Gerry's Legacy

Rachael Harrie has posted the first campaigner challenge. Write a short story/flash fiction story in 200 words or less, excluding the title. It can be in any format, including a poem. Begin the story with the words, “The door swung open” These four words will be included in the word count.  If you want to give yourself an added challenge (optional), use the same beginning words and end with the words: "the door swung shut." (also included in the word count)

For those who want an even greater challenge, make your story 200 words EXACTLY!

Gerry's Legacy

The door swung open.  “Oh Lord,” she cried.  Water percolated at the base of the granite steps.  In the twenty years they’d lived in the Lodge House the river never swelled beyond its banks, but four days after this tropical storm began, the stream morphed into a running quagmire of trash and debris.  Tree branches swirled in the eddies, a license plate stuck to particle-board floated like a directionless raft. 

    

The memory of Gerard King, the “Paul Revere” of Exeter, exhorting citizens to approve a tax increase to retro-fit the dam, circled in her brain like the plastic milk jug floating by her front door.  With his pony-tailed hair down to his waist, torn shirt and leather moccasins, he’d stand up at the mike every year, hollering, “No, the river hasn’t overflowed in over 30 years, but it is only going to take once.  That berm was built before World War II.”  Each time, engineers in their navy rep ties pulled out analyses of weight-to-water ratios, convincing townsfolk the berm was safe.

As she looked across the raging torrent to the cemetery where Gerard was buried last week, a rumbling vibration shook the house.  Behind her the door swung closed.

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