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    There’s A Storm Brewing
    There’s A Storm Brewing
    There’s A Storm Brewing
    Ebook44 pages38 minutes

    There’s A Storm Brewing

    By MJ Donovan

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    About this ebook

    This short story is set on Australia’s East coast and follows the destructive path of a cyclone called Debbie. Annie is also on a destructive path, an abused wife who believes her only escape lies at the bottom of a bottle, until another victim invades her consciousness and gives her a reason to continue.
    Now she has escaped and must decide if she wants to live with her broken body and mind or succumb to the deep as she runs from the storm raging inside her, leaving Detective Stan Rogers to find the evidence to bring her husband to justice.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMJ Donovan
    Release dateAug 15, 2018
    ISBN9780463476413
    There’s A Storm Brewing
    Author

    MJ Donovan

    I was a nurse for many years and have travelled solo around Australia in ‘Bob’, my VW campervan for a couple of years while trying to cope with total burn out. On that journey I was shown a different side to the lucky country where women, some with children, a lot in their 50’s and over, who for a multitude of reasons, were living in cars, tents, and vans because they were unable to find affordable housing when working or couldn’t pay their utilities and rent on Newstart. Interestingly our bipartisan leaders had increased the retirement age for women and somehow this ignited a huge surge in the homelessness of this group. No wage parity, most had been stay at home mums, no or very little superannuation. Something to think about.I’m currently living in a small seaside community north of Brisbane. Formally from Perth and originally New Zealand. I write articles occasionally that have been published in the Island and Surrounds, a local community paper. I love poetry and frequent a zany Spoken Word monthly event that has very talented artists.I’m not sure where ‘There’s a Storm Brewing’ came from but I think it’s an interesting short story.

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      Book preview

      There’s A Storm Brewing - MJ Donovan

      CONTENTS

      THE ROCKS

      THE FARM

      THE REFUGE

      ANNIE

      DEBBIE

      THE DETECTIVE

      EPILOGUE

      THE ROCKS

      Thunder clapped, lightning bowed, and the waves rose up in their white caps for an encore before crashing to the shore.  Gulls screamed and crabs scuttled to the rocks for safety.  A bundle of rags was huddled beneath the overhang seeking peace.  In some part of her brain, realising this was not the best place to be, she threw her head back, grinning and swallowed the remains of the pretty blue bottle.  It ’ s warmth spread throughout her scarred and emaciated body, settling in empty her stomach.

      Remembering the abuse and her unborn baby, she would rather end it here than face the terrible reality.  Grace had been saved but it wasn ’ t enough.  She hoped the evidence left on her body would take him down, she hoped, as she curled into a ball, wrapping her coat around her, succumbing to the deep.  The dark didn ’ t frighten her anymore. It was her saviour on many occasions as she shied from the reality that was her life.  A life, as it turned out, not worth living nor worth saving.  Where had she gone wrong? What had turned her fairy tale into a horror story with the most vile villain ever imagined. 

      Her final resting place was where she ’ d enjoyed her life the most.  As a young child, she ’ d holidayed here at South West Rocks with her family.  Loving the beach, climbing the dunes with their sharp rocky outlines, collecting shells; some with hermits still in them, that woke her in the night, scuttling over the floor, trying to find their way back home. 

      She regrets that now.  Perhaps that was karma. She had not thought twice about removing the little crabs away from their families and homes and then throwing them away when the stench of death was detected in the little glass bowls where she ’ d kept them.  Its funny how little things come back to haunt you.  It had not been her intention to kill the crabs as it had not been her intention to become like a crab in her own home, scuttling away from the light, from the vicious hand of her husband, constantly clawing for a way out before she too died. 

      But thats what people do.  Try to survive even through the most hostile of circumstances.  Wars, famines, abusive circumstances.  Communities and governments that don ’ t value them.  Why?  When it would be so much easier to give up the fight, stop clawing towards the light, just allow the dark to take you down and end it, once and for all.

      In the beginning, her life had been sheltered, in her mother ’ s arms and in

      her father's love and the roughhousing of her delightful brothers.  Her parents were elderly and her brothers were also so much older, with young children of their own.  She ’ d been brought up on the fluff of fairy tales, where she would meet her prince charming and live happily ever after.

      She met and married Donald while attending university. 

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