By Heather Flood
Here is an extract from Heather Flood’s fantasy adventure Purple Mist, which is available on Amazon.co.uk
by Heather Flood
Chapter One
My name is Annique Sheldon. I considered myself to be an ordinary schoolgirl until ncredible things began to happen – if I told you how my worst nightmares proved to be true, where I am now and how powerful I’ve become you wouldn’t believe me!
Let me go back to the day I discovered I had special powers and how they were to change my life forever.
I was approaching my ninth birthday and, as usual, was being tormented on the way home from school by the local bullies, Fizz, Stacie and Nicola. I had no friends because these three horrid girls would threaten anyone they caught speaking to me.
Determined to ignore them, I turned into the lane where I lived in Epsom, but Fizz grabbed my school bag and ripped it off my shoulder, while her friends cheered her on. She swung it violently and the bag, containing all my school books, thudded against my head.
“Ouch,” I shouted, rubbing the painful spot above my left ear as I staggered backwards.
“You’re ugly, Antique Sheldon. You’ve got strange purple eyes and you smell of fish,” taunted this tall, thin, squinty-eyed girl, who liked nothing better than to make my life hell.
It amused Fizz to ridicule me and call me ‘Antique‘ instead of ‘Annique’. I hated her and the snotty-nosed Stacie and pimply Nicola. The spots on Nicola’s chin always looked like they would burst any minute – it was a disgusting sight.
Fizz – that was her nick-name because she preferred it to Felicity – did not care about my pain. Instead, it encouraged her and she poked me hard in the chest with one of her bony fingers.
The other two joined in, pushing and shoving, until I fell, hitting my head on the ground. The throbbing was so bad that I thought I was going to be sick.
When I looked up Fizz was holding my bag. “There’s only junk in here – I’ll be doing you a favour if I empty it on the ground,” she gloated, starting to undo it.
“Don’t do that,” I yelled, trying to stop her but my head ached so much that my eyes began to water.
“Aw, look, poor little Antique is crying,” scoffed Fizz.
As my eyes cleared, the feelings of pain and humiliation gave way to an all- consuming anger. I glared at her and a strange purple mist appeared in front of me.
Fizz was suddenly surrounded by the mist and lifted off the ground. She dropped the bag as she began to float into the air, and started screaming.
“What yer doing up there?” Nicola screeched, seeing her friend rise higher and higher until she hovered above our heads.
“Nufink, stupid – get me down!” The mist spun Fizz around, her arms flapping in panic.
“Help me!”
Stacie leapt in a vain effort to grab hold of one of her friend’s legs.
Climbing to my feet, I rushed over to try to help as the airborne girl continued to wave her arms like a large bird.
Another searing pain behind my eyes caused me to blink. In that instant she dropped several feet. I recovered sufficiently to tug at Fizz’s coat, helping Stacie to pull her down.
“Argh!” she screamed, landing with a thud on the wet grass verge.
“Leave me alone, you freak,” Fizz shouted at me, climbing to her feet. “I’ll get you for this.
I’ll make you suffer.”
I picked up my bag and ran as fast as I could along the lane to my home, crashing through the red front gate to my small terraced house. Fumbling in my bag for the door key, I pushed it into the lock, tripped over the step, and rushed up the stairs to my room, throwing myself onto the bed and pulling the duvet up over my head.
Stella, my mother, called to me from downstairs, but I was too afraid to get off the bed as my legs felt like jelly.
My heart thumped in my chest as I went over what had just happened. Was it really me who’d created the purple mist and made Fizz float up into the air? Maybe they were right, I was a freak.
Author Bio:
Heather Flood’s first book was MOUSEY MOUSEY AND THE WITCHES’ SPELLS, which proved so popular that it turned into a series about an adorable lady mouse and other wonderfully original talking animals.
Other books to also reach the top ten of Heather’s respective Amazon categories are GIANT STICKER MONSTER AND OTHER CHILDREN’S STORIES and, for older children and adults, science fiction fantasy PURPLE MIST – AN OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD ADVENTURE! about a girl called Annique who gets bullied but discovers she has amazing powers.
Heather and her husband and fellow author Tony Flood conjure up humour, pathos, love, nostalgia and trickery in their jointly written book LAUGHS AND TEARS GALORE! – Stories and poems with twists.
Contact Author:
Contact address: www.fantasyadventurebooks.com
