101 Words

“Susie, Mary, dinner is ready!”

Carol walked into the neglected backyard of their new home, expecting to find her twin daughters hiding from her again. A rustling sound came from the overgrown hedge that divided the lawn from the pool area. With outstretched arms and wide, glaring eyes, she jumped behind it to spook the girls, but found only one: Mary.

She was crying.

And dripping wet.

A pit gathered in Carol’s stomach. In the calmest voice she could muster, she asked, “Where’s Susie?”

Mary pointed to the broken gate leading to the pool.

“We just wanted to be fishes, Mommy.”

We’re all collectors, accumulating pieces of others. Wrapping a laugh in a bow, capturing an interest of someone’s in a bottle, gingerly nesting them on our shelves.

My favorites sit front and center tucked behind sheets of glass, in frames of gold.

That filmy night, the grass poking up through your curls as your finger traced its way across the sky. To Venus then The Seven Sisters.

The “You’re a good writer” hidden in a string of conversation after you read one of my stories for school.

It’s not often we realize when others change us, in these moments I knew.

The region was in a drought.

Suddenly, rain splattered on the pavement; a dark storm cloud rolled and dropped from the sky, forming into a large gray dog with protruding tongue, happy eyes, and a wet, wagging tail. Children danced gaily around the dog.

Someone, a grownup perhaps, decided to capture it, thereby keeping the rain all to herself.

She fixed a chain about the beast’s neck and tightened it to secure her prey. The dog quickly dematerialized, leaving only a moist spot where he had stood. The sun broke from behind the dissipating thunderheads.

The rain refused to fall again.

By chance, three years before they met, they both attended a play at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. Seated rows apart, their paths failed to cross.

Had they met that night, they would have had a drink at the theatre bar. Later that year they would have married. By now, they would have had a daughter called Grace.

Years later, they met online and, discovering their shared love of theatre, decided to go to a play at the Ambassadors on their first date.

“Strange, just had a feeling of déjà vu,” he said.

She touched his hand and smiled. “Me too.”

Mom sat watching her neighbor staple ‘Yard Sale Tomorrow’ signs to the telephone poles. “Moving?” Mom asked.

“I suppose if we don’t sell enough stuff to make our mortgage payments.”

Mom told Dad. He drove his pickup over and went out back with the husband then returned and pulled his truck around. The men worked all day. Dad gave him mortgage money, drove off with his multiple rolls of sod, and made two more trips with the neighbor’s prize-winning yard.

After their wives took down the signs, they sat in the dirt with their husbands and drank beer from Dad’s cooler.

The fiery man enjoyed rejecting wisdom. Belief, science, and norms, he turned from proudly. Then Truth leapt up and bound him with a rope.

“I won’t let go until you look me in the eye,” it said. The man twisted and cursed, but Truth held its grip.

Hard-pressed, the man could no longer rail, so he faced Truth directly.

“Now you understand?” Truth asked, face compassionate.

“I do,” the man said, his eyes gaining focus. “I was reckless. Now I see your worth.”

“Go then.”

The rope eased. The man realized that Truth had set him free. And he proved so.

The lighthouse keeper flicked his cigarette to join the rest of the litter on the rocks and ice. Rusty cans, metal containers, and broken bottles, as well as a frayed rope and net, were mixed in with the debris from the wreckage.

The ashen-faced woman on her knees beside him laid her dead infant in a shallow grave in the frozen ground.

“How much longer do we wait?” Her voice was hoarse from crying and the cold.

“As long as it takes,” he replied, staring beyond the line of graves at the bleak horizon that hadn’t yielded any hope in weeks.