Flickr Fiction
As children we were told not to go near the old storm-struck tree down the end of the high field.
‘There’s bad things and worse’n that’ Uncle Jake told us. ‘You don’t wants to be goin’ to the high field lessin’ you got a reason. And that reason, well it’d better be nuthin’ less than your own life.’
After these warnings he would glare at us with one rheumy eye, the other having been lost years ago in some unspecified incident. Then he’d slowly lift his eye patch and glare down with his empty socket at us. That always made us shiver, no matter how close to the fire we sat.
‘You young uns gotsta stay well away from that place. Well away!’
Then he would lean back in his seat and speak no more. We knew better than to ask him why, cousin Jimmie had taught us all that lesson. He still weren’t able to sit proper on his seat after all this time. We’d never seen Uncle Jake go into such a rage after it. Later when Jimmie had quit his slobberin’ and cryin’ he’d told us there weren’t nothin’ up in the high field ceptin’ some old gnarled up lookin’ tree stumps.
‘The old man is crazy as a coot’ said Jimmie.
‘You aints’ bin up there to know!’ we taunted.
‘He’s a crazy ol’ man’ replied Jimmy but alls the same there was somethin’ in his face that made us wonder if Uncle Jake was all that crazy after all.
Late at nights we’d lie in bed, all jumbled up together, legs ‘n’ arms, stickin’ elbows into ribs and we’d whisper amongst ourselves - taunting and daring each other. None of us ever took it serious. We knew well what would happen if’n we tried goin’ anywhere near the high field. Alls we had to do was look at Jimmie wincing in his chair and with that look of fear on his face.
————————————-
I didn’t want to do the typical ‘Merlin and Nimue’ with this, so this could be the beginning of something, unfortunately didn’t have time to finish it so this is all you’re getting this week. This weeks flicktion effort inspired by Sculpture Copyright Flickr user RightIndex. Check out the rest of the flicktioneers: The Gurrier, Chris, Tadmack, TeaandCakes, Aquafortis, Valsha and Neil.
This is the beginning of something I’d like to see the middle and end of…!
It’s funny how we all have odd, antisocial people in our Flickrs on this picture thus far…
Comment by TadMack — February 20, 2007 @ 6:38 am
‘Then he’d slowly lift his eye patch and glare down with his empty socket at us.’ That’s horrible.
I love the language in this one.
Comment by Donal — February 22, 2007 @ 2:15 pm
Hi,
The Guardian is running a “nanotales” competition in conjunction with Bebo.com.
Write a story of 1,000 words or less and enter it by March 16th.
Prize is publication.
Theought you may be interested seeing as how you like to write these wee tales
More info here:
HERE
Comment by Jen — February 26, 2007 @ 12:07 pm
thanks for the heads up, some of the others might be interested too.
Comment by elimare — February 27, 2007 @ 2:04 pm
Lots of stuff with eyepatches lately…not sure what that means. I’m definitely very curious about what’s up in that field, though…
Comment by a. fortis — March 6, 2007 @ 4:08 am
Criminally late to comment on this - but I’ve read it a couple of times now and I really, really like it. I love the sense of menace there is with the forbidden places and the not-quite-knowing what happened to the guy who did go there.
Fantastic
Comment by Valsha — March 9, 2007 @ 10:18 pm