The Wince
By Michael Treder
In all his years, God himself had probably never planned on such a bizarre human specimen as the so-called Rogue Isaiah; but it happened nonetheless, and Isaiah was born one cold winter to Paulo and Marsha Whiles, cursed with a cleft pallet and two very awkward clubbed feet, it's even said how upon seeing the child for the first time, his own drunken father mumbled, “Just give the boy crossed eyes and a sixth finger and he'll have the whole set.”
It was over one hundred and fifty years ago, in the lonely mountain town of Bellwether, but that doesn't mean that the locals don't still talk about it to this day as if it were only yesterday. The nostalgic folk of the hills have an odd way of reminiscing about the distant past:
“I remember the boy, I saw him with my own eyes, and I feared for my life. He actually glared at me.” The stories would go on and on and with little truth, and sadly, the stories that did contain elements of truth were deemed too uninteresting and no one bothered to tell it like it really was. ’cause no one remembered how it really was.
The boy, this Rogue Isaiah, as he was devilishly called by the town’s more adolescent population, was kept mostly indoors for the length of his miserable, short life. There were stories circulated in the town post office that said that his own parents kept him locked up in an iron cage in the cellar, but when the Whiles’ house burnt down in the big fire of ’91, the ashes fortunately revealed no such cage.
That fire, the one that tore through the town of Bellwether one hundred and twenty years ago, was only the start of the town’s problems, famine, job-loss, and an overtly suicidal town council soon followed, but all this happened long after the Rogue passed on from his cruel life, but that, however, didn’t stop the boy from being blamed for the town’s many misfortunes and transgressions. The truth was that Isaiah Whiles lived only until his eleventh birthday and then he died.
There was no funeral for the boy, no service, just a small cardboard box dropped into a knee-deep hole in the center of Justice Field. There were only four mourners in attendance, two gravediggers, his mother, and an ugly brown dog called Lincoln. (The dog later contracted rabies and had to be put down.)
Though the story goes that before his death, the little boy, the Rogue Isaiah, or so the busybody housewives claimed, had somehow, through witchcraft or sorcery, placed a cruel, tragic curse upon the town. This spawn of the devil, as he was once dubbed by Reverend Morrison, had placed some evil hex or plague on the mountain town of Bellwether.
Whether it was with his crooked, nearly deformed fingers, or with his abnormally large frontal lobe that allowed for some strange, devilish form of telepathy, it didn’t matter much to the fearful. It was a curse nonetheless, a wicked, wicked curse.
And no one argued that fact because in Bellwether no one believed otherwise.
They speak of it still, in hushed circles, old tales passed on now by the ignorant and the reckless. They believed that every sad, pathetic thing the boy ever touched, every unfortunate thing the ugly boy ever looked at or desired either died or was turned to stone, every frail and stupid thought that ever crossed Isaiah Whiles’ vacant, distant mind came to pass, came into being, or was destroyed, and his very wince, the superstitious locals claimed, could destroy heaven and hell themselves, and his very tears would drown the whole, sad world. And they feared the town’s string-of-pearls of bad luck was only the beginning.
Even after his death, people hung garlic in their window boxes for lifetimes to come, and the reverend -the idiot- prayed himself into an early grave, and, yes, even the poor dog that attended his funeral died without so much as a whimper.
The town failed to get by after the boy’s passing, tales grew, stories spread, lies over lies, and misconstrued facts laid over half-truths and liberties, and despite its malcontent, the town just never moved on.
In all his years, little Isaiah Whiles never once knew just how much impact he would have over the mountain town of Bellwether, in all his sad, lonely years, the little boy, deformed and frail, would never once know the power he held in just a wince.
- - -
Michael Treder is a playwright and aspiring filmmaker living in Montreal. His short fiction has appeared in Quantum Muse, the Cynic Online Magazine, Flashes in the Dark, and Death Head Grin.
