Week 25 (November 6th-November 13th) Story Contest---Topic-Weeping DONE!!

[Paul]

Hi, this is my first story for this group, and I hope you like it. I have been a member for a while but haven’t had the guts to post something.

The storm by PAUL WOOD – WORD COUNT 1023.




THE STORM.

Molly is sitting outside on the porch, quietly reading her book when the storm starts. The first gentle spots of rain bounce on the dry tarmac inches from her unlaced sneakers. She listens intently to the peaceful drumming of the rain as it hits the plastic overhang above her head.
She is patiently waiting for her Dad to return. All afternoon she’d watches the day becoming darker; grey clouds floating lazily as they gather together to create a foreboding darkness. As she is getting to her feet the first rumble of thunder reverberates across the leaden sky. Inside she can hear her Mother moving about, pretending that today won’t happen. Molly knows her Mum’s scared; she’s trying to expel the pain with the whirl of the vacuum cleaner.
Molly understands scared. For Molly is scared of the storm. At the tender age of seven she can’t explain why. She is torn between racing for the covers of her Hannah Montana duvet, or facing the full fury of the approaching storm. It seems poetic justice that a storm is fast approaching upon this very day. Then another peal of thunder cascades down from the heavens above making the very ground shake. Seconds later the twilight heavens explode with an almighty flash. Molly screams as her eyes momentarily close against the intense glare.
In that brief second she remembers another storm and the night she’d lost Daddy. She remembers slamming doors, raised voices, the crack of thunder and the rain hammering against her window. She remembers the swirling wind blowing the tree against the windowpane; its branches scraping across the glass like a monster of nature trying to get to the little girl snuggled up in her bed. She looks over the covers with wild brown eyes and as the flash of lightening hits she witnesses Daddy’s shadow moving across the hallway. She wants him to brush his prickly face against hers. She likes the smell of his skin, like exotic oil. Sometimes his breath smells of beer and alcohol as he plants a tender kiss on her forehead. But this night she can only watch as his arched shadow weaves and stumbles down the staircase, his voice slurry as he curses. Afraid, she buries her head deep in the warmth of the bed. Somewhere in the distance she hears a door slam and what sounds like something thrown onto the driveway.
That night he hadn’t whispered ‘I love you’ and kissed her goodnight. That was the night that the storm wanted and needed her Dad. Climbing out of her bed she had tiptoed to the window and watched Dad disappear into the ensuring storm
Then she remembers why she hates the storm. The storm stole Daddy from her. Another clap of thunder announces itself. Only this one is closer then before.
Screaming she burst through the doorway, her tiny feet pounding the wooden floor before Claire, her mother grabs her, carrying her into her arms.
‘Pumpkin, what’s wrong?’
‘It’s the storm. The storms coming to take me away like it did Daddy!’ she manages to blurt out, before bursting into tears.
‘Don’t be silly honey, its just a storm,’ she whispers into her ear. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of.’ Just as she says this a gigantic crack of thunder shakes the house.
Launching herself out of her mothers arms she runs up the staircase just as another flash of lightening lights the whole house up with dazzling brightness. Suddenly there is a bang and the house is plunged into darkness. From the top of the stairs Claire can see the misshapen form of her daughter. Even from here she can feel her fear and taste her tears. She knows what fear is like, but it isn’t the storm she’s frightened off. It’s something much more scary and real.
When she arrives in her daughter’s room she witness her huddled up under the duvet. Everything looks dark and menacing in the half-light.
‘When’s Daddy coming home?’ she asks. ‘I want Daddy to make the storm disappear,’ she says disappearing deeper into the bed. ‘I don’t like the thunder, it makes me scared.’
‘Its just God moving his furniture around honey,’ she says, gently stroking her innocent face.
‘And what about when it rains?’ she asks her mother.
‘That’s easy. That’s when God is weeping about things he sees down on Earth,’
‘God shouldn’t be so sad mum,’
‘Sometimes people weep because they’re happy as well as sad,’ she explains
‘When the storm stole Daddy was you weeping because you were happy or sad Mummy?’ she asks, raising herself up.
‘That’s too many questions for a young lady. Now then you can help me find some candles and I’ll read you some good stories from your favourite books. What do you say?’
‘Well all right, but I’m staying here and waiting for Daddy. I just know he be coming soon,’ she says turning back to the window. Outside the rain is easing as she peers into the early evening gloom. ‘Mummy look!’ Molly shrieks
‘What is it?’ Claire asks, joining her at the rain splattered window.
‘It’s a rainbow. Look at the colours, isn’t it pretty. It’s a sign Mummy, that God isn’t angry with the world anymore.’
They both look at the rainbow, its vivid colours of gold, blue, red, orange sparkling and washing away the dreary storm. Already a bright shaft of sunlight is forcing its way through the cluster of grey clouds.
‘Mummy, Daddy’s coming!’
While Molly bounded on the bed like a trampoline, before racing down the stairs two at a time in her haste Claire watched the figure approach.
His suit was soaked to the skin, a battered hat upon his head. His umbrella hung limp at his side like an unkempt dog.
Glancing up at the window he smiles. It is a smile that banished all the dark clouds out of the sky. It is a smile that made the pavement shine with hope and happiness. As she descended the stairs she thought if only life could be as simple as the sun coming out after the storm.

