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Foxglove Lee

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Beschreibung

When you’re twenty-one years old, you don’t expect your closest friend to be in her nineties, but Eloise and I have more in common than I ever would have guessed.  We first met through a home-share program that matches students like me with seniors like her.  That was three years ago.  We’ve been inseparable ever since.  The problem is that odd things have been happening, lately.  I’m hearing voices in the basement.  I feel like I’m being watched by unseen eyes.  And Eloise is acting really weird.  I’m worried what’ll happen next and I don’t know what to do.  Is the house haunted… and are we in serious danger? Queer Ghost Stories are standalone tales that can be read in any order.  Download “Off with the Fairies” today!

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Off with the Fairies © 2018 by Foxglove Lee

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design © 2018 Foxglove Lee

First Edition September 2018

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

Off with the Fairies

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Also in the Queer Ghost Stories series:

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Off with the Fairies

from the

Queer Ghost Stories

series

By Foxglove Lee

Chapter One

THE FIRST TIME ELOISE asked if I was “off with the fairies,” I thought it was some kind of gay joke.  I didn’t think she meant any offence by it—first off because she’s gay and I’m not—but mostly because Eloise is oh-so-inoffensive by nature.  She really is the sweetest person you’d ever want to meet.

I should know. I’ve lived with her for the past three years.

To look at Eloise, you’d never guess what kind of life she’s lived.  Eloise is ninety-one years old and she looks it. No offence, Eloise!  She’s spry as they come, but her hair is totally white and she’s thin as a rake.

When we first met, I was a little wary of moving in with her.  You see an old white lady and you think for sure she’s going to have problems with you.  But it turns out Eloise has been living with black people all her life.  Well, not all her life, because most of her life she’s lived alone.  I’m talking when she was a child. 

Eloise says the older you get, the more you think about childhood.  She says those hazy childhood recollections that get lost in the fog of your adult years come rushing back as soon as you get old. 

Stories, songs, events from your life—it all comes rushing back.

One thing I love about Eloise is that, any time she meets a new person, she always looks for similarities, not differences.  She says we’re the same, in a way, because we were both born in another country.  We both came here, to Canada, as babies, so we don’t remember the place we come from. 

I guess I still look for differences automatically.  I don’t mean to.  Anyway, one difference between us is that I came here with both my parents—and my two older brothers—whereas Eloise came over with just her mom. 

Well, the other difference is that my parents brought me here from Nigeria, and her mother brought her over from Scotland. That would have been in... wow, the 1920s!  Hard to imagine this woman I share a house with was around way back then.  The world must have been so different.  They didn’t even have TV yet.

I often think how incredible it is that I have this close bond with someone who was alive almost a hundred years ago.  Eloise remembers the Second World War. Isn’t that wild?  I think it is.  I love all her stories.

Eloise was born out of wedlock, which is interesting in and of itself, considering the time period. It was a big taboo, to be an unwed mother, to the point where Eloise’s grandparents wanted nothing to do with her or her mother. Can you imagine? They shunned their own child. 

It just so happened that Eloise’s mother had a cousin who was shipping off to Canada with her newlywed husband.  The cousin and the husband were kind enough to buy Eloise a ticket so she could start a new life in a new country.

Hey, I wonder if that newlywed husband guy was actually Eloise’s father. Maybe Eloise’s mom had an affair with her cousin’s man and he’s the one who got her pregnant, and then he felt bad for what happened and that’s why he bought her a ticket across the Atlantic. It’s a possibility.

I wonder if that thought has ever occurred to Eloise. 

So, anyway, Eloise’s mother ended up in a new country with no husband, no job, no money... and a baby.  Her cousin let the mother and child stay with them for a while, but they had a falling out at some point (because Eloise’s mom was sleeping with the cousin’s husband maybe? I wonder...), and then it was time to get serious about life.

Eloise’s mother found a factory job and, because Workplace Health and Safety hadn’t been invented yet, she brought her baby along to work.  That’s where she took a liking to the kind young man who went on to become Eloise’s stepfather. But get this: the guy was black! Like, there are still people who have a problem with interracial marriages today, and this was in the 1920s! So that would have been a big deal. 

But Eloise adored her papa—he was the only father she ever knew—and she never realized he was a different race than her until other people brought it to her attention—not so nicely, I might add. 

Papa and Mother went on to give Eloise three younger brothers and a sister, Joyce, whom I’ve met a handful of times since I’ve lived here.  Their brothers have all died.  Isn’t that sad?  I mean, I don’t have any younger siblings, but I can’t even imagine my older ones dying. 

There’s something really heart-breaking about people dying who are younger than you.  It feels like... like that just shouldn’t happen, you know?

Wow, I didn’t mean to talk so much about Eloise, but I’m sure you’ll agree she’s had a very interesting life.  And that’s without even touching on the fact that she was a lesbian back when being a lesbian was considered a crime.  She doesn’t discuss that stuff with me.  Not much.  She mainly tells me family stories.