A bleach-boned hand with grimy fingernails reposed upon the nightstand next to the boys institutionally gray metal framed bed. The stand itself was also a dark metal gray and created a stark contrast between the bleached whiteness of the hand. As the dark haired boy with big hopeless brown eyes starred at the skinless appendage; the lights went out and with it came the empty terrifying blackness. Throughout the cold dank and miserable soul-less building began the clanking off doors closing which was almost instantaneously followed by the mind numbing sound of tumblers turning in the locks. Another night alone with his fear and the memories of how he first stumbled upon the buried bones that even through the blackness of the room; the bleached imaged burned brightly in his brain. A sob escaped him; a sob he didn’t know was threatening. It had been such an innocent mistake.

He collapsed onto his bed and let the memories invade his mind once again. Some part of his mind trying to discover from his twisted images of that day and reveal to him the one thing that could save him from the fate he now endured. It had been one of those blissfully innocent days which the fall gifts boys. He had escaped outside to the sun and brisk air. It wasn’t cold but refreshing and cool. The sun countered the coolness of the air with its’ covering warmth. He left his jacket in his room. He wouldn’t need a jacket on a day like today. In the pocket of his faded blue denim jeans he had enough money to buy two donuts at the bakery in town; his scout pocket knife; and a paper clip he’d picked up off the floor on his way out the door. There were two ways to get to the bakery in town. One meant following the roads through the neighborhood; down to the main collector and follow it as it wound its way around the hills that surrounded the city. Taking the roads meant the trip would take him a full hour. Thirty minutes to town and thirty minutes back. If he were gone that long his step mother would miss him and she would make him pay for leaving the house without her permission. They weren’t allowed out except to go to school and to come straight home. There had been a time when he hadn’t even been allowed to attend school but then one of the neighbors had told someone who told someone else who seemed to think that 15 year old boys ought to be at school and not staying at home alone.

The other route into town was through the woods. There was a cut up and over the hill made by the utility company many years earlier when they were installing the power from town out to where his step mother’s dirty yellow house sat alone at the edge of tangled trees and thick underbrush that normally made traveling through the woods in that part of their county impassable. The utility company’s break through the woods cut the time to and from town to less than 20 minutes and he knew she wouldn’t miss him. When she disappeared down into the basement he knew, by timing it, that she would be down there exactly 45 minutes before she regained the main floor of the house. She made the trip into the basement twice a day. The only real chance that he would be discovered missing is if his little sister made some noise or created some problem that would cause her to emerge early. He had told her where he was going and he had promised her that if she were very, very quiet and didn’t alert their step mother that he would bring her home a chocolate fronted donut.

He started out quickly and as always when he was alone and could think past the fear and abuse of living with his step mother; he would think of his father. Where was he? Why hadn’t he come home? Had he really abandoned them to this dreary life? It had been six months and he was beginning to loose hope he would ever see his father again. As he cross through the forested area behind his house and was about to emerge out of its’ cool gloom; his feet, ankle deep in the drying fall leaves; were tripped by some unseen obstacle and he stumbled. What? There was a crunching noise under his foot as he stumbled.

He backed up. He bent over. He brushed back the brown dead leaves…

The boy stopped the memories and brought himself back into the midnight blackness of his cell. Why hadn’t he just kept walking? If hadn’t had stopped he would be free. If hadn’t stopped he could be watching over his sister. If….he felt his heart beating against his chest and he felt the sweat as it began to trickle down the sides of face and he allowed the memories to return.

It had been the hand. The hand that now laid upon the stand next to the bed. Back on that sunlit fall day on the edge of the woods it protruded up from the earth reaching skyward. The sight of it had been startling he had fallen back onto his bottom. He starred for a minute and then some strange energy of curiosity mixed with fear and dread overcame him and he rose to his knees and pushed away more of the leaves until he got to bear dirt. He saw the boney wrist then and on it he saw his father’s leather and chrome wristwatch. He could still make out the words on the leather “father”. It had been a gift he had made his father in his first year in scouts. The complete writing on it was “world’s best father” and his dad never went out with out buckling it on and winking at him and saying “just so I don’t forget who I am.” Then he would tousle his hair as he walked out the door.

The discovery shook the boy to such an extent that he forgot what he knew about his step mother’s rules. He ran frantically back to her house; raced up the stairs on the front porch and then…. why oh why had he forgotten? He burst through the living room and threw open the basement door calling her by name.”Yolanda!!!”

He didn’t make note of it at the time but now as he laid in the dark emptiness; he remembered the clanking sound of metal and then the shuffled scurrying steps of his step mother and also somewhere from the depths; a desolate human cry.

“How dare you interrupt my work?” She yelled as she climbed the stairs.

“Dad. His hand. His watch.” I was crying.

She got quiet. She starred at me. She didn’t even seem surprised just contemplative. Later he would realize she was sizing up his fate: would it be death like his father or would it be the fate he now endured. By the time she reached the top of the stairs, she masked her expression with one of surprise and what she must have thought was compassion.

“Shhh, now. Don’t make so much noise you’ll disturb your sister and we mustn’t have her upset as you are. Let’s go take a look at what you found. I’ll just grab a shovel from the garage so we can dig around what you saw.”

Her calmness unnerved him. He hadn’t figured it out. She was an adult. She was supposed to take care of them. She was supposed to be their mother. His mind wasn’t yet capable of understanding the evil that lurked within the woman that required him to call her mother.

She retrieved the shovel and he led her through the woods. As he remembered, he could the sound of their feet wading through the dry crackling leaves. He could hear her breath just behind him. There were no other sounds but one and later he would realize it was the sound of his own sobbing.

He reached the site and once again got down upon bended knee as he trembling brushed back the leaves that had fallen back into the depression he had created when he had first brushed the debris away from his father’s hand. And, that was the last memory of the real world he had. Now, he realized that she had taken the shovel and brought it crashing down upon his head.

He had awoken to this room. He had awoken to her standing outside the bars of the room glaring at him.

“You shouldn’t have called me Yolanda. You must call me mother.” She spoke with a calmness and ordinariness that belied the insanity of him waking in a dank prison like room. She was starring at something as she spoke. “If you hadn’t been so curious; you would have never known. But, you are a smart boy. You would have figured it out eventually.” Her manic smile was almost quizzical as she continued “You know I thought he was dead before I buried him. But, he must have been alive. He must have tried to dig himself out of the hole I buried him into and now look at what his efforts have got him. He has put you in the same place and the same room I had to lock him into.”

Kaitlin sent me this prompt and I wrote this story. It is not complete. Who would like me to finish it? Do you have any suggestions on what might happen next?
granny d


“There I give you that to remind you of what happens to heroes and foolish boys.” She pointed her fat dirty finger to the dark gray metal side table by the bed on which the boy had risen to a sitting position. He turned his head fearing what he would see. It was a macabre as anything he could remember. It was his father’s hand and next to it was the watch..

“The rules are simple. You do what I say; when I say. You don’t try to escape. You don’t try to reach anyone outside of my little dungeon of horrors. You endure the punishments I give you and you always, always, call me mother. Failure to obey means that your sister shares the same fate as that of your father and you wouldn’t want that would you?” With that she left. He heard for the first time her heavy shuffling tread away from him and up the stairs. He felt for the first time the stark terror as the lights went out and the tumblers in the locks turned. And, for the first time, he heard a faded moan emitting from somewhere in the blackness.