blueberrymistruster - Tumblr blog

blueberrymistruster · 1 year ago

Text

The Mirror

The gold edges of the mirror sparkle in the afternoon sunlight. My prize possession, I admire the intricate swirls in the gilt framing, the soothing smoothness of the glass, the clarity of the image it reflects. Rays of sun bounce from the mirror, brightening and enlarging the tiny room. I am too hot, even with the window open; the air that filters in is warm and I somehow don’t have the strength to move the heavy duvet I am securely tucked under. I cannot tear my eyes from the mirror.

I wonder vaguely what, who, my reflection would look like. Like ghosts, I see my past self, pouting at her reflection, rubbing waxy red lipstick on her lips. Dancing round the room in Christmas pyjamas, sticking silly photos of her friends up, flinging open the window and lighting vanilla scented candles to mask the scent of a Vogue cigarette.

I cannot breathe.

Liv does not burst into my room, thrusting a half-spilled cup of tea into my hand and staining my bedsheets. She does not start playing her questionable music at full blast on her hot pink speaker. She does not tell me that I need to come with her to town because do I expect her to go to the vape store alone?

She does not even text me.

Neither of them do. I am alone in my room.

I stare at the stain on the carpet, the reminder of candles dripping their wax unnoticed, while I kissed her and she held me and we drank cheap prosecco from plastic heart-shaped glasses for Valentine’s day. Chloe loved theatricality.

She told me to break up with Chloe. “It’s me or her!” Liv screamed, tears streaming down her face. I stood, frozen, my eyes wide, my mouth dry. I didn’t know what to say. I thought of King Solomon. I thought of Barney brandishing ‘The Bro Code’ in How I Met Your Mother and laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. I was about to lose my best friend and here I was, wordless, picturing King Solomon and Neil Patrick Harris on my shoulders like a bizarre devil and angel. I don’t even like How I Met Your Mother.

“Are you fucking laughing at me? God, I’m so done with this!”. Without waiting for an answer, she stormed off, slamming the door behind her. It was then that I cried, sobbed, even though I knew that we always disagreed, we always bickered, but most importantly, we always made up.

Liv and I used to argue about fruit. Lying on her bed, my legs rested against the wall, Liv on her stomach, we’d giggle like children and get more and more heated about whether oranges are the best fruit or not. Or we would eat cherries so we could count the stones. She would eat the right number to marry a rich man. I would say that’s cheating, it doesn’t count if you only eat 6 cherries every time, and she would say, “yeah, as if I’m gonna marry a fucking tailor?”, and we’d start squabbling again.

Chloe could tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue. It was one of the first times we were hanging out sober, sat in her bed with her legs resting on mine, wearing underwear and strappy lace tops. It was amazing how quickly we become completely comfortable around each other. I placed a cherry between my teeth; she leaned in and gently took it from me. We giggled, her covering her full mouth – it was not nearly as sexy as we’d somehow imagined it would be. “I can save this!”, she cried, snapping a cherry stem and shoving it in her mouth. After a few moments of watching her fumble her tongue in her mouth, she triumphantly spat out the stem, a perfect knot tied in it. I burst out laughing. “Sorry, how did that save it? Was that supposed to be attractive?”. She grinned and shoved me and suddenly I could taste the cherry on her lips, feel her smiling, hear her breathing get heavier. I put the bowl of mangled stones on the sidetable.

When I got home from Chloe’s, Liv was waiting for me. I struggled out of my coat, put my damp hat and scarf on the radiator. “Where have you been? I missed you!”, she said, her tone somewhere between accusatory and curious.

I don’t know why I lied. I didn’t think she’d be jealous, not then, and I didn’t really care that she’d already expressed distaste for Chloe; I liked her and that was what mattered.

“I went to Brad’s. We’ve not seen each other in ages.”

“Oh. How is he?”

“You know Brad- he’s the same as always. He’s going on some army retreat or something tomorrow.”

“Oh cool. Hey, look, do you want to watch the new Lindsey Lohan romcom tonight? It’s meant to be rubbish but we could split a bottle of wine and do a girly spa night?”

I had already watched it with Chloe. She was right, it was abysmal. But the words that came out of my mouth were:

“Yeah! Let’s do it!”

I could feel the familiar sense of anxiety prickling in my chest, my shoulders. Even the most minor situations had been constricting my chest lately. Somehow, the lie felt like less of a betrayal than having already watched the movie, as if I was replacing Liv somehow.

