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Hmm, I'll post a story up. It's around five hundred words. Actually, it's 505. It's a fairly innocuous thing.
Through the weeds behind our house were train tracks that took you anywhere you wanted to go. The kids in town came here when they wanted to run away and my sister and I watched them, run alongside the lumbering box cars and jump on. Sometimes their friends were there and they ran with them and followed until we couldn’t see them beyond the leaves and branches. When we went down there, it was usually by ourselves and we didn’t want to leave necessarily, but instead, we carried nickles in our pockets and placed them on the tracks.
I put my ear to the ground the way they do in Wild West movies to check for an oncoming train.
“Anything heading our way?” Michelle asked.
I shook my head and so we took the silvery coins and placed them on the dark metal as if they were planted seeds. We spaced them out three feet apart, a hundred yards down both rows.
“Finished?” I called across to her. She was bent over in a cotton frock. Both of us were sweating from the summer day.
“Yeah.”
“Do you want to wait or just go?”
“Just go,” she said. “I’m hungry.”
We only had a dollar between us, not counting the nickles on the track, and while mom and dad were at work, she gave us free reign to wander the streets, which we did much to the town’s dismay. They didn’t like us much because we were dirty, poor and wild. We weren’t toughs mind you, but strange children who lived in the house at the end of block that everyone was scared of. Our isolation both attracted and frightened them like a dangerous flame in the dark.
Sitting on the fast-food restaurant’s patio seats, we shared a hamburger. Handing it back and forth, we took tiny bites. The cashier let us get by seven cents short from the tax, and we shyly thanked him —Michelle more so, using her cute voice.
Back at the track, we saw evidence of a train that came through and on the ground was the treasure we’ve been looking for, the harvest from our hard work. The nickles were flattened, scattered about across the golden knee-high plant stalks. The pressure and force from the train, transformed the coins into something else, multiplying their value in the process. I picked one up. They were the perfect size and shape of a quarter. They were cold to the touch. She filled her pockets and I did, too. When we couldn’t find any more, we left and found vending machines by the gas station.
The nickles clicked in the slots and we saw the magical 25 pop into window. We put another one in. 50. We felt devious and conniving like children cheating on a test. The potato chips and sodas tasted different, special because of the work we put into it. We spent the rest of the money and afternoon at the arcades, playing video games, and went home after dark.
Through the weeds behind our house were train tracks that took you anywhere you wanted to go. The kids in town came here when they wanted to run away and my sister and I watched them, run alongside the lumbering box cars and jump on. Sometimes their friends were there and they ran with them and followed until we couldn’t see them beyond the leaves and branches. When we went down there, it was usually by ourselves and we didn’t want to leave necessarily, but instead, we carried nickles in our pockets and placed them on the tracks.
I put my ear to the ground the way they do in Wild West movies to check for an oncoming train.
“Anything heading our way?” Michelle asked.
I shook my head and so we took the silvery coins and placed them on the dark metal as if they were planted seeds. We spaced them out three feet apart, a hundred yards down both rows.
“Finished?” I called across to her. She was bent over in a cotton frock. Both of us were sweating from the summer day.
“Yeah.”
“Do you want to wait or just go?”
“Just go,” she said. “I’m hungry.”
We only had a dollar between us, not counting the nickles on the track, and while mom and dad were at work, she gave us free reign to wander the streets, which we did much to the town’s dismay. They didn’t like us much because we were dirty, poor and wild. We weren’t toughs mind you, but strange children who lived in the house at the end of block that everyone was scared of. Our isolation both attracted and frightened them like a dangerous flame in the dark.
Sitting on the fast-food restaurant’s patio seats, we shared a hamburger. Handing it back and forth, we took tiny bites. The cashier let us get by seven cents short from the tax, and we shyly thanked him —Michelle more so, using her cute voice.
Back at the track, we saw evidence of a train that came through and on the ground was the treasure we’ve been looking for, the harvest from our hard work. The nickles were flattened, scattered about across the golden knee-high plant stalks. The pressure and force from the train, transformed the coins into something else, multiplying their value in the process. I picked one up. They were the perfect size and shape of a quarter. They were cold to the touch. She filled her pockets and I did, too. When we couldn’t find any more, we left and found vending machines by the gas station.
The nickles clicked in the slots and we saw the magical 25 pop into window. We put another one in. 50. We felt devious and conniving like children cheating on a test. The potato chips and sodas tasted different, special because of the work we put into it. We spent the rest of the money and afternoon at the arcades, playing video games, and went home after dark.
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