[Arthur]

title: The Four Corners of Earth
by: Arthur
words: 2995

All the creativity you think was in yourself are in others. Already there have been schools, hospitals and law enforcement. Locally at least you know yourself as a society’s individual, as a member you should keep your nose clean. Of course unaware, you became involved in voluntary charity work for one little library near your home, and find yourself waking up from some sudden dizzy attack, a spell. You feel your eyes are telling you lies when they open to the force of the then doubled pictures of a stone wall bare of ornamentation shining back at you, like the one in the basement of where you volunteered sixteen hours of your life of your weekends. In your struggle to find strength to get up you nearly collapse. You question how you got in the basement of the little library and you can’t remember it or what there was in the basement as a reason to have been there ever.

It’s cold because it’s November and there’s little reason to heat a basement. There are not good books in the basement because it’s to damp to store anything except old furniture which the smell of was turning over your stomach.

And a voice in your head is saying over and over to get yourself up but you fear someone has placed your body here thinking you were dead. Dead dead. Not of undead, but a rotting corpse and had placed your body here because you would smell up the books from up in the library. Imagine stacks and shelves of library books with your stench never leaving them and the hunchback librarian Ms. Georgian Weblow dragging your body for her protection and saving the rows of books from the stench of a rotting corpse. Nervously my eyes flutter open and I am not truly dead and living perched on one of those vacant couches you would never have sat on anywhere except in a library. It’s a beige discarded couch and as I remember stained and hard as if my sleeping pillow at home was stuffed with hay and I was asleep on it. Down in the basement there was more couches and chairs than any furniture store. I’m not so surprised when I looked down to see a beautiful Victorian, I don’t think it’s been reupholstered, though, gag. I’m too weekly and stare at the couch I am fixing up on. My feet are bare. I don’t remember anything. Not even the point where someone risked the smelling of my feet to have removed my shoes. Did someone want them? Or did I faint and now find my shoes are lying somewhere under the couch? I wonder.

I feel feign. I mean I’m not dead, and as a person not dead as yet, I mean fainted isn’t as bad, so, I stretch up my arms. I don’t like this feeling of an over slept feeling, nor was I ready for action. My eyes were rolling at the back of my head. There isn’t a single sound in the basement of the library except that of my feign feelings or my heavy breathing. I realize I am also in shock of waking here. And the squeak of old springs under me. I’m? It’s too quiet and I was looking along the wall for the door then I found I was not facing the right direction to find it either. I slowly force myself crouching off the couch and find that my shoes are under the couch after all. I slip them on. . . . I must ask myself, how’d in the world did I get down here? I feel a sympathetic wowzer coming to my head, and simultaneously I place my feet in the shoes and find they are wet. Why in the world can’t I remember why they were wet? Maybe there was a leak . . . and I . . . don’t remember? It’s a soft sticky wet feeling and my toes scrunch and squish and I tie my laces up. They continue as I squish and squeak while I get my balance and my stomach felt empty and with a bunch of butterflies.

I suddenly wished I was home. Hiding from some immediate embarrassment. One that I felt I couldn’t face alone anyway. I found the door and opened it, it’s unlocked, was normally anyway, I see the lights are dimmed in the hallway. I creep to the stairwell leading to an exit. I see a light on over in the front office. A librarian is usually there until she locks up the library doors. I mean someone was probably there which is logical since I was, unless . . .

