pippinpiper224422-blog - Tumblr blog

pippinpiper224422-blog · 7 years

Text

His bed creaks slightly above me, sending a shower of dirt and muck down through my flesh. It rattles through my chest, burning within me before settling silently on the cool floorboards pressing against my back. In retaliation, I let out a deafening scream. The hair on my hackles rises, my muscles tensing, as I feel him retreating beneath a flower-patterned duvet his mother gave him as a good luck charm.

Slowly, I claw my way upwards, yellowing talons scraping horribly against his metal bed frame. I peel off long streaks of blue paint beneath my nails, and leave a trail of black muck where I had been resting. Drawing myself to my full height, I loom above his bed, the soft illumination from a street lamp throws my shadow against the walls and ceilings. I open my mouth, baring my blood-coated fangs at my victim. I step forward. Thud. I begin to scream again. Thud. I lean over his bed, letting one solitary spool of red drool drip onto his face. Suddenly, the lights flicker on. A horrible acid-like burning sensation rips through me, and my scream turns from one of triumph to one of pain. The boy sits up, peter-pan flash light clenched in his sweaty palm

“Asta la vista, monster” He says, triumphant grin on his face. I scramble for his bed and the cool shadows hidden beneath, but my attempts are futile. He flicks the switch, and the last thing I see before departing for monster hell (filled with rainbows and puppy dogs) is the little boy, once so easy to torment, sticking his infernal tongue out at me.

Writing Prompt

You are a kid’s imaginary friend. He’s growing up. You’re fading away.

780 notes · View notes

pippinpiper224422-blog · 7 years

Text

Life

Far away from the brilliantly gleaming lights of our tragically beautiful world is a crumpled mass of rags and dirt. Shallow breaths rattle in and out of her lungs, whistling through brittle ribs that almost protrude from bruised skin. Her hollowed eyes are shut, peaceful but for the pain that resides in the deep shadows of her skeletal face. Death runs a spidery finger down her cheek in a loving caress filled with longing and wonderful darkness. She flinches unconsciously in response, deep in her own world of whirling dreams filled with pursuing memories and fleeing futures.

Light floods between the drooping branches of a white cherry blossom tree. Thin twigs laden with beautiful blooms interlock like wizened fingers. Beneath the tree, walking upon a glimmering pool of water, is the girl. She travels lightly, her feet brushing the shining surface like a breath of cool air. Her hair floats around her, an impossible halo of shimmering silk. Her eyes are bright, wide, drinking. She laughs a child’s laugh, smiling in her innocence as off in the distance a woman appears.

The woman is slender, but not thin. Elegant but not haughty. Perfectly and amazingly equidistant. Her face shines bright in the reflection from the water, golden as though bathed in sunset. She strides across and kneels before the girl, tracing a delicate finger down her cheek in a loving caress, a mirror of her counterpart. Smiling, she holds out a hand for the girl to take.

“This is my first face,” she whispers, leaning so close a curtain of hair falls across the girl “the face that the ignorant chose to see. Watch, as I show you your last truth.”

The world rotates. The girl is no longer a girl but a spectre, watching her own world from afar. Before her lies a house, crooked windows lined with jagged glass grin at her as she is tugged irrevocably forwards. At the doorway she stops and watches. Lying in a pool of blood is a boy, his chest rising and falling in massive, heaving sobs. His face is painted in the purpling colours of anger, drink, and regret. Tears streak the dirt matting his skin, leaving gleaming white trails in their wake.

“This is pain, my second face. It is is everywhere, it is everything.”

The boy slowly heaves himself up, fighting against the hard stone floor until he is standing. He casts a startled glance about him, hoping with all his miniscule might not to see a pale sliver of face leering out at him from the dimness. With one last look he stumbles off, white fog drawing around him as he exits, like great curtains being drawn at the end of a final act.

The world shifts again, sliding to another in a whirl of dreary colours. It stops.

“Watch, for now, I show you sadness.”

