Writing Contest - Issue 18

Wet bullets pounded my skull. The giant oak slapped the roof, knocking loose sharp shingles to shatter on cobblestone.

Jack out there, lost in the TV’s Category 5 storm.

Lightning flashed an impossibly tall woman in a black dress, hips swaying, a terrifying dance spawned by the devilish storm.

I dodged the roof’s guillotines, hopped an oak limb, ducked under a flying red wheelbarrow.

Thunder cracked. A bark. I scooped up Jack, huddled near the shed. Fur flying, he licked my face. Jack safe in the basement, I crouched atop the storm door as she ripped the roof off the place.

She didn’t remember much of her father. All she had from him was in a shoe box in the back of her wardrobe with old dusty photos and the medals he had received post-mortem.

But sometimes, when the bridge to her childhood lured her, she would conjure him. Then, shadows would fly in the flickering light and she’d lift her eyes to the ceiling.

There, rooted deep in the sole memory that would never go away, a tree of hands would dance in the night and she would smile, enchanted, an indefatigable audience of devoted fingers that would never grow old…

“Vive la France!” The air stung. The barricade pulsated, monstrous in size. They cheered for this massacre, lungs collapsing against their voices. My bonnet flew from my grasp.

“Vive la France!” Its silvery tail ebbing against the crowd. Drums rattled, the enemy sharpened to a steel, gaping grin. My sight was blinded by blue and white. Bodies piling, tangled up with the living.

“Vive la France!” Deafening chants. Blood trickles, flag wrapped around my finger tips. My limbs slip as it cut through flesh. Red soaking the blue, drowning out the white. They fight for this bloodied silk and nothing else.

Never having cradled or soothed him, I discovered a bridge I could never cross. Even so, I attempted to claim him when emotions were strong but will was weak.

Expending exhausted energy into building up what had been torn down, exposing raw layers of guilt and disappointment, I may have scraped away too much. Standing back, I memorized pictures of him hugging his ‘real’ mom, enveloping her in empty promises that everything was fine.

He never willingly looked me in the eyes, perhaps afraid I might see into a soul unwilling to accept another person inside. I’d only wanted to help.

She imagines herself dancing in the middle of the rain. She is happy when she sees a man coming towards her. She sees the man smiling at her and her heart starts racing. She is finally alive again. She can love a man again.

But the closer he gets, the more terrified she becomes. He is not a man. He is a monster. He shattered her heart once before and is now here to repeat it. Her heart beats faster and she screams.

The rain gets heavier, the night darker, the screams louder, the beats faster when suddenly…everything stops moving.