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I would like to participate in your contest. Also, please provide a flash rule thingy so I can get inspired.
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Oct 12, 2018 18:58
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 01:17 |
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Pham Nuwen posted:Your story takes place in the desert I thought you said dessert... just kidding. I don't have a real name for this, so I'll just call it: --- Ghost Tour The gravel crunched and popped underneath as Doug pointed, "There, there it is." A brown film hung over the whole place and not just from the cloud of dust we'd brought with us. Crooked wood, cracked brick, defined the small house with shadowed windows. The breaks squealed as Doug pulled over, "What do you see?" I pointed to the smoke rising out of the chimney, "Someone's home." "Bullshit," Doug said, exiting the car, coughing slightly from the sand in the air. "I checked." "You sure about that?" I asked. "I said I checked," he said while slipping his camera around his neck. He was already snapping pictures and checking the screen after each one. No grass in the yard, just dirt and rocks, and a few trees barely more than skeletons. But the windows. "Which one," I asked, stepping out into the blistering heat. "Don’t know," Doug said before turning to me. "I mean, none of the reports say. Just that Daniel's ghost appears in the windows and watched them. Some feel sad, some scared, but he disappears before they can get closer." I'd seen the other photos, grainy and indistinct. Doug was determined to catch something memorable. His $5,000 camera was "incapable" of taking a bad photo, he said. If this road trip had taught me anything, it's that the better your equipment, the less likely you are to catch something unexplainable. Funny, that. "Can I help you boys?" We jumped at the husky voice. She was standing in the doorway, tanned skin, framing a tight smile, draped in a shapeless robe, hints of well-toned muscle peaked from underneath. My heart was pounding, but Doug walked right up and offered his hand, "Doug Carlisle, photographer." She shook his hand slowly and with effort. "Perhaps you've seen some of my work online?" "No," she replied, adding, "I suppose you're hear about that boy, then." Doug nodded, "Very astute." She stared at him still shaking his hand, for a long moment. She blinked and asked, "why don't you boys come in. We can talk about what I know, what I've told the others. Only reason we get company." My stomach knotted and bile rose up into the back of my throat, but Doug was already over the threshold. I followed along. I was immediately overcome by smells of water and dirt, body odor, yeast, and heat, thick and oppressive. Where the heat outside had been like a kiln, this was like boiling alive. She led us to a kitchen whose enormous oven was clearly the source of the heat. "I'm baking. Sorry about it being so hot." "It's fine," I said, surreptitiously studying her face. The eyes, the cheekbones, edged toward familiarity, but I couldn't place them. She must have noticed, because she blushed and smiled. "Now let me tell you about Daniel Tinley, what you probably don't know." "Actually," Doug interrupted, "I've done my research. I know Tinley was his adopted name. His birth name was Abram. He was adopted by the Tinley's in 1937, after both birth parents died of prolonged illness, probably cholera. He was only six years old, but fortunate enough to be healthy and well-proportioned. Enough that George and Melinda, friends of the family, took him in as their own. They worked that boy day and night. More a slave than a son. The town was still booming back then. He'd often stare out of the window at the world he'd lost. Until one day he didn't. Nobody saw him. George and Melinda made no report of illness or injury. After a few months, they were questioned about it. Said he'd run off one night and that was that. The window sightings started shortly after that. George and Melinda go so fed up with the attention that they left, just abandoned the place. Apparently, they could afford it. Town started dying out in the 60s but Daniel's been seen the whole time." Our host was beaming, "Nice. They found his body, though. In the crawl space, in 1953. Didn't know what, did you?" Doug nodded, "I did not. Why wasn't it reported? Was it in the paper at the time?" She leaned in, but a cry from another room pulled her back, "Sorry, that's my daughter. I'll be right back." She left us alone in the stifling kitchen. "All right, dude. I'ma get some pics." "Whoa, wait. She lives her man," I said. "No she doesn't." "What?" "I told you, man, I checked." "What does that even mean?" He whispered, "Nobody's paid property taxes on this place for more than 30 years. Also, no electricity; that stove is propane. It'd be pitch dark in here without the windows. Probably no running water, either. Maybe a well? My point, she's a squatter." "So what?" I said. "She lives here and she has a kid." "I'm still getting pictures." "Dude, seriously." "I am serious. I shot all the other places and I didn't come this far just to have a nice chat." "Nobody lived at the other places, Doug." "Fine," he said, snapping a photo of the corner, "I'll go ask her." He squinted, "Check it out, though. That's nasty." I traced where he'd taken the photo. The floor was black and fuzzy with mold, shiny with who knows what." I followed the trim around the bottom of the room. It was black and brown all the way, like aggressively filthy, unrepentantly gross. And a new smell. An acrid one. Burning. "Oh poo poo. Her baking." "Doug!" I yelled. I started to call for the lady but realized she never told us her name. "poo poo. Doug!" Definitely burning. "poo poo. poo poo." I rummaged a drawer and found some hot pads. Opening the oven bathed me in heat and steam but I grabbed the frankly gigantic cookie sheet, spun around, admiring the unexpectedly sweet smelling rolls and, hands starting to burn, plopped it on the counter. I heard them sizzling. The first bug crawled up. Segmented, a dozen legs, then another, hopping with long back legs, then ten, then twenty, then even more. "What in the gently caress?" Pressed back against a far wall, I saw the black crap on the floor had been insects, dormant, waiting for this apparently. They swarmed the tray, regardless of its heat, overtaking it and what it contained. Hundreds now, maybe thousands. Doug pulled me to the side, "We have to go." "Did you see that, do you see?" I asked. "We have to go." was all he said. His pupils were blown wide and his teeth were chattering, "we have to go." "What? Look--" "We have to go," he shoved me toward the door. Once out he ran to the car, barely waited for me to get in, then peeled out in a veil of dust. "Dude, what the gently caress?" I asked. He didn't respond, just did 60 on the dirt road and 90 once we made blacktop. He wouldn't take his eyes off the road. I took his camera and scrolled through the pictures he'd taken. The last two photos were perplexing. I saw lines, and reflections, and colors, and in the last photo a flash of something like stars. It wasn't until an hour later, safely locked in our motel that I brought them upon the laptop and got a better look. Doug sat on the couch chewing on his nails and rocking back and forth. Not stars. It was the shine of an animal caught in headlights. Two sets, flash frozen forever, insects mocking the shapes of humans, mother and daughter. Surprised by the first flash, their legs and carapaces lit up. But looking right at Doug in the final picture with their dinner plate sized eyes.
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Oct 21, 2018 22:41
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Elephant Parade posted:that is not, in fact, how paragraphs work I don't know how to paragraph. I wrote that long hand first and then transcribed it. I've always been bad at paragraphing. My favorite writer growing up was James Joyce.
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Oct 22, 2018 18:15
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My first stories were entirely dialogue with no indicators of who was speaking. Although it worked for the one about the schizophrenic whose best friend was a tree named Krysta.
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Oct 23, 2018 17:22
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Thanks for the feedback.
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Nov 2, 2018 03:03
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