Renessa Norton
Bio
Achievements (1)
Stories (19/0)
Golden Girl
Five weeks. That was all it took for them to replace me. I had walked into my boss’ office on 1 September to tell him I was done unless he paid me what I was worth, and by 10 October, some other woman was adorning my television screen with my old job title decorating her name. Miranda St John. Even her name seemed to be made of money. I examined her perfectly coiffed hair, the immaculate nails she was brandishing animatedly, and the tailored blazer hugging her shoulders. And I understood the message my old boss was sending me - I wasn’t worth what I thought, but she sure as hell was. I highly doubted she would have rolled out of bed for twice my measly ‘wage’... if you could even call it that.
By Renessa Norton3 years ago in Fiction
The Betty
Many folks begin stories “a hundred years ago,” but truly, one hundred years ago, my grandfather sat barrelled against the door of this gloomy hotel room, bracing his back against the tempestuous booms radiating the thin, already splintering wood. The police had found him at last, not fooled by the vague breadcrumbs he’d trailed in the wrong directions, instead following the rhythm of his modus operandi to his favourite place in the world: George’s Hotel. George’s was an icon of its time: grand and overwhelming, fit for a king, the inside decked out in mahogany furniture, adorned in a ruby, emerald and sapphire colour palette, and what’s more, sharing my grandfather’s name. George may have been a proud man, but smart, not so much. This was always where the police found him, and as the bottom, left-hand side of the door split, it sent a shard of wood into his shoulder, puncturing his crisp white shirt, causing beads of blood to adorn his collar, freshly pressed just last night by his wife, Gloria. Incidentally, George had secured Gloria his lifelong partner in this very pub by getting her pregnant the first night they had met, creating their daughter, Delilah, in a small broom cupboard under the grand staircase.
By Renessa Norton3 years ago in Fiction
Brodor
*BANG BANG* It was 12:12am, on December 12, 1212. Frederick plucked a narrow, golden sword from his pelt before determinedly launching down the stone staircase toward the front door of the castle. There was no time to wake Nigel. If this were going to happen now, he was not going to waste any time attempting to rouse the old man from his mead-induced stupor. No, he would have to hope that Nigel’s hearing wasn’t so daft that he slept through the whole event, and that he would eventually come and be of some assistance, even if that were simply mopping up the inevitable blood fall from the flagstone floor post-battle before it stained, forever evidence of what was about to transpire.
By Renessa Norton3 years ago in Fiction
A Suspicious Snowfall
Three... two... one. Harriet screwed up her eyes, willing the school year to be over. She squinted through clenched eyes before glancing around the classroom, suspicious. The uncouth idiots who just moments earlier had been driving her batty with their bad BO and bizarre vernacular had vanished from sight leaving her in eerie silence, and blissfully alone. She glanced up at the chalkboard before her, eyes wide - in flowery cursive, it declared the date 15 December... 1908. She ran to the nearest window and saw snow tumbling down, settling fluffily on the ground below. She couldn’t recall it ever snowing before New Years.
By Renessa Norton3 years ago in Fiction
Outback Sam
It was some 12 years after we lost us that I finally conceded that I had likely loved some piece of you. Just an idle Wednesday, 8:34am, stuck in traffic, late to work once more when I was struck across the head with this blindsiding realisation. It simultaneously felt like being waterboarded and being held in your grandmother’s ample bosom, like being thrown from a helicopter with no parachute, blades chomping at you and floating down a stream in a tyre tube, like running for a flight to a funeral of your father after an unexpected turn and like putting on your pyjamas and sipping wine in your favourite armchair after a long week. In reality, I’d been hit by a car barrelling through an intersection, going 50 over the speed limit down the side of the road. Presumably my boss was more understanding of my tardiness that day. Perhaps if I’d been better at rolling out of bed, I’d have avoided all of this. But then again, I’d still be thinking I couldn’t stand you. That you were a dreadful excuse for a human being. It was a lie I had successfully sold myself a million times over like a star real estate agent. But I knew I didn’t believe it, because I effectively erased you from my life, scared that if I uttered your name, or even part of our story, that the flicker at the corners of my mouth would deceive me. And that if anyone else saw that, it would erase a decade of my truth. I was more committed to my disdain for you in the subsequent years than I was to our short lived romance another lifetime ago. But there were slip ups over the years. Sometimes they almost turned into full blown relapses. Like the time I begged a friend to drive to your house at 3am, so I could pass out beside you and awake to your embrace - thankfully a different car sat in the carport leading me to believe you had moved, so I cried the whole car ride home instead. Like the time you emailed me from your aunty’s social media account because you didn’t have your own, and I bolted when after months of discussion you announced you were moving interstate to be closer to me. When a year later I reached out to you, and the same thing happened again, and I acted as though you were crazy, despite that being how we got together in the first place, except in reverse - when I jumped on a plane to kiss your stupid face and move my life to the other side of the country. But I can’t point to a single reason I ended it with you - it’s more like a novel of heartaches that occurred over a very short period. Like the times your sister was awful to me and you left me to fend for myself. Like the time I wasn’t happy with how I looked you told me to go on a diet and exercise more when, looking back, I was already underweight. Like the time we ran into your ex and you proceeded to drink a full bottle of rum, cry and tell me you loved her, not me. Like the time you alluded to having being involved in a murder. Like the time, after we had broken up, you lost it at me for staying at a former lover’s house.
