Renea waited in the small church bathroom for her mother. She smoothed out her white dress and took a deep breath. She had turned eight years old and it was time for her to take on the responsibility that came with that. It was time for her baptism. She thought of the baptismal font at the front of the church under the wooden stage. Days like this, the Elders would remove the boards in the center to reveal the deep basin below and fill it with lukewarm water. Over the years, Renea had watched as other children slipped behind the curtains of the stage and pressed their faces to the cracks in the floor, trying to see below. Renea was always afraid that the boards would be loose and would slip open and she would tumble into the darkness. And now that darkness would be filled with yellowed light and water to clean her soul. She gripped the fabric of her dress and backed up against the wall of the bathroom, the clicks of someone walking down the hall getting closer. Any second and her mother’s knock would come. Renea wondered who she would be when it was done.
NOTE: The brief narrative above was brought to you by TZ Books and The Bite-Size Fiction Project, created by Dave Baldwin and Sheila Lee Brown (this particular one is a Sheila-story). The results of this project are bite-size story morsels for short attention spans. These tidbits are sometimes fun, sometimes weird…but always short!
