Tag Archives: Roz White

Hopeless Tales

Why Your Socks Have Holes…

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By Prudence Weatherpenny (Professor)

Although it was my housemate Miss White’s turn to attempt the laundry (“attack” might be more appropriate given the state of some of her garments, but that is a matter for some other time), I found myself joining in the most recent hunting of stray socks and stockings.

The regular discovery of seemingly-expired examples of these pieces is often distressing enough (I have covered this in a Treatise elsewhere, although I have my doubts that the Hopeless Philosophical Society here on the Island will ever publish it, narrow-minded and jealous little bigots that they are) but imagine my surprise – nay, almost horror! – when, on
lifting yet another raggedly woolly former-footwear from its place of expiration behind the chest-of-drawers, I was just in time to spot something slither away from the Scene of the Crime.

It did not take much pursuing: the house that Miss White and I currently share might be rickety, battered, tumbledown and slowly filling with mould – in other words a perfectly acceptable dwelling by Hopeless standards – but the wainscoting is solid and the skirting-boards sound. We do not even suffer from mice in the usual way of things beyond the
scullery (as far as I am aware they have not yet evolved sufficiently to contemplate tool usage), so I was confident of their being no escape for this… whatever it was. And so it proved!

The timely, inspired and spontaneous re-employment of the Chamber Pot as a temporary prison was a master-stroke, if I say so myself; what matter a little extra cleaning afterwards? Is that not what we engage an Orphan for?

Whatever this thing was, it was lively! It slithered and clattered and thrashed around within the porcelain as, with a heavy book across the top, I carried it downstairs into the scullery – where, not only is the light better but it is where my Research Implements are kept, such as
they are on this Island (any implication that they also form part of the Kitchen Paraphenalia is firmly and resolutely refuted, I might add). With a notebook to hand, and Miss White to take those notes and assist as I might direct, we lifted the book from the pot and peered inside.

It was immediately obvious that whatever we had caught was at least a part of the solution to the most common cause of death found among our socks and similar, for in the short journey down the ramshackle stairs, it had either coughed up – or otherwise ejected from itself – some unmistakable strands of wool and silk. Aha! – so socks can – sometimes at least – fall prey to this… well, what was it, precisely? It did not exhibit the body-segments one might expect from a worm, or at least those in the outside world, but nor did it have the scales of a regular serpent. It was clearly quite at home in air rather than water, but I was minded most strongly of the Lamprey, especially when the creature reared up unexpectedly as Miss White’s rather frayed jacket-cuff strayed over the pot in her reaching for yet another biscuit (we are going to have to either stop buying those quite so often, or discover a seamstress to let out some of her dresses). As it did so, this diminutive little worm-creature
revealed the most enormous mouth, a mouth lined with ferocious, if minuscule, teeth!

From a body no broader than a knitting-needle but almost as long as a middle-finger, came a gape fully as round as my palm, and those teeth were sharp – as Miss White discovered to her chagrin. The wound is still not fully healed even now, though it does not appear to affect her
ability to pull biscuits from the jar.

Mindful of the usual pattern of Island Life, particularly when things are released into the wild, I am at something of a loss as to what to do with the creature. I have discovered no others, and the rate of death among our stockings appears to have lessened, which can only be a good thing given the scarcity of such items on the island generally. I have no wish to set it loose in the landscape as it clearly represents a serious danger to one and all; I think on balance I might keep it somehow, against the chance of slight or insult from one or other of my fellow-dwellers on this little island in the mist. Perhaps that information might even be
sufficient to “persuade” the Philosophical Society of the good sense in overcoming their ages-old and completely nonsensical prejudices and actually publishing some of my findings at last!

(Actual author, Roz White, image by Nimue)

Hopeless Tales

Into the Puddle

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By Roz White

If you ask a good many of the residents on Hopeless, Maine, to name their favourite place of recreation (although that in itself is a bit of a dodgy term on the island, some might say), there are probably not many that would name The Puddle Inn before one or two others – although, again, the choice is hardly enormous on Hopeless. It is not that The Puddle is a particularly noisome establishment (but again, see the above comments) but it does rather suffer from Geography. Which is perhaps a better option than suffering from some of the other things common to the Island.

