The Dead End World

(A little piece written for Sunday Scribblings)

She was hunched down cleaning the wheels of her car, thinking of things best left alone. With chunky glasses that never seemed to stay on right and hair neither curly nor straight, she was awkward, truth be told. Why would her father have sent her here? Into a world where neither the dead nor living walked altogether upright. There were half-truths in every word they said to her and finding your way through a simple conversation was a feat.

She didn’t feel prepared. There was no way to study for a place like this, nothing in her schooling that had equipped her for this world. But she was grateful that she lived at the tip of this dead end road that the shadows and phantoms seemed to avoid. Oh, she knew that some people liked to be surrounded all the time but she only wanted to be left alone to hum her silly tunes and dream of a world in which she couldn’t see everything that passed by.


She put her wet rag back into the bucket of murky water, stood up to flex her knees and peered with unfocused eyes down the length of the gravel driveway. That was the trick, you know, letting your eyes glaze over a little bit. If you looked like you actually saw, they would come ask you for things.