That was decades ago. I can’t imagine why one has popped up in our neighborhood. Who reads anymore?
People say they are visual learners now. Pictures, videos, multimedia. I wonder if many books are even published anymore. I haven’t seen one until that mobile library in many years.
I know many books, back in the day, were banned and burned. They say it was for our own protection. I do remember they were protecting us from the Others who don’t think like we do.
The elderly lady looked up and the shutters were open. Her heart skipped a beat. She had waited for this moment for 50 years.
She tried to pull open the door of the old, dilapidated building, but it was stuck. She pulled as hard as her old bones would allow and it popped loose.
The memories came flooding back. This corridor used to be light and airy and full of dancing children, including herself. That was so long ago that it left her breathless.
She got to the stairs and began to pull herself up by the railing. With every step, the past flashed before her eyes. Her father and mother waiting for her at the top of the stairs., Her sister racing up the stairs by her side.
The air was musty and the old woman had a hard time breathing. She tiptoed inside the sunny apartment.
Ghosts. She saw them all. Her family. Laughing and talking. She and her sister, so happy, so innocent in those days. She came here because she wanted some of it back, the innocence. Maybe it would bring joy to her life.
She found the boxes in one of the bedrooms. Her dolls. Her puppets. Her childhood books and records. As she looked at each item, she smiled and cried at the same time.
All that was left that was important were the ghosts.
It descended upon her while she was walking through the woods. A giant web of some sort, but it didn’t seem to be finished. She heard something weaving.
She was frightened. It felt like it was grabbing at her and she tried to swipe it away.
She was coming to what seemed to be the end of it. The web had gotten smaller. The sound of weaving had gotten louder.
She fought it and tried to pull it off her. It seemed to tighten and then wrapped around her.
Once upon a time, there were two children who lived in the country. The girl, Mary, was 12 and the boy, Eddie, was 10. They were neighbors and became the best of childhood friends.
Mary and Eddie lived in the forest with their families. One day, their adventures led them to some steps that went up from the forest into a small clearing with the forest on either side.
Every day, they would sneak up the stairs to the clearing and play one of their imaginary games. They usually played a game they called Explorer. They would pretend to camp at the clearing and explore the forest.
One day, they discovered the remains of a campfire. They ran off into the woods to see if they could find the campers. The children stumbled across two hunters who warned them that it was hunting season and they should stay out of the woods.
They were disappointed but there were always other games to play.
Many years later, Eddie was ill. He sat in his recliner at his home and his wife tried to get him to go to the hospital. Instead of answering her, he fell into sleep or perhaps a meditative state.
He told her this story, but in bits and starts. She thought he was hallucinating and called the paramedics. Before they arrived, Eddie finished the story, fell into sleep, and then he was gone. He left with the memory of his Glory Days on his mind.
Thanks to Ayr/Gray for hosting the #unicornchallenge.
She walked away from her home because she needed to think. Depression and anxiety were plaguing her. She felt like she was losing her mind. Her heart was sick.
She arrived at the path that led to the ocean. She started to walk toward the ocean. She wanted it to swallow her. Maybe then she could forget.
When she got to the sculptures, she stopped and admired them. A feeling of hope washed over her. She wanted to live, really live. After standing there, she turned to walk home.
She knew what she had to do.
Thanks to Rochelle for hosting #friday Fictioneers!
“Isn’t this the way you wanted it,” Emil asked Portia as she lamented her small social circle.
“I wanted to escape my previous life. Not my present life,” Portia responded to Emil.
“Portia,” Emil responded, “I’m not sure that you can be certain you have yet escaped your previous life. How can you possibly take the chance of putting yourself out there socially?”
As Portia contemplated Emil’s question, Emil thought about how he met Portia soon after she arrived in the small Portuguese town and they became fast friends.
Portia was a fun-loving, social person who had sought a way to rid herself of baggage in her life in the U.S. A drastic way, yes. Probably not a reasonable way. Portia had been desperate and had simply walked off and left her old life behind.
Emil said, “Portia, it isn’t easy to vanish in today’s world. Even though you have a fake passport and you don’t use your credit cards, he will probably find a way to trace you if he wants to.”
Portia would never go back to him or work for him again.
Ten days passed and Portia stayed in seclusion other than having Emil with her. One night, there was a knock at the door. She opened the door to find several law enforcement officers standing there. They announced that she was under arrest and would be extradited back to the U.S.
She went with the officers, crying and screaming, with Emil following. When they got to the jail, there he stood.
“Portia,” he said, “You can stay in Portugal. I don’t want you back. I do want the million dollars you embezzled from my company back. You almost bankrupted us.”
“I don’t have it now,” she said as she cried and begged for his mercy.
The girl looked out the window of her high-rise apartment at the skyline of New York. She was placing her few keepsakes from home on the window sill.
Except the last one. The distorted glass. Ellie found it lying in the gutter of a New York City street.
She thought it was welcoming her to New York. A striking city that was a bit contorted like the glass.
There was a rattle and the glass slipped off its perch. It shattered. Ellie gasped and hoped that her life in the city wouldn’t shatter like that glass.
“Captain,” the detective said, “we know that women are not often grab and go thieves.”
“In the past, that was true, but in the present time, I’d believe anything. How do you explain what Mrs. Johnson saw? What about the shoe in the gutter?”
Across town, Gracie was making her way home on the side streets and alleyways. She had taken off the hat and wig she had worn and ditched them. It had been slow going. She was walking with just one shoe.
“There is another mystery,” the Captain commented. “I find it really coincidental that the thief grabbed Mrs. Johnson’s purse. No one could have believed she would have $10,000 U.S. dollars in cash in that handbag.”
“Hmm…why didn’t the thief pick a rich-looking woman?” asked the detective.
Gracie was finally home. There it was, all $10,000 of it. She thought back at the conversation she had overheard between her boss and a friend. The friend had a debt to pay, and she was musing on when and where she had to go to get the money.
Little Eddie ran into the room and Gracie bent to hug him.
“Mommy,” he said, “where’s your other shoe?”
“Don’t worry, Eddie. We can afford to buy shoes now.”
The Captain started looking at the pictures a bystander had taken of the robbery. The face of the thief was clear and familiar to him. Even though the hair was different, that was Gracie’s face. Gracie, his housekeeper.
She sat on a bench across the street from the museum, studying the sculpture in front. It was a man, seemingly sculpted from wood, reading. He reminded her of a book she once read, “A Man of Two Faces.”
If you looked closely at the man, you could see his skeletal-like face. Above it, between his forehead and the crown of his head, another face appeared to her. You could distinguish two eyes and a nose that would be looking skyward if the sculpture could have looked up. He captured her imagination particularly given the times she was living in.
The outward looking face of the man was bowed, reading a book. The book he was reading, she imagined, was a book on American culture in these unsettled current times. There were bitter political rivalries, hundreds of conspiracy theories, religious involvement, misinformation and disinformation. Neighbors turned against neighbors and family against family. Long-time friendships were forever destroyed. The American dream to her seemed to be gone and she had no understanding of half the American population and its thinking.
She looked at the other face of the sculpture. That face wasn’t as clear, the expression was more off-kilter, perhaps confused, and a little dreamy. Maybe that face was dreaming of what could be, but wasn’t, in America. The American Dream, but this time an inclusive American Dream that was available to everyone. Was it now lost forever? Destroyed by greed and the lust for power? The sculpture had no answers.
The Write Scribe 