Somewhere in Nevada
#3 of Micro Fiction
Just a goofy little thing I wrote during the writer's meetup and flash fiction jam at Vancoufur. I liked it enough to post. Prompt was, as the title suggests, "Somewhere in Nevada..." and it ended up going very "Welcome to Nightvale"-ish.
Somewhere in Nevada, a small oasis reflects the desert sun. A quaint clapboard cabin rests ramshackle on its placid shore, shaded by a lone, leafless tree. Inside that cabin, a bed with wire springs creaking, dusty floorboards, and all appearance of abandonment. A single cockroach might scuttle across the wooden floor, until pounced upon by a stalking lizard. That lizard might scuttle over a long, horizontal crack in one of those unassuming floorboards, its prize fresh in its tiny maw.
Something darts out of the gloom, and the unsuspecting lizard vanishes into that crack.
Looking closer, one might find small carvings in the walls of the cabin. Sigils both ancient and strange, written in no known modern language. Watching them in the half-light of the sun, the eye might wander, but no pattern leads itself to fruition. Rather, the viewer might start to wonder what they were looking for in the first place, and perhaps how long they had been staring at the strange script.
Occasionally, the waters of the oasis outside ripple, though not by any apparent wind or insect. No fish live in this small, clear pool. If one were to look into it, they might see the bottom, or they might not. The pond keeps its secrets, and once, a jerboa darted into the water in attempts to escape a desert fox. Tufts of fox fur drifted away on the breeze once the splashing settled, and wet rodent footprints lead away from the pond, past the lonely shade tree.
Somewhere in Nevada, the oasis rests, and waits.