Johnny Wraith Stories

Lightning casts its web and dusk changes to night. Thunder claps. Rain begins to trickle; clouds spit a little hail before letting loose the water for mud.

A hooded old woman strikes her shovel into the softening earth. She scrapes against rock. Roots crack. She is weeping. The wrinkles in her face collect and carry the tears, and the rain.

The miserable, ancient mother digs her children’s grave.

A pit opens, and one by one, the bodies are thrown into a pile. 

The shovel keeps striking. 

She continues weeping and the rain does not let up. Thunder claps.

She remembers giving birth to each of them, how she squeezed them out and slapped air into their lungs. How as children they laughed and frolicked, ran about with smiling faces!

Now they are dead – no longer smiling.

Do they whisper curses for having been born? Do they curse her?

She keeps working, weeping – thunder strikes – rain keeps splashing down. She keeps working.

After laboring the entire night, the work is finally finished – all the spoiled infant flesh has been thrown into the ground, covered up forever.

She collapses – splashes into the mud. The rain begins relenting. Thunder strikes the last time

Roots sprout like snakes and burrow deep into her decrepit body. Leaves sprout from her mouth, eyes, and pores.

The golden rays of morning dawn, revealing a beautiful girl lying in the old woman’s place. She yawns and stretches. Her eyes pop open and she giggles aloud. Onto her naked feet she leaps, out from tattered robes. She begins singing joyously, and then she skips away. 

Forgetfulness and satyrs on her mind.