Hide and Seek

Her playhouse was made of leaves and vines, of sticks and trees. Sunlight filtered into it, setting her stage of childhood and sorrow with spackles of brightness and shadow.

Inside, drawn up against the forest floor, she counted to ten, again and again, a whispered repetition that became more frantic, labored breath catching on each hurried number.

Somewhere, a twig would snap. A bird would call. And the girl would freeze, thinking her adventure over, knowing her freedom was fleeting. He would find her. He always did. No matter how still she grew or quiet her counting.

He always did.

Author's Note: Fiction inspired by #100WordSong, the brilliant weekly writing challenge from my buddy Lance of My Blog Can Beat Up Your Blog. This week's song was "Runaway" by Jefferson Starship chosen by the delightful Kir of The Kir Corner. 

Motherly Meltdown

I won’t lie. This week’s A Flicker of Inspiration prompt had me stumped. I don’t like it when prompts stump me. In fact, I get down-right annoyed when that happens. In typical badger fashion, I growled and groaned around the house this weekend, as I wracked my brain for a story to tell. 

The prompt challenged us to write an "It's Not What It Looks Like" scene. A scene where a colossal misunderstanding leads to something funny or drives the plot in some way.

I thought about it. And nothing came to mind.

Not a thing.  

And then, as it so often happens with these sorts of things, an idea fell into my lap. Thanks in part to some home improvements and my parents being over for the weekend. I’ll explain that at the end.

Behold, an actual response to the most challenging prompt I’ve faced:

Motherly Meltdown

It couldn’t be true. It wasn’t true. Not her baby. Not her sweet baby girl. Never.

But it was true. The evidence was in her hands.

Sarah’s body shook as she stared down at the tiny plastic bag. Tears filled her soft brown eyes, and she surrendered to the tragedy of it all as they began to fall in great drops, dampening the tiny bag and her shaking hands.

Emily had always been such a good child. Quiet, sweet, never a moment’s trouble to her or her father. She supposed she’d just been hiding this secret life from them all along. The sneaky little minx.

Sarah stood up abruptly, let the small bag of pot and clean pairs of panties she’d been putting in Emily’s underwear drawer fall to the floor. A glance around her daughter’s perfect purple room made her anger dissipate and the nausea creep in. Emily still had teddy bears for God’s sake. Show jumper trophies and ribbons lined the shelves along her ceiling. A poster of that ridiculous-looking Justin Beiber hung over her bed.

She was just a little girl. Fifteen-years-old. A baby.

And yet, not a little girl or baby anymore. If she could smoke pot, she was neither.  Sarah’s head spun as images of Emily danced before her eyes.

Emily as a black cat at Halloween, at every Halloween since she could crawl. “What do you want to be this year, baby?” “A black cat!” “Again? Hadn’t you rather be a princess or maybe even a witch?” “No, I wanna be a black cat!”

Emily as a graceless ballet dancer, wearing a plush airplane costume and sticking out hopelessly amongst her fellow dancers on stage.

Emily as a bookworm and excellent student, bringing home a report card with straight A’s and begging for ice cream as a reward.

Emily as a pot-smoking hipster with a lip ring and pink streaks in her hair….but wait, Sarah was getting ahead of herself. Still, the lip ring and pink streaks were sure to follow. After all, her daughter was a delinquent drug user now. There was no telling what would follow.

Suspension from school. Pregnancy. Jail time.

Emily’s life was over. And, thus, so was Sarah’s.

The other moms from Bunco would pass down their judgment harshly. She would be shunned from the Bunco table, cast off into a cruel, Bunco-less world.

Her church friends would pray for her, then shake their heads behind her back, tsk-tsking to themselves and wondering where she had gone so wrong. Hell was a certainty.

Nosey and vicious co-workers would lament about Sarah’s situation in front of their boss. Bossman would then call her into his office on a Wednesday and tell her that she’s fired for being such a horrible mother and for having such a pot-smoker of a daughter.

The media was sure to get ahold of the story, and once they did, unwanted fame would follow. She would cry as Oprah admonished her actions on an ugly orange couch. She would wince as her name and face were flashed on Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight.  The Bad Mother.

Sarah’s spiral into madness was reaching its crescendo, when Emily bee-bopped into the room. “Mom, hi!” Her voice was spunky, sweet, not at all what Sarah imagined the voice of a gruff, pot-smoking hippy would sound like. A second wave of nausea hit her, as another imagined nightly news headline scrolled through her broken mind:

Pothead Daughter of Ruined Mother Adopts Fourteen Pot-Bellied Pigs, Marries a Gang-Banger, and Moves to a Commune.

Oh, the horror!

Gathering all of her remaining composure, Sarah bent down, picked up the small bag of pot from among the pink panties strewn on the floor, and met her daughter’s beautiful blue eyes. But before she could open her mouth and begin the never-ending trail of curses that she would lay upon her daughter, Emily interrupted.

“You found Yuki’s catnip!” She chirped, snatching the bag from Sarah’s limp hand and running from the room in search of her obese tabby cat.

