"What Is It?" - Maya

They were hunkered down in a tight little knot in the clearing, all skinny-legged, skinned knees, brown summer bodies. The four of them. It was amazing that by this hot late August afternoon they were all still playing together. Every day since school let out they'd seemed to triangulate, three against one, and every day in a new configuration. Today Marcie was the odd one out. Surprisingly, this happened relatively rarely. Surprising in that she was the only girl. Conventional wisdom would have her be the isolated one most of the time, but conventional wisdom didn't hold in this case. Marcie got along well with everyone. But today she had really wanted to go to the pool, not into the woods. She'd been outvoted, so she'd grumbled as she'd trailed along behind them. It was too hot, she complained.

"Yeah, but it will be cooler in the woods," Davie had argued.

"Better be," she'd mumbled back.

Now they were in a clearing, out in the direct sun, but even Marcie was too fascinated to notice.

"What is it?" she asked.

The others shook their heads or hunched their shoulders. Sean poked it with a stick.

"Maybe it's an alien," he said.

"A dead alien," Davey replied.

It was small. No bigger than a cat or skunk, or maybe a possum. But it wasn't any of those. Its back legs were longer than the front ones, and five-toed. Kind of .... human. It only had one eye left, but that one was large and round.

"Hey, know what I just realized?" Frankie said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "It doesn't stink. Shouldn't it stink?"

Frankie would notice something like that. He was the quiet one, the observer. Frequently the odd man out in this group of extroverts. But he could be stubborn. He stuck to his guns. The other three admired that in him, and although they never said it, they all thought of Frankie as "the smart one."

"I didn't think of that," Sean acknowledged. "Maybe it is an alien, and thier bodies don't stink."

"What'll we do with it?" Marcie asked. "Like, shouldn't we take it to a scientist or something?"

"I'm not picking that thing up," Davie said.

"Me neither," agreed Sean.

"Okay, let's bury it, then," Marcie said.

"Why? Then we'll never find out what it is," Davey retorted.

"I know," Frankie said. "I'll take a picture of it on my cell phone. Then we'll bury it. We can show the picture to someone to identify it."

They all agreed. But without a shovel or trowel or anything to dig with, they wound up just covering it up with stones and leaves.

They decided to go to Sean's dad. he worked at the university in the Physics Department. So, when he got home from work they descended on him . It turned out that his colleagues in Biology were intrigued, once the kids convinced them it was not a hoax.

The four of them were excited to take the scientists to the makeshift grave site. They found it easily enough. But when they removed the stones and leaves, what they found was nothing. Nothing at all. No trace. Not a bone, not a hair, not a scrap of DNA.

They never did find out what it was.


Prompt: "What is it?" 8/16/08