Nickel

Questions/Comments are welcome at: The Writers Stand

This afternoon I saw a little boy standing at my glass door looking at me. I had been sitting in the living room, opposite the door, for quite sometime. I was so focused that only the sun streaming through the glass and my book existed. The doorbell never rang and I never heard a knock. I simply looked up with the feeling that someone was watching me and there he stood. Silent and nearly as focused as me.

Our eyes locked as I walked to the door. I could see the hate in them. His hair was black as night and framed in his well-defined face. I had only seen his clothes in old photographs of Native Americans. As he shifted his hands I saw he held a neatly folded blanket.

"Who is this child?", I asked myself reaching out for the door handle. I tried to place him, but couldn't. Other thoughts ran though my mind: Where did he get his clothes? How long has he been standing there? Why does he look so angry?

My hand stopped just short of the handle when I saw the sun shining into the room. He was not casting a shadow! I glanced behind myself to see my own shadow and looked back at the boy. Slowly, but deliberately, he raised the blanket and passed it through the glass. My eyes started watering. I stopped breathing and stood in sheer terror. Only by instinct did I hold my hands out to receive the blanket. I felt his hands brush mine and then felt the blanket with all of its weight. It was cool to the touch. Our eyes were still locked when the boy took a step backwards and disappeared.

I was looking at the place where the boy ghost once stood when I noticed dust tickling my nose. I let out a terrible sneeze. My head bent forward toward the blanket. My nose and lips brushed it momentarily. As I straighted my posture and focused my eyes, I saw the blanket slowly disappear too. Finally, my hands held nothing.

It took me hours to calm down. And several hours beyond that to realize that I had been a victim of biological warfare..

glorious

Very chilling short story..I don't get the ending though..The boy is a ghost who represents evil and he is there because you are a being poisoned?

Nickel

I didn't consider the boy to be evil (who knows though). I've been reading a lot of history and one of the tactics used against Native Americans was to give them blankets infested with smallpox as part of a trade. It wiped out a lot of their population.

I was sitting around the other day thinking about a Native American ghost haunting people and giving them a blanket infested with smallpox. I thought it seemed neat on a couple levels: ghosts in general, ghosts giving a person a physical object (a blanket infested with smallpox), and having part of Native American involved too.

I probably should have explained myself better or made the ending a little less choppy. Maybe I'll get back to it some day.

Thanks for reading it,
Nickel

Jake

I liked it, it did a good job keeping me reading for 4 entirely developed paragraphs....

usually I'm done with these types of things by the second

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glorious

No, I like endings that kind of keep you guessing. I was just curious what the boy was supposed to represent. Good work though, it was a cool short story.I had no idea native Americans did that, it's pretty interesting. You learn something new every day