With jaw slack and mind still racing, relief trickled in, and Sarah sighed, comforted by the thought that she wouldn’t have to live in a Bunco-less world after all. 

As I said, this story was inspired by my parent’s visit to our house over the weekend. They helped us put up tile in our kitchen, and at one point, my Mama fumbled through my junk drawer (can't write those words without a shout out for Dawnie, you'll know what I mean :) oh, and VISIT HER BLOG, you won't regret it) looking for a marker to mark the tile with. In that junk drawer is a tiny bag of catnip that closely resembles another substance.

Thankfully, my Mama didn’t quite react like Sarah, but I did wonder what must have gone through her head at the first glance of that bag…

This was written for A Flicker of Inspiration prompt: "It's Not What It Looks Like." If you haven't already, check out this fun and engaging writing community by clicking the button below:

All the World's a Cage

The steps led nowhere. Like some kind of an empty promise, they intrigued you, filled you with hope, and then left you standing disappointed and alone. Ada stood now, disappointed and alone, at the top of the steps, looking down at a valley of nothing in a country of nowhere.

Countless paths had led her to the same conclusion, and yet, in her particularly hopeful and naive way, she kept going. Always looking for a means of escape, a different kind of ending to the story she’d been living over and over again.

But there was none.

She was as disappointed and alone as she would always be, stuck in a world where steps led to nowhere and paths led to nothing.

Dwelling did no good, though, so Ada turned around and went back down the steps to nowhere into the valley of nothing.

It was time to eat. Although what they passed for food could barely be called that at all. Tasteless and vile cardboard, at best. At first, she wouldn’t eat it. She refused and instead searched the aimless paths for other options. After finding none, she forced the garbage down. Their prison food provided her with the nourishment she needed to keep fighting, keep searching for an escape.

A water source was located in the valley as well, dirty and contaminated water was better than no water at all. Ada drank thirstily and then started when one of her captors squealed and called her name.

“ADA!!!”

The little girl couldn’t have been more than five. Innocent and bright-eyed, an obvious victim herself. Ada felt towards this small child and didn’t blame her at all for her own imprisonment. In fact, she suspected the child might be a prisoner herself. And Ada thought that was a real shame indeed.

With empathy in her heart, she looked to the girl and smiled.

And the girl squealed again. “Mama! Mama! Ada just smiled at me!!!”

Ada’s smile faded as the girl’s mother suddenly approached. She was tall, lean, and had vicious look in her eyes. She was the most feared of Ada’s captors, the most hated.

She spoke, and her voice was filled with a mixture of exhaustion and mild distaste.  “Elizabeth, darling, don’t be silly.” She sneered down at Ada; her derision and disgust obvious. “Rats don’t smile.”

Author's Note: This was written for a Lightning and Lightning Bug Flicker of Inspiration prompt: Shuffle. We were supposed to have a major shift in tone within our story. To read some great stories, visit:

Text-a-Scare: Doors

To: Rebecca

From: Unknown Number

Sent: 3:06am

Received: 3:07am

I’m right outside your door. Which door? I can’t tell you. For your sake, hope you don’t guess wrong. 

via

Author's Note: This week at Write on Edge we were assigned to "text a scare" in 160 characters or less. Hope you'll come check out the great scares this morning, just click the link below!

No Mister Sandman

Author's Note: For this week's Flicker of Inspiration prompt, we were to be inspired by The Dark of Night. We could go scary or not, and of course, being Goth Girl, I chose scary. What follows is a character sketch. I've written about a character called The Dreamkeeper for a long time. He's a creature that hands out dreams at night, keeping them all tucked away in boxes in the clouds, each with a neat label and ribbon to identify it. He's always a very pleasant character. The character below is his exact opposite, and trust me, he's no Mr. Sandman. 

No Mister Sandman

In the dark of night, he waits. He waits for everything and for nothing all at once, hiding in the shadow in the corner of your room and waiting, always waiting. You’ll soon fall asleep, and then he’ll be at your bedside, leaning down at your sleeping face, stealing your thoughts as if they were the most precious of jewels.

And then, you sleep, and he waits no more.

In his limited amount of time, he snatches away your dreams. He eats them one by one, savoring each sumptuous bite. You won’t know he’s there, because in many ways he’s not. He’s just a figment of your imagination, a product of the darkness and too much spicy Thai. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

But we all know that he’s there, waiting in the darkness, eating up our dreams.

He replaces each dream with a nightmare, constructed with purpose, handmade just for you. In a few hours, you’ll wake with a start, eyes searching wildly in the darkness, mind desperately holding on to the last vestiges of memory from your nightmare.

Mercifully, he lets you forget most, but not all. Sadistically, he leaves threads of remembrance, a flash of the face of the man chasing you, a glimpse of the monster under your bed. These threads of memory are how you know he’s there. And though your gasping breath masks the sound of his frenetic giggles, you still know he’s there.

He’s always there, and when the lights go out, he appears, a soul with no purpose but to terrify you, to awaken your nightmares. He’s no Mr. Sandman, but he does bring you dreams, dark and terrifying dreams that will haunt you long after you wake.

