Creative Writing English 2250

Flash Memoir

Backyard Graveyard

The children at stair related ages snuck behind tall weeds in the overgrown edges of the field in order to avoid any eyes behind dirty window panes from the old farmhouse from seeing their course.

“They put them all back here, in that corner,” the middle stair girl indicates the corner in front of them, dodging the thorny vines along the edge they traversed. In winter the grass all a mat of browns and yellows, like a dead wig barely covering the earth.

“What kind of bones are they? The tallest step girl stutters, somewhat shocked at the revelation of living so close to something like this, somewhat excited to see them first hand.

“All kinds, cows, pigs, chickens, cats, even dogs…” As if on cue the sound of distant baying begins from hounds caught in an endless hunt, howling after unknown pray.

“I hear them all the time.” The second step continues, “and what's weird…” she pauses for effect, “is none of the farmers on the other sides of these woods own dogs.” The tall dark girl hesitates the steady yet march like pace she once had to discover the truth of the tale, and looks incredulously at the girl telling.

“It’s true, I swear, ask my Dad!” eyes roll back possibly as an act of disbelief or possibly as a front of fears. The shortest step attempting to keep up with the other two interrupts to aid her older sister, “We do! They bark all night long!” she pants. They all edge closer, the way clear and the view back hidden, beginning to make out the opaque mounds and deserted, twisted metal fragments of discarded farm machinery. The area littered with chopped scraps of unusable firewood, mostly branches of fallen trees. Like pimples protruding from the moss and decay of yard clippings and years of leaves that first lay upon other fields now brought here in heaps and hills. Some of the plastic mounds now only tattered wisps slightly quivering in the winter wind weather from composition of local scavengers undaunted by the plastic shrouds. Ivory teeth poking out of the forest leaf beds here and there picking clean and crumbling from full exposure. They neared one still painted in brown, the air still with miasma, areas under the surface spotted the shower curtain with trapped precipitation that randomly swarmed with black dots that had found their way into the death and now could not escape. The wind shifted and the slapping of the bare limbs overhead dropping debris all around us with rustles like footsteps among the leaves. The tarp seemed to raise as if the thing beneath had just taken a breath and the howling loudened in the over sensitive ears of the children. Wide eyed they looked at one another and dashed quickly away.

Let's think of the ideas or thoughts we want to convey as the water. It flows and often follows where it can be led or follows in directions it already knows. Next, let's think of the act of freezing like the act of writing those things down. We claim a position, sometimes rethinking it and forming it up in other ways, like the melting or thawing of water. If we think of this chemically, then the molecules move fast, if they move too fast they become air and float away, like unwritten ideas but when they freeze they slow down, sometimes barely moving on a point and that is writing them down. It is then we can see them interact with other molecules of thoughts or water (though in other states they can as well), some may even follow another's lead, slowing down to listen or move on with that idea, changing it to fit them. However, it's when many begin to listen or to think about it that it creates the sheets of ice that can move mountains. Sometimes those written sheets of ice move slowly to create the changes in our world. Sometimes in an instance, it finds just the right crack and breaks and crumbles the solid foundations that needed to move aside. No matter the change or speed the water, ice, or stone, makes, it is the constant transformation that writing should continue to solidify within and beyond us.