Something uncanny

This one may make not that much sense reading as I wrote it to feel uncanny to the people in the writing class. It worked on the day and people enjoyed it so please bear that in mind when reading

It was the first week of something new. I remember walking into a bookstore with a sign on the door saying “Closed” that felt surreal, like I shouldn’t have been there. It was week one of my newfound writing course and I had no idea what was going on or what I was walking into; luckily I walked into a friendly cast of characters who welcomed me with smiles on their faces. Down the stairs we went into what looked like the dungeon of this charity bookshop and into a room with enough chairs for us. We sat and discussed the first prompt for the course - ‘Words we don’t have in English’. The discussion was promising and cheery and time flew before we were tasked to go home and write our stories.

The following week came by, we read out stories and I remember feeling happy listening to a story about a Scarecrow who failed to hit it off with a woman who had talking coconuts following her. It was comedic and joyful, making time fly, and before long we were making our way back up into the shop to leave. On the way out I passed a section that made me chuckle; a section of foreign dictionaries. “What a nice coincidence given this week’s topic.” I thought to myself before going home to write the next prompt about one character making it up to the other.

Sitting in the room the next week, I felt good telling my story about a wizard performing necromancy to make up for killing his dear wife’s cat. I had confidence in my writing that week (despite it only being week two) and the story was well received; as was everyone else’s story as well. I wandered up the stairs, curious about if I’d find another link to the week’s topic, I found a DVD box set of The Good Place. A slightly more tenuous link but it’s all about someone trying to make up for being shitty in their life in the afterlife so close enough. Two weeks in a row now, probably still just a coincidence.

The week after was about the half mad things people do in love, this time we had a lovely ‘build-your own adventure’ type of story where people could shuffle snippets and have a unique take on the story. It was different and exciting and yet still in the back of my mind, I was curious about what I was going to find in the bookstore above that was linked. It was more direct this time. A copy of Romeo and Juliet, the quintessential story of doing mad things because of love. This was the third week and at this point, it was starting to feel less like a coincidence and more like it had been planned. Next week is diary entries, There’s no way this could continue, I mean what could be there be that was diary entries.

And yet the following week after hearing about Killer Kelly and the Tales of the Eternal Barmaid, I found a book front and centre of the shop. ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime’, A book written in diary entry form. At this point I was starting to feel chills down my spine but nobody else had seemed to notice anything was wrong. Could this just be an elaborate prank played on newcomers. Guess I’ll have to find out next week with Greek Mythology. I’d even scanned around to ensure there’s nothing on the matter in sight before I leave.

With any suspicion and worry about the strange ongoings in the shop above tempered by the laughter from a story of A God Named Richard (don’t ask), I went upstairs and found Mythos by Stpehen Fry. All about retelling of Greek Myths. This is getting too on the nose and yet still nobody else has noticed. I’m starting to feel as though I’m going mad and just hallucinating at this point. The following weeks were the same, on the nostalgia topic after hearing about travelling to Timbuktu (a place I thought to be fake), I came across a CD copy of Bryan Adams’ Summer of ‘69 single - a song all about nostalgia. The next week was all about Idiot Plots and a story tech nerd getting the wrong end of the stick. A DVD of the Hangover was at the front of the store.

At this point, I am feeling very very paranoid. I keep finding these connections in the shop as I go through the course and there’s still some weeks to go. I’m fearful about this week, the whole point of these stories is about uncanny things happening so I suppose this is the perfect time to tell of these strange going on’s. But today’s is definitely the strangest I’ve seen in a while. Upon entering the store I see a book named ‘Dragon Clouds’ and its author is currently sitting in the same room as me; in fact, he’s actually running this whole shindig.