HIVES (Part 2 by Aaron) - Day 4/12
“I’ve got a better idea,” said Alice. She’d been to the abandoned orphanage before. She obediently sat in the crib room alone for five minutes (the standard dare) and said the name of the Virgin Mary to the mirrors of the nursing hall. Repeated thrills weren’t thrills at all.
“There’s somewhere else we could go,” she said to the head boy.
“Shut up, Alice. You go through the bars first. You’re the skinniest.
“No. I said, let’s go somewhere else.”
“Fine. Go home.”
Alice gave up. She went home and rubbed chamomile on her arms and legs. The next day when she didn’t hear from the others, she walked around by herself. She stayed to the path and not a blade of grass touched her bare, glowing skin. In an empty lot, she choreographed a dance for one.
It was only that evening when police questioned Alice that they knew to search the old building. A part of the scaffolding had collapsed in the nursing hall. The children were found on the bottom floor among the debris. The paper thin shrubs that had managed to thrive in the damp had not broken their fall.
The seventh result for “empty lot” on Google image search. (Aaron)
JUNK MAIL (Part 2 by April) - Day 4/12
It was a difference that the two of us never expressed often, either because it was it was ignored or because it was simply taken as a given. Mostly we dwelt one our sameness, our worries about our present lives, our carefully worded hopes for the future. It was almost enough to make us believe that were no differences at all. But there were small reminders. It was in the way she was careless with her valuables. She had a habit of leaving pearl earrings on table tops and forgetting about them, finding them later scattered on the floor.
We finished up cleaning and settled into our quiet routine. She put on a old record she had bought at the swap meet and we told each other stories that we both already knew. She was particularly fond of recalling how we had met, it was a long string of small, compounded coincidences, all unrelated, but some how fitting together to make sense. I did not remember the event so well, and took her retelling as fact, never mentioning how she changed the details slightly every single time.
We retired to bed and fell asleep tracing the lines on each other’s palms.
I woke up early and shrugged off the covers slowly to avoid waking her. The sun was bright and unexpectedly high in the sky and the tombstones cast long shadows over dry grass. I whistled as I walked out of the cemetery, looking at the plots again, some were adorned with fresh flowers, some were shabby and dusty, long forgotten. That morning I was content, swelled with happiness, fully confident that this all was more than just a simple give and take, a mutual act of charity before dying.
I got this by Googling “cemetery + morning.” (April)