I am still in bed. The light has shifted; it no longer hits the mirror. The heat of the day is beginning to fade.

I sit up. It feels like an achievement and the thought is so depressing that I slump back down again. I check my phone, knowing I have no notifications.

Melancholia is no stranger to me. She starts as a voice in my head, restricted to my thoughts. But soon, I feel the threatening caress of her sharp fingernails scratching down my spine, moving up to my throat, choking me. It isn’t long before she drags me into bed, luring me with the promise of safety and comfort, before pinning me down and fucking me into exhaustion, leaving me powerless under her weight.

She crept into my bed the first time I argued with Chloe, replacing her warm presence with the cold dread of despair. That time, Liv barged in, clambering on the bed and scaring away the shadows, pulling me to the light. My twin flame, I would joke.

Liv pulled a face when I told her that this wasn’t the end of our relationship, it was one minor argument. She moaned that she was hardly going to see me, that I’d better not abandon our weekend plans to drink cheap cider in the park in the weak early spring sunlight. For some reason, this made me snap. She had been getting more and more possessive; it was claustrophobic.

I ranted down the phone to Chloe, who sympathetically grumbled along with me. I decided to invite her to hang out with us that weekend, hoping to force them into friendship with the same ferocity as a child pushing the same poles of magnets together. I loved them both; why shouldn’t they get along?

The day is almost over. I heave myself out of bed, throw on a floral sundress and slouch downstairs to the garden. Sitting on the grass, I thought of that day, the beginning of the end.

They had sat on either side of me, carrying on separate conversations under the guise of civility.

It wasn’t a devil and an angel on my shoulder, it was Chloe to my right and Liv to my left, their words overlapping, laughing dissonantly, Chloe’s hand on my knee, Liv’s hair flicking in my face.

Unfairly, I had taken it out on Liv once Chloe went home, snarling at her. “Could you not make the slightest effort with Chloe?”, I had shouted. I can’t even think about everything else that I said, that she said.

“You know what? I am sick of this! It’s her or me! Are you fucking laughing at me?”

I crumpled once I was behind the safety of my bedroom door. How could I choose? I’d always concealed my relationship with Chloe; I know it bothered her from the beginning, but it felt too special, too intimate. I hadn’t wanted the outside world to taint it. I’d not lied exactly, I just elected not to bring it up much, not wanting to share the details of our precious time together. So really, my warped mind argued, it wouldn’t have to be too different. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

“I choose you,” I told Liv.

“I love you; I want to be with you,” I told Chloe.

The sun is setting. I go back to my room, my haven, my prison.

I face the mirror. The person I see before me is surprisingly familiar, but I fail to recognise my own image as me. The woman in front of me is a stranger.

I wonder absently what I must’ve looked like when Liv saw us, Chloe and I, tanning in matching bikinis, sneaking kisses on the beach. I thought she was away all weekend.

However I must have looked, I know I will never forget the identical look of shock, anger, upset on their face. Once again, their words overlapped, drowned me, but I didn’t need to hear them to know what they were both saying.

“You lied to me?”

I kept a secret from one of them; I kept one of them a secret. They both stood before me, no longer sat on either side of me, finally united.

Neither of them has spoken to me since. They are silent.

It’s due to rain tomorrow. Autumn is on its way. I crawl back into bed and let the darkness take me.

#creative fiction #creative #fiction #short story #wlw #lesbian short story #wlw fiction #gay #lesbian #queer #queer fiction #queer short story #fyp #best friends #best friend story #sadness #sad story

0 notes

blueberrymistruster · 1 year ago

Text

Soulkeepers Solace

I pace the / columns / of the deserted ruin.

Birds flutter and chirp but somehow / their song doesn’t reach my brain / as if / my ears are repelling the sound.

The air / is thick, humid. For a moment / I am sure I am / underwater / but my heavy feet are planted on the cracked / flagstones, / rooted as deeply as the thick twists of vines / which hold the remains of the crumbled stone together.

The clogged sound evaporates; I no longer can sense / the sound of the birds.

The silence / I realise / is not silence / at all / but instead / a constant thrum of voices / all uniting / on a / single note and / tricking my brain.

The ruin is not empty, desolate as I had thought it was; it is filled / with people, with life, tourists / exploring the intricately carved pillars and clambering the crumbling steps.

❧❃❧

Can you see me?

