It was a Dark and Stormy Night....

At first he did not notice the strange thing lying on the ground. It was hard to notice; between the flashes of lightening, the wind stirring the branches, and the pouring rain.

He had been coming out to this clearing for some time. He had painted it over and over; different aspects in summer, winter, and fall. He loved the scent of the trees and way the light sliced into the branches. He loved the view of the clouds over the trees on a sunny day, the way they piled on top of one another in towers of fog.

He had never seen it in a storm, and he had wanted to. There was a kind of beauty unique only to stormes; the raging wind, the driven rain, the unpredicatble lightening, and the pitch-black sky all added together into a maelstrom of black and white.

When he finally noticed the thing, he thought it was a branch from a birch tree. When he got close enough, he realized it was a hand, which scared him. It was like a scene from a horror movie.

Sculpture by Aaron Fung

Then he realized it was not a hand at all, but a piece of clay that looked like a hand. Somehow, it had ended up here; probably the work of some sculptor, thrown away and left behind to sink into the earth that had birthed it. It was a sad, lonely hand.

And then it started moving.

He watched, dumbfounded, as the clay flowed like water, extending from the base where the wrist connected to the arm, the arm connecting to a shoulder, the shoulder flowing downwards into breasts and a torso and thighs. Soon, a whole, complete woman was standing before him, made completely out of clay.

"And that's how I met your mother." he ended the story, leaning back and taking a sip of his drinks as his children stared at him.

10 minutes, 320 words

The Artist

Art by Aaron Fung

"Who is he?" asked the young woman.

"Who's who?" replied the man.

They were vacationing in a small time-shared house, one of many of the exact type. Across from them was a deep lake with a small pier, on which floated a few boats. The distant sun cast a long shadow from the reads and the stilted houses,

The man in question had dragged a chair out to the pier and was sketching in a notebook, looking out across the lake. He had short brown hair and a strangely intent look about him, despite a rather informal dress of a t-shirt, shorts and sandals.

"Well, I don't know." replied the man. "I haven't seen him around. Why don't you go ask?"

And so she wend down the gentle slope to the pier, walking up behind the man. He didn't look up, merely continued his work.

"Hi." said she.

"Hi." said the man, still looking down at his paper.

"What are you drawing?" she asked.

"I don't know." he replied.

He sounded genuinely vexed, but his hand kept on moving, filling out the features of a man. He seemed older, bald, and a little angry.

"Why are you drawing it?"

"I have to." he replied.

She was standing beside him now. She sat down on the pier, thinking.

"You're strange." she said.

"Maybe." he answered. "And maybe you're strange and I'm the ordinary one."

Her feet were dragging through the water, soaking her tennis shoes and socks, but she didn't care.

"I'm not strange." she answered. "You're the one drawing things you don't even know."

"Yes." he replied. "But you're the one talking to the dead."