Mater

You all have some of those kinds of skeletons rattling in your cupboards, haven’t you? No? Not even one? Well, my creator has me

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(and a few more, I dare say, but they are not bothering me). I’ll rattle her and worry her, nudge her and whisper in her ear for as long as it takes. She’s not getting rid of me, even if she has suddenly started favouring other protagonists, in other settings. I was first!

It's a long story, really, and goes way back ( I mean WAY back, but don’t tell her I said so) to when she was fourteen years old. She got this idea into her head and wrote a story about me. Just a short story, but it wasn’t a school essay, it was a proper story - and she sent it off to a magazine. What was she thinking? She was a kid, for goodness’ sake! But she was told to keep writing, and addressed as an adult, so despite being rejected, she felt good. So good, she resurrected me some thirty years later. She got busy - so busy she forgot about almost everything else for a few months - and then suddenly I got cast aside. I still don’t understand what happened, but if she thinks that I’m about to fizzle out like a spent sparkler, she has an other thing coming. I’ll just bide my time…

I know what she thought: She thought that I had padded off quietly on my non existent feet, never to be heard of or thought about again. Except she kept the manuscript. Silly girl. (I mean woman. I forgot she’s not fourteen any more.)
I played a big part in her life once, and just because I was not yet fully formed, as far as the story went, I was still complete in another sense - and I know it doesn’t take much for her to think of what we once had. She remembered me this morning.

One of her magazines dropped on to the doormat; that’s what made her remember. A year ago my letter of complaint against Anna ( couldn’t she have thought of a better pseudonym?) was supposed to be published in that same magazine - as long as space allowed. Well, it didn’t, and it has never appeared. Boo! I say. But Anna re-wrote my letter (she’s like that!) and submitted it to Resources on Writelink, but there seems to be too many procrastinators around and my little rant was surplus to requirement. So she has shelved it. Anna has had the audacity to shelve my story. I know why, of course. She doesn’t want anyone to know how fickle she really is.