The Turn in the Screw

Gather Round,

I have a story to tell.

If a ghost story is what drives you, why not a story of ghosts true?

But be aware this is not the kind of ghosts you'd expect to hear from a ghost story.

For ghosts can be anything.

A trinket from a past

A person who died long ago

or even a place where something traumatic happened.

But all ghosts have one thing in common... A hidden sorrow.

This story starts unlike most ghost stories.

It was a warm sunny afternoon..

A woman was tending her Garden

A garden of Roses, White and Red.

She found the most beautiful rose at the edge of the garden

She was so enamored by the beauty of it that she accidentally pricked her finger on it's thorns.

She winced and sucked her finger, free of blood.

When she noticed something behind that peculiar flower.

Hidden beyond the thorny brambles, was a path towards a beautiful Lake.

As the years go by,

She would always swim in that lake,

to get away from the misery of being in an arranged marriage.

But one fateful, stormy night.

Her husband came home drunk.

She threatened to leave him.

He grabbed her by the hair and struck her head against the table top.

Barely conscious and with a broken and withered heart,

She dreamily waltzed towards the lake

saying goodbye to the desolate world that now lay behind her.

As she passed each rose of her once beautiful garden,

each petal withered away and fallen.

She swam out to the center of the lake.

And with a smile only freedom can make,

she sank beneath the waves.

Never to be seen again.