I follow a fellow writer named MC Hunton over at her blog. She recently started challenging herself and fellow followers to do a writing piece based on a certain writing prompt every Monday . I finally got off my lazy butt and did one like I promised her I would.  The writing  prompt this week was entitled  Monday Muse: Sound.  You basically have to write anything having to do with a noise or silence that won’t go away.  I believe the only rule was that you had to write for thirty minutes straight and just flow with it…..

So here it goes… the story is NOT done but I think I made  a pretty good start.  I will definitely try and finish it up soon I hope. Let me know what you think.

The Well

by Philip Wardlow

Momma would send me every morning to go fetch the water from the well that sat behind our house some fifty yards back near where the woods started. I hated that chore more than anything something awful.

I walked sleepily to the open back porch outside in my pajamas wearing just my slippers. The sun was still trying to sneak its head over the hill as the stars were still wide awake and dancing in a dark blue shy sky. This morning was especially  chilly when I grabbed the bucket at the back door. I saw every breath I took float away like I was taking a smoke like my daddy used to do.

I stood there in the doorway staring out at the backyard all the way back to where the well was. I could tell it was just waiting for me like it always does. To me it looked a like a squat little frog made of wood and brick, staring at me. Even two of the bricks which made up the wall of it were placed just so and colored just so different from all the rest, that it made ‘em look like eyes staring back at me in the dim light of the morning night. I imagined a big tongue rolling out of the hole of the well just waiting to slurp me up all green, slimy and wet.

This morning there was a fog rolling all along the ground from account of the cold. It wasn’t too thick. Pieces of it slunk around the yard moving left to right out of the corn field to cross over and go past the chicken coop on the far side and continue on like it needed some place to be. I noticed that none of the fog got too close to the well. It seemed to want to have nothing to with it as it meandered across the yard.

I shivered and wondered if I would hear it again. I  heard the sound all the time.  Dear lord, I hope I don’t hear it again, I said in a silent prayer inside my head.

“Josephine, get your butt going with that water! It ain’t gonna get itself,” I heard my momma yell at me from inside the house.

“Yes, momma.”

I mustered my courage and walked across the dark yard toward the well with the water bucket wrapped in my arms tight to my chest.

The chicken coop was quiet as I passed by, the hens and Old mister Rudy the cranky old rooster hadn’t yet caught on to the fact of that it was a new day on hand just yet. They didn’t make a peep as I walked on by ‘em to the well.

The blue pines rose up behind the well and towered above, swaying in the breeze. My own  shadow  was swallowed by theirs as I approached the well. It was always darkest in this part of the yard as the sun was still buried deep behind ‘em.

I sat the bucket on the edge of the well and secured the hook to the rope and sent it over the edge and started to slowly lower it down.

I looked out at the thick clump of dark trees behind the well. Anything could be in there. I began to imagine that something would wait for me on my walk to the house when my arms were heavy with a bucket full of water and take me from behind and drag me into the woods and my momma would never see me again. I thought a silly thought then. My teacher calling my name at roll call.

Josephine Stevens – she would call out twice to the classroom but I wouldn’t answer her. Because I just simply wouldn’t be anymore.

I found myself cranking the line to lower the bucket even faster….

Then I heard it….the noise.

….to be Continued…….:)