By Michael Treder
In all his years, God himself had probably never planned on such a bizarre human specimen as the so-called Rogue Isaiah; but it happened nonetheless, and Isaiah was born one cold winter to Paulo and Marsha Whiles, cursed with a cleft pallet and two very awkward clubbed feet, it's even said how upon seeing the child for the first time, his own drunken father mumbled, “Just give the boy crossed eyes and a sixth finger and he'll have the whole set.”
It was over one hundred and fifty years ago, in the lonely mountain town of Bellwether, but that doesn't mean that the locals don't still talk about it to this day as if it were only yesterday. The nostalgic folk of the hills have an odd way of reminiscing about the distant past:
“I remember the boy, I saw him with my own eyes, and I feared for my life. He actually glared at me.” The stories would go on and on and with little truth, and sadly, the stories that did contain elements of truth were deemed too uninteresting and no one bothered to tell it like it really was. ’cause no one remembered how it really was.
The boy, this Rogue Isaiah, as he was devilishly called by the town’s more adolescent population, was kept mostly indoors for the length of his miserable, short life. There were stories circulated in the town post office that said that his own parents kept him locked up in an iron cage in the cellar, but when the Whiles’ house burnt down in the big fire of ’91, the ashes fortunately revealed no such cage.
That fire, the one that tore through the town of Bellwether one hundred and twenty years ago, was only the start of the town’s problems, famine, job-loss, and an overtly suicidal town council soon followed, but all this happened long after the Rogue passed on from his cruel life, but that, however, didn’t stop the boy from being blamed for the town’s many misfortunes and transgressions. The truth was that Isaiah Whiles lived only until his eleventh birthday and then he died.
There was no funeral for the boy, no service, just a small cardboard box dropped into a knee-deep hole in the center of Justice Field. There were only four mourners in attendance, two gravediggers, his mother, and an ugly brown dog called Lincoln. (The dog later contracted rabies and had to be put down.)
Though the story goes that before his death, the little boy, the Rogue Isaiah, or so the busybody housewives claimed, had somehow, through witchcraft or sorcery, placed a cruel, tragic curse upon the town. This spawn of the devil, as he was once dubbed by Reverend Morrison, had placed some evil hex or plague on the mountain town of Bellwether.
Whether it was with his crooked, nearly deformed fingers, or with his abnormally large frontal lobe that allowed for some strange, devilish form of telepathy, it didn’t matter much to the fearful. It was a curse nonetheless, a wicked, wicked curse.
And no one argued that fact because in Bellwether no one believed otherwise.
They speak of it still, in hushed circles, old tales passed on now by the ignorant and the reckless. They believed that every sad, pathetic thing the boy ever touched, every unfortunate thing the ugly boy ever looked at or desired either died or was turned to stone, every frail and stupid thought that ever crossed Isaiah Whiles’ vacant, distant mind came to pass, came into being, or was destroyed, and his very wince, the superstitious locals claimed, could destroy heaven and hell themselves, and his very tears would drown the whole, sad world. And they feared the town’s string-of-pearls of bad luck was only the beginning.
Even after his death, people hung garlic in their window boxes for lifetimes to come, and the reverend -the idiot- prayed himself into an early grave, and, yes, even the poor dog that attended his funeral died without so much as a whimper.
The town failed to get by after the boy’s passing, tales grew, stories spread, lies over lies, and misconstrued facts laid over half-truths and liberties, and despite its malcontent, the town just never moved on.
In all his years, little Isaiah Whiles never once knew just how much impact he would have over the mountain town of Bellwether, in all his sad, lonely years, the little boy, deformed and frail, would never once know the power he held in just a wince.
- - -
Michael Treder is a playwright and aspiring filmmaker living in Montreal. His short fiction has appeared in Quantum Muse, the Cynic Online Magazine, Flashes in the Dark, and Death Head Grin.
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This is a really god story :) I enjoyed reading it in hopes to get something extra at the end, but it never happened. Still, your story made me read on, and I wasn't dissapointed, good work :)