Stone Snitch

Childhood memories often come complete with a hazy, nurturing comfort, but even the best ones carry a burdensome, bittersweet aftertaste.
I’d forgotten all about that summer in Kent at the Bloemfontein House, and the foul drinking water. What I do recall is Rex Bloemfontein’s diaries. Slick, greasy things bound in a cheap, ersatz leather; wild cursive loops and bowls exalting his strange beliefs on stonemasonry.

And other “wisdom”:

“When stone achieves a certain age, it becomes self-aware (and, it seems, spiteful),” went one such treatise.

In Bloemfontein House, mundane things became fantastical in my child’s mind: the trio of wych elms standing on the expansive lawns, more Boer defenders than trees (or, perhaps crosses atop Golgotha is more apt); the purple stains of laurel on the concrete of the garden’s colonnade, after falling prey to blackbirds (or my nine year old feet); the inspiring crenellations, cupolas and gables that turned Bloemfontein’s stately pleasure dome into a wizard’s castle.

Not that I’ll ever be asked back, bearing in mind what happened to old Rex’s carved portrait atop the portico’s lintel…

The carving was a monstrous thing, berating me whenever I passed underneath.
‘Bed-wetter!’ it once shrieked at me, when Ma and I returned from a Broadstairs trip.
‘I know who broke the sherry glasses!’ it screamed another time.
Once, Bloemfontein’s stone face stretched down to bite at my hair, interrogating me through gritted teeth whilst I dangled inches from the porch flagstones.
‘Shall I tell them, O, Thomas? Shall I tell them why the water’s foul?’

But Rex’s portico forgot: we can put the likeness of men on pedestals, but statues fall. A child’s hammer is enough to obliterate even granite…

Yet still, I hear it scream in my mind to this day.

DING DONG BELL,
PUSS IS IN THE WELL!!

Summary
Stone Snitch
Article Name
Stone Snitch
Description
Free weird speculative flash fiction from Beanwriting
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