The Writer's Block is a monthly column where we feature a piece of fiction submitted by our readers. To find out how your writing could be featured, scroll to the bottom of the page.
The boy had grown to love the man even though he barely knew him. They’d met one evening beneath an apartment stairwell as the city burned. The boy had been rummaging through a bin of old cereal boxes when he’d heard footsteps scattering through the hallway. He’d pulled himself against the wall and listened, wrapping his finger around the paperclip that had protected him until then, and allowed his eyes to adjust more clearly to the darkened hall so he could better glimpse the source of the footsteps.
“I saw you,” the man had said, but the boy didn’t understand him. “I saw you through the window, from outside. You got no business being here.”
His voice was low, like he’d expected to be overheard. The boy squinted and tried making out the man’s silhouette as he hovered nearly three meters away. In the break of fire and moonlight beaming softly through a nearby window, he could just make out the whites of the man’s eyes. They were focused and intense yet didn’t possess the same strangeness he had seen in the eyes of others. “Hey!” the man whispered again, but still the boy didn’t understand.
“Hey! You hear what I’m saying to you? I know you’re over there.”
“I don’t know,” the boy had said, and it was true.
“You don’t know what?” the man had asked.
“I don’t know,” the boy repeated.
“Hey...” The man moved closer, and the boy drew back. He felt his finger tighten around the paperclip, and the man stopped moving and held up his hands.
“Hey, I’m not trying to do anything other than help you. We gotta get you out of here. Where’s your ma? You got a ma?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said again, and his voice sounded small and strange to himself.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” The man continued speaking in his soft, subtle tone, bordering above a whisper. It made the boy feel easier about him, but he was cautious not to become too comfortable lest his assumptions were wrong. He had been wrong before, and he was scared.
The man nodded and carefully pulled a metal baseball bat from behind his back and held it in the triangle of firelight glowing through the window. The boy watched as the dented bat turned slowly in the man’s hand then made its way cautiously to the ground. It hit the linoleum floor with a soft, metallic ding, and there was a rush of awakened feet on the floor overhead.
To be continued...
Want your writing featured in our fiction column? Craft a 300-400 word story around the prompt and send your submissions to editor.prd@urbanatomy.com before October 15.
Prompt: Your character has awoken on a train filled with strangers. In the distance, dangling between two pieces of luggage overhead, he or she glimpses a slip of paper bearing his or her name in an unfamiliar handwriting…
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[Image via Humanpast.net]
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