Flash Fiction Friday

Sutterfield Cottage

by Donna L Martin

When I was much younger, no more than five or six, my mom would take my baby sister and me to Sutterfield Cottage every weekend while my father worked at a second job at the factory in the next town.  A kind of get away she would tell us.  We would run to pack our jammies and off we would go in our beat up car the forty six miles to the cottage.

Sutterfield Cottage had a certain charm back in those days, with all those windows and towering chimneys the crows loved to perch on to watch us while we gathered the eggs every morning.  Then, just as we made a run for the kitchen door, they would swoop down a cawing and squawking, just hoping we would drop an egg or two...but we never did.

The last weekend we were there, though, something was different about Sutterfield Cottage.  Even my mother was different.  The crows were still there but the place seemed darker, sadder somehow and I just couldn't figure out why my younger sister, who was three at the time, refused to enter the house.  Mom dragged her kicking and crying halfway across the yard before she finally just picked her up to carry her inside the house.  That left me to grab the suitcases and that's when I saw the woman.  Was it just a shadow from the junk in the attic I saw in that top window or something else?  Funny thing, but I could have sworn it moved...

*Now it's your turn.  What happens next?  Is the shadow just an old mannequin stored in the attic?  Or has an unexpected visitor come to Sutterfied Cottage?   Join in the fun with a sentence or a paragraph.  You don't have to run with my flash fiction...if someone else comments and you want to add to their story, then go for it.  Let's see where this picture prompt takes us!***