Guest Author Pierre Arsenault of Moncton, New Brunswick

Welcome to part three of the New Brunswick authors series for August and September.

As well as writing, Pierre Arsenault is also a freelance cartoonist. He resides in Moncton, NB. He is the author of two collections of short stories. The first - Dark Tales for a Dark Night was co-authored with Angella Jacob. His second is titled - Sleepless Nights.












Pierre is sharing one of his short stories this week. You never know what will greet you when you journey out in the middle of the night.

Garnett’s Gift

By Pierre C Arseneault

All rights reserved

www.mysteriousink.ca

www.pcatoons.com

 

Garnett sat alone in an empty room. Its only content being a low-backed soft stool which he now sat on and a weird oval table. The flat topped table had a mushroom like shape and stem-like leg in its center. The entire room looked like it was made of strange hard off-white plastic and yet it had some give to it when Garnett pushed his fingers into it. He had awakened in this room with no idea of how he had gotten here. Groggy at first, it took a while before he noticed there were no exits. No doors. The walls were seamless as was the stool and table. He couldn’t tell where they begun and the floor ended. It was as if the entire room was made of a seamless plastic. With no visible vents, he wondered how he was still breathing. Where was he? He remembered getting out of bed as quietly as possible, trying not to wake his wife. The dogs were barking and the cows were agitated. Something was wrong. Perhaps coyote but with their four dogs roaming the farm, they had never had any predators come close before. In the same blue chequered pyjama bottoms and white t-shirt he wore now, he had wandered out onto the porch in his slippers with his large halogen flashlight. Last year’s Christmas gift from the kids came in handy at times but he appreciated it a lot at that very moment. He remembers seeing some of the cows all huddled together against the fence. They were restless, milling about, pushing and shoving to get as close to the fence as possible. He couldn’t see the rest of the herd but he knew some were in the barn. He could hear them. The rest were most likely towards the opposite side of the enclosure. The hairs had stood up on the back of his neck and his arms. He could hear the dogs barking but couldn’t see them. He remembered calling the dogs but they never came. He remembered his sight becoming blurred and his head beginning to spin. The last thing he recalled was removing his glasses and struggling to focus as he saw the fast approaching ground as he passed out. Then darkness.

He awoke sitting in the strange chair, but still groggy, he fell out of it and quickly found himself on the cold floor. Dazed, he lay on the floor for a long time. Although in this room, time felt irrelevant. No window to see if it was day or night. Complete stillness at first. Until he regained his senses that was and then his mind began to take over. What is this place? Why was he here? His mind settled on the only logical thing he could think of. Aliens. He had seen that television show where they explored what they claimed was proof that aliens had visited Earth long ago. Although being a logical man, he never took it seriously but he always thought the theories were fascinating. But he wasn’t ready to meet one. This he thought as he got up and sat in the chair, leaning on the table with his head resting on his arms. This fact was still running through his mind as he heard a soft, subtle sound coming from before him. It was the first sound he had heard that was not of his creation in the hours he had been in this blank space. Confusion struck him until he saw a bulge forming in the floor across the table from where he sat. The bulge rose almost as tall as he before a seam appeared in it. When the bulge began opening, he could see a pale pink flesh-like bulge emerging from it. What he soon realized was the hairless head of the creature that was emerging before him. It took a moment before he realized he was no longer breathing as he had held his breath the entire time the man-like creature had emerged. It wasn’t green as he half expected but a pale pink. It wore no clothes and had a soft glow about it. Its slim face had very large oval eyes with large pitch-black pupils and silver irises. It looked to have a slim, long mouth and what looked like nostrils even though it had no nose. It had a thin body with thin neck, arms and legs. The bulge in the floor receded leaving this new creature sitting in its own seamless chair.

Was he dreaming he wondered? Had he watched too much Ancient Aliens that it now affected his sleep? Only for some reason he knew this was no dream. He could now feel a sudden presence in his mind. The alien being tilted his head slightly and seemed to smile softly as it gazed at Garnett.

[What is your name, man from the water star?]

He heard the alien speak but yet his mouth had not moved. He heard it but was it really with his ears? It felt more like he heard him with his mind.

Somehow he felt compelled to answer. “Garnett. Garnett McGraw. I’m not dreaming am I?”

[No-No you are not,] replied the alien using only his mind to communicate.

The voice had a soft and soothing feeling to it that he couldn’t understand.

“Why am I here? What do you want from me?” asked Garnett. He felt anger within him but yet he couldn’t raise his voice even when he tried.

[Your kind are dangerous, Garnett. Did you know that?]

“My kind?” asked Garnett, knowing full well what the strange being meant.

