Below is my response to Patti Abbott's 'drabble' challenge. A drabble, I was surprised to learn, is a story that is exactly 100 words long.
Ichabod
The red letters fade.
No one will say who wrote
the name Ichabod over the front door. The glory had left that country church long before the
graffiti ever appeared. Eternal whispers persist in a congregation as parted as
the Red Sea.
“Is it true?”
“I don’t want to believe
it.”
“He the preacher.”
“And she. Married. Those
poor children.”
Sunday potlucks sour.
Suspicion walks the road whenever people drive pass.
And then the bodies, arranged
upon the altar. Pastor J____ and Mrs. K___. Naked as Adam and Eve. Sinful.
The artist reminds: Ichabod gets a new coat of paint.
