Ahoy there! For this week’s flash fiction, we’re heading down to the docks to see what sort of creepy characters have been washed ashore. Enjoy.
The Crooked Boy climbed off the boat last, once the others had disbursed to seek fun in this new town they had discovered. The Crooked Boy was the navigator of the 50-foot sailboat, and was called “crooked,” because he could turn – crook – his neck all the way around, like an owl. (And because his idea of fun differed from that of the other boys too, perhaps).
He walked purposefully down a narrow alley he’d never been before. It stank of blood from the back of a butcher’s, and of piss from the back of an inn. He was soon among low houses, and when he saw an old grey-haired woman turn from an open window, where she had been stitching in the last of the day’s light, to disappear into her darkened home, he sprang onto her sill. He crooked his head around to check no one in the alley or other houses had seen him, then jumped inside, leaving his head twisted on backwards, so she couldn’t see his face.
Clothing hung everywhere, and the air was damp on his skin from all the washing, but she was quite alone. He followed the sound of her rummaging among pots in the kitchen. He waited in the kitchen doorway for her to turn around to him. His eyes, pointing back the way he had come, took in the clothing, and towels and cloths, with ornate crosses stitched onto them.
If she was religious, it would make it even better when she saw him and screamed. He waited.
“There you are,” she said. A warm hand took his arm and led him to the table, pushed him into a hard wooden chair. “They’ve been out looking for you. Here.”
Food slopped onto his plate. With his head on crooked, he could see potatoes in one pot and stew in the other behind him on the stove.
“If the wind changes, you’ll stay like that,” said the old woman, and the crooked boy uncrooked his head to face her. She pushed a heaped spoon of salty stew into his mouth.
“My boat?”
“All gone,” she said. “All gone, it was just a dream now.”
The crooked boy looked into the other room filled with wet clothes and funerary cloth with ornate crosses stitched onto them. He couldn’t read, but the letters under the crosses looked familiar, like the names of friends, and the smell wasn’t soap, but brine from the sea.
She had drowned all of them, so he could come home.
This week I discovered the 41256 podcast, each episode of which consists of various bits of radio shows stitched together. Relaxing, enjoyable, creepy, and very more-ish. Here’s episode 50: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/41256/episode-50-telling-them-HM4BteY3J52/
