Isa
Issue 3: Haunt, August 2024
The quaint little town rested atop a quaint little cliff that hung over a quaint little lake, and the quaint little residents of said quaint little town often took to the quaint little lake for a quaint little swim, with the boldest of the Quaints (which was what they called themselves, quaintly enough) psyching themselves up in quaint little ways to run towards the edge of the cliff and fling themselves, quite quaintly, over the precipice and into the cool, crystal-clear waters of the aforementioned lake below.
But this quaint little town had a quaint little secret: there was a boy, you see, and he was not so quaint, and not so little, and therefore not particularly deserving of belonging to the Quaints. The boy (whose story has been whispered around many a quaint bonfire), had been borne of two perfectly normal Quaints: a stout woman whose womb had first borne three marvelously quaint little children before the boy's unfortunate arrival into the world, and a man whose ruddy face, high-appled-cheeks, and willingness to help anyone with their quaint little problems was seen as the quintessence of Quaintness. But the boy, from birth, (as the quaint little nurses from the quaint little hospital would swear they'd observed), was absolutely and obviously Not A Quaint; perhaps it had been the way his gaze always cast downward, away from the eyes of strangers and family alike; perhaps it had been the way his chubby, balled hands never really unballed, despite the multitude of attempts to force them to; but perhaps most of all it was the way he never cried, not once, not for milk, nor for comfort.
A strangeling, this UnQuaint boy acquainted himself with a particularly UnQuaint life through downcast eyes and fists dug deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched so frequently he soon developed a permanent hunchbacked gait—an ineffective shield against the vicious words thrown in his direction by quaint little classmates at the quaint little school he dragged his feet to, and presented a rather large target for the various household objects hurled at him by his quaint siblings in their quaint little home. A baggie had once hit him on his head, spilling its contents—Quaint Spaghetti-o’s—all over his stooped figure, and the ones responsible for the mischief had stood by and giggled while their youngest and least quaint sibling crouched and tried, at the screaming behest of his ruddy-faced father, to scoop the soggy, wet mess back into the plastic as best as he could with hands that could not open, only for him to be struck across the head once again with a mop he could not hold.
Despite this the boy shuffled through each hour of each day, quiet, content, obedient. When the Quaints began their fall routine of sweeping up crunchy, golden leaves into piles for the Quaint children to delight and frolick in, the UnQuaint boy watched from behind a tree, uninvited. The children laughed, oh so quaintly, and he attempted, unsuccessfully, to mimic the sound. Upon some branch up on the tree a quaint squirrel squeaked quaintly in horror. The UnQuaint boy huffed and crouched. He began to fist the carpet of leaves beneath him. He attempted to ball them together into tiny piles. When that proved futile he stood and dragged his feet along the ground, gathering leaves against a tattered shoe.
It took the UnQuaint Boy three quaint hours, but soon he had himself a quaint little mountain of leaves of his own.
The quaint mountain, however, soon turned to a dizzying quaint cloud, and as quaint leaves rained down upon the UnQuaint boy he stared in horror as the leaves settled to reveal a Quaint girl with a sinisterly quaint smile upon her quaint face.
What happened next only the Quaint girl with the wicked quaint kick and the UnQuaint boy knew (and possibly the squirrel too), but soon thereafter the Quaint girl would run home, sobbing all sorts of unQuaint things about the UnQuaint boy, holding her arm in seemingly some sort of quaint pain.
A disquiet soon began to swell within the Quaint community, a bubble that first began behind closed doors between trusted friends, encroaching out to front lawns where it enveloped the ears of next-door neighbours, finally bursting open into the hubbub of the marketplace and townsquare: that the boy was ruining the quaintness of their town, and had to be dealt with. The people whose Quaintness depended on how quaintly they appeared were quick to agree, while an exceedingly small number of others took longer to deliberate.
In the end, however, there were no words of dissent that arose from any Quaint—whether they deliberated or not—when at last a Quaint representative resolved to invite the boy to the edge of the cliff one night, under the stars and pretense that the Quaints were holding an extra-quaint birthday party for him.
As the boy shuffled forward toward the cliff on that quaint night, his back hunched over,
his eyes downcast, no one could see the sliver of a smile—the first the boy had ever
had—form on his lips, as he anticipated the hugs and presents and cheers he had
witnessed his siblings receive on their own birthdays so many times before, only for it
to
disappear in a moment of sobering realization as several quaint hands began to push him hard over the precipice.
The Quaints did not anticipate quite how disturbing it would be, to watch a boy who could not cry or unball his fists, a boy who could not look up to see his assailants, plummet, helpless and voiceless, into the lake.
The resounding splash of the UnQuaint boy faded into the silence of the night, a long silence the Quaints of that quaint town on that quaint cliff overlooking the quaint lake forever resolved to keep.
Isa writes poetry and prose in frenzied 2am states at the behest of her raging ADHD. When not writing, she spends her time finding homes for her orphaned stories. She hopes you welcome their bedraggled, cold, earnest bodies of words into yours with an open heart and—more importantly—a wry sense of humour.
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