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Thread: What Happened to the Highwayman

  1. #1
    Kasparov or Einstein? sir_alex's Avatar
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    What Happened to the Highwayman

    This is one of my favorite stories. Hope you like it, pleae give me some feedback...

    William Highlander the 10th was tired. Very, very tired. After a long, hard day of working as the innkeeper of the Old England Inn, he was almost to the brink of fainting. But he wasn’t tired because of the cleaning, or the counting, or even the constant complaining of the guests. He was tired because of the ghosts.
    Have you ever heard of the story of the highwayman? About that man who, every night, went over to the local hostel to visit the landlord’s daughter, bla bla bla, sappy love story, etcetera. Anyway, the story goes on to tell that the stable boy, Tim, reveals the highwayman to the British Army, which brings them to the hostel. They plan an ambush, and they also put a shotgun under the landlord daughter’s chin, and to warn her loved one she pulled the trigger on the gun, blowing her face to smithereens. The highwayman, suddenly aware of what was happening, turned around and ran for his life, but was hit by a stray bullet on the left elbow. As he noticed that he was going to die anyway, he turned around and rushed blindly back towards the hostel, brandishing his rapier in his strong arm and screaming curses to the sky like a madman on marijuana. It would be just better to say that he rushed to his death, seeing as the details are too gory to describe…
    These events really happened, around 250 years ago. It is now said that the ghosts of the highwayman, who was named Geoffrey, and the landlord’s daughter, who was named Leonarda and not Bess, as the tale describes, are still floating around that same hostel, recreating their manner of death over and over, as if in perpetual motion.
    It is at this point of the story that Mr. William Highlander the 10th is introduced. A shy man, incapable of hurting a fly unless absolutely necessary, with the role of innkeeper in the Old England Inn. He was the 10th direct descendant of the landlord at the time of the highwayman. Somewhere along the course of his family’s life, the Highlanders had bought the hostel and turned it into an inn, a far more lucrative type of establishment if there ever was one. And for 250 years, the owners of that inn had to endure the ghosts of Leonarda, Geoffrey, and some dumb drunk guy that had jumped off the second story of the building. William wished it had been just the drunk guy.
    You see, having a bunch of loud ghosts screaming at the sky is not very good for business, especially in an inn filled with people that have been traveling a lot. So every single day William had to explain what the noises in the night were, and sometimes give money back to angry guests who couldn’t get his/her beauty sleep. William had tolerated it for twenty years, but now he was old, and he didn’t have those free yoga lessons on Sundays, so he wasn’t in tune with his inner peace anymore. That meant that what little patience he had had for the ghosts was gone completely. And after a lot of thought, he had decided to do something about it. It was time to get an exorcist.
    There was an exorcist named in the yellow pages, but he lived in Ireland. William called him anyway, seeing as there as there was nothing else that would interest him even minutely in the phone book, apart from an ad for a stress-ball salesman.
    A rasping female voice greeted him on the second ring. “Ghostspookers© exorcism services, how may we serve you?”
    “Hi. I’m looking for an exorcist. Unless this is a pizzeria. I have ghosts here, and I need some help. I’m almost broke because these ghosts just won’t leave me alone. Please help me…” William said with a truly pitiful voice, thinking that it would get him an exorcist faster, and maybe a discount. What he said was true, he was really almost broke; the last few guests had actually sued for sleep deprivation. He was down to his last measly pounds, and still needed to pay the gas bill. And the water bill. And a whole lot of other bills needed paying too. In resume, he was in need of a miracle (or at least a fair amount of guests to fill the rooms). That would be achievable when the ghosts were gone. That was a sight he couldn’t wait to see.
    “We have two exorcists ready, George and Balthazar. You can choose between them.” The rasping voice answered, the sound of computer keys clicking in the background.
    “I’ll choose Balthazar” he said, picking the one with the most mysterious name. “Please send him here by tomorrow. I live at…” but he never finished the sentence, because at that moment the person on the other line hung up, and a thunderous knocking on the door was heard. It was ten o’clock in the night, not a usual time for customers, but William went to get it anyway. Maybe it was a poor hitchhiker who didn’t know about the hostel’s bad fame. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the exorcist.
    William went over to the door slowly, the knock came again, more urgent this time, and he hurried to the door. Grasping the handle, he turned and pulled. The door was stuck. He pulled again, harder this time, and crashed backwards, taking the door with him. Old hinges, you see.
    Raising his tired old back slowly from the wooden floor, he perceived someone’s silhouette in the doorway. A dark figure was standing there, with a wide hat on his head. In one hand he held a sort of staff, measuring approximately one meter. In the other he held a string of onions.
    “You called for an exorcist?” he said in a deep voice, sending shivers down William’s back. The figure stepped in, seemed to look around, and then uttered a shrill scream that echoed throughout the house. A crow that was perched on the windowsill fluttered away.
    “Yes” William said, surprised “but I was only expecting you tomorrow.”
    “We have methods of transportation far beyond your comprehension, and prefer to keep them secret. Now, if you would please recite to me the manners of death of these…spectral appearances, I will gladly send them where the sun doesn’t shine, in a manner of speaking.” said the exorcist in a slight British accent. William noticed that every time he tried to see the exorcist’s face, the hat seemed to obscure it somehow, like a shadow. He proceeded to tell the man about the history of the two ghosts, and also that of the drunk man, who kept waking up the guests with his alcohol-driven ramblings. After hearing the tales, the exorcist began to pace around the room in a circle. Then he began to chant in a strange faraway language, twitching every once in a while and shaking the string of onions, which by now was already spreading an unwholesome stench around the room. After a while, he suddenly stopped and collapsed on the floor.
    Raising himself, he said in a tired voice “The ghosts have been sent to the middle of the Indian Ocean. The chant was effectuated properly. You should have no more problems with those…appearances.”
    William breathed a sigh of relief. His troubles were gone. A smile slowly spread across his face. He had nothing to worry about anymore.
    On December the 26th, 2004, an earthquake in the Indian Ocean caused a gigantic wave called a Tsunami to spread quickly across the water, hitting many of the neighboring countries and causing great devastation. One report from a Tsunami victim in India described a “mammoth wave that looked like a skyscraper, moving very quickly.” What the reporters for BBC forgot to put in was the victim’s other words: “on top of the wave there was what seemed to be strange spectral shapes moving around. One of them seemed to be on a horse. Strange, I must have been hallucinating in the panic…”

