Twist of Fate
SHE LOOKS AT ME AND begins twisting the threads, I am dumbfounded. She is going to do it. I can’t believe it. Not now, please, I beg Her.
It isn’t fair, I want to scream at Her, knowing of course, it will not make the slightest bit of difference. She cannot hear my plea, how can She? Deaf to all. Eyes only for her precious tapestry, weaving threads. Twisting, twining, feeding new strands in here, one there, seeing where they lead, looking for patterns.
All I’ve ever been able to do is watch and worry, knowing She would come to mine, but so soon?
No!
She turns now, looking at me with those sad soulful eyes, not apologetic, how can She be? This is her life. She came into being when Time started. Her lot in life, to weave. She knows—knows that She will live till Time’s last foundation has fled.
While me?
I see Her hovering, deciding, scissors poised. I know She has to. The eyes say as much. There’s no other way. She picks up the loose strand that’s sticking up out of the tapestry. Such a short piece. It wouldn’t warrant Her attention—except. I seem to have caused a blockage. There’s a jumble of threat all caught in a tight knot, but worse, it appears to be spreading. Other threads are arriving, getting caught up, and me? There I am, the only one sticking up out of the weave.
She tugs.
I feel it in my heart. That terrible moment of fear. The strand is loosening. She tugs again. Another stab.
No! Please.
She has it loose now, the scissors move. I close my eyes but in my minds-eye, I hear the ‘snip’ as the blades close. I know. I feel it in my chest. That fatal moment. Will I open my eyes ever again? I hold my breath, as if this will help. I hear the click. My eyes fly open. My hand sits over my heart. It’s still beating, rapid, but strong.
She looks at me now, the sadness almost overwhelming. She offers me the tiny piece, golden, so small. I take it. Feel the hot tears. She did her best, the look says. A finger points. I stare at the tapestry. My thread is still there. Just not as long. The other threads begin to move, the living tapestry flows before my eyes. I take a deep breath and open my palm. The tiny golden snippet has vanished. I frown. Look up at Her, questioning.
A long fine finger points again. I look down, there—there it is, on my chest. I stare uncomprehending. A long thin scar. I trace a finger along it. It’s mine. I feel it. It sits above my heart. I realise then She has given me more time. Not much, but more than I had. Just one tug and She let me live. I sigh and look up, She is smiling again. The sadness in Her eyes always ever-present but the lips? Ah! They move but I don’t hear the words, my eyes heavy with sleep, my mind slipping. I drift away.
When I open my eyes again it’s to the sound of birds chirping outside a window. I look about me and register I’m in a hospital bed. Blinking, I make the connection, my hand sliding beneath the thin hospital gown. Fingers reaching, I find it. The remnant of a tiny golden thread. Mine.
A scar to remind me. Life is short.
Expressions
“I need an expression, dammit!” Tom barked from the spotlit corner of the room where he was writing.
Teddi closed her eyes, placed a finger in the book she was reading, and shut it. Two heartbeats, she opened her eyes, “How about pi as expressed as a fraction over…” she never got to finish as Tom yelled.
“No, no, no, not a maths expression—“ careful to not add the word ‘idiot’ at the end of his rebuke. “I need something witty for my main character to say to his girlfriend.” His head bobbed over his keyboard as if the keys themselves would start typing.
Teddi chewed the inside of her lip. She knew it had been a mistake to let Tom have his ‘office’ there, in the lounge not four feet away from the couch—her reading couch. Ever since he had ‘moved’ in, putting his small computer desk against one wall, and setting up enough standing lights to illuminate the Eiffel Tower, she’s not had a moments peace to read uninterrupted. And woe betided her getting up to go to the kitchen, thereby disturbing his concentration. The filthy looks still unnerved her. Not sure who this man was, sitting in their lounge. She didn’t recognise him anymore.
The Dark
There was no light.
That was precious knowledge. The realisation of which had cost her more than she would have thought possible, if she had but known.
Everything needs a context. And for the darkness to mean anything there had to have been a memory of light. The memory was fading fast.
It would happen, and then, more often than not, happen again. Sometimes there was more than just the tentative awareness that, in it self, did not always register.
She couldn’t remember.
It would come back to her, things usually did. She always remembered didn’t she? But she couldn’t remember.
Time was something she had an eternity of, milliseconds were like millennium here.
Here?
Wherever here was? Time’s last foundation had fled, leaving her where?
She remembered. What was it? She had it a moment ago. But what was a moment? Something about light, whatever that was?
She could have wept but there was nothing to cry with; nothing, period. There was no sensation, or physical awareness. Nothing but the perpetual dark.
Horrors crawled just beneath the thin veneer of consciousness.
The Impossible Girl
The lean and lanky Ryan Connor jumped out the back of the 4-ton truck and landed in the wet mud with a soft thud. It sucked at his wellies as he moved off toward a large pit, and the reason they were all there. He turned just in time to see his Corporal, Jack Blase, a man in his late 20s, man-handle himself out of the truck like a 60 year-old. Working bomb disposal did that to a person.
“Come on, Old Man, you’ll be late for the party.” Jack flashed him a look that said, ‘don’t mess with me.’ Ryan cocked his head to one side, fixed his Service-issue woollen hat further back on his head at a jaunty angle, and grinned. He waited for Jack, William ‘The Bagman’ Herschel and their lieutenant, Sandy ‘Shingle’ House, to catch up with him. He turned back toward the gapping maw of the pit. Workers had been hand digging the area up until yesterday when, as it happened all to often in this area of Hanover, a perfectly preserved and unexploded 1000 pounder had been unearth.
It was one of theirs, that much was for sure. Someone had taken the time to write on the pointy end, ‘a gift from Ol’ Blighty’.
Connor pulled out a pack of smokes from an open top pocket and made to light one.
“Not here, you bloody idiot.” Connor turned just as Herschel dumped two bags and a couple of shovels at his feet. Connor shrugged and slid the smoke back into the crumpled packet and re-pocketed it.
“You really are dumber than a spud,” the man continued bending to retrieve something from one of the bags. Connor made a sour face at the man’s back and walked off toward the lip of the pit, scrambling over loose earth, cracked brick and rubble. It was ten years plus since the war had ended but still, people were unearthing unexploded ordinance. It was their job, as part of the British Royal Air Force’s bomb-disposal task force, to clean up the mess. Connor wondered why there were no German teams scouring London doing the same thing for them, and shook his head. He would, of course, ask Jack.
Obituary
BILLY RAY MELNIK (aged 13) of Pensacola, Florida, died today, March 6th, when his DNA registered his final act of stupidity and terminated his existence under the Statute of Evolution regulations, section 7(a) para 1(b). Which states that, no entity can forthwith continue its existence if deemed to be in violation of watering down the Gene-Pool.
Termination occurred on the corner of 12th and Main, as, spray-cans in hand, Melnik engaged in the vandalous act of graffiti
A bio-hazard clean-up crew for the city managed to collect enough of the gelatinous remains to fill a funerary pot. An interment service will be held Monday at the Pensacola City cemetery.