Hello, Readers! 

Boy, it sure has been a while since I’ve posted again, hasn’t it. Sorry! I hope you are all doing well and enjoying life. I wish I could tell you that I’ve been keeping up with writing (you know as this is NaNoWriMo)--but aside from a monthly prompt through a program I help facilitate at work… I’m really behind.

I can share with you a couple of the super short stories I’ve created thanks to some of those prompts! Below is a story that was created with an intriguing image that I found on McKenna’s author’s blog here. The image can be found to the left. 

To me, it looks like a pale, human hand reaching out of a hedge or bushes--but it can be hard to tell if the owner of the hand is standing and reaching through the bushes, or has fallen and is requesting help. Readers, what do you see? Feel free to share your short story responses to this image in the comments below!

The Mirror Bush

“Help! Arthur! Stop laughing at me and give me a hand!”

I couldn’t help my laughter. I knew it was rude, but it was just so… predictable. My twin was always stumbling about. Why would a last minute trip to Gran’s be any different? Especially given that the trip was on foot through the dense forest between our house and hers?

“Arthur!” She called again. But this time her tone was different. It was no longer annoyed but awed. “Give me your hand. You must see this!”

“If it’s another of your spider tricks I won’t do it!”

“No spiders,” she promised, reaching her hand back toward me once more. “But really. You must see this.”

“Can’t you stand up first, silly?” I demanded, reaching down for her hand.

 It struck me as odd that she had fallen into a bush and suddenly vanished, only her hand and wrist visible to me. But I didn’t have much time to ponder the oddity. As soon as our fingers brushed the weightless sensation of falling from a cliff sent my stomach rocketing into my throat.

“Ah!” I cried out, much like my twin had only moments before. I slammed my eyes shut and tried to shield my face with my hands. 

What was going on? I hadn’t even stumbled! Jillian was the one who tripped! And yet…

“I am standing,” Jillian whispered, and with her words, the falling sensation faded and my stomach returned to my abdomen. I opened my eyes, taking in the wonder in her eyes and the flushed color in her round cheeks. “That’s the thing of it. It’s like I never fell at all… except…”

“That falling sensation,” I finished for her. “It was like I was skydiving out of a rocketship or something-but! I didn’t even stumble. I just reached for your hand!”

“And look, Arthur! You haven’t even begun to take it all in,” She breathed, her usual bossiness masked by her continued awe. She stepped back gently, allowing me to see around her.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see, the inside of a bush, perhaps? Or maybe dense forest? Instead, I saw blue skies beneath my feet. Clouds floating away on a gentle breeze that blew across my ankles. 

My stomach flipped again and I began to feel lightheaded. I sank to my knees among the clouds.

“Sorry,” Jillian whispered. “I suppose I should have had you look up first.”

In an instant my eyes flicked from the bright blue sky beneath me, to the densely packed forest above. 

“But how?” I gasped, my brain failing to fully grasp the information being collected by my eyes.

“I dunno…” she whispered in response, arm outstretched high above her, reaching for the trees beyond her grasp. “ You don’t think…”

But she didn’t finish her thought and for once in my life, I didn’t rush to complete it for her. Instead, I forced her to say it herself.

“I don’t think what, Jilly?” I demanded, forcefully, intentionally, tearing my gaze away from the upside down tree directly above me, it’s full, vibrant crown of leaves reaching toward me instead of away. 

Her face was now pale, all excitement drained by her sudden realization. “Gran’s story,” she started, her voice sounding uncharacteristically uncertain. “About the mirror bush…”

“That’s just a story!” I exclaimed. “You know, to keep us from wandering off of the path between Gran’s house and ours.”

“But Arthur,” it had been years since I’d heard that pleading, whiny tone catch in her throat. “The sky and the ground are mirrored here, like they always were in Gran’s stories.”

“Oh,” the gravity of her realization and the topsy-turvy nature of oru situation gurgled hauntingly in my poor, nervous stomach. 

“Do you recall how the children got back to their world in that story, Jilly?” I asked softly, terrified of her answer, clinging to the feeble, flimsy hope that maybe, just maybe, I had remembered wrong.

“I do,” she whispered back, just as scared of her own answer as I was. “And I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“You said there were no spiders!” I yelled angrily at her.

“I didn’t know… this isn’t some trick I concocted!” She argued back, her voice mirroring my own terrified rage. “I honestly just tripped!”

“Yeah and fell into an upside down world where elephant-sized spiders control the only portals back to our own world!” I cried, burying my head in my hands. “When Gran said your clumsiness was going to be the death of me I never imagined this.”