There is a girl, sitting alone beneath a beautiful tree with thick and spreading branches. Green light filters down upon her, settling with a merry glint on a thick leather bound book. Stepping forward, a glimpse of the contents can be obtained. It is covered, simply and effortlessly, in an angry scribble of thick, powdery lead. Her pencil works furiously, as she pens all her feelings into one page of overwhelming blackness. People stalk about her and her tree, looking as faint tears trickle down her cheek and plunge off the edge of her chin. They keep walking, leaving her to her misery as they circle her in bright colours and cheerful babble. Never, among so many, has she been so alone. One solitary tear falls onto her book, leaving a blackened trail in its wake.

The world spins out, shaking as it does. When the scene settles the girl sees a small, rundown house, almost exploding with life and colour. She stumbles forward, weary now, shrinking away from what she knows she must do. She arrives at the door, and takes one miniscule step onto the earthen floor. Chaos meets her. Children scream and fight at the edges of her vision, filling the hut with an unbearable racket of noise and motion. At the epicentre of this bursting scene is one thin woman who seems almost paralysed from fatigue. She stares about her with dead, gaping eyes. Her hair, carried by the many drafts, flies about her lined and weathered face. On her lap is a small child, barely a toddler, weeping for food and compassion that has never existed. All her children are dirty and unkempt. Thin, yet wiry, from hard days labouring in destitute fields filled with grain that perishes as soon as it is seeded.

“I present hardship to you, remember this.”

With a rattle the universe shifts once again, and despair shows its face. A bang, and misery takes a bow. Again and again and again, till each change is simultaneously welcome relief and tortuous experience. She closes her eyes, baring her teeth in an unending scream of pain. Wind whips around her, shaking her clothes and snatching at her breath. She trembles in the terrible cold, and fails in the baking heat. With a rebelling tongue she cries out for relief, but none comes. She falls into a whirlwind filled with the biting grit of broken lives and torn dreams. It claws around her, building and breaking, until, with an unprecedented suddenness, it stops. Slowly, she opens her eyes, blinking at the gentle sunlight. She climbs unsteadily to her feet, hardly daring to hope or breathe, and sees a kite, pure white and shining in the sun, float shyly over a copse of trees. She stumbles forward upon trembling legs, feet sinking into a soft carpet of emerald moss, until she emerges from the dappled shade and falls out onto a soft field of swaying grass.

Above her is a small slope, its edges kindly and soft. Topping it is a young child, dressed in the deepest of blues, and crowned by the most vibrant of blonds. The grass curls about the his ankles, somehow seeming to lift him away and draw him closer in the same instant. A rich golden sun sinks behind him, framing his outline in gentle oranges and yellows. His face is upturned, gazing skywards as his kite circles the faint traces of growing constellations. His gleaming eyes wink and shimmer merrily, reflecting the hovering phantom-like kite above him. He twitches the rope and watches with a smile as it dances in response. There is a growing whisper next to the girl, building like a wrathful kiss upon her cheek. She doesn’t turn. In her eyes she beholds the boy, his image burning in her mind.

“And here is hope, at last. Never forget this, it is pure, happy, kind. It is the one thing you can hold onto without it dissolving, snapping, shifting. Never forget.”

The clouds float gently from the sky, melting the strong edges of the boy. Stars flow in gentle streams to the ground, tinkling merrily through the atmosphere. The sun winks, takes a bow, and sinks behind the friendly hill. Soon nothing is left but the white of dreams and the black of nights.

Hollowed eyes drift open, cracked lips part in a peaceful grimace. Her upturned face surveys a cloaked figure surrounded by long wraith-like tendrils of cloth. Whites and greys intermingle beneath a midnight hood, shining brightly within their damning confines. An omnipresent cold filters through the room, stripping all within it bare. She stares, a smile in her eyes, and outstretches one, small, steady hand. Death laces his fingers through hers, white bone against grey flesh, and gently pulls. She follows willingly, leaving her aching body behind, allowing her last breath to glimmer and die in the winter air. She closes her eyes gently, knowing that this is her last moment among men. When she opens them, soft light filters through the drooping branches of a cherry blossom tree. She runs beneath it, and among the roots, glimmering in a pool of water, she sees a small, beautiful kite.

#short story #death #life

0 notes