Laura Morrigan

The characters in this short story belong to L Frank Baum. The rest of the writing is all mine. I Sometimes I dream of Kansas. The vast grey desert touches the endless grey sky so you can hardly tell where they meet. So different from Oz with its bright colours and shining cities. It surprises me how much I miss it. My aunt and uncle’s lined faces smiling at me as we rose before dawn to do the chores. The way everything tasted of dirt. Not things you think you would miss. There really is no place like home. But I can never go home. II “Dorothy, are you awake?” He tries to sound casual, but I hear the tremor in his voice. The Scarecrow, the last of my friends. And even he fears me. I sit up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. They feel gritty, but everything feels gritty now. He’s smiling from the outside of my cell. Too scared to venture in. I can see from his face that it’s worse today. “It’s spreading faster now, isn’t it?” His refusal to reply is all the answer I need. I have no mirror...

There was once a girl who was very beautiful. She had red lips, skin as brown as a hazelnut, and long hair as black as ink. This was very inconvenient for her, as men were always asking for her hand in marriage and she just wanted to be left alone. All day, all night, men were hammering on the door of her cottage, telling her they loved her because she was so beautiful. They didn't even bother to find out anything about her, what she liked to do or what her name was. They just wanted her because she was pretty. So this girl built a tower. She built it seven stories high and then bricked up the door from the inside. In this tower, the men could not reach her. The walls were high and impossible to climb. She was free to do as she liked. She would haul up supplies on a bucket from the high window, a young girl from the village would bring them for her. She learned to cook gourmet meals just for herself, she read, and best of all, she could sleep uninterrupted by men banging at her doo...

  I read once that in the original Snow White fairytale, there was no stepmother, only a real mother filled with jealousy of her daughter. A sort of "be careful what you wish for" tale. I thought about of the mothers with Postnatal Depression who cannot bond with their children and wondered if this was the true story behind Snow White. I do not mean to demonise anyone with Postnatal Depression or other illnesses, but to try and see the story behind the fairytale. POSSIBLE TRIGGERS: Domestic violence, child abuse, postnatal depression Only Child  (A retelling of Snow White) A mother's wish for her child is always selfish When I felt the life moving within me I wished for her to be all things Beautiful, wise, brave And lucky When she blossomed into the world Tearing out of me I thought I would know beauty But there was only pain Days, weeks, months passing in a blur Only knowing the lingering sadness Of this part of you Becoming something else Growing, changing on its own S...

  I wanted to write a modern version of Rapunzel that looked at the idea of the mother trying to protect the daughter. She may have been overprotective, but remember, Rapunzel did end up a single mother, living in the desert with twins, until the obligatory happy ending. Warning, this story contains references to teens having sex and teen pregnancy. *** I suppose they'll make me out to be a monster. That's fine. I know the real story. As I sit here behind bars, waiting for them to decide my fate, I am not sorry for the choices I made. I would do it all over again, all for my daughter.  I married young, and it was over quickly, the dream of love quickly fading to harsh reality. We were barely more than teenagers, nights of laughing over burnt meals turned to recriminations. After three years we had failed to have a child, our one great wish. It tore us apart. He left me for another woman, not even bothering to finalise the divorce before they tried for another child. I saw he...

  Misunderstood Villain's Support Group: Loki and Maleficent “And everyone still loves Louis best!” “Shut your mouth, Lestat, you pompous eunuch,” Loki muttered under his breath, careful not to let the leader of the Misunderstood Villains Support Group hear him. He would have given anything to kill every member of the group, but without his staff, he was nowhere near powerful enough to take them all on at once. Still, only three more weeks of this stupid court ordered group and he would be allowed back to Asgard. He was counting the days. A part of him wondered what for, since all that would happen was Thor would go back to bullying him again. “Sorry I'm late”, a darkly melodious voice rang through the room. Loki turned to see the imposing figure who stood in the doorway. “Great fashion sense,” he muttered, “nearly as good as mine.” He took in her horned head and shiny black robes. On this woman, the Goth look certainly was  not  dead. The woman swept across the room to p...

  PINNED or The Disobedient Faery Childe THIS STORY IS FOR ADULTS, NOT CHILDREN “Never go near the Waterstone House”, Mother Rankin cautioned the young faery folk she taught. “It is a terrible place, a place of death.” Most of the young ones listened to Mother Rankin, after all, she was a wise old crone, her knowledge of herb lore had saved many a faery and human life. To humans she seemed like an old woman, rather bent, with browny sun-worn skin and odd, unmatching clothes. The faery children could see her as she really was, the greeny tinge of her face and her blind white eyes, but she did not scare them. Crones were not the best looking of the witch folk, but age had mellowed them and most could be trusted with the care and discipline of young faery folk.  There were two faery children who did not listen to the words of Mother Rankin. Thistledown was a pretty young faery girl, as light and air-headed as the thistledown she was named for, and her best friend Cocklebur, as sp...

My sister was always fanciful. She was born simply Anna, you know, but she had to call herself Arabella, and put on airs. Her and that silly name and her colourful lacy dresses, dragging everywhere and showing dirt! I always preferred the plain black clothes, no muss, no fuss, so much for suitable for our profession. We were born into it, like our mother before us, it was a proud tradition. All we women lived under the same roof, singing, proud of our role in life. Not so Arabella. No, she had to go make her fancy dresses, and when we teased her, well then she did what not one of our family had done in generations, she took off on her own. She made her own cottage in a nearby wood. I visited as often as I could, even though I thought she was snobby, and treated us like we were beneath her. I hated her blonde ringlet curls and primping ways. I hated the way she swept the floor with the broom, clutching it carefully so as not to chip the coloured beetle shells she wore glued to her finge...