[Your kind fights each other for resources you should all be sharing. You all inhabit the same water based star,] said the alien. [Yet, you fight for things that belong to none of you.]

“Yes. Yes, I suppose some of us do,” replied Garnett.

[Some,] replied the alien. [You kill each other because you like different things.]

“I don’t understand what you want?” replied Garnett.

[My kind wants to destroy your kind,] replied the alien as his head tilted even more as it watched its prisoner with curiosity. As if he waited for a reaction.

“Why?” asked Garnett.

[My kind believes your kind to be a danger to all the others in what you would call the solar system.]

Garnett was a simple farmer but was no fool. He held degrees

in veterinary medicine and always had a fascination for politics until he had come to the conclusion that they were all corrupt. At least that was what he now believed after watching his fellow farmers struggle to stay in business. Not having to call in expensive vets to look after his dairy and beef cows saved his farm a lot of money and helped him stay in business. He was smart in many ways and knew the alien was right.

“You plan to invade us?”

[No need,] replied the alien creature as he straightened his head and squinted a little. [We can destroy your world from far away.]

“How?” asked Garnett.

[Your star cannot sustain life without water. We would simply take it all away.]

Garnett sat still for a moment looking down at his hands as they rung at each other. He fiddled with his wedding ring like he often did when deep in thought.

“Have you done this before?” Garnett asked while still looking down at the table. Something told him they had and they were not bluffing.

[Yes,] replied the alien as his eyes grew even wider. [Yes, we have had to destroy three stars before. But not before trying to save them.]

“I don’t understand,” replied Garnett. “Save them how?”

[We visit stars. We try and help the ones who live there. Teach them peace.]

“But yet you destroyed three?” asked Garnett.

[Yes. We had to. They had begun to venture out in the solar system with weapons of war.]

Garnett stood up and walked away from the table, staring at a blank wall as he spoke.

“You destroyed them before they could destroy you.”

[Yes. They would have attacked all other stars with life, fearing what they don’t understand.]

“And now it’s our turn?” asked Garnett. “You’re going to destroy us too?”

[Your kind is on the verge of venturing out from your star. We can’t let you do that. You are too dangerous.]

Garnett turned to face the alien. “But if you destroy our world. Without trying to negotiate peace first, doesn’t that make you even worse than us?”

[As I said before, we have tried. We have sent ambassadors of peace to your star. They were all killed by your kind.]

Garnett slowly made his way to the table and sat down again.

“That’s a lie,” he said even though somehow he knew it wasn’t. “There would be evidence of such a thing happening and there isn’t.”

[Actually there is much evidence but your kind refuses to see it. Your kind always grows fearful, always killing what your kind cannot comprehend. We left you alone for thousands of your years, no longer interfering in your affairs only to watch you become worse with time.]

“It's human nature,” replied Garnett. “Maybe you should kill us all,” he said as he looked down at the table again while fiddling with his wedding ring again. “Just don’t kill my Emma. My Sadie and my Danny.”

The creature knew this man-creature spoke of his family. They always did. These water-star creatures who call themselves humans always begged to save the ones they loved. Not for the others of his star that they did not know. Not at first anyway. The creature saw nothing different or special in this one who called himself Garnett.

[The star will be destroyed and all who are on it,] replied the alien.

“Then bring me back before you do so I can say goodbye,” said Garnett as a tear ran down his face. He wiped it away as if ashamed to show weakness before this God-awful being. 

[We cannot bring you back just yet,] said the alien creature.

Garnett bowed down his head as a feeling of helplessness washed over him as he broke down. He sobbed as the creature watched in curiosity. Garnett looked up before he spoke. His voice filled with so much emotion that it cracked.

“You can’t destroy us now. Danny just got accepted to veterinary college and Sadie is starting high school.”

[Your kind is destined for destruction,] replied the alien. [Our task is to prevent you from destroying others in what you call the solar system.]

“Bring me back then,” replied Garnett. “I want to be destroyed with the rest of my kind.”

[Why?] asked the alien. [Why would you desire your own destruction?] The alien tilted his head to the side and had that squint of what Garnett could only guess was curiosity.

“I don’t belong here,” said a frustrated Garnett. For the first time he felt the ability to raise his voice in anger. “I want to die with my family.”

The alien said nothing as he watched the human lower his head and shed more tears. He waited a moment as Garnett composed himself somewhat.

[What if you could save your family? What if you could save your star?]

“How?” asked Garnett as tears flowed steadily.

The alien turned its attention away from Garnett for the first time and looked towards the blank wall to his right. Garnett looked at the blank wall with curiosity before realizing that the alien was most likely conversing with another one of his kind outside of this off-white plastic prison.