❧❃❧

Arcadia frowned at the dry soil caked under her fingernails. She had spent the last few days unearthing the sly roots of weeds which infested the darkest corner of the graveyard, where ivy ruled untamed and impenetrable, obscuring decrepit stumps of granite that had once been headstones. Her toils seemed to have little to show for themselves other than the light brown dust which settled immortally on her skin.

Her face was rough, crumpled, spotted by sun damage, her limbs twisted, deformed from a lifetime of scrubbing, gardening, hacking, digging. The scent of rotting foliage, dead things, irrevocably permeated her flesh. Arcadia had an eerie, almost unnatural lack of presence; a passerby catching scent of her might mistake her for a fallen-long-ago oak if not for her apparently human anatomy.

Father David had allowed her to live in a small annex at the back of the chapel for most of her life in exchange for maintaining the church. She did so with unwavering diligence, despite her lack of true religious belief, though she wished she could find the comfort that others did in faith. Somehow it all seemed so inconceivable to her. She had very few true beliefs, in fact. She kept mostly to herself. Those who visited the church referred to her as the Grave-cleaner. She did not know if they knew her name and chose to use this epithet as an explanation for her presence around the church, or if she was so shrouded in mystery that they did not dare – or care – to ask her.

The midday summer sky had promised a glowing sunset, but a thin layer of mother of pearl masked the cornflower and Arcadia only realised the sun was setting when she was jerked from her reverie by the faint sounds of a pair of early-dusk-strollers treading the footpath that meanders through the graveyard.

“I dreamt of Siem Reap last night,” said a walker to her compatriot. “One of the ruins at Angkor Wat. It felt as though I was underwater, I couldn’t move, but I could see all these people around me. This old building reminds me of that, all the ivy and the carvings in the stone and...” Her voice trailed out of earshot as they continued their walk.

Acardia held her breath, pensive. Something about that was familiar to her; she struggled to hold onto a fleeting image of an ancient Cambodian temple, but she had never been to Cambodia. She put it down to de-ja-vu, a sign of a tired mind, and weaved her way home through the graves in the fading grey light.

❧❃❧

Fairies dance!

They glow around me!

They dance

they circle

they are getting closer!

Their fingers

snatch at my hair!

They are not fairies at all

they are goblins! Bony fingers clutching fruit

they shove it in my mouth

it is so sweet! I want more!

❧❃❧

A man walks towards the grove, he is so beautifully young, so wizened and wise and old. The fairies scatter. wake up, he says, soft, powerful, eat not the fruit.

❧❃❧

When Arcadia entered the church kitchen to brew a hot green tea, a woman was looking intently at Father David. At her entrance, their murmured words cut off abruptly. She smiled her quiet apology and as soon as she flicked on the kettle, she faded into the background and the woman, Prudence, began to speak again. “The goblins were surrounding me, Father, little Devils! I’ve prayed but the dreams still come, I cannot rid myself of them,” she wailed.

They are trying to tell you something, the wise-wizened man whispered. The one you yearn for is waiting for you there.

Father David and Prudence were staring at Arcadia. “Sorry?” asked the priest.

Arcadia flushed, clutching her mug to her chest. She realised that she had spoken the words aloud, as if her tongue had created them and they had spilled out like saliva before her mind could comprehend them.

They looked at her for a moment, and then returned to their conversation as though she had never spoken. Just the eccentric Grave-Cleaner. Arcadia exited the kitchen, wondering if she did speak at all.

The summer days flew by, and gradually the ivy retreated from the old graves, lurking against the back wall, leaving Arcadia to gently chip at lichen, scrub away centuries of dirt, attempt to make birthdays and deathdays and messages of love and loss and memory visible again. The dreams pervaded and Arcadia quietly accepted that her life was such a non-life that she now saw the unconscious images of others, unable to conjure her own. As the headstones reemerged, she wondered if she was trading her life-soul-essence for these meagre tributes to the long-dead and forgotten.

It was September when Arcadia, resting by the tiny fire in her annexe, heard the cautious tap at her door. Prudence stood on her never-visited-doorstep, holding, bizarrely, a wicker basket of fruits. The women were silent for a beat, Arcadia in shock at her first caller and Prudence perhaps momentarily confused by her own decision. “Come in!” Arcadia cried, a little too loudly. Prudence warmed a little from the unexpected welcome displayed by the reclusive Grave-Cleaner and immediately, though shyly, explained the reason for her visit. As she told her story, the words began to gush from her without inhibition.

