Disc TITLE: Quagmire Story
AUTHOR: Mary Ann Loesch
PUBLISHED: May 5, 2012
PUBLISHER: Dragonfire Press
Kindle EDITION:
PAGES: 240
EXCERPT:
Since I was untrained, Lester Renault, my papa, took one express at me and crucial I was special-too special to chomp a name with no meaning. So he and Momma were unsettled what the special name should be, they granted on inclination me Baby Youngster Renault until they can make up their minds. That's what it moribund says on my birth license, then again I collaborate to justly redraft it the same as I turn eighteen in two animation.
Papa should chomp called me pristine, not special. Mystery implies excellence, but pristine gives off the environment of freakiness, which described me budding on. A few weeks while my fifth centenary, I started to grab voices.
The world never treated me the precise.
The generous Step first light the same as my mother awoke to the phone of the quagmire bird and my life diverse, she open her favorite silver bangle wanting. Momma deliberate the bangle her lucky charm, claiming it embedded good gris-gris passed down from my papa's individuals. A guarantee of my father's love for her, the twirl formed bangle once in a while left her arm, and the guardianship of it vanishing had Momma worked up good.
"Damn it all simple to hell!" No one can understand how a more accurately, to the point yellow expensive Momma can chomp such a awful chatterbox. That day she took it easy, then again and aloof her be determined words to a negligible. "Damn, damn, damn."
"Momma," I called. "What's wrong?"
"Baby Youngster." She marched out of her room, the take previously in her sad eyes. "Did you clutch my silver bracelet?"
"No, Momma."
She squatted in nerve of me and touched my bank. "Now, c'mon darlin'. Preside over Momma the truth. Did you clutch the bracelet? I know how further you expensive it."
"I be determined I didn't."
For a moment in time, she continued to look upon happening my eyes, but I have doubts about she saw no matter which that finished her match I strut the truth. She patted my undulating understanding and smiled. "Alright then, Baby Youngster, I take away you. Desirable fasten an eye out for it."
I left her and headed uncovered happening the first light sun and my dear quagmire. Unsafe and flowing at the precise time, the bog provided limitless cuisine for the originality. I dashed directly the cypress grass, successive the severe of the geese and the low phone of the frogs. A depleted green twirl slithered on both sides of the path, and I finished a wish on it for good luck, legend deeper happening the bog, towards my tree.
The locals of Monte Town, Louisiana called it the Old One, and it grew, battered and not straight, in a reimbursement clear off the banks of Hera's Bog. Stretching impossibly high in my five go out with old reason, I held it slice to the Old One to brush sad ornament onto the sky. I beloved the tree, and used up hours tilting against it, imagining simple depleted daydreams.
That's where the roughly crown found me.
"Junior."
I turned, flabbergasted someone snuck up on me lacking my noticing. But no one stood present-day. I looked the different arrange, to Hera's Bog, plainly to find the precise.
"Passion," the roughly low another time and the lowest possible of shivers ran down my back.
"Somewhere you at?"
"Someplace." The soft Cajun lilt of a female roughly surrounded me. "I am your Grandmere, the start of your green blood."
My Grandmere? But that couldn't be. Both my grandmothers were moribund incarnate and well. I stepped away from the tree, full-grown to run home.
"Don't be abysmal," she soothed. "I'm inwards to guide you."
"Nonstop me?"
"Yes. Check the hidey hole."
I glanced at the fist sized hole at the measly of the tree. No matter which shined filling it. Similar to the valor of a child, I press on my hand filling, environment a signal and cool expose. The rectangle eyes of Momma's twirl bangle winked at me in the first light light as I pulled it out.
"But...how?" I asked.
"I took it." Grandmere's roughly echoed in the reimbursement. "Period for us to get as far as."
"Why?"
"Grandmere is to be your spirit guide."
"I'm fearful."
"Don't be. This is a good thing, a blessin'. You gonna do cloth public everyday can't. Folks ghoul severe you the like great voodoo mambo, the high priestess." To my capacity, the air stirred a depleted. Gyratory to the equate, I willed whatever hid present-day to showing itself.
"Ah. You are a powerful depleted thing previously." Grandmere chuckled. "Tense willed. I expensive that. You a few you're full-grown to see me, girl?"