Before Garnett, a slit appeared in the table. From it, slowly emerging was what looked to Garnett like a small off-white shot glass filled to the brim with a dark blue powder. Once it was on the table, the slit vanished as if it had never been.

[Some of my kind believes that some of yours have begun a sort of revolution. That your kind could possibly know peace someday.]

“Is that why you brought me here?” asked Garnett. “What am I supposed to do?”

[We brought you here to offer you a chance to save your star. My kind wants to wait another year before deciding whether or not to destroy your star.]

“A year?” asked Garnett.

[One of our years.] The alien looked down at the glass on the table as if thinking for the first time since they had begun the conversation. [I believe that would be more than three hundred of your star years.]

Garnett wiped his tear-stained face with the sleeve of his t-shirt but said nothing.

[You need only drink the blue fluid to save your star.]

Garnett looked at the blue powder in the plastic glass. “What is it?”

[It is your sacrifice,] replied the alien in a soft tone. [Your demise will prove your kind can be unselfish. It is required so those on your star can live.]

Garnett reached for the glass but paused just before he touched it. “You’re telling me if I eat this powder shit that you won’t destroy earth?”

[If you make that sacrifice then we will spare your star from destruction, yes.]

“But this will kill me?”

[Yes!]

“How do I know you will not destroy us anyway?” Garnett picked up the glass and watched as the powder turned into a liquid before his very eyes. The cup was filled to the brim, yet when he tilted it slightly the liquid remained flush to the brim, not spilling an ounce.

[Your choice is to die along with them or for them,] replied the alien. [There are no other choices.]

Garnett took a deep breath and hoisted the glass as if making a toast at a wedding. “My gift to mankind then. To my Sadie, Danny and Emma.”

Tears flowed as he placed the cup to his lips and drank the dark blue liquid in one gulp. He set the cup down and opened his mouth to speak but found he couldn’t. The whites of his eyes were the first to turn a dark blue while the rest of him followed. He looked at his hands as they turned a dark shade of blue. The creature reached across the table and placed a long pale pink finger in Garnett’s head as if his flesh was now semi liquid. Garnett felt his body become heavy. He no longer drew breath as he felt he had no need to.

The alien closed his eyes for the first time and Garnett saw in his mind now. He saw an older grey haired man walking amongst cows leading a young calf into a barn. The old man was his son Danny. He saw an older woman; her hair died an unnatural shade of brown, trying to mask the ever increasing wrinkles she bore as she stood before a classroom full of young impressionable children. The children watched in awe as she explained today’s lessons in grammar. Sadie, his daughter would become a teacher after all. He saw an old woman sitting in a rocker, knitting as she listened to the television. His wife Emma would outlive him and her second husband as well and become a grandmother to four beautiful children. He saw the milk cartons from his very own dairy cows with his picture on them asking if anyone has seen this man.

 

Garnett McGraw.

Missing since May 19^th 2014.

Reward offered for information that will help find this man.

 

The last thing he saw in his mind was his young son pick up the dimly lit flashlight from the ground where he had dropped it when they took him.  

The End

 

Thank you Pierre for that clever story.

Watch next week as we continue with New Brunswick authors and Lockie Young returns to the Scribbler with one of his entertaining short stories.

Guest author Chuck Bowie of Fredericton, New Brunswick.

The South Branch Scribbler presents it's second guest in the New Brunswick authors series for August and September.

Chuck Bowie graduated from the University of New Brunswick in Canada with a Bachelor Degree in Science. He lives on the East Coast of Canada, an hour North and East of Maine. Growing up as an air force brat, his writing is influenced by the study of human nature and how people behave, habits he picked up as his family moved nineteen times in his first twenty one years. Chuck loves food, wine, music and travel and all play a role in his work.

 His writing will often draw upon elements of these experiences to round out his characters and plotlines. Chuck is involved in the world of music, supporting local musicians, occasionally playing with them and always celebrating their successes. Because he enjoys venting as much as the next fellow, Chuck will at times share his thoughts with a brief essay, some of which can be found on his website. http://chuckbowie.ca

He is working through the fourth novel in the suspense-thriller series: Donovan: Thief For Hire. His newest is entitled Steal It All, and follows Three Wrongs and AMACAT. He is now writing the fourth, as-yet untitled.

