From a distance, it looked like a dismembered hand. Well, not exactly. But the lone work glove abandoned on the sidewalk crept into my imagination on stealthy fingertips, reminding of me of too many horror stories from my childhood.
There was one in particular about an artist who loses his dominant (drawing) hand in an accident and the hand comes back to haunt him, drawing evil cartoons and strangling various people. The hand goes on a killing spree and the man is helpless.
In fiction there are all sorts of enchanted objects — some with scary, evil powers and others with a more benign consciousness. I grew up in a family that occasionally assigned names and personalities to inanimate things. My father named the car Eroica — after Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. She was a temperamental old car. I loved that car — once I learned how to handle her stalling out in crosswalks and that she really, really liked to go fast on the highway out to the beach. (That car was truly happy going 85 mph.)
Enchanted mirrors serve as doorways between dimensions, magical rings bestow power on the wearer, haunted treasure chests contain secrets along with pirate booty and magic carpets fly through the skies.
Does this lonely glove inspire you?
I like to keep my Ipad with me everywhere I go. There are times when I run across odd things like this that make for great demented story ideas, and I like to capture the images.
Years ago I found a dolls head in a parking lot. Lonesome and abused, imagine the stories that can come from a find like that. Sadly, the picture was taken with an old phone and I never could transfer it to my computer. It shall forever remain lost to time.
The doll’s head sounds like the start of an incredibly scary tale! Yes, it’s too bad you couldn’t hang onto that one, but I’m sure it’s already fed your imagination.