This week’s prompt for the Shapeshifting 13 Writing Challenge is the image below.
Exactly 52 words.
“Helen?”
“Yes, Jim?”
“Are those goats I see?”
“Stunning, aren’t they?”
“Absolutely breathtaking! But…”
“But what?”
“Remember last years’ cow fiasco? We certainly don’t want to go through that again… up & down, down & up.”
“Jim, don’t be gauche.”
“I’m not gauche.”
“This time I remembered to put the ladder away.”
Even the birds seemed to have moved out,
taking the neighbor’s barking dogs with them.
Revving engines, honking horns, squeaky brakes: silenced.
Was school in session?
Perhaps that explained the absence of basketballs bouncing against garage doors and shrieks of little girls playing.
The magnolia trees’ subtle-sweet fragrance was the only trace of normalcy.
How I loved the scent, and often imagined what they must look like!
The air seemed dense, yet strangely vacant–as if Nature was holding her breath.
Waiting.
Waiting for what?
The radio would have alerted me to the hurricane’s approach, if I’d turned it on.
Delores had more dead friends than live ones.
How unfair life is, she thought. You get close to someone and then they die. What was the point?
Was there one?
And the worst part, the saddest most baffling thing of all, was how nobody seemed to notice. A person loses someone who is, or was, their one and only, and the world keeps turning like it always had; like nothing happened. Don’t these people realize that someone is missing? A human being was here yesterday but gone today, and nobody notices? It’s right there on the obituary page! Can’t they read?
The news still comes on at its regular time, the mailman delivers mail, people go to work, come home, and everything is business as usual. The sun rises in the morning and sets at night. Birds chirp — what the hell is wrong with them? Don’t they know? And the magnolia trees! What nerve they have to fragrance the air with the same sweet smell that she and Eddie used to…
Delores slammed kitchen window shut — silencing the birds and suffocating the memory-stinging aroma of magnolia trees in bloom.
Mother Nature is one ballsy bitch, that’s for sure.
She muted and then turned off the TV. She didn’t want to hear or see the world.
Delores decided that a person could be in the world, but not of it. She had plenty of books to read; they could be her friends. Books never change, go away, or die. They all have endings of course, but then you re-read them. You know what to expect. No surprises, no suspense, none of the crap that day-to-day life shoves down your throat. Books are perfect. Books can be controlled.
Delores wasn’t feeling sorry for herself; she was simply cutting her losses. The less often you say hello, the less often you have to say goodbye. It’s like smoking cigarettes. At least a person could gauge the rate at which they died, since they were going to, anyway. If you don’t play in the street, there is less chance of being hit by a car.
No doubt about it: Delores is staying on the porch. Let the big dogs run the streets and get their hearts broken, run over by cars — or both.
Being a bartender put Delores in the line of fire every day. She was forced to interact with others, but it wasn’t like real life. She was sober and they were either drunk, or well on their way. She had the upper hand and was in control. Delores let her customers and co-workers only get so close. Her protective barrier kept them at a comfortable distance, and herself, tucked safely inside. There was quite an art to it, this sleight of hand; the illusion of casual intimacy. People thought they knew Delores. To them, she seemed to be an open and engaging woman. Yet, none of the men ever dared to ask her out on a date. Subconsciously they knew their boundaries, but did not understand, nor did they think to question why.
“Hey, Dlorz!” Jimmy slurred from the far end of the bar. “How’s come you always wear gray? You got no other colors of clothes?”
“What other colors are there?” Delores grinned and set a fresh bottle of Bud in front of him.
One evening a clingy young couple came in during Delores’ shift and sat in a quiet booth toward the back of the bar.
“Cripes,” Delores mumbled. She hated dealing with people in love. It made her want to puke. They reminded her of Eddie and what should have been.
As she mixed the gentleman’s Jack & Coke, Delores remembered last time she fixed that same drink for Eddie. In making the girl’s Cosmo, the growing lump in Delores’ throat caused her vision to blur and she over-poured. Delores saved the extra for herself.
She watched the couple from across the bar as she sipped the leftover Cosmo. Although Eddie was never far from her thoughts, the memories they’d made together blasted fresh and sharp and clean.
“Hey, Dlorz” Jimmy slurped his beer. “How come you don’t have a boyfriend? Pretty as you are…an’ stuff…”
She glanced at Jimmy. “He doesn’t live around here.”
Delores went back to watching the happy couple and wishing she was with Eddie.
BRIIIING! BRIIIING!
“Helleu? Sargent residence…”
“Helleu! Is John in, please?”
“No, I’m afraid not. He’s off painting portraits of people sketching with their wives, again.”
“Indeed! I thought he’d stopped that nonsense after what’d happened last time.”
“Oh, would that it were!” Mrs. Sargent sighed. “He just can’t seem to help himself—and now he’s taken to bringing Merriweather Salazar along on these…outings!”
“Merriweather Salazar? Who on earth is Merriweather Salazar, Madame?”
“His trusted companion; man’s best friend, as they say.”
“I beg your pardon?” The voice on the other end of the line inquired. “I’m afraid I don’t understand…”
“Oh, do forgive me! Merriweather Salazar is Mr. Sargent’s dog: a Chihuahua-Saint Bernard mix.”
“My word! The voice gasped. How could such a thing have…happened?”
“I assume in the usual way, Sir.” Mrs. Sargent explained. “Although I’m no expert in dog breeding, it certainly does give one paws, doesn’t it, then?”
It wasn’t my fault. I swear to God, it wasn’t.
I was on my way to New York. Everything was going along fine, just like it had a hundred times before. It was a clear day–good flying weather. Suddenly whoever was at the controls wasn’t there anymore. A stranger had taken over. I became dizzy and lost direction.
And then my passengers were screaming and I was falling. Soaked in jet fuel, parts of me were aflame. Buildings with people in them were in front of my nose. I could see the horrified bewilderment on their faces, as my face helplessly exploded into theirs on September eleventh.
Ergo, the Ogre 