The inspiration:
A story:
Nana’s funeral was barely over before my brothers started arguing over her will. I left them, slipping to the back porch. For as long as I could remember her hair was white, her skin unlined and she could hold me for hours with her adventure stories.
It was more ornate sculpture than key and was the only thing I wanted from Nana along with my memories. It felt surprisingly warm in my hand.
Behind the brooms was a door. As I unlocked it, hearing the colors and smelling the light, I briefly wondered how I would look with white hair.
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Now, your turn.
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Steve B wrote an excellent story last time. I eagerly await what he’ll offer today.
The Duggar girls slept uneasily in their upstairs loft.
It was Annabelle Jean’s turn at watch, and she sat quietly, watching a blurry moon bobbing almost motionless in the Arkansas sky.
She heard footsteps in the hall and screamed.
“Code 7 girls Code 7!”
And all 36 Duggar sisters rose as one to protect their honorable and unbesmirched ladybits from the sinful molestations of the lust-driven beast that stalked that hallway.
Several of the girls lit lanterns, chasing away the shadows, illuminating the determination in their eyes.
Annabelle heard the footsteps pause, and then retreat back the way they came.
[…] had more fun writing this than I should have. I knew as soon as I saw the image that I’d be doing a ghost story, but what kind? However inspiration hit me pretty fast and I […]
As I approached the old house, a set of chills went up my spine.
Everyone in town seemed to fear coming here.
But I had to meet him. Talk to him. We needed him again. Everything was a risk again.
He had helped save us, then we had rejected him and I’m sure he was bitter.
With a shaking hand, I knocked on the door – it echoed ominously inside and outside, and I felt the deepest chill yet. I fought not to shiver uncontrollably.
The big door creaked slowly open and there was Goldstein petting an armadillo…and he was laughing.
Looks like Hattie’s shack to me…
“Four hundred grand? Seriously?” Amy stood on the crumbling blacktop between the car and the fallen tree that blocked the drive.
She didn’t say anything else, but Michael could see her jaw moving and he knew what she was saying inside. If she didn’t relax, she was going to grind her teeth down to stumps. She had always been uptight, he thought, even when she was getting her way. Like when she wanted the new car. You’re the man, she said, you should be in charge of automobiles. He looked at the Yugo… same thing she said about vacation houses.
House Proud
The trees were afraid. The uprooted stumps signalled past battles, lost and longed for. The house had held her ground for centuries.
The little girl in the unmarked grave behind it would’ve had a great many great great grandchildren by now. Tiny, upstart footsteps overrunning her hard won stairs, squealing taunts in a babble language to the attic rafters.
The house knew what it was like to be trifled with, her thoughtful inside voice mocked. No.
The girl talked with the trees. The trees listened and were outraged. But they bent their brittle limbs away now. The trees were afraid.
Ambivalence
“Whaddya think? Too gothic? Because we can always go with a different color.”
The ambivalences in my town are yellow, which is weird, but already a different color.
[…] Fiction picked up this week from Darleen at protein wisdom, Gator from BigGator5.net, Smitty at The Other McCain, and Carrie at CarrieAisling. Tania Gail is […]
I had an Ambivalence once – had the Doc remove it and I’ve been one cranky SOB ever since.
i’m sorry that happened to you Mr. Belvedere
Wednesday was a sad one.
We found the dried out remains of the Swamp Thing on the floor of some decrepit plantation house in a pile of crack pipes and old smut. He was wearing a sneaker on his left foot. I don’t know why. Maybe his foot got cold.
We called DC comics. They claimed they’d never heard of the guy and tried to pawn him off as maybe some bum who wandered in from the Charleton buy out in ’83. E-Man told me that’s a crock.
Poor guy.
All he needed was a pot and some miracle grow.
*gro*
Big Daddy, I got some bad news. Trip’s a ball lookin’ butt chasin’ loop and his greasy wife can’t please him no matter how she tries. Them kids can’t sing, and your cancer can’t be fixed because it’s not 1991 yet. Also I heard Willie Loman died on his two asshole kids the other night. And Stanley’s wife left him after they committed her sister. The ex preacher’s drunk down in Tijuana again and some gigolo named Chance got his ass beat down probably for the last time.
Other than that the south is fine. Fine as a frog’s hair.
[…] Friday Fiction Challenge (Darleen […]
them Palins is bad news lordy lordy
“I SWEAR!“
They crouched behind the moss-bedeviled stumps; two boys, 12-ish if you had to guess, who should have been in school but were out exploring the Beggars’ Wood instead. As 12-ish-year-olds would often do.
“I’ve been through here before, and that house shouldn’t BE there!”
“Let’s check it out!” Boggs was always the more adventurous of the two.
Seven rounds of rock-paper-scissors later, Jeremy’s trembling hand finally reached out for the tarnished doorknob. It twisted loosely in his hand, and the ancient door swung inward.
With a swish and a pop, the house disappeared…just like it had 60 years before.
Graham v. O’Malley 2016 !
Graham/McCain 2016 !!
A little late, but…
The round tower had been my father’s bedroom. Until the . . . accident. Mom-mom took him and left that day. Now they had both passed.
My house, neglected and peeling.
“It will be worse on the inside,” I say to myself.
The stone steps and porch are solid. Good. Something lasted.
It is quiet in the abandoned grounds. However, when I put my hand to the door, I hear music. A string quartet? I withdraw my hand and all is quiet again.
Unlocking the door, I stepped into a brightly lit foyer, clean and polished.
“Young Master, you have been expected.”