Title: Larry The Log
Word: thimble
Challenger: baloobas
Length: 200 words exactly

From inside the loft, it would have appeared as if the square trapdoor in the floor had started to move of its own accord.

Moments later, it was pushed over from beneath, and a fair haired woman of a certain age popped her head through the gap. Quickly followed by the rest of her, she stood upright beneath the roof of the building. She glanced around, seeing almost every square foot of boarding covered with boxes.

She was at that age where, if she sat on the stairs for a moment, she sometimes had problems remembering if she'd been going up the stairs or coming down them.

And her presence in the loft was symptomatic of her plight, for she knew she'd come upstairs for some reason, but couldn't, for the moment, recall why.

She opened a box at random, hoping that the sight of objects therein would spark a memory or two. She lifted a thimble out of the box and absent-mindedly slipped it in her cardigan pocket. She opened a book and saw it was her diary from seventy or so years earlier. Helpless, she wept at the child's writing and salutations therein, but began reading: "Dear Larry..."

© Lee Barnett, 2005