Word Count: 420
It was silly, of course. She couldn’t leave the top four clapboards unpainted simply because she was afraid to go up two more rungs. So she talked herself up the ladder and…froze.
Paint can and brush in one hand, her other gripping the ladder, she hung there suspended in time. An artist’s model, reluctant to move. She’d tried reaching down through the rungs to hang the can on the S-ring. It proved too hard to do without fear of falling. The instant she let go of the ladder vertigo struck. So there she was, stuck to intention rather than moved into action. She didn’t know what to do.
Cars drove by on occasion; it was a quiet street with most of her neighbors cleared out in schoolbuses and SUV’s off to work. If she hollered, no one could hear her. Besides, she’d made the foolish mistake of trying this on the back of the three-story house.
Oh she did try to step down the same way she stepped up there but somehow the rungs seemed much further, rounder, shrinking away from her foot as she tremulously waved and poked it around. She wished she could just drop the paint, let it fall to the ground in a blazing white splash on the azaleas. Two windows beneath her would take a hit too. It would be worth it, she thought, if she thought it would help her get down. But the hand that gripped the can handle and brush also had two fingers wrapped around the side of the ladder. No matter how hard she willed herself to let go, fear laughed at her plan.
Shoolbuses squealed to a stop and she hollered out but kids, being kids, didn’t listen or hear. The postman delivered by truck and zipped through barely stopping. She heard the UPS man come by and yelled at the top of her lungs. She heard his radio blaring; he evidently didn’t hear her.
She tried catching the commuters as they came home. Most drove straight into garages, sliding through remote-controlled overhead doors. Traffic slowed down to near non-existent around six. She watched lights go on, first in kitchens, she guessed, and then dens, then upstairs, bedroom by bedroom. It was chilly and the stars sprinkled the sky.
I don’t know what finally happened. The news didn’t report it at all. And I, living forty miles north and in quite a hurry to get there, just passing by, still wonder about it today.
