I really ought to have been working today, but I woke up and went on Facebook and it told me it was my friend Ferda’s birthday. Well she got me a rather nice Miffy book when it was my birthday, so I thought “I’ll write her a story with her as a panda,” knowing she likes pandas, thinking it would only take about thirty minutes.

So I wrote the story, which took about ten minutes, then decided to illustrate it with some quick MS Paint-style sketches. Drawing on the computer took too long and didn’t work out well, so then I switched to wax crayons and decided to scan them in. It kind of went from there into a full-scale production, which has taken me over four hours now, including all the time putting it up on my site and making sure each page links together.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Ferda, here’s you story:

Ferda & Mark by H. Benjamin Petrie

I’ve also linked to it in the Highlights section of my site.

Also, to any readers I still have, I again apologise for not updating. I’ve had writer’s block and been busy with uni work. That’s nearly finished though, and I do have a nearly finished article to post in the next week or so.

I was the first one to reach the haunted house, because I only lived a few doors away. After I had stood there for a few minutes, admiring the flaky once-white paint on the front door, the half-boarded up windows, the long grass speckled with yellow flowers, Adam came into view preceded by a long dark shadow that mimicked his movement across the patchwork tarmac.

As I watched him come towards me I thought about how, as my Dad had said when I told him I was staying over at Adam’s tonight, it had been a while since I actually had stayed over at his house, or anyone else’s for that matter. Still, at the time, I had my interest in ghosts and the supernatural to keep me wholly occupied; an interest which was vindicated that night, the night when, even if no one really seemed to believe me, then or since, I saw a ghost.
(more…)

My name is Ben, I’m fourteen and I once saw a ghost. It was three weeks ago, in this old haunted house that stood empty at the bottom of my road for as long as I can remember. And for as long as I can remember, the place fascinated me because I’m really into ghosts and the paranormal and all that, and this place, with its dark, peeling paint, boarded up windows and overgrown front garden, looked just like a haunted house straight from Goosebumps.

Actually, I didn’t exactly see the ghost, but I know it was there. I could feel it. And I heard it. I’d take someone who knows about ghosts there to prove it, if I could, but they knocked the place down last week to make way for some housing estate, so instead, I’m writing this down, so there will be a record of ‘the ghost of Sycamore Avenue’ and of how I came to see it.

(more…)

Read Part One

“So there’s this girl,” Matt said suddenly, having taken a sip of his tea and now clasping the mug with interlocked fingertips.

Wondered why he was quiet so long. Here we go.

“She works in Sainsbury’s.”

Her.

“You wrote a story about her.”

He nodded. He always gave Viccy his stories to read. She liked guessing which bits were real and which bits he had made up.

“I gave her a rose.”

February. Valentine’s Day. Bunch of roses from Jack. Dinner out. Chocolate mousse for desert. No more or less than a girl could expect. Some time between the sheets afterwards. No more than a boy could want. Wish he was. But I get too snappy at him this time of month, always can’t keep his hands to himself. Can’t blame him. I would too, if I wasn’t. Talk to him later. See him in a couple of days.

“Oh.” (more…)

“I’m going to the toilet,” Rich said.

“Okay,” said Steph.

Rich stood and crossed the bar. As he pushed open the door to the toilet he looked back at Steph. She was sitting on a stool at a table by the window, with her fist pressed into her cheek, watching people walk by. She was pretty, in a way, but Rich had thought about breaking up with her today. He still was thinking about it. He entered the toilet.
(more…)

Sometimes she wanted to beat her fists against it. But how could one beat one’s fists against life? She threw the puzzle across the room and it splintered against the wall, sending shards of transparent plastic flying and minute silver balls skittering across the floorboards. Her stomach was cramped and it agitated her. She picked up her digital pen and drew another few lines, almost haphazardly. The window went blank. Frozen again. Need a new computer. She growled and hit the keyboard. Processor’s fault really, or the graphics card. Maybe just a new graphics card would do, cheaper. Birthday at the end of the month, could ask Daddy, or Mother.

(more…)

Jenny lay with a paperback novel open across her breast, staring at the lazily swaying leaves above her. She could hear the whine of a remote-controlled plane from across the field, changing in pitch as it banked and swerved. Beyond that came the gentler, resonating sound of a ball striking a bat; the sound of a father playing cricket with his children. On the grass next to her sat Mike with his knees drawn up into arches. He was watching a dragonfly as it flew up the incline, hovered a few feet from his face, then darted away over the trees.

“Dragonfly,” he said.

“Mm?” said Jenny.
(more…)

I knocked on Elle’s front door. The street was silent but for the distant whoosh of traffic, the calls of children in a school playground and an aeroplane passing overhead. The door opened. Elle’s brother, Nick, stood there. He wore a white t-shirt and tight-fitting black jeans with a hole in the knee. His hair was wet. He looked at me.

“Is Elle in?” I asked.

“Rob, right?”

I nodded.

“No, she’s not in,” Nick said, “I think she went to college.”

“Oh,” I said, “she doesn’t usually today.”

“No,” Nick said, “she had to hand something in or something.”

“Oh.”

I rocked back on my heels, pushed my thumbs into my jeans pockets, looked at the door-frame.

“I think she said she wouldn’t be long. Have you tried texting her?”

“I don’t have any credit.”

Nick looked past me for a moment. I turned to see a lady in a brown coat walking a long-haired dog. I turned back round.

“Do you want to come in and wait for her?” Nick asked.

(more…)

A man driving a red sports-car overtakes a funeral procession. His wife, in the passenger seat, with the seat tipped back, is in labour.

“Sorry,” he mouths silently to the driver of the hearse as he narrowly avoids an oncoming lorry.

SCENE FIVE

Harry enters hesitantly from SR and looks around.

HARRY: (To himself) I’m pretty sure I didn’t write anything about Lucy running off crying. What happened? Guess I’d better set up the next scene.

Harry drags TABLE 2 over to CSR and places it on its side to represent Esmerelda’s bedroom wall. He also moves one of the chairs a little way behind the table and faces it towards the audience. Then Harry exits SL. Esmerelda enters SR. She sits in the chair and mimes combing her hair as if looking in a mirror. Horatio enters SL and mimes throwing stones at Esmerelda’s bedroom window. Hearing the sound Esmerelda rises, walks to the table, and throws open the ‘window’.

HORATIO: Oh beauty! Oh Emma-

ESMERELDA: Esmerelda.

HORATIO: Oh Esmerelda! I apologise for the lateness of the hour, but I had to see you again. Can I come in?

ESMERELDA: My parents are asleep and I’m getting ready for bed.

HORATIO: Do they despise me, your parents, like Juliet’s despised Romeo’s? Can they not see the beauty of our love?

ESMERELDA: I have not yet told them. It’s all happening so fast (aside) without any real plot development.

(more…)