Letter to Scott Barker by Philip Elliott

By Raja's Insight on May 20, 2019 • ( 0 )

Dear Scott Barker,

When you used to bully me, I spent every day scared to come into school. You’re part of the reason I started to fall so far behind, and I never did manage to catch up. I know now that you was just angry because your daddy was in prison all the time. I feel sorry for you now, Scott. The little boy version of you anyhow. That little boy deserved someone to love him. I hope you’re doing better now, wherever you are. Think I saw you a couple years back at Julie’s wedding. If that was you, you had a pretty girl on your arm. I hope you don’t bully her too.

I’m reminded of something my papa said a long time ago, before he left Grandma for that walking bottle of nail polish. I was only a boy, but he was telling me and my cousins a ghost story round a campfire in the woods, not far from where I am right now, truth be told. He held the flashlight under his chin just like they do in the movies and his face was aglow like the moon. The fire was spitting and crackling and the darkness was all the more black for it. I don’t remember the story, but at the end he said, “And you know what the real lesson of a ghost story is, kids?” And we said, “What’s the real lesson of a ghost story, Papa?” And he said, “The real lesson of a ghost story is to teach us that we can never outrun the bodies that haunt us.”

Don’t bully people, Scott,

This brilliant debut consists of a prose collection of fictional letters from a deceased 26-year-old Southern American named Jeremiah John Watts (JJ). The people JJ mentions in these letters have a parallel to the alienated and confused dreamers, addicts and lost souls found in the work of the likes of Denis Johnson and William Burroughs, but JJ’s larger-than-life sentimentality as his past leaks out of his heart and onto the page puts this collection in some new sphere of perception equally brilliant but entirely its own. Gradually, the letters tell a fractured tale of a life of mistakes, heartbreak, sickness, and regret, but also love, faith, hope and perseverance.

– Heath Brougher Author, A Curmudgeon is Born, and Your Noisy Eyes

To find out more about Dreaming In Starlight read the Introduction.

$11.95 Plus Shipping ~ Available at CTU Publishing Group and Amazon.com

About the Author

Philip Elliott was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1993 and quickly started scribbling nonsense. He’s the founder and editor-in-chief of Into the Void Magazine, and his own writing can be found in various journals in 9 countries, such as Otoliths, Scarlet Leaf Review, Foliate Oak, Revista Literariedad and Flash Fiction Magazine. He has a degree in Ancient Classics, likes to blur the boundaries between fiction’s many genres, and loves above all writing that is honest and heartfelt. Philip lives in Dublin, where he gets along better with his dogs than any humans, is finishing up work on a novella and much too many other projects, and is any combination of these things: fiction writer, poet, feminist, vegan, atheist, buddhist, minimalist, mindful meditator, wandering wonderer, punk rock fanatic & very loose cannon. Stalk him at philipelliottfiction.com.

Visit Philip’s Author Page At www.ctupublishinggroup.com/philip-elliott.html

Read on Kindle Unlimited At www.amazon.com/dp/B06XJCG48J