flax-golden

seasonal binding

My next-door neighbor wraps her trees each November.

Tying up the remnants of autumn in lengths of rope and string.

Binding them to ward off winter.

She explained it to me once, the fall after I moved in, over cups of apple cider held in fingerless gloves.

She does it every year.

I’m not really sure it works.

But sometimes those last few leaves seem to hold on to her trees a little longer.

After the rest of the trees on the street have given up.

Before they finally succumb to the frost.

When the snow comes, she replaces the strings with bright red ribbons.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

precautions

First there was the mat.

It didn’t say Welcome, but it wasn’t off-putting. And everyone knew how he was about keeping the house tidy. They wiped their paws as requested and were welcomed inside for tea and biscuits.

Then he put the plastic over the living room furniture. Even the lampshades were painstakingly covered. The teapot and the saucers wrapped like presents, though the cups themselves were left exposed for ease of drinking.

(Someone claimed he threw each cup away after it was used, but no one could be certain it was true, as he had a great many identical cups.)

Mostly, the neighbors just thought he was particular, even for a bear.

They didn’t really start worrying until he added the extra lock.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

all-seeing

The skull says I see you when pedestrians or trick-or-treaters or dog-walkers pass by. Eyes that have no place being in a skull, hovering in empty sockets, move disconcertingly from side-to-side.

The observation is followed by a metallic cackle of recorded laughter.

People jump or shriek or return the cackle with laughs of their own.

Sometimes they try to get the skull to speak again, but it won’t. Not until someone else falls into its gaze.

I see you.

It does see, even as it cackles. It can’t close those eyes, after all.

And it remembers.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

cinderella pumpkin

As soon as I read the sign and saw what the pumpkins were called I knew I had to have one.

My mom said no. She said they don’t make good jack-o’-lanterns.

“But they’re Cinderella pumpkins!” I explained. “They’re not for carving, they’re for turning into coaches to ride to balls at castles.”

Sometimes I worry that my mom is not so smart.

I had to beg, but she let me take the best one home.

I left it on the lawn next to the dressed-up-like-a-ghost lamp post so I can see it from my window.

After mom went to bed I put my princess dress and fancy shoes on, and now it’s almost midnight.

My Cinderella pumpkin is getting bigger.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

impractical footwear

“Are you really wearing those shoes?” the girl next to me asks in the pre-midnight lull before everything starts, looking down at my feet. From her tone I’m guessing her expression is some combination of incredulous and disgusted, but it’s too dark to see much of her face.

“Well, yeah,” I say, because they’re the only pair I have. They have decent traction, and I can run pretty fast in them.

“It’s your funeral,” she says, and I can see the dismissive shrug clearly in the moonlight as she turns away.

She’s wearing tall boots with zippers up the sides. They look heavy and they crunch the leaves a lot more than my sneakers do, so I don’t get why she’s playing the superior footwear card.

After midnight, I get about ten paces before I figure it out, tangled in cobwebs over a freshly turned grave.

I should have guessed that shoes with laces give them something else to grab on to.

Making it that much harder to get away.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

a suitor spurned

I met him at a party.

I told him he was sweet, but not my type.

It wasn’t exactly a lie.

It’s not like I threw the glass of wine he bought me in his face for asking or anything.

I tried to be nice about it.

But now, whenever I go outside, flocks of birds follow me.

Even statues of birds turn their heads to watch with vacant stares as I pass by.

It’s like being in a Hitchcock movie.

I’m not sure if they’ll lose interest eventually or if they’re just waiting for the right moment to swoop down and peck my eyes out.

I wish someone had told me who he was before I turned him down.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.