Photo: Esperanza Algaba Davila on Unsplash
They didn’t think they’d leave such an impression. After all, they were only passing through, a transient band of transients in a town built on foundations set in stone.
And yet, as they left, colored wagons clattering on paved roads not made for wooden wheels or tender hooves, they were followed by a line of children.
Like a piped piper for the unloved. Seeking a better home.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Impact in 67 words
Photo: Sue Vincent
“What is that thing?”
Melanie squinted against the glare. Shrugged. “A microscope with duck feet.”
Tony frowned. His sister was easily the most annoying person to ever occupy the Earth. Well, after James. James was worse.
The boy stole a look behind him as if expecting James to manifest, even though he knew that the youth was many miles away. You just didn’t know. With James.
Melanie rested her chin on her knees, hummed under her breath, and played imaginary piano with her toes, watching the sand swish around her soles. She was hungry. She wondered what they’ll have for dinner. She lifted her head to glance around. The beach was slowly emptying but it was too early to check the bins.
And anyway, it was Tony’s turn.
She couldn’t keep doing everything for him. He was never gonna learn.
Her stomach growled and she sighed and squinted again at the odd shape on the sand. “Yep,” she pursed her lips. “Definitely a microscope with duck legs.”
Tony made that sound in his throat that she knew meant he was distressed but didn’t want to show it. She ignored him. He had to toughen up.
The quiet between them lingered. It felt stretchy. Like a taught rubber band wound over a finger. Melanie stared. That thing didn’t move.
“It’s an alien,” Tony finally said.
Melanie nodded. Could be.
Tony breathed. “I wonder where the spaceship is.”
“Yeah.” Melanie sat up, suddenly intrigued. “And I wonder when it leaves. You think that if we ask, it would agree to take us with?”
If only she could get there …
The mist and tears obscured her view, but she trod on, insistent and desperate for the safety of the circle. It had saved her ancestors. It had become a thing of lore.
But if the magic still held, she would be helped. The spirits that guarded the stones would weave protection over her. Bar the weapons. Shun the anger. Ward off those who wanted to do harm.
She tripped twice, the cold air breathing malice on her nape. She fought the urge to curl upon the damp ground and give up. She gathered up her tattered courage and wrapped the threads of memories around her shoulders. The incantations of her grandmother, sang softly into the cauldron, stirring soup and stories, teaching without telling, showing without spelling out what was forbidden to be known.
In the darkening damp she mumbled some forgotten fragments. “Help me, Nana,” she sobbed when her knees skinned on a stone and her breath caught.
“Rise, Child,” she thought she heard. She wanted to believe.
She rose. She stumbled on.
If only she could get there, she would be saved. The spirits will protect her in the mists of old.
The pitchforks. The firebrands. The mobs in their lust and calls for blood in smoke? They would not be able to see her. Not once she crossed into the circle. Once there, she would be scooped up, sheltered, danger gone.
Photo: Andy Falconer on Unsplash
They want to add more activity to his day. More interests. Better engagements. A hobby. A new skill.
They don’t understand.
He is fine during the days. It is the night that haunts him. Not the dark, but the solitude. The walls closing. The suffocating silence where his breath fills all the space till there is no air left. No room for words.
Then there’s the fatigue and how it erodes all his resistance. Lets the blackness in.
They offered medicine. Said it will help him fall asleep and stay asleep.
It did.
And it made it worse.
Now his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream and he cannot find the door to waking.
He feels mummified. Lost in the abyss of thoughts and memory.
The bombs. The mines. The child.
He couldn’t save him.
Guilt swallows all.
How could there be a dawn?
Note: Dedicated to all whose deepest wounds are unseen. May you find your dawn.
For the dVerse prosery challenge: maya angelou
The quote prompt: “his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream” from “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou
Photo: Free-to-use-sounds, on Unsplash
From the hollows of despair, they fled.
The shirts on their backs and the children
In their arms, all they could manage to
Take.
Even the abysmal shelters they had recently
Been made to call
Home,
No longer gave any protection or
A chance at repair or
Reform.
They left, dodging death and finding
Further fright to
Flee,
And in their hearts they held on
Tightly
To the slowly fraying
Memory,
Of days when life was softer
And beds were warm,
And babies slept
Well kept
Safe from war and hate and
Harm.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Abysmal in 93 words
Note: Dedicated to all displaced, terrorized, pressed, oppressed, persecuted persons everywhere, and to the many millions who had, throughout history and in recent memory and in today’s times, been forced to further risk their lives by leaving what had once been home and safety behind, for the unknown.
Photo: Ofir Asif
She ran into the camp,
Braids streaming behind like ribbons
In wind,
Determined to be
Unbound
For a time.
The women raised their heads,
Weary from tending to
Crops and overtired babies.
This time of year was plentiful in many things but
Not in time.
“What is it, child,” her elder asked,
The rhythm of rocking the cradles of milk
And infant
Adding a lilt to her aged voice,
Raspy from smoky fires and chaff
Of time.
“Help,” the young one breathed,
And stalled,
Needy of air and flooded by sudden doubt.
“Speak up, child,” her mother snapped,
Tight with worry for a girl-child
Chased home,
And the shadows
of another time.
The camp stilled.
A baby woke in cry.
“Come help,” the lass repeated, indignant,
No longer shy.
“The creek rises and a cow is screaming
Across the arroyo.
We have no time!”
For the dVerse prosery challenge
She ran and wouldn’t stop till she got there.
It didn’t matter that she had a stitch in her side or that something hard in her backpack kept slamming into her ribs or that the lower branches of some trees slapped burning licks against her cheeks.
She would not stop.