Chuck is married, with two adult musician sons. He and his wife Lois live in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Email: chuck.bowie33@gmail.com

 

Following is an excerpt from Amacat:

 

                                                Chapter One

                                         Prince Edward Island

 

A single track of sunshine elbowed its way through the crack in the curtains, creating a warming sundial effect on the pickled hardwood cottage floor. Peggyand John Whiteway awoke to their perfect Prince Edward Island morning. Johntried to offer up a ‘Good morning darling,’ but the ensuing crackle of his voicemade him pause and change the greeting to an accusation: ‘You got me drunk lastnight!’ He couldn’t muster the requisite indignity so the words became just…words. Instead, he peeked inside the coverlet and silently thanked his wife foragreeing to his ‘no pajamas’ rule while on vacation.

The shower was splendid. He loved a long, lingering shower—he was averaging two a day this week in an effort to keep the beach salt off. And theowners of the property, bless ‘em, had dropped off another wicker basket with acarafe of coffee, fresh croissants, and a map to a different island destination. They had done so every morning so far; he had casually mentioned it to a neighboringcottager and thus knew it was a perk the folks next door didn’t receive, whichmade the treat even sweeter. It was the best vacation John had ever had. There’s something special about the simple pleasures.

“Honey, don’t knock the simple pleasures,” he called out over the spray of steaming water.

In the background the cell phone was jacked up on the docking station. It was The Hold Steady, playing Barely Breathing. Her son Aaron had loaded up Peggy’s phone with songs before they left. A bit of a downer song, although he loved it, just not first thing in the morning.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Turn that crap off.”

In reply, she entered the bathroom and flushed the toilet, leaving without saying a word. He stepped to the far end of the shower to escape the rush of cold water, smiling as the song continued to amplify through the wall.

John ate the last almond paste croissant while Peggy showered. Afterward they tidied up the place. The cottage was located north of Charlottetown, in what he  called the artsy-beachy area. It was their second straight summer at Brackley Beach, the second of many, he hoped. The loft was fairly tidy so it took but a moment to pick up the pair of wine bottles and the pillows he and Peggy had reclined upon in front of the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows the evening before.

On the main floor the dishes were already in the sink—”I promise I’ll do them when we get back, Pegs.”—so they had merely to get set up for the day. He’d loaded the back pack; found that errant pair of sunglasses, argued good-naturedly about the need for four bottles of water and the relative merits of Vans runners versus sandals, and off they went to explore the beach. The giant red dunes in the nearby national park were their destination this morning.

They turned off the main highway about a mile before the national park gates. Peggy couldn’t pass the Owl’s Retreat art gallery without stopping, so she tugged at John’s shirt the moment she spied the shop sign. John parked the Prius and headed straight for the smaller door to the left of the main entrance. It led to the little café on the side of the gallery and he grabbed his third coffee of the morning.

          While Peggy wandered off to the koi ponds and garden at the back of the gallery, John stood in front of the framed heron that had caught their eye earlier in the week. He debated whether the pleasure they would derive from looking at it long after their vacation would be worth the bother of lugging it onto the plane back to Minnesota. Peggy sauntered back and asked him if he wanted to buy it.

Then, as couples will, they discussed whether the convenience of buying it now (and worrying about it possibly getting stolen from their trunk later in the day) outweighed the bother of stopping by the gallery at the end of the day. It was, as Pegs noted, a good five minutes out of their way, since they were coming back from a different direction that evening. Ten minutes, actually, if you counted both ways, which she obviously did.

John could tell she didn’t really care what the decision was, but if he didn’t make a decision soon, the banter would degenerate into bickering, and he didn’t want to go there. So he pretended to care and told her he really wanted to buy it now. He was pleased when she said “Up to you, babes.” Problem solved. A bubble-wrapped minute later and the trundled parcel was safe in the trunk, sitting beside the back pack with the water, extra T-shirt sneakers, a couple of murder mysteries, towels, and a wrap for Peggy’s hips in case they ate at a fancier restaurant for lunch. Pegs was becoming a bit self-conscious about the extra couple of pounds she had put on this past year. John couldn’t see it but Pegs assured him they were right there, the bastards. She brought the wrap even on the hottest days. Just in case.

Inside the park they pulled over on the water side of the road, closest to the dunes that were the star of this recreation area. The weather was unfolding perfectly so they expected to meet people on the dunes or at least on the beach. Initially, however, they were alone.

“Score!” said Pegs.

John was glad they had worn sandals. The couple had mounted the thirty-foot rise of loose red dunes only to find a higher, more impressive set. They dropped into the swale between the two sandy ridges, and then rose back up to view the water through the lens of an amazing island morning. As a kid in the lackadaisical sixties he had been given a jar of liquid mercury no child today would be allowed near. The sensation of sinking his bare toes into the night-chilled sand that morning felt just like when he had stuck his bare finger into that cold, dense liquid.

