Book Excerpt
Excerpt from “Annabelle”
“When I was
eight,” she answered obliquely, forehead creased with the effort of memory, “my
mother found a young fox caught in a trap at the edge of the woods.”
Outside, the
cold December sun gleamed fitfully through bare branches, but Annabelle felt
again the warmth of a May morning and saw the sunlight dancing in her mother’s
hair and on the reddish brown fur of the injured animal cradled in her arms.
“She brought it
up to the house, trailing bits of leaves behind her, and she didn’t even notice
her dress was smeared with its blood. I think she was going to bandage its leg.
It was bleeding quite steadily… cut to the bone by the sharp teeth of the steel
trap. Or perhaps it had tried to gnaw itself free…” She closed her eyes for a moment
as the agony of the trapped animal flooded through her. Trapped, with no means
to escape except by inflicting more pain on an already bruised body.
Although
sometimes, Annabelle thought, it was the only way.
“But just as she
stepped through the French doors, my father saw her, and just as quickly wanted
to paint her… the way my mother looked, carrying that poor suffering animal.
“It must have
been near death by then. It didn’t struggle, not even when my father twisted
its head against my mother’s breast and curled its bloodstained tail around her
wrist.
“She stood there
for nearly two hours, trapped in the act of entering her home just as the fox
had been trapped, until my father was satisfied with what he had put on the
canvas. Then he released her. But by then the fox had died… in my mother’s
arms, while she stood patiently as my father painted her.
“He sold that
picture for quite a bit of money, I think.” Annabelle looked down at her hands,
surprised to see she had been clenching them, surprised to see how wet they
were with tears—why had she started to cry? It was only an animal after all,
not nearly as important as her father’s art.
“What did your
mother do with the fox?” Jules asked softly.
Annabelle wiped
the tears from her hands. She mustn’t cry. She must not cry.
“She set it down
on the loveseat in the corner,” and Annabelle-the-child watched with what grace
and tenderness her mother placed the bloody, lifeless body on the soft white
cushions.
“Then she went
to my father, who was so absorbed in his work that he never even noticed the
fox had died. He was like that, you know,” Annabelle explained, almost
matter-of-factly. “When he was painting, nothing else mattered. It was just the
way he was.”
She wasn’t
certain if she was explaining it to Jules, or the little girl and her mother,
who both waited helplessly for his attention to leave the canvas.
“She pulled the
neckline of her dress until the buttons released the fragile material and it
fell like rain past her shoulders to the floor. My father looked up then. He
saw my mother standing there, smears of blood on her shoulders and across her
breast. Perhaps the fox had bit her in its agony.
“He ran his
fingers lightly across the blood and then on the canvas, adding a touch of dark
red to the painting. And then,” Annabelle looked blindly out the window, “he
reached for my mother. He never even knew when I left the room, just as he
never knew when the fox had died.”
About the Book
Author: Nancy Christie
Genre: Literary Fiction / Short Story Collection
There are some people who, whether by
accident or design, find themselves traveling left of center. Unable or
unwilling to seize control over their lives, they allow fate to dictate
the path they take—often with disastrous results.
TRAVELING LEFT OF CENTER AND OTHER
STORIES details characters in life situations for which they are
emotionally or mentally unprepared. Their methods of coping range from
the passive (“The Healer”) and the aggressive (“The Clock”) to the
humorous (“Traveling Left of Center”) and hopeful (“Skating on Thin
Ice”).
The eighteen stories in TRAVELING LEFT
OF CENTER AND OTHER STORIES depict those types of situations, from the
close calls to the disastrous. Not all the stories have happy
endings—like life, sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t.
In these stories, the characters’
choices—or non-choices—are their own. But the outcomes may not be what
they anticipated or desired.
Will they have time to correct their course or will they crash?
About Nancy Christie
Nancy Christie is the author of the fiction collection, Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories and two short story e-books, Annabelle and Alice in Wonderland (all published by Pixel Hall Press).
Her stories have been accepted by print and online publications such as St. Anthony Messenger, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Talking River, Wild Violet, EWR: Short Stories, Hypertext, Full of Crow, Fiction365, Red Fez, and The Chaffin Journal.
She is also the author of The Gifts of Change (Atria/Beyond
Words), an inspirational book that encourages readers to take a closer
look at how they deal with the inevitability of change and ways in which
they can use change to gain a new perspective, re-evaluate their goals
and reconsider their options. Since its publication in 2004, The Gifts
of Change has been released in three foreign editions.
Currently Christie is working on several
book projects, including a second collection, a novel and a book for
writers. The founder of “Celebrate Short Fiction” Day, and member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and Short Fiction Writers Guild (SFWG), Christie hosts the monthly Monday Night Writers group in Canfield, OH.
Website: www.nancychristie.com
Blogs:
Social media links:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nancychristie.writer Google+: http://gplus.to/nancychristie
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/NChristie_OH @NChristie_OH
Links
Buy on Amazon (Paperback)
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