Disclaimer: I just wrote what my mind saw happening…I didn’t take anything that belonged to anyone.
Author’s note: I don’t have one…if I did it would be here.
~*~ L ~*~ A ~*~ N ~*~ C ~*~ E ~*~ R ~*~
Johnny’s face felt cold…and wet. The sensation started at the top, and then traveled down his left cheek, across his chin and up the right side of his head. He realized every time he heard a splash proceeded by a dripping sound, it was followed by the return of a damp chilly feeling on his face, which led to trickles of moisture flowing into his ears. While the treatment felt good on his face, it did absolutely nothing for the rocks being blasted by dynamite noise threatening to split his skull wide open. He groaned…pathetically.
The moaning coming from his youngest son told Murdoch he was returning to alertness. His hands trembled as he wet the square of flannel once more, cringing at the blood tinged water in the bowl, he wrung it out and wiped at the pale face marred by a large blue and purple bruise on the temple. “That’s right, come on, boy, it’s time to wake up,” Murdoch encouraged with a nervous tremble in his voice. “Wake up, Johnny.”
Johnny’s eyes fluttered open and immediately slammed shut when the sunlight streaming in the large picture window of the Great room skewered his eyes like flint arrows. “Light hurts my eyes,” he practically whined, and then licking his lips and swallowing the excess salvia filling his mouth, he inquired, “Pa…er…Murdoch, what the Hell happened?”
Chuckling nervously that Johnny seemed to be all right, Murdoch retorted, “I was hoping you could tell me. I found you at the bottom of the ladder outside. You were out cold, with a large goose egg on your right temple area. Did you fall off the ladder?”
A gruesome image flashed before Johnny’s closed eyes as the horrific incidence of terror replayed in his mind’s eye. “I must have fell after I hit myself in the head with the hammer,” he explained, whimpering as he brought his hand up to touch the sore spot on his head.
“How in the world did you manage to hit yourself in the head with a hammer?” exclaimed Murdoch, terrified that perhaps Johnny might be brain damaged to come up with such a tale.
“Well, I was fixing the iron grill work attached to the window, when I saw something so shocking and disgusting, I accidentally struck the iron bar, the hammer bounced off it like a ricocheting bullet and hit me in the head,” Johnny stated in a pain filled voice.
“What in all that is holy did you see, son?” Murdoch asked curiously.
“I was working at Teresa’s window when she came flying in the room, grabbed her chamber pot from under the bed snatched up her skirt and dropped her drawers before I could call out a warning I was there…I ain’t…I ain’t never seen nothing that…that…wrinkled and ugly…Oh, God we’ll never get her married off, her groom will return her as soon as he unwraps her ‘gift’ to him…unless of course we can find her a blind feller,” Johnny blathered on, the shock of what happened making him ramble.
Standing in the doorway, Teresa heard the whole sordid tale, her anger rose faster than her skirt had earlier and she stomped to the couch where Murdoch had laid Johnny down, before she could open her mouth to harangue him he caught sight of her skirt, the memory of what was under it assault his senses and he rolled to the side and vomited. Teresa shrieked and tried to avoid the mess, stepped in it, slipped and hit her head on the coffee table…and fell comatose.
The End
Southernfrau
August 11, 2009