Prudence had lost a lover to a war; they had written to each other for years until the letters had tragically and abruptly stopped. Losing herself to God, Prudence had not thought of him for decades, until the very day her dreams of the fae had started. Always, she said, she had found herself in the grove they would meet at as secret young lovers, a detail she had never spoken aloud. Arcadia’s words had stuck in her mind like the taste of the sweetest fig, and eventually, overcome by curiosity, she had visited the grove once more. He was there waiting, and had been every day for weeks, too shy to approach her lest she no longer cared to see him.

“You knew,” Prudence said earnestly. “How?”

Again, the words honey-dripped from Arcadia’s tongue. “I just knew.”

Within a few days, those who had once sought the counsel of the priest knocked instead on Arcadia’s door, often bringing small gifts as their ancestors might have brought to sage-oracle-wisemen. Her replies were not typically conclusive, or even immediately decipherable, but always her prophecies came true. Always, Arcadia knew they were coming, knew of their dream before they told her. Her dusty doorstep now crowded with marvelling-confused-desperate-lonely-curious visitors.

The graveyard began to slip into disrepair. Eternally moss-green and ramshackle with age, the graveyard’s lack of pruning was noticeable only to Father David and Arcadia, yet an imperceptible atmosphere of neglect pervaded the air. Visitors tightened scarves against the bitter chill of carelessness as Arcadia dedicated more and more time to her new followers, satisfying their whims as they poured the contents of their soul-dreams into her creaky-mottled body. She swallowed every drop, and out poured fountains of wine and honey and milk. She did not pause to relish her newfound popularity, nor did she consider the hours of delving into other people’s consciousness a mental strain: this was simply her life now, as she saw it, this was her duty.

❧❃❧

THEY MARCH OVER THE HILL THE GROUND RUMBLES THE CRY OF A WOMAN SHE FALLS FROM A HORSE HER COAT MULTICOLOURED FLOATS IN THE WIND IT IS NOT A COAT IT HAS TURNED TO FLAMES THE KING RESCUES HER NO HE IS IMPRISONING HER THE WOMAN IS GONE IT IS ME IN THE FLAMES IN THE PRISON MY COAT

❧❃❧

October Thirty-First, Hallows-Eve. Arcadia opened her door to Father David. “Witch!” he cried, “Blasphemous-cheap-fortune-teller-swindler-witch,” the barrage of words spitting from his mouth with a stunningly unchristian malevolence. Father David had had enough of his authority being seeped away by the strange hermit he had so charitably housed for all these years.

November First, All-Saints Day. Arcadia knocked on Prudence’s door as Prudence had knocked on hers, the first of her many visitors and the closest person she had to a friend. Prudence, and her new-old lover, welcomed her with open arms, and swiftly alerted the neighbours that the Dream-Teller was now residing with Prudence, the first disciple.

❧❃❧

It was perhaps the forcible ejection from the place Arcadia had called home which woke her up. She misses her long solitary days of gardening; the dream-telling suddenly seemed so vapid, so inconsequential. As the nights grew longer, the dreams did too. She missed the restfulness of true, thoughtless sleep.

The moon replaced her sun. When its glow broke through the clouds, she would creep back to her old dwelling, seeking the peace of the graveyard. Guilt at her reckless abandonment of the sleeping-dead moved her to her old task of care-taking. To an outsider, the Grave-Cleaner looked as though she was sleep-walking, but Arcadia felt truly awake only in these moments, resurrected.

Father David too took solace in the calm sanctity of the graveyard at night. Plagued by thoughts of sermons, demons, heaven and hell, he took to silently assisting Arcadia’s midnight gardening, never speaking for fear of waking her from her walking-sleep. It was Arcadia who spoke first, in fact.

“Happy New Year, Father,” she smiled.

“Oh- thank you,” he said, somewhat abashed by his behaviour towards her. Not only his silence now, but his banishment. And before that... his inexcusable ostracization.

I’m no Joan of Arc, you know.

“I- I know.”

“I don’t see the future. Or the words of the Lord. I don’t even interpret the dreams myself. I just see them.”

“What do you mean?”

Arcadia smiled at him again and returned home, to her annex. Perhaps, thought Father David, she was never awake at all. But after that, she moved back into her home in the graveyard.

Prudence was left feeling rather unfulfilled by Arcadia’s abrupt departure, exacerbated as the callers no longer filled her kitchen and instead went back to the church. Missing their company, Prudence often stayed with Arcadia all day, watching as Arcadia slept more and more, often fitfully, as the approaching visitors triggered periods of dream-walking. She told Prudence it was as though the dreams stayed locked in her brain, clogging her thoughts, thick sap turning to amber, until she let sleep swallow her. The man, the Dream-Teller, called to her.

