A Sneak preview of...

...Tall Told Tales.  As this month’s theme is fantasy I thought I would let you into a secret that I’ve been keeping to myself for quite a while now.  As well as workng on the sequel to Messandrierre, I have also been putting together an anthology of strange tales.

Some are a little bit scary, others are there to amuse and yet more are...  Well, let's leave it at that for the moment and here’s just a snippet from ‘The Tale of Benjamin Longshins.’

He lived alone in a cottage in the dunes...

Once upon a time, in a place not so very far north from here, there lived a man called Benjamin Longshins.  Benjamin, as his name suggests, was a very tall thin man.  He had a long sad face, with an equally long nose, his fingers were skeletal and his legs seemed to reach all the way up to his elbows.

He lived alone in a cottage in the dunes by the sea, but had often wished he didn’t.  He’d spent so much time alone over the years that he had almost forgotten how to feel, so, each day when he rose, he never knew whether he should feel sad or happy.  He hadn’t laughed in a century and it had been at least twenty years since he’d spoken to a human being.  He had even stopped wondering if he could still remember how to talk.

Benjamin spent his days and nights walking on the beach when no one else was there.  He had grown accustomed to the solitude and the rhythmic wash of the sea.  It also meant that he could collect things without being questioned or observed.  Benjamin liked collecting the flotsam and jetsam that washed upon the shore and, over the years, he had filled every available space in his tiny cottage with his ‘possessions’.

One day, a young lady called Lizabeth turned up on his doorstep.  She was distraught and crying.

‘Please Sir, have you seen my dog.  She’s small and white and very friendly.’

Benjamin, bending low to enable him to peer out of the small doorway, stretched his mouth in a wide thin smile.  He had never seen such a vision of prettiness before.  The girl’s long blonde hair was being swished and swirled around her face by the wind and her large blue eyes stared up at him.  His heart, long hardened by lack of feeling, clunked against his chest wall in a vane attempt at a small leap for joy.  He tried to speak but was unsure of what to say.  Then he frowned as he carefully framed his answer...