Very few people go anywhere near its location, which in consequence means that very few have even heard of The Puddle Inn, and how it continues to even survive against such insurmountable odds is merely another mystery surrounding a place that is enough of a mystery in itself. You see, The Puddle is situated in a part of the island known as “the puddle”: it sits in a swampy area of lower ground that is damper, muddier and wetter than most of the rest of Hopeless, so it is perhaps merely a matter of degree.

So, if asked to provide directions to the establishment, those who are even aware of it might describe it as “The Puddle Inn in The Puddle.” The majority will simply stare at you blankly as if you had gone mad, although again this might be considered normal behaviour for a good many of them…

But it gets worse. Sitting in a damp depression (another term applicable to the rest of the island and its inhabitants, come to think of it), the pub itself is prone to occasional manifestations of water within its walls as well as outwith them. So sometimes there is The Puddle in The Puddle in The Puddle. Nobody on the island appears to consider such appalling grammar worthy of note; it is more a case of going to, say, The Squid and Teapot on that particular day, since The S&T tends to at least allow its patrons to keep their feet (or equivalents) dry.

Attempts to provide extra, and somewhat unique, entertainments in the pub also met with a singular level of failure. Islanders have a well-founded distrust of pretty much any body of water – even ones they can see the bottom of – and so the Puddle Inn Pool proved to be no benefit to profits at all. Even games of billiards can, on a bad day, come to resemble water-polo more than anything else, and shove ha’penny can be more akin to skimming stones across ponds (or, indeed, puddles). Nobody mentions the skittles anymore.

A certain Mr Igneous appears to be the hotelier at The Puddle; we say it in those terms because nobody has so far been able to produce any documentary evidence of his appointment or ownership of the Establishment, least of all Mr Igneous himself. But for all the damp, the loose and self-determining outbreaks of water and the singular lack of any regular (actually, any) clientele, Igneous always has a smile and a jolly word for anyone happening upon his little business; his chief source of supply is one Silas Grimgach, who whilst technically independent and self-employed, does seem to have some sort of tie to The Puddle, and has yet to attempt peddling his wares to any other hostelry, private cottage, village shop or… well, anywhere, really. The precise nature of this tie, as with so much else surrounding The Puddle, is yet to be illuminated but we do not doubt that it will prove to be just as unwholesome and potentially dangerous to life and limb as his “Old Succubus” Porter proved to be on its one and only outing. Yet Mr Igneous appears to be somewhat enamoured of the brew…

Hopeless inhabitants

Message in a bottle

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By Roz White

It has occasionally been attempted, so we are told, to send messages to that half-fabled Outside World; over the years (centuries), odd folk (some odder than others) have tied messages to the legs of birds (the birds usually peck them off and then eat them), concocted methods of communicating by smoke-signal (invariably swallowed up in the all-pervading mists and vapours of Hopeless). We could go on, but the underlying message is surely clear: messages rarely if ever make it out of Hopeless.

Recently, one reason for this repeated failure of communication has become a little clearer. It was only the other week when, during one of her occasional walks along the sea-shore, Miss White, of whom it has often been said, claimed on her return to have observed Professor Weatherpenny throwing a bottle into the waves. When questioned as to the reason for such peculiar behaviour, even by her standards (which are generally low indeed), the Professor explained that the bottle contained a message. Her insistence that this message was a scientific and fully researched treatise on the island and not merely a plea for rescue cut little ice.

Whichever was actually the truth was rendered largely irrelevant, however, for a day or two later a most peculiar piece of flotsam returned the bottle to its erstwhile owner. The thing washed ashore turned out to be a peculiar form of sea-creature with some rather odd (even by Hopeless standards) features. It was not dead – far from it, though it clearly preferred to be in the water than out of it. On what we presume was its back, it sported a very limp and listless – one might even call it doleful, a term very much in keeping with its facial features, as it happened. Still, no creature can particularly help how it looks – just ask Mr Igneous from The Puddle Inn – but the multitude who came to view the creature did rather decide that it could, if it so wished, modify its behaviour.

