Azukibabaa

Another flash fiction exersize, though I wasn't feeling the challenge and made it pretty generic :P

A little old hag moved into the little old house on the outskirts of town by the river. On Saturday the house was abandoned. On Sunday we watched the shriveled old hag drive a coughing old pickup truck from the woods to the bean elevator. She handed the boss a large brown sack of something that made his eyes glow, and returned to the woods; the old pickup wheezing and lurching under the bags and bags of beans piled in its bed.

Tom Calloway and I joked about it. She was probably gassy as hell. And who would need that many beans anyways? What could you possibly do with that many beans? We sat on the porch of the bar which faced the bean elevator all evening, running out of things one could do with beans long before we ran out of beer.

Monday morning I was chopping wood in the front yard and the cough and squeak of that godforsaken old pickup chugged down my road. It passed right by me, the old hag was in the driver’s seat �" eyes barely above the steering wheel. An hour later I peeked through my window curtain when I heard the truck again. It was coming back from town piled high with more beans.

Tuesday morning the hag again went into town with an empty truck and went back out with a mountain of beans. Tuesday evening Tom and Sam Calloway’s little girl went missing. She was outside playing and never came in for supper. The sheriff put out an amber alert.

Wednesday Morning I waited for that hag to come up the road with her empty pickup. She never did. She never did Thursday or Friday or Saturday either. On Sunday, August Wurt �" the orphan who lived at the church �" was not present for mass. On Monday no one had seen him.

The sheriff had a hunch and we went out to the old house by the river. It looked just like it had on the previous Saturday except the mountains of ground beans. Great brown pyramids of wasted beans littered the front and back yard. We searched inside the house; it looked like no one had lived there in years. We looked out by the toolshed and followed the pungent stench of burnt pork to the back and saw a pair of poor little skeletons; cooked and picked clean.

Author's Note

For those of you who are not aware - Azukibabaa is a Japanese folk creature that grinds beans and devours children. (Super obscure I know but that was the point :D)

Reviews

[Marie]

I didn't kow that. One more thing I've learned. Good story.