He waits through the day and longs for the night, longs for that moment when your lids feel so heavy that you can’t fight sleep anymore. He lives for that moment, waits for it always.

In the dark of night, in the shadowy corner of your bedroom, he’s waiting. Won’t you go to sleep?

Do you still have nightmares?

A Cage Without a Key

The fog is like a cage without a key. - Elizabeth Wurtzel

Fog sat heavy on the horizon, a cloak of condensation hiding the secrets of the city, of its inhabitants, of its past. The streets were empty, the air silent. An outsider might have thought that something was amiss, but in this city, in this time, the scene was commonplace, more normal than not.

Within one of the boarded up buildings lining the abandoned streets, a little girl sat quietly at a small desk. She carefully traced the outline of her hand on a yellowed sheet of paper with a stubby red crayon. Over and over again, she traced, methodically, almost hypnotically, until the sheet bore the indentation of her ministrations.

The adults around her paid her no mind, interested only in their own affairs, but she felt no loneliness, no sense of longing or need. She just kept tracing her hand.

The building she occupied somewhat resembled a home but was a mere shadow of its former purpose. Furniture was strewn meaningless around the room, lopsided, upside down. The desk that the girl sat at was the only item that seemed to still have any sense of import, a relic from a different time and place.

Across the room, one of the adults ran into an upended table, the resulting sound that resonated through the largely empty house startled the occupants. The little girl finally stopped her tracing, dead brown eyes lifting towards the source of the noise. A thought skipped through her empty mind, a fleeting piece of her humanity grasping at anything tangible.

Loud.

The woman who caused the commotion stared blankly at the table then grunted and shuffled away. But the little girl was mesmerized. Carefully, she put down the crayon, which was almost completely used up anyway, and rose from the desk.

She had grown used to focusing her broken mind on a single task, much like her tracing, so she managed to dedicate her energy to making her way across the room, motivated only by that single coherent thought.

Loud.

When she arrived at the table, she pushed at it with her hand.

Nothing.

She tried again, this time pushing harder. A squeak resulted as the edge of the table scraped across the hard-wood floors.

Noise.

A smile tried to work its way across the girl’s broken face. Her mouth twitched with the effort. Those nearest to her stopped to watch, forming a small and awkward audience around her and the table.

She lifted her leg a fraction and kicked the table with all her might. This time she re-created the sound that had initially startled them all. And this time she did smile.

Loud. Noise.

“Loud noise.” She said in a quiet voice that was rusty and hoarse from lack of use.

The adults moaned their agreement and went back to shuffling aimlessly.

But the little girl was awakened, as if from a dream. She remembered the day of the outbreak. The panic in the streets. The rush to quarantine the infected. She remembered being herded into the random house, being separated from her parents. The men in masks had shouted at her to “move it!” She had cried for her mother.

Once inside the house, there had been panic. Adults rushed around, yelling at each other, yelling at the men outside. The doors were locked, then immediately boarded up from the outside.

They were trapped.

And the little girl remembered that they had been trapped for a year or longer.

Reeling from the rush of memory and feeling, she looked down at her cold, gray hand and finally knew that she was dead.

Author's Note: This week we were to be inspired by one of two pictures for the Red Writing Hood prompt. I chose the picture below, which gave life to my zombie tale. New Orleans always sparks my imagination. :) This is the 600-word prologue of a longer piece. 

The Madness of Love

Love that is not madness is not love. - Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Jane Farrell was in love. Those around her knew this to be true because of the uncharacteristic rosiness in her cheeks and the soft twinkle in her eyes. Plus, she unabashedly told everyone around her, whether they asked or not.

Family and friends were relieved at this blossoming of first love. Whispers of “old maid” and “spinster” had surrounded Jane for years, and now, it looked like that fate would not befall her after all.

The sullen and shy Jane Farrell was actually the object of some unwitting man’s affection. It was a miracle, but one that no one seemed to suspect or question.

Jane’s coworkers, who didn’t share her family’s easy affection for her, did not find the news of Jane’s relationship so easy to believe.

“What’s his name?” Suzy Callahan had asked casually when Jane first declared her undying love and affection for some mystery suitor.  

The bustling room full of telephone operators had suddenly fallen silent, as everyone anxiously awaited Jane’s answer.

Jane, gangly and coltish with legs to her neck and long, unkempt, rat-colored hair, had smiled wistfully, showing off a mouth full of crooked teeth. “Daniel.”

“Daniel what?” Suzy had grinned, knowing full well that she’d caught Jane in a lie.

But Jane did seem to know her lover’s last name, and it had fallen off her tongue as easily as her own. “Daniel Roberts.”

So the ladies had gone back to connecting their calls and eavesdropping on party lines.

But Suzy refused to let it go. She just couldn’t fathom how Jane Farrell had gone from a nervous and neurotic single woman with no prospects to a newly confident and cheerful other half of a couple in one day.

She continued to question Jane on her relationship with Daniel daily.

