Many Mini Stories

Lemons

Suspense... It is up to the audience to interpret what happened...

It was in the middle of the afternoon, when workers came tired from their jobs and the children walked home from school that, a middle-aged man would be seen lurking around the front yard of an old, abandoned, wooden house. Everyday, he'd come and poke around the dried yard with his long, bamboo staff. No one knew where he came from. Rumors had it that he'd come out of the nearby lagoon, dragging his red wagon filled with lemons.

He wore old, ragged soaked-wet clothes on sunny days and fools robes on rainy days. As for the house he stood in front of everyday, its was empty. He never set foot inside. Spider webs and dust covered every inch. A big, dried, dead tree stood still on the front yard. The wind howled through the cracks of the walls in whispered screeches. The house, cast aside and dreary, was never alone though, because the middle-aged man would always be there as if he were keeping it company.

In the yard he would arrange a nicely organized wooden stand and some baskets filled with lemons to attract people to buy his freshly handmade lemonade. When he squeezed the lemons, in his eyes he'd see the fresh-flowing lemon juice pouring into the cups, but the reality made people's spine shiver cold. Dark red blood poured out of what was thought to be a lemon. It oozed between his fingers, dripping into the cups.

"What a brilliant magic trick!", many said. Others would think it was a sick joke, do to the raw acrid scent it'd spread. They even dare each other to buy some "lemonade" from him. The man insisted on no payment. "It's on the house," he'd say with a depraved smile and gave them the lemonade.

Those who drank vanished. Gone. Without a trace. No idea of where they could have gone...