OSN SHORT STORY: The Shovel Went Right Through Him…

By Hilde Kate Lysiak

It was a bright and sunny day in Sunny Skies. It was perfect—too perfect.

In Sunny Skies, it had been raining for 50 years straight!

The citizens of the town got used to the rain.

Everyone wanted to leave but no one was able to. Whenever they tried to leave, they would just appear right back where they lived. Actually, there was one person who was able to leave—the sheriff. He was new to town and no one really knew much about him because he never talked to anyone. The people of Sunny Skies only knew he was a sheriff because of his unform.
Their lives were very boring. They did the same things over and over again. They ate breakfast, went to market, ate lunch and then the next thing they knew it was the next morning.

But one day, they did something else. It began with one person reading a book instead of going to market. One by one, the other people in town did the same. After that day, everything looked different, like it was destroyed. There were massive gaps in people’s houses and things all through town looked like they had been burned down.
Then the next day, the people did something different again—they skipped going to market to have a town meeting, because after reading some books, they began to suspect that maybe the sheriff was the one to have caused the destruction. They also began to wonder if he was the one stopping them from leaving Sunny Skies. The mayor announced that they should eliminate the sheriff—he was just too sketchy.
The people agreed they would hit the sheriff with a shovel. They got the shovel and went to the sheriff, who was on the phone.
‘’Where are you now?’’ a voice said through the phone.
‘’Oh I’m just patrolling the area making sure no one comes in,’’ the sheriff replied. ‘’Oh…ok well the school wants to have you tell all about the Sunny Skies bombing’’ the voice coming from the phone added.
The people didn’t know what the phone was. They hit the sheriff with the shovel but the shovel went right through him.
The Sheriff addressed the room of school children:
The Sunny Skies bombing was exactly 50 years ago. The people of Sunny Skies were very mean,stubborn people. All the towns surrounding Sunny Skies hated them. Someone claimed that they had a plan to kill someone.

Finally one 40 year old person, who is now 90 in jail, had enough of it. One rainy day, he placed 8 bombs throughout Sunny Skies. One was at the market, the others are un-known.’