What’s he look like?

Where does he take you?

Where’s he from?

And Jane politely answered every question posed without hesitation: giddy and gay over her first love and thrilled that the popular Suzy Callahan had apparently taken an interest in her.

She happily detailed date after date and even began dressing better and wearing more and more rouge. Her long, stringy hair was washed on a daily basis, and the shadow of her former, awkward and plain self began to fade away.

But, as it goes with first love, Jane’s world came crashing down on a sunny Friday morning.

She rushed into work with tear-filled eyes, and Suzy and the other girls knew immediately that the dream relationship had ended.

Curious as always, Suzy was the first to approach the distraught Jane. “What happened, Jane?” The sweetness in her voice belied her true intentions: to fetch a juicy piece of gossip.

Jane looked up at her new friend and sobbed. “It’s over with Daniel!”

“Why, whatever for?”

But Jane was far too upset to answer, and she was excused for the day, leaving Suzy and the other girls to speculate like mad.

They didn’t have to speculate long.

News of Jane’s termination from the telephone company spread like wildfire. The cause? Well, that information was sketchy at best, but Suzy, ever the diligent investigator, discovered the answer herself after tracking down and visiting the infamous Daniel Roberts, who was recovering in a midtown hospital after being attacked by a stranger.

As he described his attacker, a mousy woman with gangly legs and rat-colored hair, Suzy smiled smugly.

She reported her news back to her coworkers with glee, and each time she ended her story of Jane Farrell’s tragic first love, she punctuated it with two words and a wicked grin: Love hurts.

Author's Note: This piece of fiction was written in response to Write on Edge's Red Writing Hood prompt: 

"Your assignment this week was to write a piece where you explore the first broken heart for your character – or for you."

Birds on a Wire

Well, here we are again. 

Yep. 

What should we do today?

I don't know. 

Should we fly over to that fence?

Sure.

Well, here we are.

Yep. 

Can't see as much from down here. 

Nope. 

But it is a little more comfortable than that wire. 

Yep. I guess so.

That crow sure is loud over there. You'd think he'd keep it down so that mockingbird couple doesn't come after him again. Some birds never learn.

Nope.

You think the mockingbirds will hatch a nest this year?

Don't know. Guess we'll find out soon enough.

After last year's disaster with that cat, you'd think they'd take a year off. 

Guess that's their business.

Maybe. I'd just like a little peace and quiet in the neighborhood for a change. With their constant chattering, I can barely concentrate on what I'm doing. 

Yep.

I sure wish that crow would shut up. Should we fly back to the wire do you think?

Up to you.

I like being able to see what's going on. You can't see anything from down here.

Nope.

Well, here we are.

Yep. 

You see anything we can eat? I'm kinda hungry.

Nope.

Is that a french fry in the middle of the road? Oh, I love french fries. Should we go down and get it?

Up to you.

I think we should. There haven't been many cars yet. I think we'll be safe.

Watch out!

Ah!

Let's go back!

Well, here we are.

Yep.

Guess we shouldn't have gone down after all. 

Nope. Probably not.

I just really like french fries.

Yep. Me too.

But I guess it's not worth it.

Nope. Probably not.

Betcha that crow will go after it. Mark my words. 

Yep. Guess he probably will.

Crows have all the nerve.

Yep. They sure are brave.

Brave!? Ha! They're just stupid. Flying down to the middle of the road to get some dumb french fry. Like they don't have any sense at all. No wonder the mockingbirds chase them.

Yep. Guess you're right.

Of course I'm right. I'm always right. So, what should we do today?

I don't know.

Should we fly over to that fence?

Sure.

Author's Note: Our task at Lightning and the Lightning Bug this week was to write a story using only dialogue. Come join us by linking up and checking out our fantastic community of fantastic writers!

 

A Bus to Nowhere

Sometimes I think of escaping on a Greyhound bus, just heading over to that station in town that doubles as a beer and lotto haven and demanding a ticket to anywhere. Wouldn’t that be romantic of me?

Of course, the clerk behind the dusty, crowded counter would ask, “Where to?” And I’d have to actually make a decision.

Decisions have never been my thing. Probably why I’m stuck in this dirty little town with nowhere to go and nothing to do. I should work on that, making a decision once in awhile.

Every now and then.

But the impulsiveness of my Greyhound dream is ruined by the uptight clerk just working for the weekend and that miniscule pay stub that’ll barely keep the hot water running.

Hot water is always the first to go, too. You figure you can’t live without electricity, but hot water is far from being vital, so you stop paying the gas bill first. Unless you’re my sister who takes forty-five minute showers. She scalds the impurities from her skin and gets down-to-the-bone clean. When she steps out of the bathroom with her dark blonde hair hidden under the tall towel turban resting on her head, she smiles with sweet ferocity and asks, “Oh, did you need to take a shower?”

I learned at an early age to appreciate a cold shower, so hot water would definitely be the first to go if I was the clerk behind the counter, with my tiny paycheck, enjoying a chance to ruin a customer’s attempt at impulsivity.

