Sugar is Sweet (Prompt 064, 100OriginalFics Challenge)
Title: Sugar is Sweet
Author: ravanasnape
Prompt: 064 (Fall/Autumn)
Rating: PG
Length: 340 words
Summary: Some of the oldest fears are hidden by the wildest fripperies.
The girl stands and stretches. She is twelve. Her parents are still alive. Outside, the leaves are at their brightest and best; one last show before winter’s death claims them. They fall in a cacophony of colours, dancing like a demented corps de ballet around unsuspecting passers-by. Red, orange, burnt and brown, they salute the humans who rush past them, uncaring for Nature’s matinée gratuite.
Hallo’een is tonight and restless children already prowl the streets. They are not as pronounced in their celebrations as their North American cousins, but there is nevertheless a tangible sense of anticipation in the air. Tonight is about fear, the one night of the year when you allow the wolves to claw at your door and revel in the shivers it sends up your spine.
The adults, though more restrained, are the same. They send each other secret glances, messages in code. Outwardly they laugh off the excitement of the children, verbally congratulate themselves on having grown out of it, but inwardly they are screaming.
The girl knows all this; she has seen it approaching over the last four, bitter weeks. Kept home from school - Why do they never believe her when she protests it an accident, always an accident? - she has had plenty of opportunity to watch the world go by. In front of her they have evolved and expanded, in complex, hurrying patterns - like the leaves outside or the snowflakes soon to come.
For her contemporaries it is a time of sugar, of chocolate, of sparkly make-up and sweet dreams. It is a time to pretend that all the bad things that stalk them during the days are just whispers on the wind, intangible and inconsequential, like witches, demons or ghouls.
The girl knows better.
As midnight approaches she lights the candles around her room and stands on her very tiptoes in order to reach down an old book from her highest shelf. Whilst the adults play parlour tricks on the floors below, she opens the cover and begins to read…
Author: ravanasnape
Prompt: 064 (Fall/Autumn)
Rating: PG
Length: 340 words
Summary: Some of the oldest fears are hidden by the wildest fripperies.
The girl stands and stretches. She is twelve. Her parents are still alive. Outside, the leaves are at their brightest and best; one last show before winter’s death claims them. They fall in a cacophony of colours, dancing like a demented corps de ballet around unsuspecting passers-by. Red, orange, burnt and brown, they salute the humans who rush past them, uncaring for Nature’s matinée gratuite.
Hallo’een is tonight and restless children already prowl the streets. They are not as pronounced in their celebrations as their North American cousins, but there is nevertheless a tangible sense of anticipation in the air. Tonight is about fear, the one night of the year when you allow the wolves to claw at your door and revel in the shivers it sends up your spine.
The adults, though more restrained, are the same. They send each other secret glances, messages in code. Outwardly they laugh off the excitement of the children, verbally congratulate themselves on having grown out of it, but inwardly they are screaming.
The girl knows all this; she has seen it approaching over the last four, bitter weeks. Kept home from school - Why do they never believe her when she protests it an accident, always an accident? - she has had plenty of opportunity to watch the world go by. In front of her they have evolved and expanded, in complex, hurrying patterns - like the leaves outside or the snowflakes soon to come.
For her contemporaries it is a time of sugar, of chocolate, of sparkly make-up and sweet dreams. It is a time to pretend that all the bad things that stalk them during the days are just whispers on the wind, intangible and inconsequential, like witches, demons or ghouls.
The girl knows better.
As midnight approaches she lights the candles around her room and stands on her very tiptoes in order to reach down an old book from her highest shelf. Whilst the adults play parlour tricks on the floors below, she opens the cover and begins to read…