The days are getting darker! Perfect time for a scary story by Storry.
One of my tales is being featured in the Never Cheat a Witch anthology. The book is launching in October, just in time for Halloween.
Seasons as Memoir Writing Prompts
You can use seasons as memoir writing prompts. When you live in Canada, we have four distinct times of year when nature shifts. The way the light changes or how dark it is in the morning can remind of us other times. Use these natural triggers as story ideas for your memoir.
If you live somewhere that doesn’t have separate seasonal differences, you can use holidays. What sort of things do you remember around the time a specific holiday rolls around?
Here’s a story about me and Halloween.
The witching hour
I was never good at colouring. I didn’t stay in the lines even when I tried my best. Anyway I didn’t like colouring much except around Halloween. I loved colouring then because we got paper cut-outs witches and there was no way to go wrong with these ugly conjurers.
You could add warts to their noses, make their faces green or purple, give them terrible unmatched striped socks – whatever you wanted to do. It was up to your imagination. Those witches were awesome.
One Grade 3 afternoon my class got to colour our witches. All our little heads were down using our crayons to create the monster pieces. I gazed outside. The fluorescent light in the classroom only brightened the grey Nova Scotia day by a tiny bit. The wind was blowing. Strong. I could see yellow, orange and red leaves being stripped off the trees by the howling currents. Clouds sped by and sent rain to hit the windows intermittently. A pitter here. A patter there. The sound lulled me into a daze and cast a spell over me.
I entered a new realm. A dimension where I could be an enchanter, too. But what would I look like? Would I keep my brown hair? Would I like to be green? Would I wear a long black dress and a cape to keep me warm when I was flying around on my broom?
If I was a witch where would I live? Could I keep my room at home for now? When I was older, could I build myself a mansion with my powers?
If I was a witch who would be my friends? Would they be scared of me? I wouldn’t do anything to hurt them. (Promise.) Unless they did something to make me sad or angry. Otherwise we could hang out and play like before. When I wasn’t a witch.
I turned my head and looked around the room to see which friend would like me as a witch. There was no one there except for the teacher. School ended five minutes ago but Mrs. Hood had been busy with papers at her desk and hadn’t noticed me still sitting there.