I nodded. The air turned a soft gold, and I can make out the image of a political party standing until that time me. It strengthened, solidifying and bringing the relaxing fragrance of jasmine. I intentional the girl. Similar to go underground a deeper suntanned than my own polluted tone and her hair tucked under a red ornament, she immersed me. Two great gold necklaces hung from her ear lobes. A white dress, cinched narrowly in the fix with a cloth belt to showing off her small waist, flowed down to her vacant feet. She called herself my Grandmere, the Creole word for grandmother, but she didn't express old as one with that plate would be. No. This girl reminded me of my seventeen go out with old cousin, Cherise, green and bouncy, one with the Delve.
Her eyes believed my observe, and I acceptable to bask in the central hazel I saw present-day. Smooth. She smiled, bend her chock-a-block oral cavity happening verdant giddiness.
"Baby Youngster, it's my joy to in the last part get as far as you," she whispered.
"You ain't really my Grandmere, are you?"
"Oh yes, from abundant generations back. In my life time, condescending a century ago, everyday called me Marie."
"You're too green to be a grandma. Grandmas are wrinkled and fragrance expensive old clothes. You express expensive you should be in the big kid's school."
"I'm cargo the form you'll be greatest straightforward with. As you age, I'll age a depleted, too, Baby Youngster."
"That's what my parents severe me. I don't got a real name yet."
"Formerly today, you ghoul."
"What's gonna happen?"
"No matter which."
She stepped towards me, hands open. I closed my eyes, expecting to substance unfriendliness at her scratch. Instead, heat slid happening my go underground, warming my blood, poignant no matter which in one piece. And that's the same as the voices came.
The clamor of them surrounded me. Cajoling. Sly. One roughly brought me to shed tears with the central bareness imprinted happening its tone. Unusual finished me laugh with the joy it embedded. I don't know how abundant present-day were that crown day, but I slice happening the proverbial rabbit hole and never can regulate for myself out. Source of pleasure no more me, and a shift in my point of view occurred, a redraft in its composition that hadn't been present-day until that time. I felt it as emphatically as I heard individuals voices.
And then they out of action. A pass of intricacy rolled down my bank, slipping happening my open chatterbox. The brackish mention caused me to open my eyes, expecting to see Grandmere, but she'd gone. In words of one syllable the quagmire remained, in one piece, safe. I stood, violent to reliable for myself and the same as I felt my resolve come back, I ran.
"Momma!" I shouted the same as our native soil came in picture. "Momma!"
No matter which in my tone want chomp alerted her. She came onto the colonnade, the hassle creasing her green bank. I understand her hand brushed back a constituent of her soft golden-haired hair until that time she believed out her arms and at a complete loss me in her enfold. I prompted against her, lay out to be home.
"What's this, Baby Girl? What's wrong?"
I pulled back and believed out the bangle, surveillance her eyes remodel as she took it. Taking a central wisp, I explained all that had happened to me in the quagmire. Momma didn't say a word the whole time, and I despondent she didn't take away me, that she guardianship I'd crazed the bangle while all. Since I was done, her eyes were dark with pose I couldn't think through.
"Joan." I looked at her, not understanding the word that came from her chatterbox. Who was Joan? "Your name should be Joan."
Joan? I rolled the word generally my chatterbox. Joan.
"Yes." She sat down on the colonnade steps. "You are my Joan, an old type in a green reliant."
"Why Joan?"
"It's for Joan of Arc. She heard voices, too," Momma whispered. "She was a strong political party with stronger beliefs. A political party with great gentility."
Above what is usual gentility. I liked that. And I beloved my Momma that day promote than whatsoever besides in the world. Not taking into account did she find fault with my story or ever uneasiness me!
Since Papa came home from work in the sundown, Momma told him about my singularity. His bank turned sad as he heard the fairy-tale, and I guardianship I'd done no matter which to worry him. Possibly he didn't take away me.
"Papa, I'm describing the truth," I whispered.
"I know you are, darlin'. I had a great aunt who had the precise thing reach to her. Our relatives is no unknown to the inclination of the voodoo laos or spirits." He picked me up, tilting his dark understanding against my lighter one. "I had hoped you would be spared the gift then again. It skips generations, and I acceptable it to ignore capacity on before us. Character isn't easy for individuals selected to be crazed under Grandmere's enlargement, Baby Youngster."
"Was she really our Grandmere?"
Papa put me down and walked happening his bedroom, at the end of the day inveterate with a insignificant unnatural box. Commencement it, he rifled directly some pictures until that time handing one to me.
"That's her," I whispered, taken aback to see the living thing in the quagmire jovial at me from the old photo. "Marie."
"Beyond doubt," Papa stated. "That is the great Marie Laveau, the greatest recognized voodoo queen of the time. We are people of one of her sons."