“Hey, lady.” The squeaky voice of the clerk knocks me out of my daydream violently, and I find myself standing in the stark reality and fluorescent lights of J’s Quik Stop.  The clerk behind the dusty, crowded counter says, “You’re holding up the line.”

What am I doing?

I blink at the clerk with the leftover pimples and crooked teeth and find myself demanding a dream. “I want a bus ticket.”

“To where?”

There’s a hundred and forty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents in my pocket. I grabbed it from the bottom of my jewelry box before leaving the house and telling my mom: I’ll be right back. She smiled sloppily at me and took another swig of Jack’s.  Okay, honey.

“To where, lady?”

And I tell him some anonymous place that doesn’t matter.

Two decisions in one day. This must be a world record for me.

He prints out the ticket, and I hand him my money. It’s a transaction that will determine my future, my place in life. The ticket feels heavy in my hand. Substantial. I stare at it for a moment, while the line behind me made up of men with six-packs sighs and fidgets like a six-year old who has to go potty.

The clerk clears his throat.

I smile, then turn around and walk away. There’s a bench just outside of the Quik Stop, with an ad promising of a quick and easy divorce for just under six hundred dollars. I smile at the pretty irony, because I divorced my life for just a hundred and some change.

I sit down and wait for the faint sound of the bus in the distance, arriving to carry me away.

I don’t know what awaits me in that anonymous town, hundreds of miles away, but I do know that I’m finally doing something. And, for now, that has to count for everything.

Author's Note: This week for Red Writing Hood we were challenged to write about a season of change for our characters. I was once a bored and jaded teenager, dreaming of leaving my small town behind for a pipe dream. Thankfully, I stayed put and realized my dream just where I was, but the romance of a bus trip to nowhere has never left me. 

Come check out all of the amazing writers at Write on Edge! Just click on the button below.

The Move Within

We had to leave immediately. Papa said so. Driven away by some unseen force, we fled what I thought of as our safe, secure home and went out into the vast world without an inkling as to where we were going. Well, that may not have been entirely true. Papa always seemed to know where we were going.

In fact, he always seemed to know a bit of everything, and so we followed, myself and my little brother David, because we loved him and because we had no other choice.

I was eleven years old, and this was my seventh move.  I could say I’d grown used to the moving, but I’d be lying. No one ever gets used to picking up their entire lives time and again, being forced to find a new place, a new niche in the world.

For some kids, this kind of thing may have been easy.

Move to a new town. Make new friends. Play with new friends. Repeat.

But I wasn’t just some kid. I was what Papa called an odd duck. An odd duck waiting, always waiting, to transform into a nice, normal swan.

A day or two after leaving our sixth home, we landed at our seventh. It was a nice brick ranch. It was larger than what we were used to, three bedrooms and two baths. David and I wouldn’t have to share a room anymore, and I found that thought incredibly pleasing.

I shared my excitement with Papa, as we were getting settled in. He’d been on edge the last few days, and I kept trying desperately to cheer him up. We were unpacking boxes in the kitchen, one thing I could actually help with, and as I was filling one of the cabinets with our cups and glasses, I casually remarked, “I’m so glad I have my own room now.”

It happened fast, so fast that it took my mind a moment to catch up. One of the plates that Papa had been putting away in the cabinets whizzed past my ear and crashed unceremoniously against the wall behind me. I kept my eyes trained on Papa, whose face had gone red in anger. “You’ve always had your own room!” His words echoed in my head, over and over. “There is no David!”

No David? My mind raced. It couldn’t be true. David was just in the other room, playing with his toys. He had grown tired of helping us sort through boxes.

Hadn’t he?

As I looked up at Papa, my eyes filled with tears. “I just want to go home.” I said quietly, and I could tell his anger was abating, because his gray eyes had softened.

“I know.”

He put me to bed early that night. After drying my tears and singing a quiet song, he laid me down in a soft pink bed, one that was achingly familiar to me.

The truth came crashing down on me suddenly and without warning.

There was no move. No David. No unpacking.

Just me, Papa, and my madness.

I sat up in my cozy pink bed and looked around a room that was my own, had always been my own. Somehow I knew that when I woke up in the morning I might be in a new place, a strange place. This moment of clarity was probably fleeting, destined to disappear into the madness once again.

The sanity would be fleeting, yes, but for now, my whispered wish from earlier had magically come true…

“I just want to go home.”

…because I realized that we were already home.

Author's Note: This was written in response to Write on Edge's Red Writing Hood prompt. The assignment was to begin a piece with the words "We had to leave immediately" and end it with the words "And then we realized that we were already home." I cheated, because that's how I roll, and tweaked the last sentence to fit my tale. 

The Runaway

The tiny yellow butterfly landed on the young man’s single outstretched finger. He dared not move in fear he might frighten it away. He kept his eyes trained on the creature, on its sheer beauty and innocence. It distracted him for a moment from the destruction around him.

His world had gone gray, and this little flash of color was something for him to hold onto…even for just a little while.

“Hello.”

