Image source: Pixabay
On the way home
Old Brent Heartwood made his way down the road. Two steps. Stop. Two steps. Stop. He heard a giggle behind a roadside tree and looked up. “Hello?”
A young girl emerged, her hair shining golden in the afternoon light. “Why are you walking that way?”
“Because my house is just down this road. What other way would I go?”
“But why are you walking just two steps at a time?”
In fact, he walked that way because when he took three steps at once, a shooting pain ran up his left tibia. But perhaps he could have a little fun. “It keeps the monsters away.”
The girl looked around. “What monsters?”
Brent could see the girl’s mother standing on their porch just up the hillside, watching them. “You don’t know about the monsters? Well, they know about you.”
The girl squinted. “You’re making it up.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
He thought of a cup of tea. He only made this journey once a week, just to make sure his bones didn’t petrify. But he was tired. Why had he started this game? “Okay, fine. There are no monsters. But just in case, do you want to learn how to disarm them?”
“I’m supposed to take off their arms?”
“No. Make them harmless.”
“How?”
Brent closed the space between them and handed her a bag. “With candy.”
“Thanks.”
Brent continued on. When he turned to look, the girl was tossing pieces of candy into the road. Just as quickly, they disappeared.
Thank you for reading my 250-word micro-fiction story. Your comments are welcome!
I wrote this story when I ran a weekly micro-fiction writing contest, and I would also often contribute my own piece, just for fun. This story was my piece for the prompt, “space.”
If you read or write for specific genres you might be interested to know that the intended genre for this piece is “magical realism.” My Write Club group was tasked this past week with writing a piece in this genre. (I wrote a separate one for that prompt.) I am now officially fascinated with magical realism, and even though I don’t think it is the natural genre I will tend toward with my writing, I had so much fun with it that I decided to write a micro-fiction piece in this genre as well.