Elizabeth Waterman-Scrase
ELIZABETH WATERMAN-SCRASE loves to weave a tale mixed with historical facts in an experimental-surrealist style within an interconnected world through time. She is often found trying to catch-up with herself on the shingle beaches where the North Sea and the English Channel dance.
The Hooden Horse
The following extract is from an experimental, surrealist piece using dream-like writing to take the reader across the canvas of a story. Our protagonist has discovered an old folk song from 1843 carefully hidden withing the pages of a book of the same age. With some research it is discovered the song refers to a Hooden Horse (a wooden horse head on a pole carried by a person shrouded by hessian, a custom associated with Christmas), in particular one that belongs to her home town of Palshore. The song is spinning, trapped in her head as she escapes the office for lunch. Here we join her inside the mind as she heads to the beach to clear her head.
Tummy says, it’s not that interested in the next hour. Eyes suggest, the next hour will be bliss. Legs exclaim the next hour should be all about, nothing to do with chairs. Bum says, it has no feelings on the matter. Lungs proclaim, freedom is air.
Ears meet with the world. The tap-tappy-tap click-click world of heads down pretending to work suddenly finds double dashed lines on the road to lunch. Contrary to advice from Tufty and to take a leaf from Willy Weasel’s book; a rolling stroll from path to curb to road to curb to path with by the book left and right and left and right so back to front Tufty’s mum would have apoplexy! The beach yearns with a salty nose and a cool throne of shapely stones. Not many come in the half-summer. The odd dog and its loyal pet that serves food, throws stuff and picks up the result of a well-run tum skirt the place where worlds wrestle a perpetual roll in the cosmic hay of what’s the point? Horizon skippers shimmer, ice cream and chip nickers watch for the fools from other towns, grey shimmer strutters strut with an eye for a crumb. The imagined Spanish have an imagined Spanish word; Khool-cee-h’air, no idea how it is spelt, but it says it all, about what drifts from the water to the shingle to the face. Hypno-something. A word for sent to sleep by the waves, hypno-rhythm? Mind snaps fingers in vague recall; hypno-modum! That sounds fun. A reminder set on the persistent world spinner to sing a twinkle when it’s time to find that tap-tappy-tap click-click world of heads down pretending to work world of why do I bother? Oh, yeah. Money. And the hand which fumbles in the dead beasts’ belly amongst the look at my lips and the hair laced pain hedgehog is the piece of paper. It sings for a look. Ears flap in the Khool-cee-h’air in a Dumbo style of escape attempt.
Elizabeth is completing her MA in Creative Writing at CCCU in the summer of 2020.
Twitter @ElizabethScrase
