"THE BIG "C" AND THE OLDE BARN ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE POWER LINES"...

BY: FRITZ VON LUDWIGSLUST

CHAPTER 12

    Faux-ville infamous, career adulteress Hale Colon... also known as the big "C" by most (especially those whose marriages and lives Hale ruined and there are many), was spinning with delight as she had found a new way to go to town...  in reality a new, secret place to meet other people's boyfriends, husbands, lovers and fiancees.  It was a large, old and unused barn (or so the big "C" thought it was), that stood hidden for decades in an old, overgrown meadow several miles deep inside the forest on the other side of the power lines...  but that old barn was far from abandoned.  It had once been part of a huge farm, but no one had actually lived there in many, many years and the rumors flew like ghosts in the night that it was haunted.  Hale threw all caution to the wind, plotting and planning her clandestine, illicit "trysts" soon to take place there...  but Hale and her much-married "lover" of the moment would not be alone in the hay.

   It must have been like a scene from the 1940s classic film "The Red House", when shameless Hale ran out into the night to meet one of her many (married) lovers in the old barn beyond the forest.  It must have been just like the young boy from that film running through the wicked, windy night deep in the dark forest to a secret red house...  only with a deceptive "adulterating" twist.  Hale made sure that her career (multi)wife-beating-hubby was passed out before she dashed out the door and down a dusty, weedy path to the entrance of the engulfing forest.  Hale would cut across the open power lines and a small swamp to get to her destination, where Larkin Edwards would be waiting.   The forest was pitch black inside and she felt a pang of relief once she stepped out the darkness of the woods into the moonlight of the open area of the power lines.  She was running faster and faster when poor old ho Hale almost had a heart attack when a trio of bog suckers flushed up from a small patch of cattails in the swamp. She almost keeled over from the explosive, whistling sound of the birds as the helicoptered up and away.  Her heart was racing... (from the bog suckers scare or the four daily prescriptions that she just chased down with a swig of mad-dog?) as she continued on her virgin voyage.  This would be the big C's first "meeting" at the clandestine barn...  and little did she know it would also be her last. 

    She was near the end of her cheating journey and would have to cross a wooded swamp... or traverse a mile or more to get around it.  It had just rained however and the water level was high between the muck and mire.  Hale would have to try and use the random clumps of tussock sedges as stepping stones to get to the other side and her waiting paramour.  Well, old Hale was not a swift balancing act (especially high on scrips and on high heels) and she proceeded to fall large derriere first into the stinky sludge.  Hale was whimpering when she finally reached the other side of the swamp, pulling burs from her clothes and stumbled upon the barn area to find her loverboy "napping"  (passed out).

     Her shady, cheating paramour Larkin had already arrived at the barn before Hale and had waited nervously for her arrival... He had felt that something was amiss the minute he stepped out of the dark into the open area of the old farm.  It was an eerie scenario... a strange, luminous blanket of fog hung over the old meadow and he could see moon beams through the old weathered planks of the barn.  He thought he had heard leaves and such rustling under someones foot steps over the loud, chorus of nocturnal insects, whip-poor-wills and the bizarre croaking of a distant night heron as he passed out.  

    Larkin fell asleep sitting on the clumps of long grass propped up against an old pollard apple tree stump.  Hale found him in the moonlight and exhausted from her nature hike collapsed down beside him, swamp mud, debris and all.  

   They woke up to what looked like a giant, living scarecrow standing over them with a long rifle in its hand.  The full moon was behind the aberration, so they could not see its face.

   The "ghost" pointed the end of the barrel at them and hissed. "You two tryin to find my still!", "Chicken thieves!"

   The cheating couple jumped up and raced towards the woods and the swamp with the "scarecrow" following them closely, cocking his rifle, cursing at them with a brimstone and treacle cantor.  

   The not so happy couple ended up going home covered with mud, weeds and fear.  Needless to say neither told a soul about the scarecrow and the old barn on the other side of the power lines.  

Faux-ville update (coffee clutch edition)...

   Oh Hale, poor old Hale, (almost 60 looking 80 now... on a very good day that is) gave up nature trails, animal  husbandry, the farming life (especially barns, after that traumatic scenario and the "ghost") and all chances of becoming a camp-fire-girl...  in lieu of an old forgotten habit.  Hale was now craving dark chocolate again,  however she'll have to travel to the big city to find that particular variety...   Hopefully the "chocolate" she finds and indulges in will be aged at least 17 years or older this time around...  Not the underaged, I mean underripe chocolate she was sampling before. 

 No hard feelings Hale... Really!