- RDP Friday: LURKING
Gertrude Abercrombie,
Reverie, 1947 - ” I’m just going to say it straight up. Your girlfriend isn’t very cool.” Calvin’s friend told him at the bus stop one day.
- It was the Friday before Labor Day and most of the people who waited at the stop were friends so Cal and Sam knew since the beginning of the week they’d be the only two there today. That’s why Sam had decided to bring up the Girlfriend topic.
- ” She’s just always there shooting us the stinkeye.” Sam decided to soften his position because the bus was about 10 minutes away and he didn’t want to share this with some random commuters. ” I mean why does she hang around us if she doesn’t want to hang out with us? You know what I mean?”
- Sam looked up Elm Way and when he didn’t see the bus hissing it’s way towards them he decided to answer.
- ” No. No I don’t know what you mean.”
- ” She’s like a stalker or something Cal. She’s just there checking everyone out and she never says anything. She just stares at us like we’re a bunch of bastard children who showed up at a family reunion, see what I mean? “
- ” I really don’t Sam.”
- “Well. She walks you to the bus stop everyday and she waits on the corner over there under the tree until the bus shows up. She never comes over here if I’m here or anyone else we ride with. She just looks all offended or pissed off if I even wave at her or smile.
- The bus sailed towards them and Sam turned and waved to Calvin’s girlfriend- ” See man, Nothing. She’s not very friendly is she?”
- The bus stopped in front of them and the doors opened.
- Calvin stepped back and let Sam take the stairs up first. Then he turned around to the place under the tree where Sam had waved and like always there wasn’t anyone there when Calvin turned around.
- One of these days he was going to tell Sam he didn’t have a girlfriend.
- However, Calvin did have a wife and she wasn’t standing under the tree on the corner.
- She was buried next to it.
- Calvin decided that this might not be the right time to have that conversation with Sam, but over the weekend when the street was quiet he might get around to doing a little more digging around that tree and then maybe- just maybe he would have a little talk with Sam.
#RagtagDailyPrompt
The Truth Remembered
RDP Monday: CERTAIN
PHOYOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
When she was little
she remembered yelling at her Mother,
” You don’t love me, everyone knows it’s true!”
and for years and years she tried to remember what her Mother had said
in reply.
All she could recall was the look on her Mother’s face-
the confusion, that’s what she remembered seeing- confusion
and that animal trapped in a corner look in her Mother’s eyes that must
have burned away the memory of what her Mother angrily responded
to such a horrible accusation coming from her first born child.
That memory turned up, always uninvited, to holiday dinners, it barged into the
bathroom when she was putting
on her makeup in the morning, it chased her when she was running for her bus after
work, it followed her when she was walking her dog- and it whispered in her ear that
her Mother must have said something, she was certain of it and then her
inability to remember what her Mother must have shouted back frightened her- that
dark silence rested in her heart and it squeezed until she nearly cried.
She turned that memory over in mind again and again and then one day she realized
she couldn’t remember what her Mother had said because
her Mother had never said anything at all.
Treat or Scream?
RDP Friday: CRUNCHY
Crisp red apples
bathed in cold clear water
I’m glad they don’t have teeth or they’d certainly click and chatter.
Crisp red apples
skewered through a hole on the tops of their heads
I’m really hoping that they are not alive and that they are truly dead.
Crisp red apples
cold too the touch
next comes the boiling sugar did you hear that little crunch?
Crisp red apples
sitting on a tray
waiting to be claimed by ravenous monsters and then spirited away.
Crisp red apples
tortured for your culinary pleasure
every Halloween.
Flori Goodchild By The Sea Shore
RDP Wednesday: KELP
F. K. M. Rehn, Beach of Bass Rocks, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1881
That’s Flori Goodchild standing on the beach, can you see her down there by the rocks?
She is out there everyday when the tide goes out and she’s even out there when the fog rolls in or the sky turns black and it starts to rain.
I look for her before I go down to the beach myself because I liked knowing where she is.
It’s always a good idea to know where Flori is, but I wouldn’t recommend looking directly at her.
Once I was down on the beach trying to remember what it looked like when it snowed, I was struggling to recall if really felt soft when it landed on my cheek. I was mid-thought, confused, when started to turn around to find Flori Goodchild was standing right behind me and she smelled- but she didn’t smell like the Sea or suntan lotion. She smelled like a laundry room with a cement sink covered with mold and a window covered grime and spider webs.
When she stepped back I could hear her feet slide across the broken shells and bits of dead rotten kelp and the squishing and crunching coming up from under her heel almost made me turn all the way around because the sound was wrong- but not quite wrong.
It was like hearing someone singing a song just slightly off key.
I didn’t lift my eyes to Flori’s face, I didn’t say ‘excuse me’. Instead I started to walk straight ahead.
” Come to me Jenny George. ” she said to me.
I did want to go to her, so help me I needed to. But I moved away from her as fast as could
I did try to run for it, but I couldn’t. My knees were shaking and my teeth had started to rattle and it wasn’t from the cold.
I was up to my chest in salty sea water before I realized where I was, but I kept going and then I started to swim because what Flori Goodchild was back there and she knew my name.
Before long the waves hid me from her the way they did all of those years ago when I saw her on the bow of my boat in that storm when thunder and lightning tore the sky apart and I jumped into the water to escape Flori and her Sea eaten face and her outstretched fleshless hands.
I keep going back to the beach and I always keep an eye out for Flori Goodchild. But I never look right at her. It’s not a good idea.
Still.
I’d keep both eyes out for her, but the crabs took one of them on the day I first saw Flori Goodchild and if it were in my power I’d pull out the other one to save myself the grief of having to ever see her again.
Max Jensen-Stürmische See
I named the character hiding from Flori after ‘ The Jenny ‘.
Legend says The Jenny is an English Schooner that disappeared with her crew in 1823. The story says she was found in 1840 locked in an ice barrier in Cape Drake by a whaling ship. By this time the Jenny was a morgue and her crew was said to have been found frozen and preserved- in what areas of the Jenny is never really made clear.
The ‘ Jenny ‘
“The Jenny”