Elemental Forces by Mark Morris

Author:Mark Morris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror; gothic fantasy; supernatural horror; speculative fiction; short stories; anthologies; horror short stories
Publisher: Flame Tree Publishing
Published: 2024-08-27T14:30:41+00:00

The Note

Paul Tremblay

After dinner, there was enough sunlight left to pretend we had more time to our Sunday. I suggested to my wife Linda that we walk the mile or so to the local dairy farm for ice cream. We had yet to go that spring, or, we had yet to walk to the farm to get our own ice cream. It’s possible – scratch that – probable that some foggy number of weeks prior we had sent one of our two kids to fill our sugar fix. I suppose in the eyes of state and federal law Cal and Elly were technically adults, but they were young enough to remain financially umbilicalled to us. Cal would graduate from his college on the opposite coast in less than a month and Elly, a high school senior, was out with friends.

I almost pitched the walk to Linda as a preview of our fast-encroaching empty nesters’ destiny, but she was already in the throes of the tomorrow-is-Monday blues, so I didn’t pile on. Linda agreed to the walk, but without much, or any, enthusiasm. Was it the company or was she considering what the sugary dose of dairy might digestively wreak later in the evening’s soft gloam? She rolled her eyes at the ‘soft gloam’ quip. Deservedly so.

We left our small dog, Molly, at home. Molly wasn’t a fan of crowds, other dogs, or walks. She had never liked walks, but now, with her golden years descending as quickly as an autumn sun at dusk, she downright loathed them. No one in the family, myself included, was willing to verbalise the mundane yet depthless horror at how old and creaky Molly was getting.

So, it was just me and Linda. We walked, heading uphill and north – north if our house was the centre of a compass – through a suburban neighbourhood we knew well. That is to say, we knew it physically well. I could draw a map of the streets, but we didn’t know any of the actual human neighbours. We weren’t aloof or snooty – definitely not snooty, anyway. Our lack of conviviality with our neighbours to the north was more a quirk of happenstance and direction. Our kids made friends by coasting their bikes downhill instead of pedalling up. I don’t intend that as a metaphor for their work ethic or future prospects. Not everything means something else, right? But, writing this now, I’m afraid the opposite is true. Maybe we need a new, better word to describe the slippery things we claim as true.

With no kids, no dog, no neighbours to chat up as we ambled past house after house, Linda detailed the latest shit pile the gaggle of old, out-of-touch white men, who comprised the board of directors for their chain of local seafood restaurants, had dumped on her all-women marketing department. It was a slight variation of a common theme at her workplace. Once her indignation and moral stance was clearly stated for the continuing record,

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