Jessica Barratt

Writer & Photographer | Digital Portfolio

Recent Stories

  • The End of the Road | Pt 5

    The End of the Road | Pt 5

    Start with Part 1 of The End of The Road Here.

    [From Part 4]

    Shaking himself out of it, he found his rucksack and pulled a light-weight sleeping bag from the thing. He thought about sleeping on the floor, but soon saw the couch had a foldout mechanism, and brought the small, lumpy cot out from its hiding place. This, at least, was dust-free, having been tucked away for so long. He used one of the couch cushions as a pillow, draping his small towel over the thing to avoid the dust in his mouth. Pulled himself into the sleeping bag with the curtains wide open and laid down to rest, falling asleep watching the moonlight creep up the opposite wall.

    He woke the next morning clutching his throat, the pre-dawn sky casting an eerie pink light across the dark room. His eyes ran to the door. The door with the latch. It was closed.

    He blinked, and blinked again. Still closed. His heart hammered in his chest.

    A dream. It was just a dream. The door is closed. The door is closed.

    He swallowed the bile that had risen in his mouth, but couldn’t look away from the door for a long time, even as the light began to turn blue with the coming sunrise. Couldn’t shake the dream until finally the sun rose above the treetops and sent it’s blinding white light right into his eyes.

    He blinked. A dream. His heart began to settle, and his breathing returned. His arms still felt like jelly, though, and his mouth was thick with sleep and bad breath. He thought about the bread in the fridge, the cheese. He needed water. He needed air. He needed people, he realized. Usually he had someone – at least someone – in the old house with him. But waking up like that, with no one to rattle off to…

    …deciding he needed a smoke more than anything else, he put his feet back in his boots and walked to the back of the house where it was still dark. Opened the fridge and jumped back, slamming the door shut. Then shook his head and opened it again. The light came on like normal, and the bread and cheese and smokes were there, inside—but for a moment he could have sworn they weren’t, and that the fridge was filled with moss and mould and stink. It had looked that way, hadn’t it? he thought, reaching for a smoke and the cheese. Nah. It’s just the dream on ya. He lit his smoke. Made himself eat the cheese when that was finished. While he ate, his eyes were far away, staring out the back broken window off into the marsh. He was thinking about town. Whether he’d seen a liquor store. There was a lot to do around the place. He would need a couple brews to get through it all until Trent packed up the rest of his stuff. Then he wouldn’t need the beer so much.

    He scratched the crook of his elbow absent-mindedly and decided it was better to go to town early, before the day got hot. Maybe some old biddy could cook him a breakfast to shake off the taste of the bad water, the bad dream, the bad day before.

    Grabbing his smokes from the fridge, he strode back to the front of the house, emptied his pack onto the bed, changed his underwear, put the same clothes back on and opened the door to go outside and get a move on.

    Only, when he opened the door, out in the field of gravel and scrub-grass leading to the house, there stood a small girl. Not too small, mind you. Probably 10 or 11. With rude eyes and chubby cheeks and a dress that hung all the way down to her ankles. Her dark brown hair was tangled as if she hadn’t brushed it for a while, and her dusty too-big-for-her cowboy boots gave him the impression that she had slipped on someone else’s shoes for a morning walk.

    The girl spoke first.

    “You live here, mister?”

    “Yeah.” He felt itchy. Impatient. He had to go before it got hot. He’d wanted people, not some little girl.

    “You’ll probably die. Some other people died.” She didn’t move or stop looking at him. Just said it and stared.

    He rolled his eyes. He knew kids. Their little tricks.  

    “Lots of people die,” he said. And then, “You live around here?”

    “Yeah, over there.” The girl pointed behind him, back out toward the marsh. Then a few seconds later she asked, “Where did you come from?” But he didn’t have time for questions, or for games. The sun was truly up now and he was starting to feel anxious about it, like he’d lost his window. Like he hadn’t seen a liquor store, or a grocery store, or any stores at all when he’d passed through.  

    “There a liquor store in town?” was all he asked next, pushing his feet in front of one another to walk closer to the girl. She seemed to blur as he got closer. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

    “Dunno.”

    “What about food?”

    “Dunno.” She just stood there, looking at him, the freckles on her nose and cheeks mocking him. He began to get angry. And the cheese wasn’t sitting right in his stomach.

    “Well fuck off, then,” he said as he went quickly by. He resisted the temptation to push her to the ground. Something in her reminded him of his little sister growing up. She’d made him angry too. Just by being there. Just by being alive.

    Forget it, he thought, walking toward the trees up ahead, already desperate for their meagre shade.

    And he didn’t look back, but if he had, he would have seen the girl watching him go. Would have seen her turn back to the house and look at it, and smile with all her teeth. Might have heard the house groan. Might even have seen her walk toward it, and past it, and disappear off into the stinking, impossible marsh.    

    This story is currently a work in progress.

    Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4 of The End of the Road, or try reading a short comedy to shake the scaries here.

  • Coyote On The Highway

    Coyote On The Highway

    In the city, I used to look for it, and so I got by. The copse of trees at the end of a forgotten street. The cultivated flower gardens around the golf course. The tiny patch of grass that lived beside the parking lot outside my apartment window. Nature lived there. And when I looked harder I saw other things, too: the coyotes on the highway before dawn; the many moons reflected in the river water past midnight. I lived with the smells and the noise and the strangeness because these things were there, too.

    Yet every morning on my way to work – every day that I would carry my computer with me to some office, some coffee shop, some park to type under the sun – I would stand at the top of the stairs leading into a patch of forest nearby, and I would dream: dream of a day when I could walk down those stairs and not have to come back out again. For work. For anyone. For anything. It began to tear at me, each day, having to pull myself away from the trees and back along the streets of a city that I loved…but couldn’t find myself in. Because somewhere, off in the distance, I heard somewhere else calling me.

    I’m just thankful I had the guts to go. To let go.

    Because these days I wake up in the morning and go sit in fields of wild flowers, listening to the birds and the wind. These days I collect rocks from the beach, take them home, and then bring them back again. I weave grass into bowls and tangle string into bad hats for my friends at Christmas. And you know what else? With so many arms uplifting me, I’ve made reality out of a dream. I’ve started saying yes instead of no. I’ve stepped into the forest and haven’t come back out again, even with everyone calling.

    And I caught myself this morning – out for my usual walk, a steaming mug of hot coffee quickly cooling in my hands. I caught myself in my own future. Standing where I once dreamed of being, I saw myself from the past. As if I were the coyote on the highway, there, looking back.

    I’ve made messes. I make them still. I’m not so different from who I was before. But at least the outside matches the inside now. At least I can feel seen in a place that sees me.

    And if I can, you can, too.

    Enjoying these impressions from my every day? Enjoy another one here!

  • Close Your Eyes And See

    Close Your Eyes And See

    Having been raised by a projectionist, I tend to love cinema. In fact, he (my father) told me recently that all those movies we watched together growing up were his school. He wanted to be able to talk about film to the people who came to watch them, he said.

    So he studied them. We studied them. I studied them. And my young mind became a maze of images. Like how a baby puts everything in it’s mouth to ‘teach’ their tongue, I absorbed these pictures, moments, scenes until even books became movies. Dreams became like reality. I could close my eyes and still see.

    I still can. This is one of the greatest and most pleasurable gifts I’ve received in this life: the ability to ‘see’ everything someone says like it’s a movie, and they’re the director. I watch 100s of films a day, just by listening. My own life moments become montage worthy–the simplest cup of coffee becoming a ‘flashback’ moment to every good warm cup before it.

    And another thing:

    I’ve discovered that, within the maze of these images, there is a structure by which I keep them all together. And this structure, to me, is a place. A place that I return to, again and again.

    So as I always do, I started telling other people about this ‘place’ and what it looks like:

    Basically, it’s a giant, endless grey space filled with fog. In perfect rows and columns as far as the eye can see in any direction, there are rectangle, stone monoliths rising up to the grey clouds above them. And whenever someone tells me a story – or I watch a film or short video, dream a dream, read a book – and it shifts something in me… one or two of the stone monoliths will start to move. Slowly. So slowly. With an echoing sound of stone against stone as a new idea, image, place, being, sense, emotion, becomes embedded in the core ‘memory’ of this place. My ‘mind’ map changes to encode the new information.

    Which, is interesting enough in itself, but is also not why I sat down to write today.

    Because what these conversations have always turned into is an exploration of other people’s mind maps. I’ll ask: what does yours look like?

    And, low and behold, people have an answer.

    This is how I’ve learned about the filing cabinets. The braille-books. The libraries, cathedrals, mazes, ant tunnels. It turns out a lot of us, when prompted, know exactly what our system looks like. Feels like. Sounds like. How it moves when new information comes in. Even those who have never thought about it before will start building it, then, in that moment of asking.

    So today, I came here to leave you with this. As a prompt for thinking, writing, painting, photography, whatever your art is, I ask:

    What does your place look like?

    I’m talking about the place where epiphanies go to make their mark. Where your most brilliant self files things away. That place where new ideas become part of the schema. Even if you invent that place right now… I want to know: what does it look like?

    I’ll be sharing any submitted art, writing, drawings, posts, or even comments that respond to this prompt in the body of this post – so don’t hesitate to share. I’ll even link it to your artist’s page or website!

  • Hello, Lupin

    Hello, Lupin

    When you take a prairie girl to the mountains, her eyes will grow wide. The beauty is big. You don’t have to look for it. Her breath will catch at every corner, every tree, every snow-summit.

    Yet when you take a mountain man to the prairie, his eyes will dim. Big sky, big land, but beauty? Not in the way he’s used to. It’s cold. It’s barren. It’s empty. It’s flat.