The sun had risen well past the top of the dunes on their left but still cast long shadows across the leeward side of the empty beach. A minute earlier the night chilled sand from the shaded part felt like a cool liquid. Now the sun-warmed sand felt like a different material altogether.

The beach stretched on and on in both directions. They could see a few families far off in the distance, but otherwise they were alone with two miles of beautiful red-sandy playground. He pointed to the families in the distance.

“Sorry, Baby-cakes; no nude sunbathing this morning.”

“Yeah, like that was going to happen.”

Once again John smiled as she patted him on the shoulder. It was a great day.

“Okay. Enough with the climbing. Let’s go down there and make sand castles and solve mysteries. Did you bring a good book?”

He took her hand and led her down the water side of the dunes, red sugar-sand feeling like a cool silk on his ankles where the sun hadn’t yet got to it, and they strode onto the best beach in Canada.

John stopped at the base of the dunes to study the marram grass that had been planted to reduce the erosion. Peggy took the backpack and went on ahead to pick a spot on the sand between the ever-shortening morning shadows and the water. He took the lens cap off his Nikon and bent down to take a few photos; this grass would be a beautiful border for his garden back in St. Paul. Surely the garden shops back home had a non-marine version of this.

He thought of that quote: ‘God gave us memory that we may have roses in December.’ “Or marine grass from Canada in Minnesota,” he muttered.

            Something made him look up, to where Peggy was standing. She had headed down to the water’s edge having dropped the backpack a few feet behind her. Something had caught her attention. A peevish thought entered his head, disturbing his unclouded mood: If we sit that close to the water this early in the day, it might be a little too breezy. Why doesn’t she just come back halfway up the beach? It would be warmer, offer softer sand and the dunes would keep us out of the breeze.

As if in reply, Pegs screamed. It began as a wail, but she obviously felt only her best effort would do under these circumstances and her voice went up a few decibels and a few notes. A half a mile downwind the little boy and girl turned their heads in one motion and stared up the beach, at his wife. John began to run.

* * * *

“Dammit, this is why I came to Canada, to get away from this shit.”

John refused the invitation to sit and paced the great room of his cottage, eyes glued to the floor.

“If I wanted murders and, and…mayhem, I’d have stayed home!”

His eyes finally rose up to meet the RCMP officer in charge of Queens County, Prince Edward Island.

“Because believe me when I tell ya, we got m-murders back home. I don’t need ‘em following me on vacation!”

John’s voice was rising, uneven and his face was blotchy and red.

“Shut up, honey.” Peggy had gotten control and was now unexpectedly calm.

“There’s not a lot we can do about…”

John stopped to glare, looking but not seeing. He raised the palm of a soft hand as if to halt any interruptions.

“…Because I expect to dig my god-damned toes in the sand and not dig up bodies with ‘em. Especially bodies that I recognize! What the hell is this? Detroit?

No, it’s supposed to be this gentle storybook place…”

At this point John ran out of steam. Peggy leaned forward without getting up and patted John on the back of his bare calf. After standing patiently for several minutes, acknowledging his witness’ need to vent away a little of his shock and, yes, fear, Inspector Ian MacIsaac stepped forward and took control of the discussion. He glanced at his notepad and began.

“Mister and Missus Whiteway, is it? I’m going to tell you my understanding of what transpired, and you can stop me if I make any errors in what took place, when it happened or your observations during the course of your morning. Now, I would ask you to jump in if anything, anything at all is different from your impression of what happened. John, I really appreciate your cooperation in this matter and I am truly, truly sorry for this, ah, interruption of your holiday.”

The Inspector took a deep breath. “Shall we begin?”

He pointed to a nearby teak chair into which John reluctantly sunk, and the Inspector followed suit by dropping his bulk into the mate of John’s chair. He started to speak but something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He looked over to John’s wife.

Peggy had raised a tentative finger as if she was pointing crookedly at the teak and wicker fan above them. She began, faltered then started again in a hesitant voice, all the while smoothing her shorts with the flat of her hands.

“I…I was wondering if we saw who, who we saw. Was it…?”

Inspector MacIsaac gave her a look as if to ask why it really mattered who the body had been before being murdered. But he merely offered that when the red beach sand was pushed away from the rest of the victim’s face and naked body, it did indeed look like the Hollywood actress Nadia Kriss, but that he couldn’t possibly confirm or speculate who in fact the woman was. He then leaned forward, rested an elbow on one knee and from his notes proceeded to tell the story of how Mister and Missus Whiteway from St. Paul, Minnesota walked straight into the shit on what up until that moment had been a perfect Prince Edward Island vacation day.

 

 

 

 

Thank you Chuck for sharing the beginning of what will be a marvelous tale. Buy Amacat here .