The whisper was so slight that at first he wondered if he’d dreamed it.

“Hello, mister.” This time he was sure of what he’d heard.

Careful not to disturb the tiny butterfly, he craned his neck, eyes moving over the field around him searching for some sign of movement, for the source of the whisper.

Nothing. For the first time in months, he was immersed in silence.

Except for that slight whisper. That quiet voice…

A chill ran down his spine as he realized he was completely alone. He looked back at the butterfly and tried to ignore the sensation of being watched.

It wasn’t long until he heard the whisper again, except that this time it was more insistent. “Mister, are you ignoring me?”

He jumped up from his position on the ground. Butterfly be damned. And it did fly away, only to return moments later to flit in front of his face.

Could it be?

He blinked at it, wondered for a moment if he had in fact his lost his mind. Had he waited too late to get out? Had he finally arrived at the doorstep of madness?

“You’re not crazy,” the butterfly said. “You’re just a coward.”

The young man stared as the butterfly landed again on his outstretched hand.

The war had gotten to him, the gunshots and blood, dead comrades and bombing, all of it had finally taken their toll. He’d escaped from it too late; his mind was gone.

“You’re not crazy,” the butterfly repeated, exasperation coloring its tone. “You’re just a coward.”

The insect was so tiny, and its voice matched it perfectly: slight, incredibly quiet, and yet, the words it spoke resounded loudly in the young man’s mind, as if they’d been screamed at him.

His defensiveness kicked in, and he swatted a hand at the pesky insect. “I’m not a coward!”

The butterfly easily dodged the swipe and came back to fly in front of the soldier’s face. “Cowards run away.”

It was true. He had run away, left his friends--his fellow soldiers--behind without a thought. “I’m not a coward.” He repeated quietly. This time his words held less conviction, as if maybe he doubted them.

“Fear does not make anyone a coward, but quitting does.” The butterfly hovered for a moment, then flew silently away towards the sound of a whistling train in the distance, leaving the young man with nothing but his guilt for company.

Somehow he knew without seeing that the train was one full of Jewish people on their way to some horrible fate, a fate in which being able to fight would be a luxury. He knew also that the people on that train were full of fear just like him, but unlike him, they had no means of escape. Quitting and running away weren’t options for them.

It made him ashamed.

It made him turn back.






Author's Note: This piece of fiction was written in response to The Lightning and the Lightning Bug's Flicker of Inspiration prompt. This week's prompt was the picture below, taken by my lovely and talented friend Whitney:

Two Mississippi

Lightning flashed. The young woman watched as the terrified little boy burst through the front door of her home. She wasn’t startled. She’d grown used to children trespassing without any regard to her. She always appreciated the company.

So, as the boy ducked under her dining room table, she just watched him unnoticed from the corner of the room.

He was terrified. She could see the fear in his young eyes; she recognized it, because she’d seen it in the eyes of the many other children who’d come to her house to visit. She hated the fear, mourned it, for she knew it drove them away.

But this fear was different. The boy hadn’t spotted her yet, so it didn’t originate from her presence. This made her curious, made her wonder.

Thunder clapped overhead, and the boy crowded further under the table. She couldn’t help but smile at his discomfort; it was so childlike, so innocent. A simple fear of storms, a fear she’d faced during her lifetime as well. If only things were so simple now.

Above the sound of the storm, she could hear the back door banging against its frame. She could tell that the boy could hear it, too, because he kept glancing nervously towards the back of the house.

He still hadn’t noticed her, and she was torn about whether she even wanted him to or not. The past taught her that when her presence was discovered they would always leave. And she didn’t want this boy to leave like all the others.

As she watched and wished, the boy thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a yellow cats-eye marble. He kissed it quickly, and then stuck it back into the pocket of his shorts.

When she saw the marble, she knew why she was so drawn to this boy, so curious about him. She knew that his visit to her home was not accident but fate. She knew, because she had an identical yellow cats-eye marble in the pocket of her own faded dress. She kept it with her always, a lucky charm, a protective token, a reminder of the life she’d had.

The boy was a kindred spirit; she just knew it. And at that moment, this kindred spirit was gathering up all his courage and crawling out from under the table. The curiosity about the banging door had got the best of him, and he was going to investigate.

She managed to stay out of his line of vision as he slowly made his way across the room and towards the kitchen. His hand stayed in his pocket, and she knew he was worrying his marble, just as she’d done herself hundreds of times before.

When he finally worked up the nerve to push open the kitchen door, he gasped and then hesitated for only the briefest of moments. She held her breath, anticipating his next move and hoping he’d stay.

But he didn’t. The back door moving in time with the wind was the last straw. The boy’s fear took over, and he spun around, nearly falling over himself in his struggle to get out of the house.

The young woman sighed, moved across the room to the front window so that she could watch his departure. As he ran off into the storm, she lifted a hand to the window and smiled. She wasn’t sad that he’d left, and she didn’t feel lonely. No, in fact, she felt better than she’d felt in a long time. Because the boy with the yellow marble might be gone now, but she knew, without a doubt, that he’d be back.