    So the prairie girl teaches him to look. To slow down. To get low and say hello to the grass. To look closely and find the lilies in the meadow; the lupins along the road.

    And he’ll find them. For he is not blind, and a mountain man already knows the serenity of a lake, the cool recharge of a summit-blown wind, the soft peace of rain on rock.

    Quickly, he will learn to see the plains like waves on water. He will feel the warm chinook winds wash over him in the evening. He will blow dandelion seeds and watch them float for miles against a fiery setting sun.

    And she will smile, the prairie girl at her mountain man, as they walk along a dusty dirt road counting cat-tails. She will point to the blackbirds cawing this way and that; to the frogs hopping between mud puddles. She will watch as he sees the silhouettes against the growing dusk, the rumbling thunder in the distance, the deer paths through the tall grass. And she will know, when they return to his home, that he will always stop, slow down, and say hello to the lupins along the road.

    If you enjoyed this short piece, you may enjoy my printed short story collection, Brittle Leaves & Broken Eaves. Check it out here!

  • The List

    The List

    trigger warning: sexual harassment.

    “If you won’t smile, I’ll take you out back behind the autobarn and make you smile.”

    It is 8AM. I’m at my desk and Wes the mechanic is just walking by with his coffee. I stare hard at the screen, checking emails.

    Later that day I mention to Tim in the Parts Department that my stomach hurts.

    “Well you know the best cure for a stomach ache?” he looks at Grant next to him and smiles knowingly. “What?” I ask.

    “Bend over.”

    I’m 17. I’m not fast enough on the draw, so I laugh. I guess it’s funny.

    My boss Keith, Tim’s Dad, tells me he only hired me for my legs.

    I liked my legs, but I don’t like them now.

    I wish someone would cut them off.

    Then I’m 21. My classics professor has invited me into his office to talk.

    “I’m worried about you. I’ve noticed you haven’t been dressing up as often. Is something wrong?”

    The next day my cognitive psychology professor growls at me as he walks by, his eyes boring into mine.

    I start to sit at the back of the classroom, where his eyes still find me.

    Then the next year my (English) English professor tries to walk me home after an event and puts his hand on my elbow.

    I say no thanks, I’m good.

    At another event, I am alone texting my little sister off in a corner. The same professor comes up behind me and presses his whole body into my back.

    “Who are you texting?” he asks, his alcohol breath on my ear. I step away. I give him a dirty look, and can’t help but question my grades from then on.

    Then I’m 25, and am merely friendly with the neighbour man across the hall. He is tall, dark, handsome. Used to girls liking him. Still, he’s seen me with my boyfriend. Knows I’m not interested.

    But he buys me a bike lock for my new bike anyway. I insist on paying him. He says, a hug will do. I’m already in the hug before I can say no, and he breathes on my neck. Puts his lips on my shoulder.

    I take a really hot shower after I push and push to get away.

    I don’t like to go in the hallway anymore. And for a while, I don’t leave my house.

    So then I move away.

    Another hallway. Another neighbour. An old man this time with a big smile and a big hello.

    After two years of simple hellos, I say hello like always. But he pulls me into him and I cannot get out of his arms. “Just one, just one” he says and I try to pull away but the old man is stronger than me. He tries to kiss me again and again until I finally break free.

    I take another hot shower. My mom almost beats down the man’s door and I’ve never loved her so much.

    I go away for a while. I travel. I go out to visit my cousin and she gets too drunk. We grab a slice of pizza and a group of nice men charm us with polite jokes and midnight banter. We joke back. We smile, and when we leave, they do not follow.

    Then we walk back to wait for our friends. We sit on a bench. Are surrounded by a different group of men.

    I say we’re not in the mood, we’re just waiting for a cab, leave us alone. One of them closes the circle around us.

    “What, are you scared? Why are women always scared of men?” They keep getting closer. I go to run, but I cannot leave my cousin. There are 8 of them, 2 of us. I stay, my eyes wide. “I’m not scared, I’m annoyed! Just leave us alone we don’t want to talk to you.”

    Two of them sit on the bench with us, on either side. “We’re not even dangerous? Why are you so scared?”

    The cab arrives and we go home with shouts of ‘fucking bitches!’ chorusing behind us.

    When we get there, I have my very first panic attack when my other cousin tries to hug me from behind.

    Because so many others have come up from behind.

    Because this is barely the whole list.

    Because this is barely a taste of what it’s like to be in this body.

    And if you’ve felt uncomfortable reading this, imagine being this.

    .

    I’m 35 now.

    They say when a woman turns 40, they become invisible; that society doesn’t see them anymore.

    Five more years and maybe my list will end.

    Though I’m not counting on it.

    If you enjoyed this piece, you may enjoy Bleed Like A Man.

    And if you want to get inspired to share your stories, book a writing inspiration session today.

    Cover Image by Jessica Barratt