Photographs lacking context offer numerous possible stories, and few photographs are more mysterious than those without a known author or time period. In every print issue of Don’t Take Pictures, a writer is presented with a found vintage photograph to use as inspiration for a micro-fiction story. In doing so, the photograph is given new meaning, and the truth of the image is subject to interpretation. To coincide with our our current issue’s theme (The Fiction Issue), we are looking back at some previously published stories.
Photo courtesy of John Foster/Accidental Mysteries
Sweat pooled between Eugene’s shoulder blades and drained down his bony spine. Already he could feel, under his thick wool sport coat, the stiff fabric of his dress shirt, so crisp and dry when he’d put in on less than an hour ago, starting to stick and drag against the cotton of his undershirt, which already clinged to his moistening back.
It was the damn ice cream cone. Sized as if for a giant it floated by, held to earth by four men in dark outfits straining against long ropes. The sun was out, unseasonably warm for a Thanksgiving Day. Already the ice cream was starting to melt, as if hell-bent on assaulting everyone—the clapping, laughing, oblivious fools dressed up in their holiday best—with flies and mud and filth that left everything and everyone stained and ruined.
Eugene knew it was too late already. Soon the ice cream would start to slide down the length of the cone, catching and pooling in the crunchy grooves and depressions. Then it would be dropping off the pointy end of the cone, first in drips—one, two, three—then in a flood, like rain cascading over the lip of an uncleaned gutter. Eugene knew the sticky trail that would be left behind, children and adults splashing through like puddles in the aftermath of a storm, their shoes and socks irrevocably ruined. Eugene could see the mess clearly as if it were already there, the sticky, dirty mess, and his mother, looming between the buildings, face twisted in anger, wooden spoon held high….
Eugene turned on his heel and retreated through the crowd, making way, pushing and shoving, mumbling apologies in the wake of indignant protests. He had to get away before Mother saw.
Chris La Tray is a writer who lives near Missoula, MT. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays From the World At Large won the 2018 Montana Book Award.
This story first appeared in Issue #13, Fall 2019