy to live in the lounge instead of this cramped box; a problem the landlord still hadn’t resolved. It was a miserable prism. And now, the floor was a chaos of feathers. My amazement at just how many feathers are stuffed into a pillow was quickly squashed under the eerie sense that there was someone else in the room. I shivered. The Pit itself had grown a lot darker. Haunted, I was sure of it. Things had become strange and eery outside the feather room even; unsettling. I didn’t like to think what had happened in this flat before our coming, or what was at the bottom of the gaping hole to nothing that was caged just outside our front door. Whatever it was, it had stolen itself into our
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The Dunedin Writer's Walk

After a night of no sleep, I emerged from of the damp depths of the Pit.   Dunedin was in its quietest hour of the night. And yet, it was calling me out before the peeping dawn. For what? I wondered, slinking down into the lamp-lit street, slipping from shadow to shadow to the Octagon. The centre of Dunedin. The mystery I hadn’t yet cracked. For an answer, perhaps? I was seeking an answer to the problems I had created for myself - the downward-spiral that was my finances and creative endeavours. And I trusted in Dunedin. I trusted in its magic tricks and mysteries. I believed I would find my answer here, hidden in the city I held dear.  The statue at the Otagon’s crown held my attention. I always noticed this man sitting there, nonchalant in the  centre  of town. And yet I had never stopped to wonder who he was or how he ended up there, immortalised in Dunedin’s most curious place. A seagull landed on his head and squatted there, looking oddly suspicious. It cocked its head.  Why i

Writing the Writing Story

I was 10 years old when I made the Wish, my feet sunken in the sand of Omaha Beach, eyes searching for the end of the sea. It was a place of wishes, Omaha beach, and it had nurtured me since I was tiny and new to the world. It had fed my imagination, invited me to dream. My whole life lay before me, as vast and mysterious as the ocean that was lapsing near my ankles, and I didn’t stop wondering where I wanted to go in that adventure. That day, the Wish was born. And it felt right. I carried it back down the scraggly, sandy walkway from the dunes to the wooden deck of the Bach, and went inside after hosing my feet. Carefully, I unclipped my black journal and began weaving the Wish onto the sand-coloured paper with my most treasured pencil. I was only ten years old, but there was no need to wait until I had grown up to start fulfilling my wish. A story was already blooming in my mind, and I felt the need to write it.   Sadly, as the years passed by, that Wish faded to a whisper. But jus