And this, finally*, brings us back to the matter of the Professor’s bottle-message: for it was promptly coughed up by the creature, almost right at Weatherpenny’s feet. As others in the crowd began to feel that it might perhaps be approaching lunchtime and brought out picnic-things, and certainly when Silas Grimgach, part-time brewer and barkeeper, began offering his own rather dangerous wares for sale, the animal went practically berserk. Every bottle, no matter the size, hue or even contents, appeared to be a subject of insatiable curiosity to it, and it immediately rampaged towards every new specimen, trampling men, women and children (as well as dogs, cats, other sea-denizens…) in its path. A good many residents of the islands found themselves with no option but to risk life-and-limb to rescue their glassware, for such things are hard to come by in Hopeless and people tend to treasure even the humble beer-bottle as heirlooms (as an Aside, Professor Weatherpenny was subsequently seriously chastised for her wanton disposal of such a valuable item).

Thus was the Bottle-Nosey Dole-Fin named and described (by the Professor, yet again), and added to the ever-lengthening list of Strange Things Around Hopeless (her Treatise on this, if nothing else, can be verified and even studied by anyone sufficiently bored). Driven from the strand and from every other picnic-area by incensed owners of bottles, wine-glasses and even spectacles across the island, we conjecture that there must be some level of breeding population in the oceans around Hopeless, and if their ability to discern glass artefacts is even half as keen amid the waves as it appears to be on land, then we can confidently predict that the bottle has yet to be made which might withstand their energetic attentions.

*the blame for such a lengthy discourse is laid firmly (by Miss White) at the feet of Professor Weatherpenny, since she is accused of being Academic and therefore inclined to verbosity. But since on some level we suspect that Miss White and the Professor are one and the same, the apple, as they say, has not really fallen very far from the tree.

(You can find more of Roz’s work on her Amazon page – https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Roz-White/author/B00W1L8QKW )

Hopeless inhabitants

Paperthins with Roz White

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Story by Roz White

Roz White, who has previously been accused of Making Things Up, might well have made this one up as well. Unfortunately, proof could be hard to come by insofar as there is a chance that, if true, the subject of this report has made off with said evidence. On the other hand, if the assertion turns out to be false, how are the missing pieces of paper from Ms White’s notebooks to be accounted for?

It all began when she opened her back door one blustery day (there are so many of those on the island that it is impossible to nail the date down any further) and saw a sheet of paper scurrying away. It rapidly vanished under the larder door and she thought no more of it – until she went to retrieve it later (a Later involving coffee and a mild lacing of rum)… and it was not there. Every now and then, Ms White noticed other sheets disappearing, breezing along the floor even when there was no breeze for them to breeze upon. It became bothersome when she made the correlation between the missing sheets and vital notes to her latest attempts at Making-Things-Up.

Thus she came to the conclusion that her notebooks were indeed a new lifeform. Named Paperthins, mainly for what they are of course, what they do, where they go and more importantly what they eat (always a vital question on the island, of course) remain so far shrouded in Mystery, and may indeed be merely another literary device intended to excite curiosity and hopefully an Urge To Purchase (Ms White is, after all, somewhat dependent upon such Purchases, and so her part in this ought surely to be suspect). But in the meantime, caution is urged, and as a preliminary measure it is recommended that all sheets of paper be nailed to the surface on which they rest. Much in the manner of errant Vampires…

(To further explore Things Roz White has Made Up wander this way – https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07FN1FCZX/)

Hopeless inhabitants

Roz White – resident

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It turns out that Roz White may have been making things up. This is going to come as a relief to some of you – it certainly did for me. All those things she said about ghasts might not be true. I’m still not entirely clear if ghasts are the same as gaunts or, for that matter, what a lady ghast is.

However, if they aren’t a new kind of monster and we aren’t all at dire risk of dying horribly in new and even less familiar ways, that’s about as close to good news as we’re likely to get this week.

Also it turns out that I was entirely wrong about her being a blacksmith, for reasons that should be perfectly understandable, I think. It’s a mistake anyone could make. Especially if, like me, they’ve mostly been getting by on hairy coffee for the last week and haven’t actually slept since the previous full moon. Has anyone else done that? Or is that just a me-thing? Anyway, there’s a point at which the hairy coffee doesn’t merely keep you awake, it adds in whole extra periods of time that no one else experiences and this is where (so I am told) all my issues with ghasts and blacksmithing have come from.

Apparently Roz White makes things up, on purpose, to amuse other people. You can find The Forging of Lady Ghast over here – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forging-Lady-Ghast-Steam-Punk-Phantasy/dp/1717811094/ but I am led to believe it won’t guide you through the process of making a woman out of metal.