Next week in the series of New Brunswick Authors, you can meet Pierre Arseneault of Moncton.

 

 

 

 

Guest Author Afiena Kamminga of Sackvile, NB

Today is the first of an eight part series devoted to authors from New Brunswick, Canada. Lots of talent and wonderful stories.

Afiena Kamminga was born and raised in the Netherlands. She came to Canada in 1975 and moved from Ontario to New Brunswick a few years later. She studied Law (Amsterdam), Journalism (London, ON) and Anthropology (Fredericton, NB). Afiena and her husband moved out of town to live on a small farm east of Nackawic raising Scottish Highland Cattle and Welsh Cob horses before retiring to the town of Sackville, NB, where she now spends much of her time writing novels. She is presently working on a sequel to her historical novel, The Sun Road (2014).

Afiena is currently working on another work of fiction titled The Storks are Back, a historical novel for readers age 8-13 set in Denmark in WW II during the nazi occupation; please find posted below a few sample pages from this novel 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

Sample pages from The Storks are Back 

 

Chapter EIGHTEEN 

     Mother passed out sandwiches made with Jesper’s favorite Esrom cheese. She told them to savour every bite and save half of their sandwich supply for later.

      “This is to be our dinner as well. We’ll have to conserve food if we don’t want to run out in the next few days.”

      They had been traveling for nearly a day, leaving Boegested’s railway station early yesterday morning and waiting out the night in the ferry harbour of Korsoer hoping for passage to the island of Fyn, next stop in the journey to Jutland.

     Last time they journeyed this far to visit Uncle Holger and Aunt Magda, it had taken six hours by train and sea ferry, one of the longest journeys a person could take within the kingdom of Denmark, under normal circumstances.

 

    This time it looked as if they would be traveling much longer. Ferry services were no longer on schedule. Many of the ferry vessels were commandeered to transport German civilians fleeing across the Baltic Sea from the Russian armies advancing on the eastern front. Jesper and his family waited among other Danish travelers at the dock, hoping the next ferry would be taking on regular passengers across the sea strait named Store Belt, to the next island.

     A ship had just docked, and she would, the rumour went, take on Danish travelers after unloading her cargo of refugees.

     They waited while the ferry crew put the water hoses to the ship, caked with filth from her overcrowded load of refugees, many of them seasick. Jesper, with Snap in the rucksack on his back, walked to the railhead for a closer look at the refugees now being loaded into freight trains. Nearly all of them were women, children and old men. Many could only walk with others supporting them and some needed to be carried. They were a dirty, ragged bunch of exhausted looking people, half of them wearing blood-soaked bandages. Jesper felt uneasy looking at their eyes in the worn faces, eyes staring ahead without seeming to see anything. The stench from the ship was overwhelming no matter how well and how long the ferry crew scrubbed and washed down the decks.

    In a hurry Jesper returned to his mother and sister just when the gangway came down at last. He grabbed his tote bag and joined the surge of people determined to board this ferry if it was the last thing they did in life. Right away, Jesper was separated from the others. The throng of people with packs and suitcases lifted him up and literally carried him aboard. Jesper tried not to panic. There was no way to get back on his feet if he were to stumble and fall -- a boy his size wouldn’t be noticed in the stampede and he would be trampled.

     Someone grabbed him around the waist, lifted him up and place him astride a huge suitcase. A tall burly man had come to his rescue. Jesper rode on the suitcase up the gangway and the first set of stairs, all the way to the end of the upper deck before the man lowered him down on this feet. Jesper shook the huge hand offered to him, thanking his rescuer profusely.

     ”Alright son,” the man grinned. “Scrawny little lad like you ought to eat more fish. Herring for breakfast and eel for dinner; that’s what got me up to good size. Try it.”

     He turned and went back down the stairs, towering over anyone who came up; most people stepped asie to let this man pass. Jesper grimaced to himself; he wasn’t likely ever to grow as large as this man who had been his guardian angel. Then again, he could try -- there would be lots of fresh fish to eat in their new home not far from the North Sea.

     No matter how hard and how long he searched the ship for his mother and sister, Jesper caught no sight of them during the strait crossing. He went from the upper to the lower deck and back up again, squeezing between the densely packed people; at last, shortly before docking, he found them hunkered down beneath one of the life boats. His mother, close to crying, embraced him.

     “Inger went out twice to look for you. We worried ourselves sick thinking you must be left behind on the dock. What happened?”

     Jesper told them about the big man who rescued him.

     “Uhm, where we’re going, could we eat fish every day you think?

     Inger threw him a look.

