You’re strolling through Yipping Woods when you spy the cranberry-colored umbrella beneath a fir tree.
I don’t need an umbrella, you think. Even if it’s got personality.
Then the sky, in response, cracks open.
Scurrying forward, you grasp the rotating cherry-wood handle. Angle it on your right shoulder, gloves and stockings (you don’t remember donning) turning cranberry to match.
Rain pitter-patters everywhere.
As you parade along in your newly red getup, a jar materializes in the crook of your left arm. Fireflies flutter from its opening: a glittery gold cloud that trails behind you.
If it really must drizzle…
Eventually, you reach the wood’s edge—where you pause without knowing why. Close your umbrella, only to re-open it.
The rain renews.
The jar refills.
And you resume strolling beneath the trees, when suddenly an echoing sound shakes the canopy of leaves.
Was that…a giggle?
________________________________________
A native Floridian, C. L. Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculative fiction. Her work appears in The Cosmic Background, Dark Moments, Dread Machine, Factor Four Magazine, Impossible Worlds, Martian Magazine, Stupefying Stories, and others. You can find her on various social media platforms @sidellwrites
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The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood
spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a
few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted,
usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries,
determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to
Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.
You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link.
This time the challenge was to write a story of up to 150 words in length, keying off two of the following words: turkey, parade, football, fir tree, stocking, or cranberry. However, the story could not be about a holiday, a meal, or a gathering of relatives.
Great story, but a special shout out to the picture that matches the story perfectly.
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