‘All day, Lucky had been thinking about a cheesy horror movie she’d watched on TV with her mom. Not the movie, really, but the title — Something Wicked This Way Comes. She thought it might be from an even older story or maybe it was a poem . . . That line had struck a chord with Arnya, who started saying it to her reflection like an affirmation before she left for the night.
She’d stand in the mirror and give herself the once over, then nod. “Lookin’ good, Arn. Watch out, world, something wicked this way comes.”
Lucky had never been sure what the saying meant, but today, as storm clouds gathered in the darkening sky around them, she thought of it with a deep sense of terror.
The storm never broke. Not over their Pathfinder as she drove hard down the highway towards the Ozarks. Not when they pulled into a neon-lit motel with a sleepy old clerk who asked for cash and slipped it into his pocket instead of the till. Not when she fell asleep, her spoon tucked safely under her thin pillow. But it was coming. Of that she was sure.’
***
“The Crusher”, we called it. “It” was a stained and rusty, broken down piece of equipment at the end of one of the many trails which snaked through the sand pit across the gravel road from the house I grew up in.
On reflection, I suppose it would have resembled an extra large cement mixer, parked and permanently fixed in place. Last time I looked, it had vanished. I wished I’d taken a photo of it.
My brothers and I would climb up inside it, over it, all around it. Once inside, it wasn’t dark as the rounded walls had large, about 2-inch holes cut out of it, all the way around. When we’d come out of it after sitting a while, I’m sure the backs of our legs and arms would appear as though we’d had a tussle with an octopus.
We speculated it had once been used to tumble or crush large rocks, but to us, the Crusher was a fort, a school, a spaceship. It was our “hollow deck” that could be whatever we wanted it to be.
MEC 2023
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