Author's Note: This is a rewrite of my short story "One Mississippi," which was born from a Lightning and Lightning Bug photo prompt. I've wanted to revisit this story from a different perspective and was glad to be able to do so in response to this week's Red Writing Hood prompt. 

By the way, "One Mississippi" is currently published in Volume #35 of Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal. Be sure to check it out!

Jonquils

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A row of Jonquils outlined the spot where the house used to stand. They provided a stark contrast of life against the death hovering around the property, a property that seemed nearly like a graveyard with sentimental tokens of bouquets and other trinkets sprinkled over it as a sign of respect to the dead. Behind the bright burst of flowers, in the right hand corner of the property, a chimney stood tall, the sentinel over all that used to be and now was not, a grave marker signaling another dearly departed soul.

The child skipped through the overgrown grass of what used to be a front yard, his mother following closely behind, calling out to him to slow down or he would fall. They looked like an ordinary enough family. Complete with a father in a neatly pressed suit standing apart from his wife and child, surveying the acreage of the lot.

The old man watched the little family from his perch on his front porch. His wife often warned him that if he kept sitting in that rocking chair on that porch day after day that he would grow roots and be stuck forever. The old man didn’t care too much about what his wife said; his last simple joy of watching the traffic pass in front of his house was not something he was willing to give up easily.

He’d watched countless other families look at the property across the highway from his own. He’d watched them swoop in like vultures onto the great deal the land was always offered at. The lot was a prime one. Flat, lots of trees, a little creek running along the back. The perfect spot to build a perfect house with a perfect picket fence, a perfect home for a perfect family. Just like the one that had stood there so many years ago.

The old man remembered that home. Remembered the family that had lived there, and died there, so many years before. The house had caught fire late one summer night. The whole family was inside, unable to escape the smoke and flames, unable to escape that perfect home.  

Maybe this would be the family to bring that home back to life. The old man hoped so. He hoped this family wouldn’t notice the heavy air that hung over where the house used to stand. He hoped that they wouldn’t sense what those countless other families had sensed and refuse to build a house on such evil land.

The old man hoped that this young couple and their little boy would buy this empty lot with its bright jonquils and lonely chimney and build their dream house upon its ground. They would build their family, build a perfect spot to have front yard picnics and backyard barbecues, build a foundation for a lifetime of cherished memories and moments. He hoped they would build that perfect house with its perfect promises, so that he could tear them all down.

From his perch on his front porch, rocking calmly and quietly, he would watch those dreams burn. Because no one ever suspects the little old man across the street, nothing more than a nosy fool. Nothing less than a murderer. 

This was written in response to the Lightning and Lightning Bug prompt: Houses. Or the lack thereof.

The Red Tag

She stalked the aisles of the ancient shop and tried desperately to ignore the sounds of its ancient proprietor at the counter ruffling his newspaper and slurping his coffee. She had to focus, tune out any sounds so that she could concentrate on her objective.

Cameras lined the shelves of the shop, relics of a simpler time and place, antiques now all but obsolete. Her eyes touched on each one, searching for one with a red tag, one she had searched for in countless other shops. As she passed, the cameras seemed to cry out to her, each telling her its own tale.

Some of light. Of birthday parties and weddings. Vacations spent with families of four at the beach, journeys across Europe and time. Sunsets and newborns.

Some of darkness. Of haunted alleys and houses. Graveyards and dark rooms. Blood and sex and violence. Souls captured on film, damaged forever.

She ignored their pleas and furtive cries, eyes searching wildly for a flash of red. The shop’s air was becoming thick and heavy; her breathing came fast. As she turned down the last aisle, desperate to finish her search and burst out of the shop into the fresh air, she spotted it.

On the bottom shelf, shoved to the very back, a camera with a red tag.

The noises and thoughts crowding her busy mind fell silent. The ancient shop-owner and screaming cameras faded. If possible, the air around her grew heavier, thicker, so that as she moved through it towards the camera it felt as if she were walking through heavy curtains, pushing through some invisible force.

She kneeled at the shelf, hesitated only a moment, then reached for her prize. The camera felt nearly hot to the touch, and even though she knew that couldn’t be, that none of this could be, she felt the heat, was nearly burned by it.

The red tag was attached loosely to the shutter release button. Her name was printed on it in faded handwriting.  The camera was hers. She knew that without having to see her name; she knew when she dreamed of it months ago, sitting on some dusty shelf in some ancient shop with its bright red tag, waiting for her.

Taking a deep breath, she stood up, lifted the camera to her face, and gazed through the viewfinder into her destiny. 

Author's Note: This was written in response to a Red Dress Club prompt. We were to write a story based on the photo above in 400 words or less. Check out more great tales by clicking the link below! 

The Beauty of a Sno-Cone Stand - Parts I - IV

Author's Note: This is the first  four parts of a short story that was published in a local magazine called West Georgia Living. Thought I'd share it with those of you who may not have seen it. I'm weird about sharing my fiction and poetry, so this is making me incredibly nervous. Didn't want to post the entire thing in one post lest I bore you. :) Thanks for reading! 

