To the Other Side of the World

“How deep do you think it goes?”

She stared at the hole in the ground with a sense of wary curiosity, brown eyes wide and thoughtful. It sat smack in the middle of the poppy fields by their house, a blotch of deepest black among the sea of endless, crimson flowers.

“Dunno.” The boy at her side picked up a rather large stick and began poking at it. She instantly panicked.

“Don’t do that!” she yelled, reaching forward to slap the stick from his hand. He agilely stepped out of her range. “There’s probably somethin’ livin’ in there!”

“So?”

“So you can’t just go pokin’ a stick in it!”

“Sure I can,” he said-and he did. She huffed loudly, putting her hands on her hips and sticking her lower lip out.

“What if it’s a snake or somethin’?” The girl watched nervously as he pushed the stick in deeper and deeper.

He grinned wickedly. “I like snakes,” he answered. “I hope it’s something better than a rabbit, at least. That’s what mom said it was. Just a rabbit hole.”

The boy glanced up at her. His eyes were shining mischievously. “But I don’t think it is. It’s too big, see?”

The long stick, which was nearly as tall as she was, was almost completely enveloped in the darkness of the hole. The boy’s hand was dangerously close to the opening as he continued to push it further down.

“Stop it,” she warned, apprehension crawling over her skin as he started to shove his arm into the void.

But he only grew more and more excited when the stick continued to fail to come into contact with something solid. He was up to his elbow, now. “This is really, really deep!” he shouted gleefully.

“It might go all the way to the other side of the world!”

“Stop it!” the girl shouted again, but he ignored her. He knelt on the grass, leaning down so that his entire arm, all the way up to his shoulder, was underneath the earth. “You shouldn’t do that, mom said to leave it alone! I’m-I’m going to tell on you!” She turned on her heel to head towards their house, sprinting across the fields of endless, crimson flowers.

She was halfway there when she heard the scream.

poppies

 

jmr

7 thoughts on “To the Other Side of the World”

  2. It’s cool, you know, finding a collaborative literary project online. Reading through a bunch of cool bios, then reading the latest piece. Then realising, by the end, that it was all a ruse: ‘Jamie Marie Rose’ not being a real person, instead being a fake pen name, for Stephen King.

    And in the off chance that compliment seems accusatory of copycatting: Awesome post; you have a real talent for tense anticipation. I could easily read a bigger, multi-dimensional version of this story. Great format for a blog, by the way!

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