Imagine
Outside our village, a little way into the woods, is the start of the road to Heaven. Don’t ask how I know. Everyone in the village knows it, always have, just as we know not to take fairy food, and not to stray off a path once you’re on it. There are some things that you know as naturally as you know how to make your heart beat.
There’s a curfew, here, because at nightfall, that’s when the new souls come. They pass through on their way to the road. We stay in because we don’t want to get them lost. There are stories of souls getting curious about a person wandering at night, and following them, and ending up a ghost, wandering and fading until there’s nothing left of who and what they were.
The road is cordoned off in the daytime. There’s a barrier- reed thin poles, a whisper of string. It’s enough.
Sometimes I look out of my bedroom window to watch the death-fires light up along the way to the road as the sun sets. Sometimes I even watch the souls pass. There’s not a lot to see- shades in the dark. Still, it’s strange. One day I’ll be among them. At least I won’t have far to walk. Unless, of course, we’ve been wrong all this time. Like that song suggests- ‘imagine there’s no heaven’. It’s not so easy as all that. Not with the road there, calling.
Paty Cockrum
hmmm interesting… this is an excellent start on a story… but it is not a story yet. It sets the stage and gives you the parameters of the story within the scope of the image. the story told within these parameters has yet to unfold. You have merely set the scene here.
The problems with short stories and especially with a limited story format like elephant Words is that you can easily use the word limit allowed in setting up a story. this offering is, as I said, not a story per se… but I would love to see the story that has this premise as it’s setting. You obviously know something of folk legends and such so the story could get most entertaining…should you choose to continue it… which I hope you do, actually… but the story that this excellent beginning could generate would probably not fit into the limited format of this site. Do consider finishing it, though…
Paty
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