The Beauty of a Sno-Cone Stand

I.

When I was twelve-years old, I read about the end of the world and hoped I’d be there. It seemed like as good a place as any to be to a twelve-year old girl who didn’t have much to look forward to. So I looked forward, ignoring the stark and pale-under-florescent-light reality of my present, and began to plan.

I spent that first week making key decisions.

With the entire store of logic in my underdeveloped, underutilized, adolescent brain, I reasoned that the end of the world might as well be on a Wednesday afternoon, so I decided on one in January. When I informed my best friend Zacariah of this first decision, he approved and agreed that January was the worst month of the year because of all the snow and the fact that people broke a lot of promises because of the whole resolution thing.

I resolved that the end of the world would happen before people could break those resolutions. My last gift to everyone.

I started marking the days off my calendar in anticipation.

II.

When my Mom would come into my room late at night to turn off my light, remove the book from my faux-sleeping chest, which I’d learned to make rise and fall in a perfect mimicry of real sleep, I’d watch her out of the miniscule slit in my eyes as she would look and sigh over the calendar on my wall with its red x’s counting down the days.

The first time she did this was on October 22; at first she only gave the calendar a cursory glance, but I guess she noticed the bleeding x’s, because she stepped closer to it and then began flipping ahead through the months. She’d always told me that looking towards the future on a calendar was bad luck, but I didn’t say anything in my pretend-sleep state.

When she made it to December, she stopped and puzzled over what I’d always called the baby calendar at the bottom of the page. In the same red ink as the x’s, she saw the tiny circle around the 12^th day of January.

            The next day at the breakfast table, as I pushed around the little o’s of cereal that I thought matched the x’s on my calendar perfectly, she asked me what was supposed to happen on the 12^th of January. I calmly informed her that it was the day the world would end. She just laughed, and then turned from her dishwashing at the sink to study me. She said, “the end of the world, huh?” 

And I nodded sagely and shoveled in more sugar-coated black holes.

III.

When November rolled around, I began making a list of the things I would do on the day the world would end.

I’d tell my step-father just how I really felt about him. I’d tell him how his beer gut was the grossest thing on the planet as far as I was concerned and that I’d rather touch a slug than have to look at it all the time, so to please put on a shirt at least sometimes.

I’d announce to my entire homeroom class how I hated the way they avoided me every morning, like I smelled bad or something. I’d inform them, with just a hint of superiority, that I did not smell bad and that I knew that for a fact because I took a shower every day. And if they were avoiding me for a different reason, then they’d just have to tell me because the world was going to end anyway.

I’d take a picture of that Sno-Cone stand out by the new Wal-Mart that was closed for the winter. I thought that’d comfort me through all the horror and death and all, and people just don’t appreciate the beauty of a Sno-Cone stand.

I’d write a few things down of interest just in case anyone’s left or in case anyone ever returns, so they’ll have reading material and maybe won’t get too bored. Whatever I wrote would include the word segue, just because I found that I liked it.

I’d finally get up the nerve to kiss Nick Harris, full on the mouth. It would be my first kiss and his last.

The kiss with Nick became the only thing that mattered to me on my list. I even began to look forward to that kiss more than I was looking forward to the end of the world. That happens sometimes. We lose sight of what we really want in favor of the things we think we want. I thought I wanted that kiss from Nick more than I wanted anything in the world or, what would be, the un-world.

IV.

On December 14, as we pushed our loaded cart throught the Wal-Mart parking lot, Mom caught me taking a picture of the Sno-Cone stand with my step-father’s old Polaroid camera. She paled under the sickly glow of the winter sky and announced that it was time that I visited what she called a head-doctor. The appointment was made with a head-doctor by the name of Earnest Jones for December 23, Christmas-Eve-Eve, at 4:15 pm. That day I pouted all the way to his office and continued pouting during the session, though I don’t think I did a very good job of it because neither Mom nor Dr. Earnest Jones, head-doctor PhD, seemed to notice.

Like faux-sleeping, I was really good at faux-speaking. It was easier than you could imagine telling Dr. Earnest Jones, head-doctor PhD, just what he wanted to hear. He pretty much fed my lines to me.

I gobbled up words like depressed, lonely, purposeless, hormonal, neglected, adolescence, notice, and vacant, chewed thoughtfully, and spat them back out in an advanced form of faux-speak that even I hadn’t been aware I could produce.

The head-doctor seemed to be impressed with my faux-speak, too, because he kept nodding and grunting, squinting his dark-circled eyes in a way that was intended to make me believe he was really listening. On the day the world would end, Dr. Earnest Jones, head-doctor PhD, would regret never listening to the truth behind his patients’ faux-speak.

Before we left his office, the three of us mutually decided that I was just a lonely kid looking for a little attention in the wrong place. When we got home, Mom took down my calendar and, with that same squinty look the head-doctor used, sternly said to me, “the world will not end on January 12.”

As if saying it aloud would make it true.

To be continued...Read the ending here.