preview

Short Story

Good Essays

Marta was ten houses away from home and the closer she got, the more she shivered, dreading that one step that will swallow her inside, pass her iron security door and inside her enclosed porch. She looked at the houses that hugged each side of the street. All of them had enclosed porches with wrought iron doors that secure their homes as well. The only difference was the color of the houses. Some were pastel pinks, buttery yellows, and mint greens. She noticed that no mattered how colorful they were, they all looked just as opaque in the dark, as the other houses that weren’t painted; those houses with grey concrete blocks and symmetrical line patterns of cement like hers. She stared at the path ahead. The streets of her neighborhood …show more content…

She extended her hands forward as if to catch the crystals as they were, but they gathered in a puddle in her cupped hands. Every beautiful thing she had, always melted just like that when she tried to hold on to it. She felt the water fall like needles in her bare arms. She let the water on her hands fall and covered her shoulders, realizing she was wearing a white tank top. She looked down and saw the white maxi skirt. She had to hurry home before everything beneath showed. She started to speed walk on the unfinished street, one part pitch black with asphalt and the other gray with dirt and broken pavement that was now turning to mud. She stepped on little pebbles and rocks that poked her slippers and hurt the sides of her feet. Every time it rained like this the water would rush to the center of the Y, where there was a deep hole that swallowed the water. No one knew how deep it was and she didn’t think anyone ever wondered, except her. The hole greeted her on her way home from work every evening like now. It always asked her when she’d have the courage to fall into it as it asked her now. The neighbors were hurrying past her to their homes in a blur. She imagined they all came from the grocery store down the Y. Marta hated going there at night. It terrified her. It was so loud she could hear the music and the shouting men playing Dominoes while she lay awake at night. She thought of her neighbors that turned

Get Access