Tag Archives: Creative Writing

Photo by Thomas Wolf.

You followed your normal bedtime routine last night: teeth flossed and brushed; pets taken out for their evening walk; cellphone muted; 15 minutes of reading a pulpy mystery before you slipped into a dreamless sleep.

It came as a surprise to you, then, to wake up on a cold, hard, marble floor. A white wall stands behind you. There is no other direction to move other than forward.

The corridor is so quiet you can hear your heart thumping as you stand up and start walking.  You glance between the columns, but none of them reveal doors or windows.

About hallway down the corridor you realize there is a room at the end of the hall. A warm, yellow light spills out of it as you draw closer.

“Hello?”

No answer.

You walk a little faster now, eager to see if you can find a phone or friendly face.

What do you discover in the room? Leave your answer in the comment section below!

Someone found my blog by searching for this phrase recently. I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, but I thought I’d write a flash fiction for those of you who do. 

Candy hearts litter the dash. What a nice touch for our last Valentine’s Day.

I sneak one as Jake permanently seals the doors and starts the engine. We’ve been together so many years that we don’t need words at takeoff. He does his work and I do mine.

The cargo growls. A faint, sulphuric odour fills the cabin. Damn, the meds can’t be wearing off already. The last dose would have knocked out an elephant. I double the next round and text Melinda. If nothing else, she’ll know how to slow these things down if any more of them hatch. There’s no way this one will survive its midnight crash into Kīlauea.

A silent nod from my captain. All systems go.

I’m ready.

Just tuning in? Catch up with parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve , thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen of this story.

Aunt Lucy must be immortal.

Not only had the oldest member of the Mingus Mountain community survived the fever that had claimed so many, she bounced up the stony path to Daphne’s house with more energy than the middle-aged man half her age who accompanied her. If not for her white hair and wrinkles no one would have believed she was an elder.

It was good to see that Gerald Perez was still alive. The scraps of news that had drifted back to Daphne’s house indicated that his unlucky household had seen many deaths this past spring.  He greeted her with a palm full of the Nosi that some folks liked to chew while informally discussing important matters.

Daphne shook her head and offered him a brief hug instead. She’d never learned to enjoy this particular plant, and while she was glad Gerald’s crop had been bountiful enough to share she wanted to face this meeting with a clear head. The last time she had chewed Nosi socially she had ended up craving it for days, and Daphne didn’t have the arable land or energy to dedicate to such a difficult habit to break.

Sean Reed and Ephraim followed the elders up the path to the house where Sean and the remaining members of the council gathered around the little table in the main room. Small talk had to be the worst part of meetings like this one. Daphne didn’t know if Sean’s wives had settled their longstanding feud while the children were ill or if it was ok to ask about the health of Gerald’s remaining family members. He had lost so many of them that she worried any mention of his family would reignite his grief.

Ephraim poured cups of water for everyone and sliced the last of the cheese while Lemon begged silently under the table.

“No, Lemon,” she said, secretly grateful for the distraction. She really needed to stop slipping him treats a few times a week. Lemon was beginning to assume that not being given treats was a punishment.

While the food and water were slowly eaten Sean described what had happened to Liam and Marcus Swood on the night the soldiers appeared at the Reed’s farm. Both brothers had quickly figured out how to communicate with one another despite being temporarily placed with foster families on opposite sides of the valley. Marcus egged on his little brother as the two of them made a nuisance of themselves to the visiting soldiers. At one point Marcus had claimed the soldiers were changelings, one of the most serious accusations one could make about someone who wasn’t well known to the community. He had claimed to see one of the soldiers speak to a rock and then transform into one. When Nevada Reed corroborated his story the neighbours began to pay closer attention to what was happening and one or two reputable people reported seeing equally troubling signs of blasphemy. The gods never would have concerned themselves so intimately with the affairs of mortals, and anyone who respected the gods would leave magic up to the ones who created it.

Soon after word of their findings began spreading to the larger community the Swood brothers mysteriously disappeared one night. Sean and a few other adults had gone searching for them, but no trace of either boy could be found much to the grief of their mother.

“We searched the other side of the valley as well,” Gerald said. The port wine mark on the left side of his face had grown darker after a long spring working in the sun. Daphne detected a hint of sadness in his voice as he continued speaking. “It is as if they were never born.”

“And they’re not the only ones to disappear,” Aunt Lucy said as she raised her right eyebrow and glanced at Daphne. “MacArthur is gone, too.”

Daphne made a conscious effort to keep her expression neutral as the older woman stared at her. After their last discussion on this topic the last thing she wanted to do was give Aunt Lucy any new reasons to continue digging up the painful chapters in her life. The discussion slowly drifted to what everyone thought the community should do about the disappearances, surprise inspections, and gleeful destruction of property. If Gerald or Aunt Lucy knew what else the soldiers were looking for neither one of them gave any indication of that knowledge.

So many of Daphne’s theories about what was happening were based on wisps of information. She had long-since wondered if MacArthur was involved in something distasteful. He sometimes travelled to other communities in order to buy and sell sheep or sell the blankets his wives and children wove. While she had no proof of this, Daphne wondered if that was all he carried with him.

