libbycolours
The scenes flashed past the window as the train relentlessly carried her toward her doom. First her beloved seaside scene gave way to intensely green trees and fields, populated by fat sheep, then the trees thickened into a wood and quite settled within the train. She waited.
Then she felt tense and her skin became clammy with fear as the trees gradually fell away to the reveal flat, red earth with rickety fences and underfed cattle. Her claustrophobia tightened. No water. Nothing green growing. Not even sand... just the hot, backed earth and sparse yellow grasses as far as the eye could see.
She began to cry quietly.
So many words, so many letters, names and instructions, swirling around in front of him into some kind of unholy soup of black ink. He’s frightened, trapped in the ballot box with nowhere to run to and everything to run from. He is unable to leave without voting, he must vote. He’s not allowed not to, his government won’t let him, but in spite of all the reasons he must, he just can’t make sense of the marks on the paper.
His dyslexia cripples him.
It wasn’t that she had told an untruth. No. And it wasn’t that she had stood before her peers, those who believed they knew her to be a pure and honest beacon, and lied. No, indeed. The guilt, the sickening guilt, came from her father, who knew of her lie. In whose good opinion she was now blackened.
No trial could be greater for her, no mountain higher, than the loss of her father’s love.
The letter was indeed as damning as he had been lead to believe, but as it concerned his son, the old man turned a kind of wilful blindness to it. He knew that it distressed his wife to see him denying what their child had become, and his daughter disapproved of both his behaviour and her brothers, but even their feelings could not persuade him to take the necessary steps to control his boy.
He could not bring himself to hate his only son and so he took the knife and blinded his common sense.
The trees of steel and glass stretch up into the sky, penetrating the clouds and disrupting the path of aeroplanes… or, at least, that is what he thinks they must surely do, because he has never seen anything as enormous as these shiny, transparent towers. They dominate the city in a way a country boy could not understand and intrigue him in a way nothing has ever done before.
They are like human ant farms, the boy thinks.
There was nothing binding about their friendship. There was nothing constant, or frequent, nothing that obliged her to be there when her friend wanted or required her to come when her friend called. No promises of eternal love had been made, or were ever likely to be… and yet… and yet, she could never fail her friend. The mere thought brought bile to her throat.
Perhaps they didn’t need to be welded together with passionate exclamations of their attachment. Perhaps from the first time they saw each other, they were simply bound.
Everywhere he went, the presence of bubbles indicated he should be cautious when approaching. No place required this caution more than his sister’s spa. The nastiest, smelliest fish could be found there most afternoons, lazing about in the sunshine. His sister called the fish ‘Robbie’, but he was certain such a vile creature had no name. Every time his sister got close, the fish began to eat her face. He had tried to save her, but the fish just pushed him away. All he wanted was his sister back! He hated the nasty spa fish.
The mother octopus flexes her tentacles, reaching out from the small cave she had chosen into the open sea. She unfurls her limbs, letting them swish gently in the current.
Then she feels a movement, and quick as lightning she is back in her cave, tense and waiting.
He couldn’t quite manage to sustain the fear. Of course, unexpectedly having things appear in front of him was surprising, but the haunted house was just not scary enough for him to even pretend to quiver in fright. Severed heads had never bothered him, skeletons were commonplace in his line of work and clowns just never did if for him, despite their oversized shoes (which should frighten anyone).
His psychologist turned to him and he shook his head. Not this time either.
...and then The Miracle happened. It was small at first, but rapidly grew until it was a white-hot light, swallowing all the darkness and burning the long-fingered shadows, until nothing remained but their dusk on the cold concrete floor. It touched the souls of those around it, not purging exactly, but soothing away the fears and anxieties.
And in that moment, they knew it's light would burn calmly in their eyes forevermore.
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