This short story won “Honorable Mention” in round two of the NYC Midnight 250-Word Microfiction Challenge writing contest!
The way the contest works is: you receive a prompt at 11:59 PM containing a required genre, action, and word. You then have 24 hours to write a 250-word (maximum) short story incorporating all three.
My prompt was:
GENRE: Historical fiction
ACTION: Bricklaying
WORD: Step
Charlie
I lay down another brick. My body aches, but I can’t stop.
I owe this to Charlie.
The first body turned up on Canal Street, bloated, with black pustules in the armpits and sores around the mouth: Mary, the baker’s daughter. She died with her eyes open and her mouth wide, as if she had used her final breath to try and scream. To warn us.
“The Black Death,” they call it. Fitting.
Mary’s corpse drew a crowd of children who ran around her body, poking her with sticks and daring each other to touch her discolored skin. She was far more popular in death than she had been in life.
She lay rotting in the mud for half a day before my brother, Charlie, mustered up the courage to move her corpse.
My brother was a solitary creature. No one was around when he died.
A dreamer, Charlie used to imagine his body being encased in a marble tomb big enough to house all of his descendants, 80 generations down the line.
“Enough room for everyone,” he used to say with a wry smile.
I place the final brick, and take a step back. It’s not marble, but I think Charlie would be proud. He used to tell me that being a bricklayer was the most important job someone could have—that I created homes for the citizens of the world and carved out places for their souls to rest.
I hope his soul rests well here.