❧❃❧

I walk / through the graves / careful!

not to stand on the rest-place of /

people / sleeping

Keep them clean /

Cleanliness is next to

Godliness.

God?

The sun is setting.

is she dead is she breathing oh lord oh god get her some water she’s dehydrated she’s moving is she awake is she dreaming

Arcadia walks towards the Dream-Teller. He smiles the same smile Arcadia had once been known for. Shall we? He asks. She nods.

Arcadia!

She is with a man, wise

ancient

youthful

faceless!

They walk together! I call out to them

they do not reply

they smile! They do not speak

or if they do

I cannot hear it!

❧❃❧

The moon rose full over the graveyard. The ivy rustled but finally, it respected the rest-place of the dead, and stayed in its corner, where it belonged, still, peaceful.

#creative writing #creative fiction #short story #short fiction #dreams #dream story #graveyard #surrealist fiction #surrealist writing #fyp #summer #summer writing #fiction #in the dreamhouse #reading #books

0 notes

blueberrymistruster · 1 year ago

Text

Lemon

Cracked open in his planetary hands, the juices of the fruit blended with the dirt that was permanently etched into the lines of his palms. It was as if the crust of the Earth understood that he was a trustworthy person to settle on, the natural world calling for the attention of his eyes, his heart, his hands. Small uneven thumbs dug into the remaining flesh of the citrus, his mouth betraying the sharp pain of lemon juice in his fishingline-thin cuts. The pain felt good. Deserved. Afterall, he was tearing the lemon beyond repair—it seemed only right that it wasn’t going unpunished. To begin with, the destruction felt careless, but he soon realised it was the opposite. Somehow it was not so much boredom or anger which compelled him to destroy, but a feeling that he owed it to the universe. More than primal instinct, but less than conscious thought. It was respectful, in a way, reviving the lemon by giving it a purpose: to be used, to heal, to be consumed. Granted, he wasn’t consuming the lemon in the way it might have imagined.

For every split in the fruit, the river-wide, canyon-deep cracks in his soul healed over a layer, as if the sticky juice trickling down to his elbows was fusing the empty space. The lemon he held was a rising sun; the fissures in his skin and his soul were the shadow that night had left behind.

Gentle breeze caresses September trees. The brush of a kiss against bruised knees.

He had found the lemon lurking nameless by a bin earlier that day. He was struck by its vibrancy, its defiantly cheerful outlook despite having been lobbed in the general direction of a bin by an owner who didn’t care to dispose of it properly. Who would bring a lemon to the park and just leave it there, condemned to rot? The symbolism wasn’t lost on him.

When he’d caught sight of it, glinting in the late afternoon sun, his skinny body had been lolled against a tree as if it didn’t contain a network of chasms. His feet were already intertwined with the roots of the tree, fragile shoulder blades leaving dents in the bark, hair transitioning from soft tufts to budding leaves. He couldn’t tell if it was the Earth that wanted to take him into Her, where She could properly care for him, or if it was him who wished to soak into the safety of the tree where the breaks could heal.

Yet something made him grateful for the sight of the lemon, the compulsion to stand—ripping roots and shedding leaves—and pick it up, forcing him to return to the real world. Getting too rooted was dangerous.

His world was a surprisingly nice park on the edge of a small city, more on the wild side than a carefully crafted artisanal garden. He liked to think of the trees as his protectors, the soil as his home, the grass as his bed. Though realistically his bed was beneath a bench, curled up on the harsh grain of the tarmac in the kids’ playpark, where he was largely obscured from view and looked like nothing more than a child playing hide-n-seek. The trees did their best, but they were less effective guardians against the dangers of the corporal realm.

The nameless child walked to his resting place for the night, collecting a drop of sunlight on his heel and leaving a puddle of darkness with every step until the park was submerged in twilight. The shell of the lemon was still cradled in his hand, and he considered briefly how the peel would taste in his mouth, how it would fill his echoing stomach.

Fluttering leaves spotted with pale gold sun. Hand on an arm whose life had not begun.

The air felt strangely light that night, perhaps the heaviness of summer seeping from the atmosphere and the chill of winter creeping in. Each breath seemed to suck in flimsy air, gulps which slipped in his lungs and refused to settle, no matter how long he held it in for. It left him aching for air.

