The first story in the Friends of the Springfield Woods Creative Challenge...
The Creative Challenge: From the "artifacts" found during the various cleanups, create a story or poem or graphic sequence which tells how it got in the Springfield Woods. Creative works submitted will be published here on the blog. To submit: butchberry@hotmail.com and specify "Springfield Woods Creative Challenge" in the subject line.
The Ring
by Al Brathway
There is an area in Baltimore, Maryland called the Springfield
Woods, where an interesting situation happened in the spring of 2012. Sharon
and her friend Tabitha had joined a neighborhood clean up group and their
assignment was to assist in cleaning up Springfield Woods. Springfield Woods is
a wooded area that is separated by a fence from an apartment building complex.
Ten feet from the fence is a stream. Over the years the area between the fence
and the stream has been used as an area where people have thrown their trash.
You name it… Bottles, garbage, some furniture, whatever… The job was messy but
Sharon and Tabitha were determined to get that area cleaned up!. The stream was
(is) beautiful when not littered! What made the job more difficult was the fact
that an under-brush grew in the ten foot space as well, but the girls were
undaunted! They were going to get the job done.
The sun peeked through some light clouds and the day was
grey looking when the girls started their task. It had rained lightly before
they got started so the area was damp. They had their gear on. Heavy leather
boots, jeans, water repellent jackets, hats and heavy gloves. They plowed through
the garbage and dirt, bagging everything that was out of place. Hours passed
and the light was short at this point but the girls had made a dent with their
hard work.
Sharon had gotten to the stream first and decided to sit to catch
her breath. As she sat by the stream, the flow of the water and the sound of it
captured her undivided attention. It was like she was hypnotized. As she stared
in the water, she saw something unique that did seemed out of place. Sharon
took off her gloves and stuck her hands in the water.
“Oh my god!” she
screamed! “What?” Tabitha responded quickly. “What happened?” Tabitha rushed
over to where Sharon was…
“Look at what I found!” Sharon opened her hand and a strange
looking object sat in her palm. It was a ring covered in crud and the metal was
worn from the water.
“Look at that,” Tabitha quipped. “That’s a strange looking
ring!”
“Yeah,” Sharon answered. “I
wonder where it came from?”
“I don’t know,” Tabitha answered, staring at it
like it had some kind of weird power. Tabitha then snatched it from Sharon’s
palm.
“What if there is some story behind it?” Tabitha asked.
“Story? Please!
It’s nothing but a beat up, old ring. Looks like someone just threw it away. It
is ugly!” was Sharon’s take.
“It is ugly… I think there is something to it! Let
me have it?” Tabitha asked.
“Go ahead, I don’t want it!”
Tabitha pocketed it and
the two girls packed up their stuff and called it a day.
A couple of days later, Sharon’s cellphone rang.
“Girl, I gotta see you. Where are you?”
Tabitha screamed into the phone.
“I’m on my way home.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you
there!”
An hour later, Tabitha shows up at Sharon’s apartment.
Sharon just happened to live in the apartment building that was on the opposite
side of the fence where the ring was found.
“Girl, you are not going to believe
this!” Tabitha shouted!
“Believe what?”
“I went online and I found this website
called the Smoking Pistol. It had categories and one of them was rings, so I
clicked on it. Guess what I found?” Tabitha asked.
“What?”
“The ring! I found
the ring on there!” Tabitha was excited and nervous.
“The story goes that this ring is a possession from
apartment 666. It belonged to a man named Beldar who has lived there since the
building was built. His family had some political pull in this neighborhood,
back in the day, and he was one of the first people to get a spot in here!”
Tabitha crowed.
“Okay… What does that have to do with the ring?” Sharon asked.
“The
story goes that Beldar was a plastic surgeon. He stayed in most of the time. He was hardly ever seen in the neighborhood!”
"That’s stupid,’ Sharon replied. “How did he eat if he didn’t come out? He had
to go grocery shopping sometimes!”
“That where the story gets weird. There was
a girl that used to shop for him. When anybody saw her, they would see her go
to the store, then come back and not leave the apartment until it was time to
go back to the grocery store!” Tabitha explained.
“Get outta here!” Sharon
responded.
“Yeah… it goes on to say that when the girl grew up and got up enough
nerve, she left the apartment to go to the store, she took the ring off, threw
it over the fence and was never seen again!” Tabitha’s voice lowered.
“You got
the ring?” Sharon asked.
“I got it right here,’ Tabitha reached into her pocket
and pulled it out. It was all clean and shiny from Tabitha cleaning it.
“We
should go to the apartment and see what’s up!” Sharon suggested.
“Hell no! I’m
not going nowhere near that apartment!” Tabitha responded. Sharon laughed.
“Give it to me!” Tabitha handed it over, looking at Sharon like she was crazy.
“What are you going to do with the it?’ Tabitha asked.
“I’m gonna go to 666 and
return the it!”
“Are you crazy?” Sharon laughed.
“I’m not crazy. I’m just gonna
go there and return the ring. I’m sure they would appreciate it.”
Three weeks passed and Sharon had not been seen in school.
Tabitha had been to her place only to be told that she is missing. Sharon’s
mother has done all that was in her power to find her daughter. It was like she
vanished without a trace. There had been reports that a girl that people
thought looked like Sharon was thought to be seen at the grocery store but to
look at her up close, she did not look like Sharon.
If you think about it, a ring can represent a cycle… IJS!
© A. Dacostab Brathway, January 14, 2013
