The Deep and Dark

In the dark forest behind the house where she grew-up there was a place no one went. All of the other kids in the neighborhood were scared of this deepest darkest part of the already dark forest. That is the place where she would go to sit in silence and dream of a future outside this godforsaken town and its equally forsaken inhabitants. She would sit in the dark hollowed out oak tree and imagine herself in exotic places doing exotic things. She was a voracious reader and she knew that the world beyond this hellish town was real and magical all at once. She imagined that once this town had been a better place but it had lost all of its magic long ago. She knew this but no one else did, so they feared this forest and its darkness while she tasted of its secrets. When word got out that she was venturing into the darkness her mother beat her with a wooden spoon leaving welts that took weeks to fade. Her classmates shunned her and called her evil names. But she did not care. They had no magic in their veins anymore and she was pretty sure that most could not read and would never understand the beauty of the forest or the world beyond. She had falsely promised her mother that she would not venture into the deep dark forest again, but once the welts faded so did the memory of that promise and she went back into the forest. That trip into the dark would change her life for ever. As she followed the path deeper and deeper into the forest she did not hear the sirens that warned of a tornado coming, the forest blocked the noise of those sirens like it would block the wind from that tornado. The forest would protect her that day as the tornado would ripe through her town destroying everything in it path including the house she lived in. When she would emerge from the deep and dark of the forest and survey the ruin of her town and home, she would only shed a tear for the books she had lost, but nothing else.

When the state legislature passed the bill that would allow for a mall to be built where that forest stood, one woman wept at her computer in a city across the ocean. Wept for the deepest darkest part of that forest.

Ballad of a Giggling Girl

He wrote the song about a girl he knew in High School. It rose to number one on the Pop Charts quickly. He went on all the morning talk shows to perform and he went on all the late night talk shows to perform. When they asked if the song was about anyone in particular, he lied made up a pretty story about a lovely girl in college. He kept the real story to himself. The story of the fifteen year old girl who giggled at the drop of a hat and loved him like he would never be loved again. A story of a summer filled with gigles and love. A story so sad it still made his face flame with shame. A story of destruction. A story of that same giggling girl discovering his deception, of hearing the laughs of thier fellow classmates when she confronted him in the hallway and he denied any knowledge of thier shared summer. A story about the look on the girls face that shattered his heart and ruined him for anyone else. A story of a girl who never giggled again. On those late night talk shows he would play that ballad with all his soul. Straining to hear the giggles.

Future Visions

She saw the future in her dreams. When she was six she dreamed of her high school graduation. When she was nine she dreamed of her college days and what she would study. When she was twelve she dreamed of her future career. When she was sixteen she dreamed of her wedding day and saw the man she would marry. Her dreams continued to show the future, so she made no plans and let her dreams carry her along. She graduated from High School just like her dream. She went to college and when she graduated she got the job she had dreamed of. All her dreams had come true so far and so she waited for the rest, and as she waited she failed to take notice that her life was passing her by, so when she woke upon the morning of the day she dreamed her wedding would be and had no groom to marry her dreams crumbled. As she sat on her bed and cried she slowly realized that dreams could not compare with life and she had let hers go by without taking part. So she got herself up off her bed and made the decisions to no longer rely on her dreams to build her life. Now she would make the decisions. And as the rest of her life unfolded she no longer was just along for the ride but was the driving force and that made all the difference.

The Evil Eye

She had worn the necklace for as long as she could remember. She could still remember the day her grandmother had given it to her. It had been her sixth birthday and her grandmother, who had been living with them for three years by then, had pulled her into her room. She sat her on the bed and gave her the gold chain with the beautiful blue crystal pendant. When she looked at the pendant she would swear to this day that the eye winked at her. Her Grandmother stressed that she must wear the pendant always. That it would protect her from anyone who was trying to do her bad. So she had. Not because she believed but because she had loved her grandmother. A woman from another land and another time, who did not fit in to the American culture, who kept her old superstitions. The girl had never been to her mother's homeland, a place her Grandmother described with such love and hate at the same time. A country left to die under a communist regime for 39 years. A place where to this day folk myths, legends and superstitions still existed. So she wore the necklace for 30 years now, never giving it a second thought until someone asked about it and then she would tell them the story of her grandmother and how she made her swear never to take it off. It was a good story, people enjoyed it. So the day that it happened she did not even realize that without her grandmother she would not have lived. He was walking toward her on the sidewalk and at first she did not notice him, but as he got closer she felt the change in the air and shivered. She did not look at his face as he approached a warning remembered from her Grandmother. As he passed by she could feel the heat of the pendant and at that moment she understood that there was evil in her modern world and that she must listen to those old superstitions and protect herself.