As he neared the playpark, he discovered why. A figure of swaddled clouds had emerged beneath his bench. Easily wafted away, he hoped. The fallen cloud seemed to be a child, something he was distinctly wary of.

All children are something to watch out for if you want to avoid sand kicked in eyes, pointed fingers and taunting words. But the real threat is mothers (fathers, not so much; BBC sports news is easily enough to keep their eyes occupied aside from a swift glance to check on their own child). But mothers, gaggled together, surreptitiously casting an eye over their compatriots’ offspring to assure themselves of their superior parenting, galvanising one another into quickly looking up the number for Childline as they decided that so-and-so’s daughter was clearly malnourished—they presented a danger.

He wasn’t so worried now; the mothers had long departed to prepare fish fingers and their own glass of rosé. Night was beginning to drip into the twilight blur; now only post-work joggers and dog walkers remained, vague shapes flowing down the distant path. Enough movement to keep the demons of night at bay without disrupting the blanket of stillness that had started to settle. Usually, it was now that he could relax.

Today, however, his hackles remained raised, his heart thrumming as the shuffling plates of the Earth reverberated through his chest. Something was strange tonight; the shapes moved purposefully and more and more of them seemed to spill into his park, crossing ominous beams of light that they held captive in their hands.

The ball of mist shuffled; its form seemed to strengthen as it sucked air from his lungs. It stretched out, rolling from a foetal position to rest flat on its stomach. With a sudden burst of adrenaline, he decided to run at it to defend his territory and his suffocating lungs. He let the lemon peel slip from his hand.

His efforts were futile: by the time he had crossed the short distance to the bench, it had decidedly become a she, a fully formed, tangible body shrouded in a thin white blanket that most certainly would not drift harmoniously away from his sacred spot. He wondered if she was a child, or if even fully-grown clouds materialised as small beings. Either way, she was fast asleep and seemingly incapable of inflicting any real pain as far as he could see. He looked to the trees, wondering how to approach this, and was reassured by a gust of wind that ruffled his overgrown hair. Tentatively, he prodded her with a toe, then leapt back, just in case. She did not stir. He knelt and cautiously shook her shoulder with his earth-blessed hand, snatching it back as she jolted awake, hitting her head on the underside of the bench and bursting into tears.

Every tear seemed to restore the air to his lungs, raindrops dribbling onto thirsty flower petals. It expelled fear and washed away worry like a river smooths stones. She was no threat, he knew that now. He wondered how he could have ever doubted the intention of the clouds. Should he stop her crying? Rain was something to be respected, he knew that—though on the nights he spent shaking uncontrollably after he had been soaked to the bone by a summer storm, he had trouble feeling as rejuvenated as the plants seemed to.

Puddles drying on a hot summer day. A back turned and steps hurrying away.

Nervously, he inched closer to where the girl cowered. Voice cracking like leaves splintering from trees, he mumbled a word of reassurance, then when she didn’t respond, he spoke louder.

“Hey, it’s ok, I won’t hurt you or something… it’s just, just, you’re in my bed?”

She was still weeping softly, snuffling into the blanket, but she finally turned her eyes to his face. He was stunned by the intensity of her lightning gaze; his voice wobbled as he asked if she was alright.

“I’m scared.”

“Hey, no, it’s okay- we’ll get you back up there,” he said earnestly, slightly alarmed at the strange ache in his throat, the rust that had formed from disuse. She crawled out from under the bench, which he couldn’t help but think was a rather naive mistake. Not that he was something to be wary of, but the demons at night came in many forms—he thought a cloud would have known this. She must be a young one.

“Who are you?”

“Um, I don’t know. I don’t know if I have a name anymore.”

“Why?”

“No one ever calls me by my name. And I never really liked it, honestly.”

“Oh. That’s weird. My name’s Flora. I’m 7.”

“Flora?”

“Yes.”

There was a lull as both parties pondered this. He wondered why she had been sent to him, because if he was honest, the interaction felt somewhat unnatural. Before he could broach the subject of getting her to leave his bench, she spoke again.

“I think I should maybe go home now,” Flora said, calm but expectant, as if he was able to suddenly evaporate her and float her to wherever she lives, “Mummy will be worried now, I think.”

“How will you get home?”, he asked, thrilled that his problem would be easily solved, though the worry that the demons would get her was enough to splinter what remained of his soul.

This turned out to be a mistake: she started to cry again, which felt the way the lemon juice did when it trickled into his cuts. As her sobs became a rainstorm, he realised his face was wet too, his mouth twisting like dandelion roots and quivering like leaves in a hurricane. It was not rain or lemon juice he felt wetting his face, but tears, thick like sap and as infinite as the cycle of a bird’s egg hatching to become a mother the next spring.