     “Eat whatever you like,” she said. “Just don’t expect to tuck into my marinated herring for breakfast.”

     The troublesome ferry ride turned out to be merely the first hurdle to face on this journey. There followed three more days of hazardous traveling before they arrived in their new home. The railways in Fyn and Jutland were busy transporting newly arrived German refugees in freight trains, which crowded most other trains off the railways. Few passenger trains made it through and those trains who did get assigned a space on the rails accepted regular passengers only piecemeal, one short stretch of railway after another. Any train permitted to leave filled up in record time with Danish civilians as well as German soldiers loaded with backpacks, spades, helmets and rifles. Jesper and his mother and sister squeezed on board of one train after another with long delays between each leg of the journey. If they were lucky enough to find vacant seats, they needed to clear away shards of broken glass before daring to sit down; the soldiers squeezing by others in the aisles, kept punching out train windows with their heavy gear.       

 

    Finally they boarded a train which, supposedly, would bring them all the way to their destination -- if it managed to keep to schedule. The train crawled away from the platform and speeded up briefly, only to come to an abrupt halt in a stretch of wide-open farmland. Frightened passengers scanned the clear blue sky for Allied war planes about to strafe the train; a collective sigh of relief rippled through the train when a message traveled down the line explaining the hold up. The railway ahead has been blown up by saboteurs.

     Inger snorted, “Blown up by freedom fighters, they mean.”

     Mother pointed to some distant farms, red-roofed beacons sheltered from wind by belts of tall trees.

     “Come on, let’s get moving,” she urged. “We’ll need a place for the night and we want to be ahead of the crowd.”                                                          

 

Thank you Afiena for sharing an excerpt from your latest work.You can discover more about Afiena by visiting her WFNB membership page. Click here

Join the Scribbler on Friday and read one of Pierre Robichaud's short stories. Pierre is from Moncton, New Brunswick.

 

 

 

4Q Interview with Author Mohana Rakajamur of Qatar

Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar has been a guest author previously on the South Branch Scribbler. Her award winning books have focused on various aspects of life in the Arabian Gulf nation of Qatar. From Dunes to Dior is a collection of essays related to her experiences as a female South Asian American living in the Arabian Gulf and named as Indie Book of the Day in 2013. Love Comes Later is a literary romance set in Qatar and London and was the winner of the Best Indie Book Award for Romance in 2013, short listed for the New Talent award by the Festival of Romance and Best Novel Finalist in eFestival of Words, 2013. She currently lives with her family in Qatar, where she teaches writing and literature courses at American universities. 

 

With the release of her newest novel The Migrant Report, we have the good fortune of posing 4 questions to Mohana. Check out the excerpt below.

4Q: Please tell us about your latest work, The Migrant Report.

MR: For years I have been reading and watching crime without quite knowing why. This is the same person who is afraid if you whisper “vampire” in my ear after sunset.  I realized that crime investigations are a look into society and what motivates, ails, and separates us. There are tons of plot lines there – especially if you look into the underbellies or fringes of society. That’s the main focus of my first crime novel: the labor camps of the Arabian Gulf.

4Q: How did your writing career get started and how has it developed since?

MR: I’ve been writing for twelve years, since I took a creative writing class in graduate school as an elective. Then with the eBook revolution, about 2009, I was able to take 8 projects that couldn’t get agents to commit to them and make them into books. Now those are coming out as paperbacks and I keep getting new ideas for stories all the time. 

4Q: Please share a childhood memory or anecdote.

MR: I wrote a 250 page medieval romance novel for my middle school theater teacher because I thought it would be fun. That’s the kind of kid I was.  

4Q: What’s next for Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar?

MR: More books! I have a long overdue sequel for Love Comes Later and of course the second book in the Crimes in Arabia series to get cracking on… 

 

 

After she joined the e-book revolution, Mohana dreams in plotlines. Learn more about her work on her website at www.mohadoha.com or follow her latest on Twitter: @moha_doha.

An Excerpt from The Migrant Report;

Chapter Three

By Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar

Manu knelt, bowing his head to his mother’s feet for what might be the last time, the bluish-green veins on the back of her hand trembling under his lips as if the pulse of life inside her were buoyed by his. If this were a Bollywood movie, he forced himself to think of the scene in less personal terms, the music would be slow and reedy, the camera panning out to a doe-eyed girl, crying about the devoted son. He clutched the fine bones of her hand until his mother turned in her sleep, the slope of her nose pressing into the pillow, her restless limbs tossing on the woven mat on the dirt floor.