The question was, what else could he take with him that was easily concealed? Most households produced just enough food and clothing for their own needs. In a good year there might be a little surplus for trade or charity, but no one ever had enough to justify the many trips he made most years.

A long-forgotten memory flashed into Daphne’s mind as the debate droned on around her.

As small children Isaac and Ephraim had occasionally spent the day with their stepmothers or older siblings while Daphne finished harvesting the food that would see them through the summer. One day when she went to pick them up Daphne had spotted Ephraim hiding underneath one of the large wicker baskets in his father’s yard. When she asked him what he was doing he shushed her, said he was being smuggled, and warned that it wouldn’t work if people knew he was there.

At the time she had laughed at the idea of hiding a person.

Now she wondered.

Photo by Tammy Schoch.

Just tuning in? Catch up with parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve , thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen of this story.

“What do you mean they just let him go?” Daphne’s joy at seeing both of her children return home safe was quickly becoming tinged with irritation.

“When I arrived at the camp they told me he was free to go.”

“And you turned your back on them and walked away?” In the 45 years she’d lived in the shadow of Mingus Mountain Daphne had seen more than one seemingly-peaceful meeting turn violent. Strangers couldn’t afford to give one another the benefit of the doubt in a climate where every family struggled to keep themselves and their kin alive. If nothing else her sons should know that by now.

“Well, they didn’t have any weapons pointed at us.”

“Oh, Ephraim. I’m glad you’re ok, but what in the hell were you thinking?”

“That we ought to get out of there before they changed their minds.”

It didn’t make sense. Everything Daphne and her neighbours had observed about their invaders pointed to a culture that had no reason to fear them. Had MacArthur or Sean Reed captured one of the invader’s people Daphne had little reason to believe he or she would have ever been released. The prospect of gaining insider information about the habits and motives of the other side would have been more useful than almost any bribe or trade. So what made them change their minds?

“They almost seemed afraid of me, Mom,” Isaac said. Daphne frowned at her short, thin, quiet son who had only recently developed a slightly more muscular frame as a result of his carpentry apprenticeship. She grew even more confused as he explained how quickly the soldiers changed their minds. Nothing her children told her today made any sense.

“Well, they know where we live,” she said finally. “There’s nothing we can do to prevent them from finding us again, but we can finish the harvesting.” Either Death was on his way or he wasn’t, but running out of food in August would be a sure way to capture his attention. The days unfolded slowly with no sign of the soldiers. Once everything that could possibly have been preserved was safely stored away Daphne and her family settled in for a long, hot summer.

The children were fully recovered by then, and Daphne spent many afternoons telling them the stories her sons had loved a few short years earlier. Even Paige reluctantly joined in, although she still preferred to rearrange Daphne’s kitchen or scold Lemon for barking when she thought she could get away with it.  Traditionally summer evenings been set aside for visiting neighbours and catching up on what was happening in the community, but this year Daphne had to rely on her sons to bring back snatches of news on the rare occasions when they met other people on the way to or back from Sparrow Creek. She could no longer take the trip herself. No one knew if the mysterious fever was still spreading, and few people wanted to take the risk of catching it when the desert released its summer miasma.

It was after one of these unexpected meetings that Isaac brought back troubling news. A midnight raid on the Eversons property had lead to the deaths of a son-in-law and two grandchildren. The invading army had finally taken MacArthur, but not before destroying his sheep paddock and setting his house on fire. Rachel and her remaining children and grandchildren were sleeping under the stars around a small campfire each night. She had taken to travelling to the next nearest creek for water in the hopes of avoiding further encounters with the invaders as the younger members of her family foraged for what little food they could find.

“Son, we might not even have enough for ourselves this summer,” Daphne said before Isaac could ask her to feed anyone else. Fishing and snaring sometimes rounded out their meals, but more often than not the Lewis and Davenport families ate watered down stews and thin slices of bread while they counted down the days to autumn.

“Every family is stretched to the limit,” Isaac said. “But the Eversons won’t make it through the summer without help. Rachel said her husband isn’t coming back.”

“She can’t possibly know that.” Daphne needed more than one hand to count the number of times MacArthur had been on trial for something. He always found a way to recover from even the most damming evidence, and she had no doubt he’d wiggle out of whatever these soldiers discovered he’d done as well.

“They’ve already sent him to Eutaw for his trial, mom. The commander said it wouldn’t be safe to keep him here, and that even if he was found not guilty on one charge he couldn’t outrun them all.”  Once again Daphne wondered who or what MacArthur had found himself mixed up in. In all of the years she’d known him he’d always had a steady supply of food and new sheep for his herd. Their wool was a valuable trading commodity, but they were more fragile creatures than the sensible goats most families relied up on for cheese and milk.

“So what do you expect me to do?”

“Call a community meeting. If everyone gives a little the Eversons can muddle through just like the rest of us.”

“Son, I don’t have the authority to do that.” The Mingus court system survived because it so rarely treaded into the daily lives of the people who  agreed to follow what the ombudsmen decided. Their jurisdiction was limited to theft, property rights, and the occasional custody or inheritance suit, and while the culture generally erred on the side of generosity it had been years since it had been this sorely tested. Would enough families be willing to reduce their already inadequate food supplies to keep such a controversial family going?

“What would you say if I told you I kind of already called one for you?”