I thought that the doors must be locked and one of the librarians was working past late. Probably, but why? I want to know why I was in the basement so I walk to the office with an intent to learn what I suffered threw to be lying unconscious and for so long. I guessed I hoped to see Helen Teabagging because she was always the nice one. Obviously she was more of a morning person but still I had high hopes it was her in the office. I walked until I reach the door; a hand pokes out from the darkness and takes mind in hers. I begin to scream but no sounds come from me only an eerie alarm amid I now remember is aghast. My anger burned at my face as I saw the face of Ms Georgian Weblow the main librarian.

“You’re safe thank god for that, Jenny are you all right?” She said. I flinched. My squared shoulders sway to fall, draining my energy. I feel a lump in my throat I can only describe as cold.

I eerily try and replied with cobwebs forming over my words, “Yes I guess. I mean, I don’t know what happened to me.” I said all of this in nearly one word, I’m sure, I was afraid she would slap me. Instead she smiles to me, for the first time can I remember Ms. Weblow smiling. She never smiles. In truth she never looks at the others on the staff even to reassure any of them that they are needed. I was sure she had no friends, the old hag. Only now she was cracking a smile at me.

“So what happened?” I ask. She looks around me mysteriously, and then she beckons me to come inside and sit in the office on the couch. This one I don’t mind as much, it’s soft and cushy. She takes out a ciggerrette and motions to me to take one too. I don’t know what they are so I motion back that I didn’t care for one and she eventually lights one up pointing to the non-smoking signs around, then she flutters her eyelids. So Ms Weblow lights up when there was no one in the library at night. I mean I remain quiet for a moment while she puffs a few times. I don’t know what I thought until she clearly began speaking. I truly was unprepared to learn what I did and can only suggest I can only say I am retelling what she told me and what I believed happened to me and not for you to make fun of me after about it, even if you should ever figure out what library I volunteer at and find me and tell me to my face what you think of my story. No, I Jenny or whatever my real name and last name are, for too young too to be telling you anyway, so never-mind my story grammar either. And if you are only curious about my story and think you need to follow me or stalk me now to find out I warn you not to. Other than that I don’t really care if it bothers you and I will go on with my story.

One detail after another I may skip things that make this story far to long to read. Ms Weblow starts by telling me she went through this once too. When she was a lot younger, than she was, and I begin to ask her how long ago that was then thought wiser of it. So she had what happened to me tonight happen to her and she assures me it happened to her when she first started here at the library only after three months. Back then the main librarian was a woman name Beckley Doo who had white hair past her shoulders, when Ms Weblow began here she never heard Ms. Doo speak to anyone outside the library and when she did speak always in a whisper. Everyone thought she was a little crazy and maybe she was. The library attracts all sorts of people. In reality that won’t explain everything except one night just like tonight a guy walks up to the checkout carrying a wooden sign with five dots in the library asking for help. As librarian she whispers she was closing but asked if he would come back. Why couldn’t Ms. Weblow or anyone make out his features? They were the only two left in the library. Ms. Weblow says since he came for her that night a long time ago she has never forgotten what she went through. She patted me on my shoulder to reassure me I will remember. Ms. Weblow looked at me with sympathy.

She hasn’t explained why Beckley Doo had white hair. Or if it was caused by that night, only he came and took me somewhere behind a wall. I know the look on your face. It’s distorted from figuring out how someone would write about a secret world of possible torture hidden beyond the library wall but that’s exactly where I was and the main librarian too. I was there standing beyond a wall with a gasp of disbelief. Ms Weblow had been with me and we started to run away from the man who pulled us through the wall. Ms. Weblow was screaming now that she had returned to this other side and took notice of the danger she was been in. I didn’t know where we ended up but indeed was running with her. We ran for a while until I noticed a huge hour glass on a shelf built in the middle of what seemed a darkened desert or someplace in nowhere. It was not pouring out any of its sand because time was blocking it just like the trap we were in. It was dark like I described, but every time we stood near something it pulled us close to it to observe it. It could be anything and it could be nothing. Only we were running for what could be forever trapped along the outside or was it the inside of the walls of the library. My boyfriend has teased me before about falling asleep while in the library the waking up and finding a pursuer chasing me in the library as a fantasy and whether I’d enjoy it as a dream. I assured him just as long as there were books it would be fun to have woken up trapped in the library only now it wasn’t a dream and fantasy and there was only me and the main librarian Ms. Weblow running from an obscure person we didn’t want to know. And far as I could see no books.

