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Kathleen March

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2020

Stories (395)

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395 Stories

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Haunted House

Haunt is a very interesting word. To be haunted is complex, a concept that can be interpreted in many ways. A haunt can be a noun, like a favorite place to hang out. Hant or haint is a vernacular form when it’s another noun, a synonym of ghost. Haunt as a verb is wobbly, going from very bad to seductive. If we are haunted by something or someone, it often gets sensual, and we begin to dream. Why, then, do ghosts, haunted houses, and the like mostly provoke shudders? Do we think the norm is associated with death (ours)? What are we afraid of?...

5 likes

Bats Deserve Better

Dear Bats, Who Deserve Better: I owe you an apology, and thought if I took time to write everything down, in a nice letter, you might believe I am being sincere and if at all possible, want to make amends. They say it’s never too late for that. Here goes - Way back when I was a little girl, I was scared to death of bats. They, I mean you, had two related characteristics that were the main reasons I trembled at the thought of meeting one. Bats were going to land on your neck and suck your blood (vampire style, of course). Or they would bite y...

4 likes

Do you see? (2/2)

From the journal or memoir of the one who buried the book and never saw it again Where does a brook keep its skeleton? I’m sure it has one. As I sit here, not nearly napping and with no Raven to perch above my chamber door, nor utter the fateful three-syllable word, I begin to understand. The language runs through me and around me and I consider pouring myself a small glass of Amontillado, except I have none, never had any, other than in a short story.  Note: Do you remember the house in Philadelphia where the man walled up his friend,...

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Do you hear…? (1/2)

My brook is like fine red winefrom Navarreit is the arterythat runs from a river I can't translateto the sea…In April the wine turns to goldand the burgundy shadows soundlike fish planning to spawnlike green seeds…It once ran reddrunken and wet, as ifrepeating it alluntil the end ~ KNM, Burgundy Brook ‘Just a minute’ said a voice in the weeds,so I stood stillin the day’s exquisite early morning lightand so I didn’t crush with my great feet any small or unusual thing just happening to pass bywhere I was passing by ~ Mary Oliver, Why I W...

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Lavinia Returns to Compostela (2/2) (L2.20)

Should I try to pick up the pieces?Tie up loose ends?Patch things up?Put the pieces of the puzzle together?Mend the broken pieces of something else that is not a puzzle at all?The questions rolled over her like frouma,like seafoam on the beach at the tiny town called Tal, near Esteiro. They insisted and their voices were that white noise she despised.On her first night back in the soft, stony bed, Lavinia knew she couldn’t sleep. It was something other than jet lag, however. It was all those questions, expanding and contracting, dashing her ...

4 likes

Lavinia Learns a Lesson (1/2) (L2.19)

The past is never the past. Who wrote that? Or not that but something else? And was the statement true? These questions and others kept running through Lavinia’s mind and were beginning to keep her up at night. She was waking up with dark circles under eyes and sometimes had to wipe away the last cobwebs, not of sleep but of nightmares. She knew she had to do something… It had all started, this sense of the unsettled, the uncertain, when Lavinia had what some call a crisis, although she just thought of as a moment of reckoning. True, it...

4 likes

Starving

“And then revenge is very good eaten cold, as the vulgar say.”~ Eugène Sue, Mathilde: Mémoires d'une Jeune FemmeShe had put up with the bullying for years, although nobody called it that. Another term was mobbing, but another was scapegoating. None of the words mattered, because what had gone on for so long was invisible to everybody else. How can cruelty be invisible to everybody, though? Isn’t it really a matter of cowardice and self-interest? A wise man named Chomsky had written that not caring or not doing something about a bad situ...

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Toyland, Joyland

We all have toys from childhood that we recall fondly. The reasons for that fondness are varied, and mine are probably not so different from yours. I had a lot of toys, from stuffed animals to dolls to sets with pieces that required assembly. That’s not counting crayons, coloring books, card games, puzzles. Board games, slinkies, play-do, and that flesh-colored plasticky stuff you could use to make impressions from newsprint and comics. However, I’m sure you’re not interested in my list, because it’s just a list and if you’re a certain age (...

2 likes

In my secret life (homage to Leonard Cohen)

Dan blew out the candles on his birthday cake, made by his wife, sat back in his chair at the head of the table, and smiled. He had just turned sixty, which meant enough years had passed so that nobody was ever going to know. He sighed loudly. “Is it hard turning sixty?” Asked his wife, who was about five, maybe six years younger. She had made the cake, which was lemon with cream cheese frosting, his favorite. She thought he was perfect. In all their years of marriage, which were more than thirty, he had been the best husband she could have...

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Readers Beware

It was getting late, too late to read poetry at least, better for sitting with a good mystery. Even when there might be more murders than necessary, a mystery keeps the reader alert and interested in finding the motives for the crime. Val couldn't stomach the cozy style, which is essentially a lack of blood and guts and an absence of police or detectives. Solving the crime is in the hands of an untrained individual who feels entitled to jump in and find the murderer. The amateur sleuth is often, but not always, a woman who happens onto a cri...

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Muses 1

I’ve read books with muses in them. Poems, too.  I’ve studied ancient mythology, so I know the supposed origins of the muses, near Mount Helicon and Mount Olympus. Also their names, although I can’t recite them all, but the group of nine are the source of inspiration for the liberal arts, including poetry, and for the sciences. It’s not necessary to list their names and all the times they’re cited through the ages, but since we still refer - laughingly - to them today, they deserve a thought or two. A muse brings ideas to the human who ...

4 likes

Crying over you

I was alright for awhileI could smile for awhileBut I saw you last nightYou held my hand so tightAs you stopped to say hello Oh, you wished me wellYou, you couldn't tellThat I'd been crying over youCrying over you When you said, "So long"Left me standing all aloneAlone and crying, cryingCrying, crying ~ Roy Orbison, “Crying” (1961) I love the music from the late fifties and the whole decade of the sixties. Most of the songs they sing nowadays don’t say a thing to me; I feel nothing when I hear them. Must be there’s something about the nat...

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Speak Easy

I have to write a speech and give it. This can’t be just any old speech, because I’ve won a drawing for everyday people who want to participate in the national convention for the Democratic party. Only one name was selected - mine. Oddly enough, there was no requirement to belong to the party; my friends submitted my name as a joke. Everybody who knows me is aware of how I have a very hard time speaking in public. I stammer and stutter, break out in a sweat that gives me a shiny face and drenches the back of my shirt. I look flustered and I ...

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Been broken

Excerpt 1, from article in a magazine on feminist issues: Been there, been broken. I identify, before woman, before heterosexual (just a little), as Broken. A broken person who is also a woman, which is adding to the impression of brokenness.  Excerpt number 2 Also, an inclination, one the opposite of suicide, consciously or unconsciously, tries to utilize breakage as an event or action that leads to new connections. Heals, guides, strengthens the phoenix.  I had been reading the magazine and got to thinking about how we are h...

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Akrasia, a story for everyone

I don’t recall when I first heard this story, and in fact I can’t even say for sure who told me it, but most likely it was my father or my mother. My grandmother wasn’t much for stories, unless they were about putting flowers in the urns on Memorial day. Nobody else ever took the time to tell me stories. That gives you an idea of my childhood. If I wanted stories, pretty or otherwise, I had to make them up for myself. Maybe that’s why I decided to become a writer. That also means that my stories are for me, so I write for myself. That’s not ...

6 likes