DRABBLE TALES FROM A NEW DRABBLIST
What a great pleasure it is to introduce the wonderful Candy Ray, especially as she has only recently commenced writing Drabbles.
Let's start with her interesting bio.
I grew up in London and moved to the south to study when I was 25. For a long time now I've been living on the south coast with my small family and at the moment I work part time . In 2014 After becoming interested in chaos magic I started to write serious occult fiction: novellas, short stories, flash fiction and the occasional drabble. I keep my identity secret and write under the pen name Candy Ray. My hobbies are visiting parks, beaches and outdoor markets, joining discussions on internet forums, and some reading- though not as much as a writer ought to do.
It's Drabble time folks.
Flood Defences
Just as summer is starting, the beach has been closed. I’ll have to find another place to go.
I step into a time machine and visit Rome, trying to keep my eye on the exquisitely designed temples instead of on gladiators being made to fight to the death. Then I jump into a space ship and soar to another galaxy where I inspect blobby people with arms like tweezers. Next, I dive to the bottom of the sea and follow a squid riding a plankton raft towards cherry pink coral reefs.
I still like the beach across the road best.
Cyber
After I did up the button on my cardigan, I kept my finger on the button. By following my finger, I threaded my whole body through the buttonhole. The fabric pinched my head as it jerked through to the cardigan’s lining, where the long row of buttons formed a control panel leading straight into cyberspace. By pushing the first button I could go to Google, the second led to YouTube, and so on with all the others which took me to different sites.
I’ve seen enough now, so I am going to come out through the speaker on your computer.
Monster Eyes
Witches can see ghosts, and ghosts can tell whether someone is a witch. But zombies don’t see anyone: they only smell the flesh of the living. Vampires scent blood from a long way away, like sharks, so they too don’t actually need to see. The yeti, being an abominable snowman, is snow blind, while skeletons have dry and empty eye-sockets.
I suppose all these speculations are rather a waste of time. Whichever creature I decide to dress up as for the fancy-dress party, there is no need for me to go invisible. I might as well let everyone see me.
Snapshots
On holiday the family always photographed one another. They posed next to loved ones with a fixed smile and sometimes with an arm held stiffly around their shoulders, standing in front of the scenery.
I photographed a lone seagull high in the sky with blue reaching to the edge of the frame, and a dainty Japanese water garden in closeup, greenery filling it right to the edge. I lay on the ground and held the camera above my head to snap a young tree covered in pink blossom.
They looked at mine and said, "there is nothing in your photos."
Festival Day
It was a festival day and I longed to see what was going on. A stage with music playing, blocked by the crowd standing at the front. Stalls covered in brightly coloured shapes labelled ‘hand-made crafts’, and crowds thronging around them- carousel, bouncy swing for the children called a spider’s web. Teenagers pedalling furiously on pedal-power bikes to fuel the generator.
But whenever I try to move closer, the wire mesh bars my way. There are no special days for me – every day is the same, sitting on the same perches, in the aviary at the centre of the park.
My books are here
