Fiction Fridays! Week 2

The Barn

By Emma Campbell

The aged barn sits on the same old hill with its green siding, once as bright as the spring grass, now chipped and worn away from years of weathering the storms.  Open the giant sliding doors and birds flutter from their nest to fly free to the warm south. Reveal the inner sanctuary and let the dirt and hay roll in with the wind.  A gust of musty air blows through the wide open space, abandoned after years of being forgotten. It now breathes in the harsh, cold air of winter that threatens to tear it apart like a long loathed enemy. 

The timeworn floorboards lie crooked on the floor, tread upon by generations of feet.  The wooden beams, rotten through with all their knots showing, barely hold the rickety structure together.  Splinters and nails jut out like knives in all directions from the trim—once pure white, now faded gray. 

Dust gathers in every cranny where the air has failed to breathe its way through.  There are cracks in the ceiling—places where the snow blows in during the winter nights.  Today the sky is an endless void filled with clouds and the breeze is a single, bitter breath.  Now the day’s light pokes through a single crevice and bursts into tiny fragmented beams of light—the only light within the dreary barn. 

                The windows are glazed over and refuse to open after all this time of remaining shut.  They overlook the dirt path where the wooden fence once lined the road, leading the way home.  Now there are only remnants of the timber and barbed wire that project out in all the jagged places, ensnaring any creature that dares draw near. 

                The metal ladder is frozen in its regular place: it leads up to the nook with the shelves and the old desk that was once used for reading tales of kings and kingdoms, knights and princesses. A few books have fallen onto the floor—pages scattered about, now blowing down the ladder and out the window with the winter wind.  The pictures of castles now lay faded on the ground.

Glass bottles still sit hollow on their shelves, accumulating dust rather than messages with their years.  There is a latched window that oversees the barren pasture, once blooming with spring, now coated in frost and trees that have begun to decay with time.

                Dripping from the cracks, the ice on the roof leaks onto the shelves, the pages, into the bottles, and forms puddles on the floor.  It forms a heartbeat that echoes through the vastness of the barn.  The wind picks up once more outside and whistles as it rattles the walls. 

Biting cold air howls. Creaking floor boards moan. The ice still drips, and drips, and drips.