Writer Rachel Yelding's official website
Short Stories
THE GREAT WHITE HUNTER | first performed as part of Three Pegs Production's 'Pegs Off!' showcase at The Horse Hospital, London 2014 |
Set at The Magnolia Hotel ninety years before the events of Paradise, 1930s big game hunter Roderick Schwartzman is lured to the hotel to hunt the legendary 'White Fox of the Leas' only to cross paths with an alluring and mysterious woman dressed in white fox furs. Pegs Off! cast and crew: Producer: Sibila
Diaz-Plaja Click here to see more photos of all four pieces performed at Pegs Off! Photos taken by Pavillion Photography London. |
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I'D LOCK IT WITH A ZIPPER | Impossible Spaces, ed. Hannah Kate, Hic Dragones, 2013 |
A young woman suffering from ennui is forced into action when a clockwork girl who lives in the clock at the bottom of the garden enlists her to rescue the clock's human residents from her brother. All he wants is to be human too but he has developed a very strange plan to make it happen. Steampunk body horror.
Buy Impossible Spaces here!
Excerpt: “What is this place?” I asked. “Clockwork,” she said, tugging me to my feet. “Come on—we have to go.” “Where are all the people?” “Gone. The robots took them.” I stopped. “The robots? Like you?” “No, like Brother but not like Brother.” I held my position. “I don’t understand.” She froze and looked beyond me. Slowly I turned. The silhouette of a man lurched out of a building. I threw my hand up to him, “Hello—” “No!” Dizzy hissed then threw her arms around me. She squeezed my chest so tight to hers it felt like my ribs would bruise against her unyielding frame. I went red — |
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too much informality and not enough oxygen—but before I could stutter a request to be let go she pressed a finger to my lips and whispered, “Stop producing automatic motor functions. Act inorganic.” My eyes widened. As the man stumbled—no, clattered—towards us it became clear he was no man at all. He was a little too tall and a little too lean and gleamed all over, apart from his long fingers which were pointed like fence stakes and rusted as if repeatedly dipped in something thick and red. His head was nothing more than a gramophone funnel that pointed up to heaven. CLICK… CLICK… CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK. He rotated his head ninety degrees then thrust it at us and waited… listened. I held what was left of my breath. Something small and furry scurried out of a crack, across the cobbles and up to a collapsed barrel of grey fuzz that was once strawberries. CLICK… CLICK… CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK. The robot man rotated his head 180 degrees and listened. He clattered up to the barrel. He thrust his spikes in, rummaged around like a game of garbage tombola, and pulled out the squealing, wiggling, impaled rat. Prize won, he rattled away. Dizzy let go of me. I dropped to the floor. “Like that,” I breathed. |
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