From Robyn on Patreon in 2025
My dearest Katherine,
I write with deep shame in my pen, nay, I can barely hold it straight for the regrets that course through my every sinew as I recollect the awful events on Pendlebury Sands last Sunday. How could I have exposed you to the lewd implications of that ghastly sea-creature as it flopped amorously across the pebbles? Kitty, my love, you may or may not choose to believe me, but had I even had the faintest intuition that low tide would reveal such horrors, I would never, ever have lured you there.
Indeed, the Reverend Hoskins (himself a noted connoisseur of marine activity) had resolutely assured me that the chances of cephalopod activity were nil.
"Edward, my boy," he counselled me over a small sherry after Matins that morning.
"You may take it from me that you and your betrothed are at no risk whatsoever from anything of a tentacular nature on Pendlebury Sands."
And yet O woe! I am abject and, moreover, prostrate before you. Can you still bring yourself to walk down the aisle with me at St. Clifford's next spring?
I pray, and yet I dare not hope.
With all of my affections, your fiancé,
Edward
Dear Edward,
Your words clearly seek to pacify me, but I am sad to tell you that they do not reassure.
The "events" as you call them are etched on my retina, and will, I fear, be there forever. The writhing, the thrashing, the heaving, the ungodly motion of its translucent thrust as it seemed (consciously, I felt) to crawl towards us, towards me specifically, Edward: yearning all the while, it seemed, for - though the very thought makes me shudder - contact. You stood aside, Edward - you made no move to protect me as it hauled itself nearer and nearer and then - well, if it had not been for Colonel Soames and his timely intervention with a shotgun, I cannot bear to think what might have happened.
Then, with the blast still ringing in my ears, as the creature shuddered out of its life, the sight of the half-digested remains of a human head in its membranous belly, which set even you retching, Edward, as I recall. I myself must have fallen in a faint, for the next thing I remember was Mrs Jeavons in the Rectory bending over me with a vial of sal volatile.
Then, for me: delirium, and the slow road back to clarity. Yet, still, a week later, the tentacles and those awful suckers have imprinted themselves as might a whiplash across my brain.
Edward, you and the Reverend Hoskins may disport yourselves as you wish, and doubtless you will. Why, I have to ask myself, would you seek his counsel on "marine activity" if there was no likelihood of it occurring? Mr Wells alerted us all to these dangers in his story "The Sea Raiders", as well you know, for we read it together last Boxing Day.
Oh, Edward, it grieves me to acknowledge that you menfolk have your own strange language. It is not, now, a tongue that I am very eager to learn.
Your ring will be with Miss Frencham at the Post Office, awaiting your collection. I pray that you and I can, somehow, in years to come, think fondly of our time together.
Sincerely and in sorrow,
Katherine