In an old park are two children crying. Under a bench, young souls slowly dying.

A long time seemed to pass as both children sobbed freely together, pain mingling like a river meeting the sea. Slowly, slowly, her breathing calmed and the sobs waned. She looked at the boy and the way he had turned his face, hiding behind his grubby hands. His feet were bare, his clothes discoloured under layers of grime and dirt. Mummy, she thought, would not like that. The tears began to creep back as she thought of her mother. Running away did not seem so fun now.

The boy dried his eyes and fixed her with a surprisingly solid gaze.

“Flora?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you a cloud?”

“Huh? Cloud?”

He ducked his head and didn’t reply.

“Um. Do you have a Mummy?”

His head remained lowered, dipping almost to rest on his emaciated collarbones. Slowly, he shook his head. This was the first time he had really admitted this to himself, but it somehow felt more like a weight tumbling from his eggshell shoulders than a sickening truth.

“Come home with me! Mummy will let you have a sleepover, I promise!”

Her excitement was contagious enough to make him raise his head and smile weakly at her. He was going to tell her thank you for the offer, but his home was here. His treacherous mouth, however, betrayed him.

“Flora? I think… I’d really like that.”

A small frog hops confused among the ferns. A helpless mother who never returned.

He had planned to ponder whether to stay with Flora on the walk home, but it became quickly apparent that she knew exactly where she was and it most likely wasn’t going to be a long period of reflection. Now he found himself teetering on the doorstep, awkwardly surveying Flora’s mother clasping her to her body, the way mingling vapours at dawn seem to merge into one unbreakable, delicate wall.

He had been prepared for the claustrophobia from the second he decided to join Flora on the doorstep. The thought of setting foot inside a building made him feel as though rot was spreading through his insides, and he had felt a flicker of embarrassment as he compared the shade of his grubby, soil-grown feet with the cream carpet that stretched past where the mother and daughter were still joined.

But this was not enough to dull the effect of the unbreathable air, thick, stagnant, and warm in a way that hurt his skin. It was not the heat of bright July rays brightening his skin, but an intense, dusty heat that felt more like wind churning around him and squeezing him dry of moisture. But worst of all—the walls. It was not their inescapable closeness, or the looming solidity they threatened, but the paint. It was too bright, too matte, too thick, it seemed to blur before his eyes and increase in layers as the walls, the ceiling, the horrible thick heat, tightened around him. It had been a long time since he had been held so tightly.

He turned on his heel, leapt down the concrete steps of the porch, and tore back to the safety of the park.

The rustle of birds settling in their nests. Another crack widening in his chest.

Leftover sap clogged his eyes as he sprinted. His lungs rasped, tiny insects beginning to make their home in the branches of his alveoli.

At last, the park loomed before him, and he squirmed through the railings of the locked gates. At last, he could slow down. The playpark was just visible ahead, but as he passed the tree he had rested against earlier, his foot caught on something and he found himself tumbling to the ground, hands reaching out into the abyss to break the fall. The pain hit him first in his knee, then stung his grazed palms with a sudden intensity which made him gasp. He sat on the ground, and felt clarity return to his blurred mind with each vital breath. He was home. He was safe.

As he looked towards his bench, his eye caught on a flash of colour. The lemon. It was as if it called to him personally, as a flame calls a moth and the sun calls fresh spring shoots. He stood slowly, entranced, and gingerly picked it up. He looked at the seeds, still clinging to the crushed flesh inside. Decay was already tinging the edges of the peel. The hypnotic feeling was overwhelming, and he realised he knew what the Earth was asking of him.

At the base of a tree, hidden within the small patch of forest left in the park, he knelt. He gently removed all the seeds from the lemon and planted them in the soft soil. They probably wouldn’t grow, he knew that. But there was always a chance. His young hands gently patted the mound of soil he had crafted, and he realised how tired he was. So very tired.

The trees opened their arms to him, the grass soothed his exhausted feet. As he curled up at the base of the tree, nestled between stately roots, he felt moss slowly grow over his body to form a blanket and sprouting fungus stretched over his head until he was concealed. Tiny roots began to entangle with his fingers and toes, and he watched in awe as his skin began to crack, roughen and harden as bark turned his once-soft skin into armour. And finally, he allowed the Earth to root him to Her, let Her sew the cracks within with fibres of Her very core. For that was what he clutched still, rough hands clasping the lemon peel to his chest, his reminder that there had always only been one ending.

