Getting lost

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He piggybacked both kids out of the pine forest, gnarled trees crouched like animals. He wiped his sweaty eyes on the baby’s head and panted in the thick air. He tiptoed past the wild goats so as not to alarm the children and tried not to panic when the horned beasts followed lazily behind. He lugged the kids past the last few straggly trees, relieved to see the parking lot a few yards ahead. He stumbled out onto the burning black lava field and into the excrutiating heartbreak one finds only when truly lost.

Some vacation, he thought.

 

This one’s a true story, slightly edited.

friday-fictioneers

9 thoughts on “Getting lost

  1. I think I might’ve been on one such vacation, except we had an odyssey on horses’ feet (okay, it was a 12-year-old van that decided to stop working). But, beyond the authenticity, nice work on the setting and language, with every word in the service of anthropomorphizing the forest and depicting the protagonist’s all-too-human struggle. A great read!

  2. Dear E.M.

    Sounds like the stories will be much better than the vacation. Well done. I was relieved to get to the parking lot with them.

    Shalom,

    Rochelle

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