We ran until the man, ironically named Iron Henry appeared ahead of us and he was laughing uproariously and as we stopped all he had for a face was his big upturned grin. I don’t think I saw his eyes while he was laughing. Then he suddenly stopped as I was wondering why he had laughed at us. We must have run for a long time and for no reason because his one right was gold and it peered at me and his left was black and it remembered Ms. Weblow only I didn’t know that at the time. He wasn’t uproarious and laughing and looked undiscernable as I aforementioned.

“You’re just in time for the game,” He said. He brought us across the wall to this barrier and now that he knew we were vulnerable he was going to play a game with us.

“Turn back now,” Ms. Weblow said to me.

I was frozen in the eyes of our host Iron Henry. And possibly I couldn’t run anymore.

So he said, “How nice of you to have chosen to die,” and I went black for a brief spell. I’m sure now what I felt and that was fear.

“Oh no,” I whispered to none in particular. Nobody would have heard me anyway.

Ms. Weblow said, “That’s not how the game is played Iron Henry!” and that spitting out the truth the ironic man raised a brow. Only it became stiff. It delivered a blow and Ms. Weblow hurled back a few steps and darkness grew about her and I could barely make out her features. A window of bars separate us which was really strange. It was almost as if Iron Henry could summon up magic by will alone and then he turned his remaining attention back to me as Ms. Weblow watched us.

[Arthur]

“You don’t need to believe him Jenny,” She said. “All he will do is accuse us of tricking him anyway and of his being trapped here like us. He doesn’t want you or me here. He wants us to die and collect us for his amusement. Don’t believe him Jenny.”

“You go on such lengths Georgina. I wonder about you.” Then his eyes disappeared again. His grin was up and his brows touched together on his forehead. “I’ve had an idea each time I’ve had visitors,” he laughed, “and this is the sign.” He grinned from ear to ear. He held up the sign in wood which he held. Iron Henry pointed to it with his fist. Then unclenching one finger while laughing anyway he indicated that we were the dot in the middle. There were four more in a square around our dot. “Choose which direction you seek,” he said laughing, “this one or that one. One of these is a door to get outside, the other three are your deaths. Haha. Choose one and go through, but you can’t turn around for the other ones after you find one of these places. Haha. Go now.” He points up into the darkness with his finger in a sign of number one iota then clenched his big fist again.

I stood there for a long while. He was so motionless I began to think I was dreaming after all and that I’d fallen asleep. Then he said, “Are you going?”

I wanted too, had I not? Just to get away from his big grinning that baboon holding up one lifted hand in the air and Ms. Weblow trapped behind a locked cage that was possibly invisible. At this point I wasn’t sure but his big brow furled. “I’m going.” I said, I meant going crazy.

I stomped a few feet and turned back to see if he was watching. He was unchanged only Ms. Weblow was still the same distance away. I took a lot more steps away from Iron Henry until he was the size of a dot like on that sign he held or that of a mosquito. And Ms. Weblow still held her exact distance from me and seemed she was unchanged.

“I’m trapped dear. Can you understand?” she asked, while what she had to say was from her looks, they were of weeping a little and a weekly smirk. “I guess I might as well tell you for the first time that I’ve been through this once before dear. Yes one time a long time ago.”

“You?” I asked astonished that Ms Weblow was talking to me. She was always so busy then to pay any attention to me but now she floated behind me like my fairy godmother or something locked in a cage like my pet canary I had when my grandmother was still alive. I used to feed it to much and she warned me every time that if I kept it up like that that it would end up killing it.

On one hand I was overjoyed by her presence. She was a legend with everyone in the library. Ms. Weblow knew where every book was by memory. She vetoed recommendations of new books and only allowed new books she deemed worthy of the library. Some of the books were really wicked she allowed on the shelves. Talk about a strange lady right now to have floated behind me?

I had to figure out what direction we were going. Would I go to one of the points. Could they be representing North and South? I asked Ms. Weblow and she agreed they were like the directions from maps. Only we have no compass. Then I remembered the pin I pricked through a piece of paper earlier and had in my pocket. I could tear a piece of paper and place the needle on it and float it in something, if I could find a cup of water.

I always carried magnetic stick pins to pin things together. It was my grandmother who taught me to keep my pins magnetic so they cling together instead of each one getting loose. I learned to believe her when she told me things, and after that canary died and the veterinarian said it was from some fatty tissue disease I paid more attention to her stories.

…

[Caitlan]

woah....muahahahahaha