Petals burst, leaving dying buds bereft. He will never understand why she left.

The Earth rotated, rocking him to sleep. The sun broke into the dawn sky, beaming through in wisps of clouds. He smiled as he thought of Flora, and hoped she was warm, still enveloped by her mother.

Once again, the dark of dreamy night thins. The sun has risen and new day begins.

When families, joggers, couples, dogwalkers and teens strolled, ran, wandered, chased and plodded by, they noted the fresh pile of lemon-yellow leaves beneath the tree. Autumn had come.

#creative writing #lemon #short story #loneliness #creative #fiction #short fiction #surrealist fiction #surrealist writing #lanny max porter #autumn #summer #summer writing #fyp #explore

0 notes

blueberrymistruster · 1 year ago

Text

Loneliness

I try to consolidate with the idea of loneliness. It is my final week of university and all of my housemates have gone home; my parents are unable to collect me for another week. I am perfectly happy in my own company; I read, I watch TV, I go on walks, I play with my hamster, I tap through endless games of online sudoku. Writing it down on paper, it all seems awfully banal but I can’t help but wonder what else there is to do? Create something perhaps? Not everyone is a creator though, and, as I said, I am more than content with the small life I am living through my books.

I recently read Mitch Albom’s ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ and I was drawn to the segment in which Morrie advises that you acknowledge a feeling, truly feel it, and then detach, stop wallowing in it and make room for all the other emotions. I suppose that it what I am doing here.

I feel lonely.

The house is quiet. Only one of my housemates remains, a girl who I have truly never had a real connection with. We lived together in first year, and again in my final year, but somehow something never quite clicked and even three years into knowing her, I find myself struggling to think of things to say to her which might lead to a conversation. I loved all the rest of my housemates – six others – and I realise that I don’t even feel guilt for not considering her as company. If anything, she is an obstruction, the flaw in my fantasy that I might live in this large house alone by choice.

I have a couple of friends and acquaintances I could see, and of course I call all my friends on a ceaseless rota, but I know it is not the lack of human contact which I miss, but the atmosphere of a house alive. Shouts up the stairs, constant overlap of music played on speakers and guitars, the smell of tuna pasta and curry and bacon being cooked simultaneously, feet thudding on the stairs while I try to work out who is heading up to the bathroom and if they will be long in the shower.

Perhaps it is not true loneliness I feel, but dread. When I go home, my parents and sister have their own lives. Here, our lives are intermingled; we are wrapped up in one another. I am understood here. So I suppose this silence is an introduction to the next few months of my life.

I plan to travel over Christmas: pack up my essentials into a backpack, fly to Indonesia for a month, then meeting my best friend in Sydney for a while, before I head off to explore the east coast on my own. Initially, the idea was borne of having nothing better to do. My post-grad options are essentially getting a 9-to-5 in some low-paying uninspirational job or travelling round the world. Which would you rather do?

As the idea has solidified in my head, (and the recently prescribed anti-depressants started to kick in), a genuine excitement has grown. I have spent happy hours flicking through Lonely Planet guides, reading travel blogs, watching Tiktoks of beautiful beaches and sunsets. I travelled through South-East Asia last summer with a few friends; it was one of the happiest periods of my life. At the very end, I went off on my own for a couple of weeks, mostly due to the fact that everyone else had prior commitments at home and I was reluctant to surrender the lifestyle of true freedom I had become accustomed to. I had met some amazing people while I was there and I was eager to taste solo travel for myself, so I picked Borneo at random and two days later, I was there. I had not considered that few backpackers of my age – or indeed, few backpackers in general – ventured to the Kinabatangan region, and while I experienced some of the most beautiful and eye-opening geography of the trip, I also experienced my first taste of real, blood-deep loneliness.

I find myself worrying that I won’t make connections while travelling, though I know that the very nature of solo-travel is about meeting people and living out perfect, fantastical friendships in paradise that end before they can sour.

I think about my backpack. Last summer, I never needed anything that I couldn’t carry on my shoulders, albeit with some backpain, but my room is cluttered with the colourful treasures of two years of living here, and I feel the weight of impending dread at boxing up my beautiful life here and leaving my bedroom as cold and empty as the rest of this silent house.

#writing #creative writing #end of uni #travel #travel writing #travel creative writing #loneliness #tuesdays with morrie #mitch albom #short story

1 note · View note