Writer's block

Aunt Petunia opened her door and beamed fondly at the pretty pink Pegasus at her door. "My, don't you look lovely!" she crooned, as she deposited a fistful of hugs and kisses (she never bought any else) into the open sack. "Oh dear, your wing fell off!" She bent down to pick it up. The child just stared at her solemnly.

"You're Aunt Petunia," she said in her lilting accent.

"Yes, I am, dearie. And what is your name? There, your wing is properly fixed back."

"My brother said you were jealous of your sister and starved your nephew," continued the child, looking at her wide-eyed.

"I - what?" blinked Aunt Petunia. She could have hardly been more startled if the girl had accused her of being a certified axe-murderer. "Your brother-"

A loud guffaw from behind her made her turn to see her nephew John, Patch to friends, a dear soul whom she practically doted on and stuffed full of nourishing home-made salads and pies (for after all, cooking was one of the few pleasures she had left) whenever he came over to stay, holding his hand to his tummy and nearly collapsing with laughing so much. "Your expression, Auntie, oh, it was priceless! It's your name."

"What about my name?" asked Aunt Petunia, a little offended. She liked her name - all the females in her family were named after flowers: Daisy, Rose and Marigold. That was much better than her cousin, whose family members were named after birds: Pelican's dislike of her name was well-known in the family circle.

Patch affectionately shooed the little kid away with a "Don't believe all you hear!" and explained to his aunt, "You share your name with Harry Potter's aunt. She did all those awful things you were so falsely accused off." He gave another great shout of laughter, imagining his placid, motherly aunt in the role of villain. He shoved her playfully. "Come on, it's Halloween, and I can't wait to have the roast pig.

**********

"I'm stuck," she wailed, chewing on her pen. "I can usually finish my Wordzzle challenges without too much of effort - the words connect themselves into a coherent story, you see - but I'm dashed if I can think of how to work a paddle into this tale."

"Maybe you can have their pet poodle chew it randomly. And the family is distressed because he just came in fresh from a large puddle and his paws are all muddy."

She thought it over. "Ingenious," she conceded, "but I think I have a better idea."

**********

They didn't really have roast pig, of course, but in the spirit of Halloween Aunt Petunia's table was piled with unusual delicacies including 'original' pumpkin pie with a scary face artfully drawn with icing, bat's ears with a monkey fluid sauce (dark-brown nuggets with Aunt Petunia's special ketchup recipe), beetle juice (grape cordial) and 'Parched man's poison'; this last named when the children were much younger, and their Uncle Mortimer effectively cautioned them away from it by saying that the more one drank of it, the more thirsty one felt till one died of too much fluid while believing that one died from dehydration. "That's not good," he had assured his children. Patch now drank it in a gulp without the least hesitation : it was, in fact, whiskey.

"What a diabolic imagination Uncle had," Patch said affectionately. "All these goodies' names were his idea, weren't they? He had a way with spooky stuff."

Aunt Petunia, who had never got used to calling her delicious food by those horrible titles, and had only conceded to this 'tradition' after her husband's death, merely said, "Yes, he had. He always said he would be a great horror writer one day; he was obsessed with horror stories - especially by that Poe guy."

"Edgar Allan Poe," smiled Patch. "One of my earliest memories of Uncle is him relating 'The Pit and the Pendulum' to me in the library. He made the tale sound freaky without giving me nightmares." Patch pulled up a chair and sat down on it, his face abstracted in the flickering lamp-light. "I miss him."

Aunt Petunia nodded quietly. As they ate the food, Aunt Petunia thought, "Patch's holiday will soon be over, and I'll be alone again. It is lonely here in this huge house without Mortimer." But she did not feel as sad as she usually did at the thought. "Maybe I'll organise a cooking class as Patch suggested," she thought. "I can keep it on weekends, in the morning." A new thought struck her, and she smiled, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening. "And the rest of the time, I'll occupy myself by reading Harry Potter."