By Renessa Norton3 years ago in Fiction
The Goat
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a girl. She would dye her hair many colours, and paint her eyes in many shades, all in an attempt to become who she felt she truly was. She watched other people her own age laugh and have fun, and she could mimic that incredibly well. You would have never known that when she went home after school, she would despair because she never felt she fit in. The more people she surrounded herself with, the lonelier she felt. However when she was alone, she felt truly like herself at last. She could sit in her room for hours, reading about mystical lands - her favourite was about a goat named Matteusz. She could have read that book all day long. She would spend hours daydreaming and writing, creating a world in which she felt she belonged. But when the morning came and she had to go back to school, her face would become twisted, resigned to another day of no connection. You see, the girl lived in a horrid city that was full of people with no dreams or imagination. The city was small, yet it had humongous, terrible monsters that lived within its waters. These creatures had huge yellow teeth, tarnished with blood, and if you tried to escape, they would banish you forever. But one day, the girl decided to make a daring escape. She was the first to leave, but in her success, she grew confident in her abilities. She moved to a new town, and at last she felt as though she was where she truly belonged. One day, she looked up, and she saw a boy from her old town, and she realised that other people had escaped too. She thought that perhaps the monsters had disappeared, and having abandoned her family, she thought it was best to return and try to make her peace with the monsters. Almost as soon as she had arrived, she felt the same sense of loneliness, but she was glad she had gone back to put the monsters to rest and show them she wasn’t afraid. She left knowing that the path of freedom had been established. She returned to her old friends in her new town, but she discovered that whilst she was away, their paths had taken different turns, and she once again felt that same sense of loneliness. The only difference was that she had now grown to enjoy her solitude, and with age, had come wisdom, and a sort of peace with the fact that she was different to others. Sometimes she would meet someone and they would seem to be the same kind of strange as her, but very quickly she would discover that she preferred her loneliness to their company. It did not mean that the girl regretted those people coming into her life; only that they had learned their lessons from one another, and it was time to move on. The girl had heard of one particular city, far away. There was something about it that sounded magical, and she had long yearned to explore it. From all the whisperings by the townsfolk, it sounded as though, if there was ever to be anyone who matched her, he would be in this magical town. And so the girl finished school, and flew all night on a giant bird to this new place. And she searched high and low, and delved through magical realms to find her match. There were matches, but alas, they were all burnt and lacked any lustre. But the girl did not mind, because she was growing more and more comfortable in her own skin, and her company, she was finding, was fantastic! And just as she had come to terms with the fact that perhaps her match was herself all along, she heard a sound quite like a sneeze.
By Renessa Norton3 years ago in Fiction
The Pharaoh's Ring
"He's never done anything like this before." It was a lie, of course; he did this every bloody time they set foot into a museum. Celia would comment on some brilliant artifact, receive no reply and half an hour later Jack would be hauled out from behind a “staff only” door, huge grin on his face and inevitably something priceless in his pocket. Their house was starting to resemble the ancient world, and Celia was mortified, but all she could do was try to preserve things as best she could, lest Jack would surely go to prison.
By Renessa Norton3 years ago in Fiction
Subscribe to my stories
Show your support and receive all my stories in your feed.
Send me a tip
Show your support with a small one-off tip.