This story is one I actually did for my English homework in secondary school and was told it was too long, but I've decided to post it on here and find out what you think instead. It's a dual narrative which means that every other paragraph is set in the past and the rest are in the present, I hope you enjoy it and it interests you as much as it did me to write it. :) Here are the first three paragraphs...
Grenwich, would be a lovely town- with the homely little houses, dotted around neat and tidily; with the large Grenwich Lake, in Wolfson Park, a perfect crystal mirror to the sky; even with the absence of the cherry blossoms that once made a scheduled appearance each spring it would be lovely. Grenwich would be a lovely town, if the inhabitants didn’t live in fear of the huge, eerie mansion that plagued the small country lane at the edge of the village. Black Manor was a name the residents of the town shied away from, but if ever asked by tourist or traveller, every soul- alive or dead- had stories to tell of that house. However, every story- true or otherwise, was formed around the legend of the mad woman whom once lived there.
Rose Manor was once a beautiful, famed inn, favoured by all whom visited. The baby pink cherry blossoms would envelop it in the spring, with joy and freedom. And the dustings of snow would make the warm fires inside, all the more cherished during the winter. In the year of 1906, little bad was to be heard of Grenwich, for it had never been such a widely adored place of homeliness and glee- an intoxicating drug to rid yourself of the fears and sadness barred by the town boundaries. But, of course, this was all back in 1906.
The gentle hum of the car stereo proceeded to lull her into a continued state of false composure, as she desperately attempted to ready herself for her arrival. Flexing her stiff hands on the leather covered steering wheel, Emilia James counted slowly backwards from ten- and silently rehearsed her greeting, “Hi mum! Auntie! How nice to finally see you again. And look, there are the little brats-!”No!, she scolded herself. You must not refer to them as brats this time, the funeral was bad enough. She grimaced as she recalled the last meeting between her mother, auntie and little cousins- it had been her Grandmother’s funeral and little had prepared her for the lack of restraint on her tongue as she’d addressed the little cousins as brats, much to the snickering amusement of her audience of supposed relatives.
Tensing her jaw, she let her mind swell up with anger and regret at ever accepting the offer of visiting her mother and aunt at their house in Grenwich. Urgh! She shuddered at the name. Emilia despised Grenwich, it’s superstitious, ever fearing residents; its gaudy flowers and homes; the stories of the supposedly haunted house on the country lane leading into it. She loathed it. Having been born and raised in Grenwich herself, she had heard a fair few hundred different retellings of the same ghastly story of the dreadful mad woman who butchered travellers who came to stay at her inn, and then married a degenerate man who together discarded their daughter on the street and then sold their one son into slavery in a factory in Ireland eleven years following. After the factory in Ireland had been closed no one had ever seen the son again- many a theory to be heard, though, was there in Grenwich. But there was a rumour that the daughter had been found and adopted into a family by a young mother somewhere within the town. Emilia no longer had compassion for any of the presumed victims, favouring instead to forget about her traumatic childhood there. But now, she had been mercilessly entangled in a forced invitation to return, goaded by bait of a promised inheritance. So she had returned, against her will, to what would soon become her permanent residence.
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