At last she saw a glimmering reflection and the slight opening in the dense woods that signaled she was almost there.
Her attention drawn to the sight ahead, she missed a crawler root and fell hard. She lay there, the breath knocked out of her and pain coursing through her body where it hit the ground. A gnarly stump poked out of the earth not two inches from her eye. It would have done real damage.
She was almost too miserable to care but her eyes still filled with tears. For the pain. For the helplessness. For the exhaustion. For so much more she could not find the words for and couldn’t afford to. Not yet.
She had to get up or she’d never move again. The backpack pressed heavy against her and she couldn’t help but remember other weight pinning her down. Unwelcome. Uninvited. More tears sprung. Then sobs that came from someplace between her diaphragm and belly button and competed with the stitch already jabbing through her chest. It was too much. It had all been. Too much.
Finally, after what seemed a decade, her breath calmed and she found strength to push up to her elbows, then her knees, then up to lean against a tree and shift her weight gingerly onto each leg.
Nothing broken. Or nothing broken that would prevent her from getting there. Her elbow throbbed and she was bleeding from scratches on her face and a badly skinned palm. There would be more abrasions underneath her pants where a tear bloomed red at the knee. But she was up, and some burden had lifted in the crying, even if it left her heart hollow with sorrow and echoing with despair.
She filled her lungs with a long breath and a tardy sob escaped to join the others but then her body shuddered one last time and she steadied.
She walked on. Not running now, just dogged determination.
The forest peeled away to reveal the clearing. The pond glowed and the purple light remained as she’d remembered. Lush greens licked the muddy banks and a clump of cattails whispered in an almost nonexistent breeze. The tree, too, was still there, just as it had been before: it’s bark missing in places, it’s silvery leaves rustling as the very breath of the place coursed through it from root to leafy tip.
“I’ve come back,” she breathed, and touched her scraped palm to the exposed trunk. Skin to blood to skin.
An echo filled her chest and she knew it knew her, and the relief made the jagged hole in the center of her self heal some.
This was the one place she never felt completely alone in.
She’d last left it thinking that her old life would not chase her to the new, and she had tried – for longer than she thought she could endure – to pretend that she no longer longed for what she had believed in and had given up. She could give it up no more.
“Will you help me?” she whispered. “I’d forgotten how.”
And the tree rustled and a ripple ran across the water and into her core, and her body softened so completely that she slid to sit leaning against the trunk. Welcomed. Invited. Warmed.
She’ll sleep. And she will dream. And she will wake to find the way back to herself. To her true realm in her rightful time.
Photo: Amitai Asif
“Almost there!” she sighed.
What had been an orange halo of illumination at the horizon of their climb finally crystalized into evidence of habitation.
She could hear Merri’s labored breath behind her.
“Not long now,” she cajoled to mask her wariness.
Will they be welcomed or will they be turned out again? The other two places were small towns. This was a big city. Perhaps they could blend in. Hide in plain sight.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Illumination in 73 words
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda; NYC
There are times when to pummel
A wrongness with words
Is a must.
If another is silenced
And their voice thrown
To dust,
Then lambasting the cruelty
Is the way to be
Just.
(Note: Photo taken today at the Families Belong Together March in NYC)
This post continues the blogging challenge in which Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day, serves as inspiration a-la the “Daily Prompt.”
Want to join me? Feel free to link to this post on your blog, and/or post a link to your blogpost in the comment section below so others can enjoy it, too. Poetry, photography, short stories, anecdotes: Go for it!
For more visibility, tag your post with #WordOfDayNY, so your post can be searchable.
“Follow” me if you want to receive future prompts, or just pop in when you’re looking for inspiration. Here’s to the fun of writing and our ever-evolving blogging community!
The prompt for today was just too on point to ignore, when the paperback became available TODAY (!!!) and when so much of this novel is about what a home is, or what may at any moment become a place one is pushed out of or needs to run away from. The connection felt even more apt with how the holidays bring up for so many the very realities and stories of a home (or lack thereof).
“Apples in Applath” is a work of fiction, yet very real children do fall victim to policies and realities not of their choice or making. Also real is that what makes a home or family is not always immediately obvious; and that hope and wariness, need and conscience, often compete inside one’s soul as one seeks a safe space to call home.
I’m very excited for “Apples in Applath” – my fourth book and third novel. I hope you’ll check it out and share it with others who may find an interest. I hope that it may find a home in yours.
Even more so, my wish for you — and for all who are or once were children — is that you’ll always have a safe nest to call home.
For The Daily Post
tucked away in the mountains
History of the Bloomingdale area on Manhattan's Upper West Side
A creative miscellany of mythic fantasies
a weekly flash fiction prompt inspired by google maps
A community for writers to learn, grow, and connect.
To participate in the Ragtag Daily Prompt, create a Pingback to your post, or copy and paste the link to your post into the comments. And while you’re there, why not check out some of the other posts too!
I can't sleep...
Alternative haven for the Daily Post's mourners!
never judge a girl by her weight
original fiction and rhyme
Taotalk is a forum for the discussion of both the academic and pragmatic aspects of dao and Daoism, with participants expressing themselves on Daoist writings and pragmatics from their unique perspectives. It serves as a community for Daoists, and those interested in Daoism, to gather and talk dao.
A photographer's view of the world - words and images to inspire your travels and your dreams
Life in progress
Straight up with a twist– Because life is too short to be subtle!
WordPress & Blogging tips, flash fiction, photography and lots more!
Better Living Through Beauty, Wisdom and Whimsey
Life in a flash - a bi-weekly storytelling blog
Na'ama Yehuda 
You must be logged in to post a comment.