“Walking down a country road one shoe full of water
I should have watched where I stepped but I was hurrying to help my father”
Shawna grinned as she saved the lyrics to her ‘Songs’ folder in her phone, as she walked toward home, with her one dry shoe and her squishy wet one.
Thwack.
Thawck.
Thwack…… her wet shoe seemed to be creating the beat as she walked along.
“and now my sock is sliding down, way into my shoe
my toes feel like they’re waterlogged, I’m sure they’re turning blue”
Shawna was so tuned into her sudden burst of lyrical genius that she didn’t notice the sun had been overtaken by dark, strange, angry looking clouds that seemed to be so close to the treetops that they were smothering out any sound below it, pushing the already thick, humid air downward. The birds weren’t chattering. The cicadas weren’t screaming, the wind wasn’t blowing. There was no sound except the thwack of Shawna’s shoe.
Thwack.
Shawna’s next step landed softer than she expected, the thwack swallowed by the thickening air. She slowed, one hand drifting toward her phone as if the silence itself might reach out and take it from her.
The clouds had sunk even lower, heavy and swollen, pressing down on the treetops until the branches seemed to hunch under the weight. The road ahead looked darker than it should have at this hour, like someone had turned down a dimmer switch on the whole hollow.
She took another step.
Thwack.
Except this time, the sound didn’t echo forward the way it had before. It bounced back at her, close, too close, as if the trees lining the road had crept toward her while she wasn’t looking.
Shawna frowned and glanced over her shoulder.
Nothing behind her but the long stretch of road she’d already walked, the puddle she’d stepped in glinting like a small, guilty mirror. No cars. No wind. No birds. No cicadas. Just the kind of quiet that made her skin prickle, like the world was waiting for her to notice something she hadn’t yet.
She lifted her foot again, slower this time, listening.
Thwack.
And then – very faint, almost imagined – another sound answered from somewhere in the trees.
Not an echo.
A reply.