Inspiration Point: Busy Gnomes

I took liberties with the tense and the pronoun. And, this is first draft quality and silly, but fun regardless.

Today, the lake sparkles as it always does, fairies of light dancing across its surface to blind us from time to time. Levi is scratching his head, a small frown turning perfection to flaw. He doesn't wear frowns well and therefore tries to stifle them, but perhaps he feels the foreshadowing as I do. Or maybe he was just upset because he lost his place as the center of attention.

Marguerite laughs. She drinks. She drinks a lot, her laugh climbing the C scale until it flies, screeching, right off the top, the rest of us cringing whenever she opens her mouth.

The gnomes look busy, but I know it's only window dressing. A fabrication or construct, because what they're actually doing is waiting. Just waiting.

I begin to panic, scraping my knee when I stand and causing Levi's frown to grow. This isn't going well at all. I stifle a whimper--my knee really hurts--and pretend it's funny, which returns the smile to Mr. Perfect's face.

There, he smiled. All better now. The pain doesn't matter. It never does.

Still the gnomes, wearing pointy hats and sporting scruffy beards, bustle about with round stones, bleached branches, and buckets of red wine, which they deposit in a pile by the shore.

I'm certain no one sees them but me.

The sun is low, its bottommost curve settling behind Papa's log cabin and its long fingers of orange light reaching for us. Sunset in the hills. Finality. Drastic change. End. Ending. Ended. Just a few moments left now.

We number five: Levi, Marguerite, Monty, Jake, and me. We're at Papa's cabin for the weekend and I'm somebody, just for now. Earlier, they raided Papa's fridge against my wishes and I wonder how it was that I sit here on the deck sipping a stolen Corona, sans lime. Papa would shit bricks if he knew.

So, we number five but had begun the day as six. One of us is missing--her bag packed and gone, her personal items as invisible as she. They all think she just up and left, maybe pissed because neither Levi nor Jake had shown any interest in her. For that matter, Monty hadn't either.

Poor girl. Poor Renee.

Used to be, I'd, forget to breathe. Used to be I was afraid to move, scared that what I feel will slip away like the dusk when light and time are magic.

The gnomes look busy--they always do--but I know it's only window dressing. I know they're playing the waiting game. Waiting for me.

Faeries of light, splinters of luminescence, fragments of dying sunset . . . they dance on the lake in the cool orange glow and the gnomes are ever busy. Busy with their round stones, bleached branches, and buckets of red wine.

Levi is laughing, the frown gone forever, and Marguerite is crying, her mirth finally spent. But Jake and Monty are frightened because they see what is coming. They're the only ones who do.

And next fall, the gnomes will return and busy themselves while they wait for me; they'll transport round stones that resemble skinless skulls and white branches that look like bones. They'll dump bucket after bucket of warm red wine. Wine that is thicker than it should be and not fit to drink.

And me? I will return to Papa's cabin with new weekend friends. I'll be somebody again, but just for then.