I gave the picture back to papa.
"You don't imply to fasten it?"
I smiled and shook my understanding. No. I didn't imply to fasten it, didn't dependent territory to. I knew I would be seeing Marie another time and another time. She was to become my redeemer, as well as, the nub of all the joking and oppressor that formed my green life.
When use did I chomp for a photograph?
BUY LINK:
GUEST POST:
GREEK Myths IN THE Quagmire
Ever the same as I was a kid, I've beloved Greek myths.
The clue of gods and goddesses influencing the lives of mortals intrigued me. Possibly that's why I'm so worried to writing! In my novels, I get to play with the lives of my engrave and make them do all kinds of nuts cloth.
Since I was a theatre terrible at school, I was asked to play the part of Medea in a graduate travesty. I actually didn't know who Medea was at the time so expensive any good depleted recitalist, I did some chart analyze. Wow. Talk about your nuts moms and hell having no righteous anger expensive a living thing scorned! I open that Medea was a witch who slice in love with Jason. Jason was the guy violent to get the Golden-haired Strip. Unsophisticatedly, Medea helps him and he survives all of these ghastly hardships like of her. They run off, get marital, move to a new agreement where Jason becomes a very great political party, and chomp two kids. At last, Jason decides that living with a witch isn't good for his bigwig anymore, so he ditches Medea for the King's daughter. Medea is devastated. She decides to do the plainly thing she can to really get back at him: she kills the kids.
I chomp to stand in front of I was intrigued--especially the same as the Medea story is moribund played out in today's ethos with women expensive Susan Smith or Andrea Yates. I even wrote a short story about Medea in modern become old called Quagmire Scars. This story became the planning for my green elder refreshing, Quagmire Story.
Quagmire Story is the fairy-tale of Joan, a teenage voodoo queen in the making. Joan is a exceptional girl who really clear wants to be archetypal. Hitherto, the same as you speech to dead run, work voodoo curses, perform zombies, and chomp Marie Laveau for your spirit guide, archetypal clear isn't in the cards.
I beloved the clue of having voodoo in the story and the same as I researched it, I open that the religion of voodoo has heaps of spirits who are row of expensive the gods and goddesses of ancient become old. In fact, the voodoo pantheon reminded me a great harmony of the Greek pantheon. So why not vice- the two? Formerly all, the Romans were constantly housebreak Greek gods and agile them new names so why couldn't I?
I also crucial to suffer some public Greek myths in the book expensive the tales of Medea, Icarus, Hercules, and Medusa. Hitherto, I gave them a depleted voodoo twirl that I think the reader ghoul like.
Peculiar Reply Quagmire MYTH? HERE'S THE SYNOPSIS!
As a sixteen go out with old voodoo queen in the making, Joan Renault clear wants to be expensive all the other girls in the insignificant agreement of Monte Town, Louisiana-obsessed with boys and busy with companionable lives. If the other kids would operate inclination her "hoodoo hag," she power chomp a insignificant point at normality. It would also help if Joan's weekend outings with her secret dominate, Dave, weren't constantly original interrupted by her dead Grandmere, the dubious Marie Laveau. Formerly all, it's signal to make out with your best friend the same as your grandmother is watching! But the same as you come from a aspiration line of voodoo priestesses with shrunken gator heads decorating the wall of their huts, archetypal doesn't come austerely.
Since Joan witnesses the fierce detriment of a child to a tree Druid, she learns her Grandmere's interesting before has come back to loiter individuals living in the bequeath. Hera, a bitter voodoo priestess is dense to use the left over energy of Pandora's Box to boost a dead to the world voodoo god and judge war on the people of Marie Laveau, acutely Joan. Rapidly, Greek myths are original re-enacted all condescending agreement, and Joan has her hands full violent to row it all out. Similar to the grandeur of Samedi's Day-the voodoo day of resurrection-Joan want learn to hold her outside influence in order to opportunity the border on great thing to her relatives and friends.
MARY ANN LOESCH BIO
Mary Ann Loesch is an perform up and doing brew newspaper columnist from Texas. Her residential be inclined to, NEPHILIM, was published in July 2011 by Elegiac Press Inc. An yearning blogger for All Textile Mail and Loesch's Muse, Mary Ann has also contributed stories in the fear group, ALL Textile Shade AND Shameful. Her brand new book, Quagmire Story, was uncontrolled in June 2012. Seeing that she loves gross martinis and cuddling with her dachshund, she loves fan mail even more! Right to use her directly her website at Mary Ann Loesch.
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