The Lock and the Leather [M/fmf M/F]

(c) 2007 by Grace Brackenridge
[505 words]

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This story is inspired by the lock and chain photo
(11.jpg) for the 2007 Short Story Contest.
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Uncle Yomer must have chained the barn door years ago, securing it with an old brass padlock.

I tried turning the ancient key but the internal mechanism had rusted shut.

Artifacts from my budding adolescence remained hidden.

-- -- -- -- --

Half a lifetime ago, the summer I turned 12...

Cousin Hillary was 16 and Cousin Paul was 13...

July 4th...

Cousin Pauly had smuggled firecrackers onto the farm... Hillary and I shared his guilt by watching from the riverbank...

We quickly doused the small fire... Nevertheless, Uncle Yomer and Aunt Mildred favored severe punishment...

Yomer wasn't really my uncle... Mom's uncle...

Aunt Mildred and Yomer had no children of their own... Yet on their farm, they acted like parents from bygone times...

Not Amish, they lived in that part of Pennsylvania... They had many old-fashioned ideas...

Like a midnight "trip to the barn..."

Prudish to the hilt, I'll never understand why they made us strip...

The scratch of a wooden match head against the sawhorse leg... The smell of sulfur and burning kerosene from the lantern swinging lazily from a coarse rope... The stench of horse manure commingled with alfalfa... Powered dirt between our toes...

The smell of leather oil as Uncle Yomer conditioned the strop, cracking it against the saddle... The nervous stomping of horses in their stalls, sensing tension...

Cousin Hillary stepped first to the saddle suspended over the sawhorse...

I noticed her erect, hard nipples... I glanced at Cousin Pauly and saw my first erection...

Aunt Mildred grabbed Hillary's straight blond hair with both fists...

Leather cracked like gunfire against bare flesh... The horses whinnied...

Strange, throaty moans came from Hillary... Stale, pungent dust was sent airborne as Hillary clawed the dirt floor frantically with her bare toes...

Aunt Mildred grabbed Cousin Paul by the ear and hair... I wondered how Paul felt when she rammed his manhood against the saddle leather...

Paul made sounds like an animal... His skin turned ugly colors under the dim flickering yellow lantern... Horses stomped... When he stood, Paul was no longer erect...

I can't remember what happened to me... I remember wet anticipatory secretions... I remember Aunt Mildred pulling my hair...

I did pee...

Afterwards, Mildred double-slapped me for "losing control..."

-- -- -- -- --

"Thought I'd find you here," said Paul from behind, jolting me back.

He wore his dark suit from the funeral. "Only building still standing. Fire took everything else."

"Fire is dangerous," I shrugged, grabbing the key and rattling the lock. "We're locked out."

"Locked out of what?"

I shrugged. "History. Passion."

I faced him directly. "An awakening."

Paul smiled. "Lots happened behind this door. Come."

On the far side, Paul pulled several boards away -- a secret entrance.

Inside, time had stopped...

The saddle straddled the sawhorse still and the strop hung from a rusty nail...

"Needs oiling," said Paul, bringing down the old leather strop with a wicked crack against the empty saddle seat.

"So oil it, Pauly," I smiled as I unbuttoned my black satin blouse and unzipped my dark skirt.

This time, I remembered everything.

This was a beautiful story, evocative of days past, and future events. It was also beautifully written- a perfect little gem. So much power and heat in under 500 words. Amazing. Oh, did I mention it was also very, very hot? I longed to be there watching. I longed to be Paul. I longed to be the narrator.

One thing that impressed me about this story was how the author used the setting to set the mood and tell much of the tale. The author neatly captures the paradox of being terrified of something that, over the years, becomes a source of captivation. This experience is shared by many of us, and baffles most of us - but not our protagonist. It is rare to see this type of story pulled off in so few words. The "picture" that inspired the story did not merely make an appearance. It became a central theme.

Your description of the scene inside the barn was well done. I got a sense of being in that barn and could almost see the dust and smell the leather. The wooden match striking against the sawhorse and the lantern dangling from the coarse rope gave some nice peripherals to accompany the spanking scene. The story has a nice rustic, old fashioned feel. It would be a challenge to get the depth you were after, covering such a large span of time while being restricted to using so few words, so you really did a nice job.

I liked the retrospective point of view, the adults seeking the completion of the desire spurred by childhood memory. This author is always very good about including the sensual details that I crave, such as " . . . Hillary clawed the dirt floor . . . " and the smell of sulfur, the scratch of the wooden match.

Irregular punctuation is something best applied when you want to make an impact. A good test of how effective it is, is to rewrite whatever one used it on without it to see how the writing changed. I found that the application of the " . . . " distracted more than strengthened the piece, and it does fine without it. This author is a strong enough writer that she doesn't need cheap tricks to pack a wallop.

I'm not the biggest fan of using sentence fragments as an easy way to get poetry into prose, but there's really no other way to put as much *story* as this one has into the space, and in this case it also works brilliantly to suggest the fragmentary nature of memory, and the focus on the small and otherwise insignificant details which leap to the foreground at times of particular intensity. There's an authentic flavour to the whole thing, and the framing device makes the story particularly rich and layered.