WOE: Sand

Write On Edge prompt:  Write 450 words about sand.  Yep.  Sand. Since I wrote it, I thought that I should post it. This is fiction, of course.

"STOP RIGHT THERE!"  My mom met us, broom in hand, before the screen door slammed.  The two of us dutifully froze.

"Where have you two been?"  Sweat beaded on her upper lip, her hair disheveled, and she seemed out of breath.  I wondered if she had run from the kitchen when she heard us stomping up the front porch steps.

"We went to the dunes!" My brother proudly exclaimed.  John held up his blue bucket, grains of sand slipping through the crack on the side. 

"Lordy! Effie, you are ten years old!"  she exclaimed.  "You're supposed to keep your brother out of mischief, not help him with it!"

There was no time to roll my eyes before my mother was shoving us back out the door, grumbling about sand on her clean floors.  We were told that she would bring us towels so we could remove all of our sandy clothing.  The screen door slammed as our mother rushed back inside, toward the kitchen.  I thought that I heard a low voice, male, coming from the kitchen.

"Did Dad come back from work early?" I asked my mother when she came out with the towels. 

"What? No, he won't be back until tomorrow," my mother was startled. "You know that, Effie."

"I thought that I heard him in the kitchen, that's all,"  I bent over to take off my other sock, watching as grains of sand spilled on the porch.

"You imagined it, is all," she grabbed my brother's socks and turned them inside out. More sand dribbled out, to add to the pile already accumulating.

John and I stripped out of our clothes, tired after our day in the sun.  Sand seemed to pour from every pore, more sand than I remembered ever seeing before.  It was between our toes, behind our knees, under our arms, and behind our ears.  When we were done, a small dune of sand had formed; the three of us stared at it.  My mother  tsked at us, ordering us upstairs for a bath.  We were not to come down until we were spotless.

The two of us clutched our towels and raced up the stairs as she held the screen door for us; I heard it slam before we got to the bathroom.   John got the bath water running.   I left the room to go get us some clothing to put on, and that is when I heard voices again.  My mother's voice, familiar as breathing, and the lower register of a man.  The screen door slammed as I stood in the hallway.  Then I shook my head.  My mother was right; I was imagining things. 

Except, when I went back out to the porch to collect my shoes, I found a single, man-sized shoe print in the middle of the pile of sand we children had created.