Frank Discussion

Today I took an afternoon walk with the ghost of Mary Shelley. She was/is the author of the novel Frankenstein.

I told Mary Shelley that I had a poster of the Frankenstein monster on my ceiling above my bed when I was a lad. I said that the movie Frankenstein was the first film to actually scare me. On a good night, the poster would make me wet the bed.

Mary Shelley said that as a child, she was scared of flowers. She felt that flowers seemed nice, and emitted an aroma that would draw you near, but the flowers secretly had tiny sharp teeth that could bite off your nose.

I said the flower phobia would have made for a good book. Mary Shelley said it’s hard to write about the truth. Fantasy and fiction allow the real feelings to assume new identities. She said, “The truth gets confident to show its face, although it’s not its face.”

I told Mary Shelley that I wrote a non-fiction book about clutter busting, and that I never write fiction. I asked if this meant I had nothing to hide. She said that figuratively, I’m really good at holding my breath.