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    Time Tells Tales: Tale one - Dead In A Ditch
    Time Tells Tales: Tale one - Dead In A Ditch
    Time Tells Tales: Tale one - Dead In A Ditch
    Ebook59 pages59 minutes

    Time Tells Tales: Tale one - Dead In A Ditch

    By Stephanie Fletcher

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Tale one - Dead in a Ditch - Alfred's Tale
    Set in 1999, in England, Alfred of indeterminable age is lying at the bottom of a very icy cold and deep muddy ditch hidden by brambles. He has been knocked into this place by a car that sped off not stopping. He is sure that broken bones aside, this was to be his last resting place. As this realisation hits home he begins to review and play out the high and lows of his mostly misspent life in glorious colour whilst his body succumbs to hypothermia.
    What will he reveal? Will he be found or his Journal? Will the letter he wrote to his sisters get to them before all evidence of his life is lost? These and many more questions will be raised but maybe not all will be answered in this first novel of five. For sure, time certainly has some tales to tell.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStephanie Fletcher
    Release dateOct 7, 2012
    ISBN9781301133680
    Time Tells Tales: Tale one - Dead In A Ditch
    Author

    Stephanie Fletcher

    Biography (29 10 2012)I am a Mother and best friend to three girls. I truly love my life and every person who has ever touched it with unconditional love, and I am grateful for all their support in my endeavours. I am now a grandmother for the first time in October 2012 and I am sure inspiration will come for some children's stories! I have a website for publishing my writing and poetry. The web link is http://www.stephanie-fletcher.co.ukI started writing seriously after having a traumatic event in my life and having a nervous breakdown to boot. My physical and mental health suffered greatly and now six years later, hand on heart, I can honestly say I am not the self-driven OCD perfectionist I was before.I had a spiritual enlightenment, counselling, and time, lots of time on my hands. I could have quit, and sank deeper into depression but I didn't. I am lucky enough to have three wonderful caring and considerate daughters who witnessed my decent into hell and back, and a family who never left my side. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and hit life head on again like the Taurean bull I am.I had always written a journal of sorts, spasmodically, and the days of staring into thin air became times of inspiration. At first I was scared to show others my work. The last thing I needed was criticism that cuts you to the soul. I needn't of worried, only but a few people gave me critique that knocked my confidence and I began to grow as a writer.I am not very well educated, only secondary school and college at forty doing a creative writing course and gaining a certificate in counselling skills. I read a lot, anything and everything and I take notes everywhere, for use later in my work. I collect idioms and sayings, inspirational quotes etc and they all help. A voice recorder is handy for those nighttime ideas and I also read my work out loud, recording them and then playing back, as it is easier to see where something doesn't work. I have a programme called ‘dragon speak’ which types up my recordings and saves a lot of frustrating keyboard time, which does my arthritis no good! I like to do my original work long hand so I have a lot of A5 notebooks needing attention.Writing is never dull, or a job, I enjoy everyday I spend writing and often surprise myself at what comes out. I am now attempting my first Novel, called ‘Time Tells Tales’, a synopsis is on my website and the first book of the five tales is published as an e-book on Smashwords.com and is called ‘Alfred's Tale - Dead in a Ditch’. I have three collections of poetry and two short, novella type stories available as well, one of which is free, so go help your self to a copy!

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      Book preview

      Time Tells Tales - Stephanie Fletcher

      Time Tells Tales

      Alfred's Tale

      By

      Stephanie Fletcher

      * * * * *

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      * * * * *

      PUBLISHED BY:

      Stephanie Fletcher on www.smashwords.com

      Dead in a Ditch

      Copyright © 2012 by Stephanie Fletcher

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      This story is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

      Adult Reading Material

      I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

      Stephanie.

      * * * * *

      Time Tells Tales

      A Novel in Five Tales

      Set in Ireland and England in the early 1900’s, covering a century, Time Tells Tales is a Novel in five parts or ‘Tales’. They explore the history of three families; their interconnected lives are intricately woven together by love, birth, death, and marriage. These lives are spiced up by religion, revenge, scandal, abuse, heartache and spiritual intervention.

      The five Tales are told from different perspectives by the characters that drive this novel along to the surprising conclusion, spreading across time, space and dimensions, hence the title - Time Tells Tales.

      * * * * *

      Alfred's Tale - Dead in a Ditch

      Prologue

      It was cold, so cold, Alfred thought in his discomfort. Those who had a home would probably say, for late November of 1999, it was quite mild tucked up in front of their fires, with their central heating and their double glazing, keeping out the bitter wind chill that cuts straight through your clothes. They didn't have a clue.

      For Alfred Rooney, of no fixed abode, on this particular evening in the waterlogged ditch in which he lay, it was very, very cold, bitterly and miserably cold. Icy fingers were poking him, chilling him to the bone. His ragged clothes offered no protection from this nightmarish situation, in which he found himself in, and on top of that, he thought - he had more than likely broken his leg.

      Alfred thought it was round about 7-30 p.m. He did not own a watch, as he had never needed one. He knew the time by the seasons, the stars, the sun and moon, and he was never far wrong. A car had sped past him on this dark moonless night, on this narrow deserted country lane, somewhere in the Staffordshire moor lands and it had knocked him for six, sending him flying into the deep ditch where he was now residing.

      This is it, he thought. This is where I'm gonna see out the rest of me glorious, misspent life, interred in mud and feckin’ freezing cold water! Forgotten by all wi' not a chance a bein' feckin’ found...

      The car driver hadn't stopped and Alfred didn't blame him. He had been staggering from side to side, in the middle of the lane, drunk as a skunk of course. His dark lumbering presence would not have been illuminated to the car driver in sufficient time for him to slow down, not even with the very bright headlights of whatever car, they had been driving. And to make matters worse, there was not one street lamp in this way out place in the depths of the English countryside. It were as black as hell, a place well suited him, which, more than likely, he was going to see very soon.

      Alfred neither heard nor saw the car approaching. It had hit him hard on his right side from the back, so hard he had seen the stars in the sky before landing in the deep ditch, which he now presumed would be his last resting place.

      He heard his thigh bone snap on landing on the rough, wet, muddy, branch-strewn ground. His head was flung backwards as if it were on a spring, hitting a large rock, hard enough to knock him out cold.

      On coming too, he estimated he had been unconscious roughly an hour or so. The sky was obliterated by the undergrowth of brambles, nettles and overgrown bushes, which had done little to cushion his fall onto the stony wetness of this deep ditch. No sign of an ambulance or the police, so he presumed the car driver had taken one look at him and fled.

      A normal reaction from all and sundry, that he was privileged to receive, for more or less

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