šCreative Short Storyš
Our village was a small village.
Even smaller once that incident happened.
Our village...is nothing special. Itās very small. Itās peaceful. Nothing out of the ordinary every happens here. Itās so tiny, that everybody here pretty much knows each other.
There is only one school here. It is a small, run down looking building that has room for a limited amount of students. We all know each other here. Iām one of the six 9th graders attending the school. We are six of the eighty-two students attending. A perfect amount of students for each one to get to know each other in less than a year.Ā
Our village, though small, gets many visitors and tourists each year. Weāre known as the āTown of Blossomsā because if you come here in the spring, the whole village will be swamped in cherry blossoms. We hold a big festival called the Blossom Festival in the spring, where adults and children can all come together to have fun and just enjoy the sights. It is a much anticipated festival, and everybody in the village put in a lot of effort to make it an unforgettable day. Iāve been attending it ever since I was born. Every year.Ā
The event had happened after the very last Blossom Festival. On the first day of the festival, a man that was not a resident of our village was present. This wasnāt out of the ordinary; in fact, a lot of tourists and visitors came to our village during the festival. It was not anything new. However, there was something a little bit odd about this man. It soon became clear that he wasnāt just a normal tourist. He was dressed in a torn gray coat, had on a tattered black hat, and he was pushing along a small unstable looking cart. On the cart, were a bunch of dolls that looked to be hand-made. Judging by his wrinkled hands and unsteady posture, he must have been rather old. He pushed the cart around the vicinity of the festival, calling out in some weird unintelligible language that none of us could understand.
I was with my mother back then, and the two of us were just trying to enjoy the festival. When I pointed at the man and inquired about him, my mother pulled my hands down and scolded me by saying, āIris. It is rude to point. Do not go near that man; he is trying to sell bad things. He is dangerous, no doubt. Do not trust strangers. Remember what I taught you?ā
Despite my overwhelming curiosity, I resisted the urge to go up the old man. I could not see very well from so far away, but the dolls on his cart looked rather cute and well-made. He must have been in a lot of effort and care into making them. On the sides of the cart were balls of yarn and needles. However, the other villagers werenāt so impressed. They called him names, brushed him off, or just ignored him when he came up with his cart.Ā
That was the first day of his appearance. After that day, he began to appear randomly in our village from that day forth. Although he never approached me, he had to others, and he began to be regarded as a nuisance and a disturbance from the other villagers. The adults tried to tell him to go away, but it was already apparent that we did not speak the same language.Ā
āNobody here likes your merchandise! Please leave!ā the people of our village would yell at him. The old man would always talk back in a soft, unintelligible language, shake his head sadly, and go about pushing his cart again.Ā
This went on for days. Weeks. Months. I guess some people of the village finally got fed up with him. They called him a leech, a nut, a ghost. A lunatic. The insults came pouring in. The children of the village, including me, were nice to him though. He never really bothered us, so we found no reason to be rude. In fact, most of us found the whole event to be rather amusing, because nothing exciting ever happened in our ordinary little village.Ā
One day, the adults of the village finally made a move. I was on my way to school with my friends when an ear-splitting screech came out of nowhere, scaring my friends and I.
We looked to the right to see a big group of villagers running and pushing a cart: the old manās cart. They were even dropping some dolls along the way. Behind them, the old man was tumbling forward, trying to pick up the dolls they had dropped. My friends and I watched, stunned, as the villagers ran the cart into a nearby river that ran through the village. The cart began to sink underwater, along with the dolls and the rest of the old manās belongings.
The old man let out a cry of despair and, to our shock, he jumped into the river behind his cart. If I had known how to swim, I would have jumped in to help him. Apparently the old man did not know how to swim either, because after he became submerged underwater, he never came back up. The adults told us that he had deserved it. He was being a nuisance and an eyesore to the village, according to the mayor, and he was already really old anyway. My friends and I were a bit traumatized, but we didnāt object.Ā
After that incident, life returned to normal at our village...or so we thought.
Recently, strange things have been happening in our village. More and more people have been getting sick. Our crops would not grow, and we were getting less and less visitors. However, that isnāt the biggest problem. Children have started to go missing randomly, without a single trace. One day, a child would be seen walking back home from school. The next day, they were gone. Never to be seen again. It has now been a month since the old manās disappearance, and all of my friends have gone missing, along with a few other children of the village.
Recently, Iāve been walking alone to school. I was walking alongside the riverbank today, when something poking out of the shores caught my eyes. When I walked up to it, it didnāt take me long to realize that it was a doll. The doll looked exactly like one of my missing friends. How bizarre.Ā
