One Two Buckle My Shoe By Nugent Barker

One Two Buckle My Shoe by Nugent Barker
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This story by Nugent Barker comes from his anthology Written By My Left Hand, which I guess is a pointer to the fact that they deal with things that emerge from the night side of the mind, the subconscious. It is a story about the Devouring Mother told in a dream-like way. It's horror for sure. It's short and leaves you scratching your head, yet it is told in a familiar way from ghost stories where gentlemen are sitting in their study around a blazing fire sipping whiskey toddies while they swap scary stories. The content of the story is less than straightforward though. You have the benefit of my thoughts afterwards.

Nugent Barker's strange, atmospheric short story "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe" uses the rhythmic, insistent meter of the traditional counting nursery rhyme as a sinister narrative framework. The plot ensnares the narrator into a fatalistic, dream-like reenactment of a haunting childhood event, gradually transforming the innocuous lines—from buckling a shoe and shutting a door to picking up sticks and digging—into a heavy, inescapable burden of fate.