Her sari rode up to reveal her calves, the ant bites scattered like the moon’s craters across her muscles. This wasn’t a Bollywood movie. He was no hero who could strengthen his mother’s aging body. The veins around her ankles were the twisted roots of an ailing tree. His sister, Meena, wrung a stained handkerchief and dabbed the frail forehead.

The driver of the microbus beeped, this time long, the high-pitched bleat of a wounded animal.
“I’ll send something as soon as I can,” Manu said. The sight of his mother’s feverish petite frame filled his vision, dominating the small cement structure that was home to five of his siblings and their mother.

Turning so his younger siblings would not see the tears slipping out the corner of his eye, he made for the low-ceilinged entrance. The youngest ones, Raju and Ram, the unlikely fruit of his mother’s dwindling years, clutched at each of his knees and whimpered. They were six years old.

Outside, the horn sounded again, causing their cow to give a low bleating answer. Their family, like most in their village, had fresh milk, and a garden fertilized by homemade manure.  His siblings could grow up the way he had, on a plentiful vegetable garden, playing in the long grass, and doing household chores, living from their eldest sister’s wage, a replacement for their deceased father’s business.

His mother’s long illness had drained their resources. The shadow of the Maoists lingered, the tendrils of fear reaching all men of Manu’s age.

“Soon.” Meena repeated the word, her lips pressed tight. She nodded as if this were a guaranteed date. “We used Didi’s salary for the medicine.”

Meena had been a child when her older sister had gone off to work. She was still too young to manage a household, but there was no one else. She followed him to the front wheel of the microbus with his bag. He didn’t have much to take for his job as an office worker, but that was good, because more would not have fit in the passenger area.

“Say hello to Didi for us.” Meena handed off the bag and attempted a half-smile.

“I’ll tell her first thing.” He ducked into the cab’s once-cream interior. The driver hacked a cough, opening his door to spit.

“Bus station?”

“How long?” Manu asked, though he knew the answer. “How many stops?” His mother would have chided him for his incessant questions.

“Two hours,” the man grunted, picking his teeth with a splintered toothpick.

The tears flowed unchecked. Manu turned to the side, the hot breeze little comfort as the microbus bumped the unpaved road from his village to the bigger one next door. To the bus station that would take him to Kathmandu. To the airplane that would take him to his new life. A life that would allow him to revive his mother from subsisting on the meager vegetables of their garden.

He dozed off, despite their halting progress over uneven dirt roads.

“Make room,” the driver said. The microbus slowed to a stop.

A man in a button-down shirt, hair slicked with oil, eyes wide with promise, boarded the auto. Manu slid behind the driver, putting his feet on either side of the bag.

“Great day for a journey!” His companion bounced on the seat like one of the twins. Manu offered a smile that didn’t raise the corners of his lips. The auto began again. The driver coaxed the vehicle ever faster, which was more difficult to do now with the added weight.

“I am Hitesh.”

“Manu.”

Hitesh shared a continuous stream of thoughts. This was the furthest he had ever gone from his village. How, he contemplated, did airplanes manage to stay in the sky? He wondered if he could learn to cook quickly enough to avoid starving.

These preoccupations had occurred to Manu as well in the months preparing for his new job as an office worker in the Gulf state, but he had an ace card that Hitesh lacked. Manu’s eldest sister, Sanjana, had been working abroad for years. Her salary had kept the family afloat, at least until their father had been killed.

Manu could have joined the army or started a shop with the leftovers of his father’s trading connections and risked the Maoists’ wrath. These had been Manu’s choices once the Maoists had gotten hold of his businessman father trading in a village west of Butwal. As he had contemplated the options, Nepal’s civil war ripped away any sense of security.

“You know my family, they pay everything for me to have this job.” Hitesh bounced on the seat with the jolts from the potholes. May as well have been with excitement, Manu thought wryly.

“I have to borrow money to get my ticket, and to pay for finding the job, and even this bus ride.” Hitesh ticked these off on his fingers. His calculations were staggering.

“How will you pay this?” Manu asked, despite himself, drawn into the conversation.

Hitesh shrugged. “The man from the agency say they will take it from my salary, until debt is finished.”
         

   Manu looked out the window. He hoped his relief didn’t show. Sanjana had been saving money for him for several years. Well, for him to go to university in the capital, to study, become educated, like their father would have wanted. The money had gone to pay for all these fees that Hitesh was outlining, using up most of their savings. There were worse things than not attending university, Manu thought. Like being in debt to a company you didn’t know.

 

 

Thank you Mohana for being a guest on The Scribbler.

Please visit again next week when The Scribbler will be featuring authors from New Brunswick, Canada. There will be two guests each week, one on Fridays and the other on Tuesdays. Two 4Q Interviews. Lots of talent in our tiny province.