    Two months after the Tsunami, an innkeeper in Pondicherry, India, called an exorcist in Bombay.
    The spirit of Man is great
    How puny are his deeds

    Goethe

  2. #2
    Kasparov or Einstein? sir_alex's Avatar
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    I would really love someone's feedback on this story, please...
    The spirit of Man is great
    How puny are his deeds

    Goethe

  3. #3
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    I've really no time to write, I don't even have time to be on the computer, I just wanted to post a thread about my story. . .

    Anyway.

    I started to read your story, but then I realized what it was. I'll be honest, I think The Highwayman is absolutely perfect, just as it is, and I don't really want to read any more about it. Heck, Shakespeare or Pratchett could write more of it and I still wouldn't read it. I think you had an amazing idea, but The Highwayman just wasn't the right story to embellish. I'm not sure if that's how everyone feels, but that's what I think. I'm really, really sorry. I know that this is not what you wanted to hear, but it's the truth as kindly as I could put it.

    ~ Juliet

    PS. If I may be so bold, may I suggest trying your hand at fanfiction writing? You have the makings of a good fanfic writer. Embellishing on a bit character or expanding a plot or filling a gap is always fun to read about, and there are a billion sites (litterally in most cases) for any fandom you could think of that would host your stories. Fanfic is widely read, and in my personal opinion, the fame gained therein is quite real and satisfying. I know that if I ever met Lobilia Sackville-Baggins or Andy and Saphie in real life I'd probably faint!

  4. #4
    Kasparov or Einstein? sir_alex's Avatar
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    Dante'sJulliet, thanks for your frankness, it couldn't have been put any kindlier (kindlier, is that even a word?). However, I don't really understand what you mean by fanfiction writing. Could you, say, explain. I'll do a Google search...
    The spirit of Man is great
    How puny are his deeds

    Goethe

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