101 Words

Manley sat beside her on the porcelain bench, an umbrella in his hand. She kissed his cheek, but, as usual, he remained silent and rigid, his gaze vacant. Pearl felt like a prisoner in an unchanging world.

She struggled onto her feet and lurched forward. Toward freedom.

BAM!

Her world began to wobble on its podium; then it rolled off, moving along the shelf. Her body tumbled with the swarms of churning flakes.

The glass orb plummeted down, landing with a sharp crack, and the liquid enveloping her began to seep from the globe.

Pearl frowned, then took a deep breath.

The roar of aircraft engines in the London anthracite sky made me want to crawl underground. To my husband, the Blitz was in full swing.

Hope was dying in the cradle. My road was one-way.

“Follow me,” the guide whispered, scanning for eavesdroppers.

I walked blindfolded, on the winding path to the black market.

“What’s inside your box, poppet?” the pharmacist asked.

“My wedding dress—silk. I need two bottles of penicillin,” I replied.

“The dress is only worth one,” he stated.

“Please, sir.”

“Four bottles—your affection and the dress,” he grinned.

“Agreed.”

The price of maternity had been high.

“It’s black as hell’s overcoat. Promise you won’t let go! I’m convinced there’s a stalker in those trees,” Jo said.

Sal brushed a withered leaf from her sister’s hair. “Shakespeare said the only darkness is ignorance.”

“Shakespeare didn’t lose his torch on a wilderness trek! I have deadlines. I should be working.”

Jo’s hand flailed; Sal seized it.

“Jo, I get you’re scared. It’s not about the darkness. Look up! Marvel! It’s time you soared.”

Sal unfurled her gossamer wings. Her sister’s feet inched from the ground. The watchers in the trees gasped, mouths agape, eyes agog as the faeries ascended.

For a year, Grandma gave me knick-knacks: a macramé owl; a crokinole board (half the pieces missing); a soup tureen shaped like a chicken.

“It’s a gift.” She laughed while her cancer quivered between us like a persistent moth.

Now, a nurse lifts her into a wheelchair, my cue to leave. I touch Grandma’s hands—once strong, now aching with hollow bones.

The nurse’s impatient shoes squeak as she pushes the wheelchair. The sound swallows the silence. I want to tell her to try talcum powder.

Outside, I wait. Time gets soft. The light of the exhausted sun fades into nothingness.

Bendetta Langley hovers her ear above the floor vent. The racking of guns distorts the conversation, concluded by footsteps rushing the staircase to the side door. Her son and five others flood into his van—masks ready.

“I do this for you, Ma.” That was his line—his lie.

Rotating the phone dial, Bendetta turns to her late husband. Framed above the stove, he smiles with sweat-stained clothes next to an automotive assembly line.

“Nine one one, what’s your emergency?”

Closing her inflamed eyes, Bendetta pauses.

“Hello? Ma’am?”

“Sorry…I’d like to…I’d like to report a robbery in progress…”

I’ve been chained and left for dead, but at least the beatings have finally stopped. My body is battered, broken, and bruised. My flesh is blistered from the sun. I haven’t eaten anything in a day, and I’m so thirsty. Dehydration and a lack of nourishment are finally pulling me under. My ribs are showing, and I can barely stand.

Escape is futile. Believe me, I’ve tried.

I still can’t believe this is really happening to me; my life was supposed to be different.

So now I lie here with my head on my paws wondering what I did to deserve this.

It was on a dreadful commute home when I began to notice the names scratched onto the walls of each and every New York City subway car. Monday it was Mark. Tuesday it was Dylan. Wednesday, Fatima; Thursday, Kat; and Friday, Lucy (with a heart…!). The poorly carved letters, engraved with such care, resemble the jagged handwriting of a preschooler; it is something so inexplicably human. Though the scratches will inevitably fade and the steel of the cars will eventually corrode, I’d like to think otherwise. That the remnants of these people will linger long after time forgets who they are.