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As mentioned in last week’s post, while cleaning out my room, I uncovered a stack of papers containing short stories and flash fiction that I had written last summer. With most of the writing I do on scraps of papers, I end up grouping them together in small piles and stashing them somewhere that I won’t look for nearly a year later, if not longer. After going through this newfound pile, I picked out a few that I’d like to share here on my blog in the coming weeks.

Scroll down to read the second story…

She had forgotten what it was like to be near the living. In an estate untouched for nearly a century, the living seemed like a distant dream to her. The man cautiously walked through the aged teak door and peered around the mass expanse before him. She leaned over the guardrail positioned across from where he stood, one story above him. Despite knowing she was all but a whisper on his plane, she nevertheless pattered down the mezzanine steps as swiftly as her feet would allow her, until she came face-to-face with the stranger.

Standing so close, she could smell the faint scent of tobacco clinging to his clothes, see the soft pores on his cleanly shaven face, hear the the gentle thrumming of his heartbeat. The very fact that he was so very alive was almost enough to shock her own long-expired heart into a rhythmic flutter. She reached up to touch the smooth milky skin of his face, trailing her fingers across as he stared past her — through her — into oblivion. Was he afraid here?

Here she was in a manor possessing minimal light, no trace of human contact for close to one hundred years, yet was finally seeing a living man before her…chest rising and falling with each inhalation of oxygen, cheeks flushed with life, hands clenching and unclenching nervously.

Why was he here? Why are you here? My mouth cannot open to speak words that he would never hear. I take his hand, trying to lace our fingers together, but I cannot. He does not know that I am here. He does not know that I exist. I am a superstition, a scary story, a bump in the night. I am invisible, I am translucent, I am a memory long forgotten. To him, I am no one. To me, I am a young woman trapped in a place that she once loved, damned to pace its empty rooms for eternity.

As he steps closer toward the center of the Great Hall, I mirror each reluctant step, until he turns and abruptly exits. I race to the door, but go no further. He disappears. He is gone, and I am alone.

Who am I? Where do I go from here?

***

X,

Emily

Petrichor

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

While cleaning out my room this week, I uncovered a stack of papers containing short stories and flash fiction that I had written last summer. With most of the writing I do on scraps of papers, I end up grouping them together in small piles and stashing them somewhere that I won’t look for nearly a year later, if not longer. After going through this newfound pile, I picked out a few that I’d like to share here on my blog in the coming weeks.

Scroll down to read the first…

She stared out into the open, arms crossed under her leaning body. The stone railing held her upright, but nothing sheltered her from the sparse but steady rainfall coming from above. The rain clouds moved languidly, gradually making their way toward the last remaining traces of sunlight that she could discern in the far distance. Slowly, her mane of chestnut hair soaked up each raindrop, her clothing turning a deeper shade as it too, drank up the rain. From miles away, thunder rolled loud and deep, the lethargic grumble rolling its way across a blackening sky.

Still, she kept her arms crossed against the rough grey stone, sinking her body further into the stance. Rainfall could never perturb her. With only the terrace spanning before her, there was nothing particularly intriguing to see; nothing that she could not see on any other day in far better weather. Of course, she knew this was so, but staring out in these conditions was something in and of itself. The moisture in the air could not gather on her skin and face like this, nor the nearly non-existent breeze whisper in her hair, nor raindrops kiss her eyelashes on any other type of day. She could not feel the Earth weep, hear Her low groan, nor smell Her dewy tears in any other circumstances.

The rainfall increased, a heavy sigh from the clouds releasing the warm water from above her. The thunder grew louder, creeping closer to her safe spot on the balcony. Beyond the walls enclosing the terrace gardens, she easily could see a thick pocket of trees, a single sparrow darting from a distant rooftop awning, into the thick, deep green foliage.

Rain fell heavier upon her narrow shoulders, seemingly washing away her sins and misgivings as easily as it watered the Earth. Each droplet from the downpour worked toward erasing her fears; her hates; her distrusts, sweeping them away to the soil far below to be purged and forgotten.

Lightening cracked overhead, the illuminating force of nature glowing against her face. With her eyes closed slightly, she straightened her back, turned her face upward, and smiled.

***

X,

Emily