Wired – a mostly true story

For Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge

Each week I will be posting a photo I grab off the internet and challenge bloggers to write a relatively short flash fiction piece inspired by the photo. While there are no definitive style or word limits, I suggest trying to keep your posts to under 300 words.

Wired – a mostly true story

He was only seven when the monsters came. Whispering to him late at night, telling him stories, telling him … things. I sat and watched as he stood open-eyed, staring off into the distance, talking to someone I couldn’t see, in a language I’d never heard. He was only seven.

So I stood my vigil over his bed, sleeping in a chair. The monsters showed him a big green box near the woods. He told me there was a girl inside and that it scared him. No, he wasn’t afraid of the monsters, but he was afraid for the girl. He was only seven.

I called a friend with the Sheriff’s Department. My son recounted his tale in surprising detail leaving my friend troubled. The following day, he called me to say they had found the body, exactly where my son described. He was only seven.

We went to the neurology department at the university where they wired my little boy up with every sensor known to man. They charted the “unexplained” brain activity and sent us home, none the wiser. He was only seven.

That night I grabbed a box of salt, lined the doors and windows. Over the next few weeks, I put up every ward I knew and invested them with every bit of psychic energy I could spare. Then I called upon the spirits and declared in no uncertain terms that if things must be known, they were to bring it to me, but leave he boy alone. He was only seven.

Though he called them monsters, they were not evil spirits and they did as I asked. He began to sleep like a child again. That’s when my nightmares started.

word count 285

Til next time ~Peace ~JPP