Welcome
to The Spot Writers. The August prompt is
based on a photo taken at a local zoo. There was a fence leading to a "no
admittance" area, but about 12 inches at the bottom had been bent upward,
allowing admission of… people? animals? And where does it lead? The Spot
Writers’ task: Write a story involving a fence that has been snuck through—as a
major or minor plot point.
This
week’s story comes from Phil Yeats. Phil (using his Alan Kemister pen name)
recently published his first novel. A Body in the Sacristy, the first in
the Barrettsport Mysteries series of
soft-boiled police detective stories set in an imaginary Nova Scotia coastal
community is available on Amazon.
***
Coming of Age
by Phil Yeats
The school bus dropped them off on Friday afternoon
after their third week in grade ten at their new high school. They lived in two
isolated houses on the far side of a large industrial estate, the last two kids
off the bus before the driver turned back to town. Everyone in school thought they
were going steady because they spent their free time together, but it wasn’t so.
They knew no one at school and had been friends forever, so they hung together.
But they weren’t romantically involved, at least not then.
Mitch dropped his school bag at his place and continued
to Jen’s where Mortimer eagerly waited for his afternoon romp. She threw her
bag on the porch and chased after her mutt. Mitch followed more slowly knowing
they’d make so much noise he’d have no trouble finding them. And anyway, Jen
needed a run as much as her dog did. She was the high-strung adventuresome one,
always getting them into scrapes.
When Mitch tracked them down, he saw Mortimer
running along the chain-link fence that bounded unused forested land behind the
industrial estate. The dog vanished through a gap in the fence. Jen yelled
“Morty, come back here!”, then squeezed through the gap and promptly
disappeared.
Mitch rushed up to the fence and stared into the
forest. With no undergrowth or large trees to hide behind, he should have spotted
them. Where were they? And why couldn’t he hear them?
After pulling at the fencing to widen the hole, he squeezed
through, tumbling and banging his head on fine white sand. Mitch gazed at palm
trees swaying in a warm breeze and listened to waves breaking on a beach. He
stumbled past girls in bikinis and surfer dudes in their baggy shorts wondering
how the Nova Scotia forest had transformed into a tropical beach.
When he found Jen and Mortimer, they were back in
the Nova Scotia forest. She rested in a hollow in the long grass while Morty
bounded around like the crazed rabbit in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. No more
tropical beach, just a meadow in the forest, a place where they’d often
stopped.
Mitch flopped down beside her, and she reached over
and pulled him close, kissing his lips. Had she also been assaulted by the
strange tropical beach images? Were they omens, images destined to lead them
forward from children to adults? Had they suddenly joined the high school
culture where everyone was more interested in relationships than the physical
world around them?
Weird and wild, but hey, Mitch could handle it.
***
Chiara
De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/
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