Ellen made it a point to go out on her porch whenever a fog rolled in. While she wouldn’t admit to having such ridiculous thoughts, it made her feel like she was alone just above the clouds.

Her house wasn’t the biggest out of the neighborhood. When the Fishers sold up all the farmland back in the forties, it was one of the first to spring out of the ground – right at the top of the only hill for miles.

It made the old home feel enormous.

She lived alone, though in her past she’d kept a husband and children under the aging oak beams. She kept the house like those people still lived there – she discovered early on that making a home completely yours is a quick way to loneliness.

Looking over the milky fog she saw where the road to town turned just before disappearing. She saw the darker outline of the woods behind the Sheriff’s metal roofed farmhouse.

He’d proposed to Ellen on her 58^th birthday, five years after Sam passed.

“You always have a thing for me, or do you just feel bad that I’m up on this hill?”

“Well, Ellen, it just ain’t right for a woman to be alone in this big house,” he said in the farmer’s drawl she found to be as comfortable as old boots.

She refused kindly enough, though the refusal wasn’t enough to stop him from checking in on her, which Ellen appreciated.

The truth of it was Ellen didn’t mind the lonesomeness so much. Nobody to cook for, nobody’s bed to make or long-winded thoughts to listen to. If Ellen had the opportunity to live a second life immediately following her current one, she’d make it a point to only shack up with men when she felt the need for comfort but make sure she had a quiet, lonesome place to go to that was only hers to have.

Finishing her coffee, Ellen stood up from the porch and walked, barefoot, into the kitchen. Before she was even able to put the coffee cup into the sink she heard a car door click shut. Continue reading →

This is the second draft coming out of the workshop review and practicum. Lemme know.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit much? Getting rid of it I mean?” Dale asked.

Jason, next to Dale, looked at the wide mouth of the swimming pond.

Jason’s father made the pond as a gift to Jason’s mother some thirty years back. When he finished it, the pond was larger and deeper than either had expected.  It became something of a landmark for parties while Jason grew up–his father stringing lights across it and buying a small boat Jason used whenever he wanted to convince girls to make out. Kissing in the middle of a pond seemed more romantic.

So far it resisted Jason’s attempts to fill it with dirt, drain it with an industrial pump and, in his last attempt, dig a drainage ditch. Dale helped by providing stubborn encouragement and beer, but the only thing they succeeded in doing was making the pond look horrible.

The pond was a fixture of the place and knew it. Something about the way it was dug into the ground or the clay earth around it made the work nearly impossible. Jason thought it might be the ghost of his father making it difficult–not out of anger or dislike, but just to make his son work hard for something he wanted.

Jason understood, looking at the muddy and marred pond, why Dale was tired of trying. Jason was tired of trying, too. He’d spent nearly four months clawing and dredging and cursing at the pond. It needed to happen before the freeze, but he was beginning to suspect it simply wasn’t possible to do. Continue reading →