cleolinda | Happy five-year journal birthday!

So for today's (final) journal flashback, I wanted to go back to two (very) short stories I posted last Halloween--except this time, with the audio readings I'd wanted to do then.

The Hot Door (4:36)

I'm not sure why, but for some reason this story seems a lot better to me spoken than written. A lot. So listen to the audio before you read the text, if you don't mind. And as I mentioned at the time,

Note: This door, as described--in the back of a closet, leading to an attic, sealed over with duct tape--is actually in my house. It's in my sister's room. I've never pulled the tape off, though.

Strength (Bell Donner Gives Her Word) (5:29)

I'm still really happy with this story, text or otherwise, and I let my Southern accent come out to play on this one. This is genuinely what I sound like, you know, when I'm playing around being extra-Southern; it's not my everyday conversational accent, which is a lot lighter and more citified (no, really, I swear! "The Hot Door"! That's what I usually sound like!).

The title of the story may make more sense if I tell you that it was inspired by this tarot card (this is the Morgan-Greer artwork):

Or the inverse of it, rather--the lady not holding the beast. I added the subtitle just because "Strength" seemed so generic. I do like the idea of writing a series of short-short horrorish stories based on tarot cards, but I haven't really thought of anything else yet.

By the way: I made a mistake in the reading. I accidentally inserted the word "down" into the phrase "then back to town again," which wouldn't matter except that if I were going to specify at all, I should have said up. But this was the best reading I recorded, and quite honestly, I decided, to hell with it. So, you know, just mentally asterisk that.