A little bit of an emotional one for me personally this week.
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Broken
As she pondered the next chapter of her book, her thoughts were interrupted by a crunching sound and the words ‘oh shit’ filtered up from below. By the time she had gone downstairs to see what was going on, her husband had moved the broken mirror outside. The sun had started to set and the golden colours were reflected in the shards like a rainbow, with deep red at the bottom moving up to light blue at the top.
She couldn’t help feel that this was prophetic in some way. It summed up how she felt about her life: There was so much beauty and so much to be grateful for, yet somehow it didn’t work. It was full of sharp splinters that didn’t quite fit and obscured her view, giving it a warped, malformed, broken appearance. She could see it all in its different segments, but she couldn’t embrace it as a whole. It was missing two vital components: love and joy, which she believed would bring much needed cohesion and clarity.
She’d moved here with her husband so full of hope, and maybe a little too much expectation, but within a few short years she’d found herself stranded with no social life and no support, just a husband who danced round her like she was something to be feared.
She’d withdrawn and isolated herself, working on the inside instead, but much like the mirror she couldn’t bring the pieces together, even though each part held something valuable.
And now she was torn between continuing to try to make the picture whole, or throwing the whole thing in the bin.
The mirror had given her the answer.
The Deal Mall by Terry Brewer, @Stories2121 (561 words)
ReplyDeleteI hear nothing. I scream and only hear the reverberated echo of my desperate cry.
“Is there anybody here?” and all that comes back is a cascading “here” “here” “here.” Each quieter than the one before until it fades to nothing and again I hear nothing.
I wasn’t alone last night. It was a group of ten or twelve. We’d been told not to but we never listened to what we were told. That was the point of being in college. Never listening to what we were told.
I’m not sure whose idea it was. Probably Benny’s. He was the idea guy among us. I wasn’t sure I would go until I heard Shirley say she was in. Going not only meant being with her. It also meant not being labeled a coward in her eyes.
So I went. It started out well enough. Jerry, who always did Benny’s dirty work, smashed a window in a side door to unlock it for us. It was dark, but we used our phones to see where we were going. It had the smell of mold and the air a suffocating dankness. What had been the food court had the look of an art installation that one wouldn’t believe was an “art installation.” Just a jumble of tables and chairs randomly distributed in the large open space that had been the mall’s centerpiece.
Some of the stores had “For Lease” signs taped to their windows, from the days when there was the prospect of new retailers moving in. Those days were gone long before Sears pulled up stakes and with it the last breath of life in the place. There were still some phone and cheap-jewelry kiosks until the end, but nothing remained of any except for the empty kiosks themselves.
The echo was cool. Last night at least. We tried to do that think people do in Grand Central where you whisper into a corner and the person diagonally across hears what you said although no one else could. Must be the physics of the place because it didn’t work here. So we marched around shouting and hearing our shouts coming back to us. Benny and Jerry and some others smashed some of the windows that were spared by prior intruders. The place’d be coming down soon anyway so no one really would care.
The last thing I remember was Benny throwing the top of a trash can at the window of a Bed Bath & Beyond on the second floor. As it hit the window, only to bounce back, there was a loud bang. Then I woke up.
Alone.
Where’d the others go? The top of that trash can is about fifteen feet from me, so Benny did throw it at the window. But where is he? Where are Jerry and Shirley and the others?
I look to the outside. The large plate-glass window is smashed, pieces of it somehow staying in place next to pieces that had not. It distorts the view much as the halls distorted my calls.
“Hello?” I can see through the window that it is dusk. Night will arrive soon. I’d been asleep for fifteen hours. Can it have been days? I stand and pull my phone from my pocket. “No Service.” It’s almost out of power and my only source of light. It’ll be dark soon.
The start of something really epic. I like that.
DeleteNice work, Terry.
DeleteThis was another really good prompt!
ReplyDeleteAnd another really good tale! Thanks for taking part.
DeleteIntriguing story, Miranda. That last line left me feeling like I'd missed something somewhere. I have no clue what though. Good job.
ReplyDeleteLol, consider the sentence before. It's sort of cryptic.
DeleteI think I'll have to consult Holly on this one.
DeleteHere is my go at this weeks picture. Not sure I like it much but, Presenting Mirrored Secrets Hope you like it.
ReplyDeleteReally like that, a juicy bit of story there. Liked that a lot.
DeleteFrom me, a simple story of Love
ReplyDeletePainful read that'll make you wince for sure. But very well done.
Delete