A Twist of Pepper

Charlie reached into his bag and pulled out a peppermill, placing it on Kirsty's table with a flourish. "It's cursed," he told us.

He'd bought it on eBay. We mocked him for spending £150 on this, even if it did come with 'a certificate of authenticity and full provenance'. He told us the story - how it was the only object retrieved after an arson attack in Manchester; how two subsequent owners met violent deaths.

I'm not sure how you'd track a peppermill closely enough to notice that it's cursed. It looked little different to the ones at the restaurant where I work. We laughed at Charlie's warning about the pepper from this grinder as he offered its use to flavour Kirsty's lasagne. A couple of us preferred our host's unhaunted salt and pepper, including me. I work in a kitchen, I didn't want to risk the terrible things that could happen through combining a curse with all that hot oil.

I don't believe in ghosts, and I don't believe in hauntings. Kirsty's miscarriage could not have happened because of some pepper grains. It was not pepper that caused Tony to be nicked for drink-driving, and thereby lose his license, his job, and then his house. Terrible things happen to people, and the older you get, the more likely they become. Clint's mental breakdown wasn't caused by a condiment.

Charlie's dead too now, mere weeks between biopsy and funeral - how cursed is that? Before dying he made sure that I would receive the pepper mill and destroy it. But I thought about the rude customers at my restaurant - the ones who made the waitstaff cry. Most of them would be flattered by the chef coming out to flavour their food. None of them would expect justice to be ground onto their risotto.

Tropes I’m banned from using in stories for my writing group

As of last night:

1. Clowns

2. Tarot Readers

3. Curses

Everyone liked the story last night, but Andy suggested that I tended to use curses a lot. This story also contains a few rhetorical tricks I often fall back on. This has been a long week, with far too much commuting.

I’m working on some things that are very new and very different. I hope I can share something in a couple of weeks.