Following the darkly thrilling début novel Book & I by E-L Cartwright, there comes this absorbing collection of short stories.
I dream of cold blue
walls, two portraits of people looking down in yellow ochre frames, two chairs
unoccupied, two bottles on the table, two everything but me, wrapped up in
linen on the single bed like someone in a shroud. But why is there an angel at
my head? – Vincent, “Inside the Yellow House”
Inside the Yellow House & Other
Stories continues to explore previous themes of obsession
and perception through the lives of each character.
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Owlight Creative Press; 1st Edition (Dec 2012)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9567432-1-3
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Extract from the short story: "Inside the Yellow House"
Vincent, a young
modern day artist who shares the same first name as Van Gogh, finds himself
inexplicably terrorized by the colour the famous artist loved most: yellow.
It was six months before I told her. Didn’t want
her thinking I was ... imagining things. Usually, I could ignore It, but though
I worked and tried for long periods not to see through my peripheral vision, I
was aware, as if someone was standing close by, that something was in the room
while I was painting. Although the walls were blue and the floor mainly green,
the overriding impression was of yellow, not a happy, vital yellow but one that
had a clinging thickness to it, suffocating. Did Van Gogh really love his
yellow house? More than the asylum, I suppose.
The
shutters are dark viridian-like leaves opening inwards, not inviting but
propelling me back into the room. I’m going nowhere.
That
night, Jo said I’d woken up, or appeared awake because my eyes were open and
I’d walked across the room to the window and started looking for a way out,
fumbling with the locks and stepping back then going forward to try again. I
did this five or so times when she got up and led me back to bed, not worried
that I would fall (just three feet to the ground), but wondering where would I
go? I couldn’t tell her. I had no memory of getting out of bed.
I
tried my best, from then on, not to see It but then came summer and It was
everywhere. I resented the sunflowers in the shops, on cards, in windows, in
galleries; their colour, a bludgeon to the senses, an affront to morning
hangovers, their brightness surely deepening by contrast, the mood of the most
depressed. Why he loved them; I’ll never know. They grow strong and tall and
when you look away they turn their dark round malevolent faces on you.
