Flash Friday 3-21-14 Lost Wallet in Flash Friday

“Just up here Mar, c’mon, it’s just up here.”

His loose sole flapped on a rock, sounded like a beached fish to Mar. She smiled. She couldn’t see his grubby paws in the underground dusk, but she knew he’d be tossing them out for balance.

“I’m coming, I --- what is this?”

The light was scatter-gunned, like it was shining through grating. It seemed to be coming from the wrong place though; Mar wanted it to come from above and when it didn’t she couldn’t place it. The ceiling to the grotto was moist, dense, gray and green, and, in places, like a 360 grating or a hamster cage, it was backlit.

“I told you. It’s where the lost things are.”

“Punkin’ that’s foolishness.”

“I didn’t make it.”

“Yeah, but, if the lost things are anywhere they ain’t lost.”

Mar almost had a twinge of conscious, arguing with the boy; she was just talking to keep from staring gap-jawed. The almost twinge was short lived, he was her boy like she was his girl and there wasn’t anything to explain. And then the twinge busted out of her and cleaved to a wall. “What was that?” he asked, “Mar, what the hell was that?”

“How’d you find this place?”

“I dunno.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I. Duh. Ennn. Oh. Kay? I just … did. I thought you would, uh, like it? Want to see it.”

The floor was littered with wallets and purses, empties and never fills, cigarette butts and broke in two cigarettes, lottery tickets and parking tickets, little sharp shiny things and big clumpy dull things and … so were the walls and the ceiling. Some of the light came through the gap in the boys sole, wrapped around it, curled up and took a nap.

“Punkin’?”

“hum?”

“Come on, we gotta go and you can’t come back here ever.”

She held his grubby little paw fast in her own grubby little paw, and pulled at him to follow her.

“Why Mar?”

“Cause I found you.”

His sole didn’t slap on the way down; there was a small squishy cushion of light.