Ted stood at the top of the well, stick in one hand, arms crossed over his chest. The well had been more than half grown over with weeds and vines, and they'd spent nearly an hour pulling it all back, revealing the rotten wood that still only half covered it. They'd broken off and pulled back as much of the wood as they could. The wood was sick with the slick, wet rot of having been submerged in stagnant water for too long - alternately hard and liquid, uneven in its decay. Their hands and shirts were covered with the stink of it, and JC had a streak of it across his forehead.
Ted had taken up his position the first time they saw something stir under the water. He gripped the stick loosely in his fist. It was a good stick - it was solid pine and fit neatly in his fist. He had left it out in a chalk circle under the full moon for three nights, and had hidden it under his pillow for two more, whispering to it wicked fantasies of rage and violence. He hadn't hit anyone with it yet - hadn't had to - but he knew it was good for it.
"It may not come out," JC said, looking up from his trapper-keeper. He had scrawled a picture of the monster on the notebook paper, with an approximate map of the area. His pencil had been broken, and he'd used the jagged remaining point to sketch an eye in a geometric pattern.
"It will," Ted said, not moving his eyes from the well.
"Well, eventually it will," JC agreed, strapping the trapper-keeper closed. "But we have no idea when."
"Time is a flat circle," Ted said. "All moments are one moment, separated by a consensual hallucination of causality. Everything's a circle and any effort to change or avoid it is futile. The only thing that's certain is that the monsters will come."
"Yeah," JC said, rolling over on his back to look at the darkening sky. "But Dad will be calling us soon."
Kicking the Inner Child
So I kicked a special ed kid today, right in the disability, which I hate doing. It was like hitting a dislexic kid because he can't read, or worse yet hitting a blind kid because he can't see. I'm exagerating, but it was certainly not a good day for James. A kid, who has been difficult the last several days, hit me today, which is no big deal. But my response was all disproportionate to the crime. He clipped me on the shoulder, and I turned and said, "Did you just hit me?" and he hit me again and I restrained him. Which, I grant you, doesn't sound all that bad. But it was the way I said it. It wasn't incredulous, it was mad. I sounded enraged, completely pissed off....which, in that moment I completely was. And he recoiled. The kid reeled, like I'd slapped him. He fronze as I held him, then when I let him go he ran to the corner and stood there, shaking. Which is not, by the way, normal for this child. He stood there, shaking, then starting saying I w
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