The Sixteenth Street cathedral had been under renovation for nearly a year. Mr. Hughes and his team were contracted to May, but frequent mishaps forced them to postpone the deadline indefinitely.
“It’s cursed.” Judi stared up at the four working men on the scaffold. Jake, balancing on two beams, looked woozy from his previous malaria infection. Mr. Hughes and Ryan both wore back braces from the last fall. Burt had a mask over his mouth. Was he still coughing blood?
“But the church is holy ground,” Shirl said.
Holy doesn’t explain away the slave auctions, Judi wanted to tell her, held in the basement below the sanctuary Sunday evenings after service. The evidence was in the library archives. Christian men defended their atrocious acts with the Bible, but still preferred to grope the appendages of human beings in secret.
“The spirits don’t want to be disturbed.”
“You’re freaking me out with that crazy Voodoo stuff!”
“Interesting you’d find that crazy.” Judi counted four men on the scaffold, but spotted a fifth on the roof.
word count: 174
—Nortina
Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers is a weekly challenge where you write a story in 75-175 using the provided photo prompt as inspiration. Click the froggy icon to read other stories inspired by the photo and add your own.
Well told!
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A lovely mix of politics, history and spiritualism!!
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Thanks! 🙂
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Nice build in the suspense. I like the look on the atrocities of the past and how they are ignored now.
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Thanks! It’s so sad how the horrors of our past are being ignored now. In order for us to grow from our history, we have to know it, even the uncomfortable parts.
Thanks for reading! 🙂
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little twist at the end interesting
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😉
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Whoa–that’s a great mixture of light and darkness. It’s kind of disturbing just how often history reveals these sorts of cross-purposes–what we say we’re doing and what we actually do.
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Thanks! So true. I also think it’s interesting to see how things change over history. Things we were so sure were “right” back then are frowned on or illegal now. It’s always fun to write about that.
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So much of our history is built on “unsavory” things we don’t like to talk about. It’s always interesting to see how people’s perspectives change when confronted with those realities. You capture that well!
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I agree–The way we discuss things from the past now… Yes! Definitely amazing!
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Great take Nortinia. I wouldn’t want to disturb those ghosts, unless it meant truly, sharing what happened to them and the double standards supposed “Christian” men practiced with slavery.
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Acknowledging the horrors that happened to them could definitely help them to move on, but I wouldn’t want to disturb them either!
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Creepy… Excellent take on the prompt!
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Thanks!
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I wouldn’t be standing underneath the scaffold, that’s for sure!
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Nope! I feel another mishap coming…
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Those slave auctions and groping appendages in secret are hopefully, a thing of the past. I can’t stand the thought that they would still be happening. I wonder who that fifth man is – the one on the roof? Wonderful story, Nortina!
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Thanks! The slave auctions are part of the churches dark, dark past, which might have manifested into the mysterious figure on the roof… 😉
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Oh, I see!! Great story/poem!!
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