Wishing Well, Part 5

I meant to finish this up today, but NaNo has made me a slave of my muse. Next week should be the last installment of this little story. Please comment!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

He looked more human than the others, his skin free of the frayed texture of their gray skin tone. He was clean shaven and the only defect on his face was a wide scar, deep and red, beneath his left eye. He wore a thin white linen suit, crisp and creased as though he’d taken it from its packaging and settle into it right away. His hair was long and black as a crow’s feather. It curled past his small ears and was pulled back by a thin hemp strap.

“Who are you?” I asked. I lifted my hand to shield my eyes from the incandescent brightness that shone from his head and arms. It reminded me of the reflection of lake waves on midday.

“Some call me friend.” He moved around me like the others, draping his body behind my shoulders, around my arms, but he did not frighten me. He smelled of lilies and when his fingers brushed across my cheek, I felt the velvet smoothness of that flower. “Some call me enemy.”

He let his hand rest on the small of my back while he stood at my side. I had long-since stop wondering how these creatures could defy gravity or suspended logic.

“Miss Matthews, do you know why you are with us?”

I was afraid to answer, still troubled by the cruel evidence of my past sins, still consumed by the weight of my shame. Was I being disciplined? Was this man the punisher, set in a fine cast, wearing a warm smile to lessen the shock of my judgment?

I looked away from his face and stared at the fine hairs on his ear. “I was dared.” The words came out weak and low enough that I was certain the man would not hear them.

“A dare? How very odd that you would accept a challenge from such weak-minded, simple girls. Girls who have no hope but what they are told to have from others.” I did not know how he knew of Ruth and her friends or how he could so accurately describe them. The man touched my chin and I lifted my head up to stare into his black eyes. The lily fragrance was diminishing. “You are here, Miss Matthews, to see the truth.”

“Whose truth?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“All truth.”

He turned from me and lifted his hand, waving it once in front of the well wall until that white fog that heralded my past sins, returned and covered me. It shifted around my neck and moved the damp hair from my cheeks.

I saw a green light flash, like the quicksilver of lightening cracking across the black, starless night sky.

What I saw made me hold my breath.

I stood beneath the thin veil of the fog, my hair longer, my breast fuller, my hips rounder. I walked near the bank of Redwood Lake, holding the hand of a child. She was small, no more than five or six, with long blond hair that trailed past her waist. She ran ahead of me, following a golden dog who barked at something in the treetops above us.

“Tomorrow is a gift given to those willing to sacrifice,” the man said. I could not see him, did not take notice of where he stood, too consumed by this older version of myself, took caught up in the beautiful child and her play. “Gifts are not offered so easily, Miss Matthews.” His voice sounded behind me, somewhere in the depths of the well I had no interest in discovering.

The scene shifted and a still older Blythe Matthews appeared. Her hair was graying, but she was not elderly; still firm in her body, still having a solid, straight frame as she danced and twirled with a man. His face was hidden to me though I could clearly see the shape of his head and the length of his hair. His features, however, were blurred as though intentionally blotted out to keep me from a complete image of him.

“Sunshine,” he called Blythe. “My sunshine.”

The Blythe before me smiled and nestled her head against his broad chest. Content. Pleased.

“Tomorrow comes to those who choose it.” The man’s voice now sounded deeper and held a sterner timber. “Only to those who choose well, Miss Matthews.”

Again the green light flickered and the fog became thick, so thick and expansive that I could barely make out the figures that moved within it. I saw myself as very old. My back curved and my hands were twisted by the cruelty of time. My cheeks were heavily concaved and the skin on my face was thin and lined with deep wrinkles. Despite all this, despite the evident twist of my body and the old creases on my face, the old woman before smiled a toothless grin, surrounded by a room of people I did not know.

She laughed and giggled at two young children playing a game. They were all assembled in the front room of a cottage, every inch of the place taken by couples, by children, by an assortment of people that reminded me of my parents, of my brothers and cousins.

They were a family I had not yet designed; a consortium of lives that existed in my future, suspended in wait for the choices I had yet to make.

“Choose wisely,” the man said. The fog lifted and he stood before me. He had grown older. His hair was now thin and gray. His smooth skin was creased and he stood slumping in front of me. The sock of his appearance made me reach out to cradle his face.

“What’s happened to you?”

“Time,” he said, his grin weak, his lips giving a small view of missing teeth, “time transforms us all.” I felt the sting of tears corner in my eyes, not certain why I should feel such worry and sorrow for this strange man. His long fingers wiped back the moisture on my face. “Choose well.”

###

Teaser Tuesday Wishing Well, Part 4

*This one is a bit out of left field*

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3



“Such pity.”

“Such shame.”

When one creature spoke, the other immediately answered. I could not bear to look at them—their stench and the feel of their loose, moist skin was too much sensation for me— but I had gleaned the wide spherical shape of them, the make of their long limbs and the thin texture of their skin.

My descent slowed and I found myself wrapped in their embrace, unable to move my legs or even shrug my shoulders. Their grip was like a slack-fitted vice, not constricting but confining enough that I had no chance of escape.

“We see…”

“Within…”

Both creature slid up my body and rubbed their long noses against my temples and I could tell that they were naked. One female, one clearly male.

“So much promise…”

“So much doubt…”

I felt the cool lick of them pressing on my mind. There came a shudder of my breath and the rasp of my voice sticking in my throat before their grip tightened and I struggled to breathe.

I tried to plead, to mutter “please, stop,” but the only sound I heard was the forced gurgle of air leaking past my lips.

“To dream…”

“Is to die…”

“To die…”

“Is to choose...”

With another squeeze around my chest and the pump of their tongues on my mind, my eyes opened, but I did not see gray, wet well brick or even the queer green lewd figure gyrating in their perversion. I saw, through a mist of white fog my life set present and real. Every sin open to be discovered, every shameful thought tangible.

I watched, horrified, as a younger version of myself lifted three gold coins from my dead grandmother’s jewelry box. That bounty had bought three bobbins of red and pink ribbons despite the winter’s harshness and my parents struggle to keep us fed.

Then I saw an only moderately aged version of myself hiding beneath the cellar doors to spy on William Hunter as he stripped himself completely of muddy clothes near the horse trough. The baker’s coach had overturned, the horses spooked by a painted black rope fashioned to mimic a snake, tied beneath their reins. One horse had to be put down and William lost his job delivering the baker’s orders that summer.

Then, the Blythe Matthews from just two summers ago, holding her father’s whiskey under her arm, already flirting near drunkenness, racing into the Hollows to meet Riley Cormac past a secluded field of heather. Never mind that her father had forbid her from ever seeing Riley. No matter that he was promised to Elisabeth Hillson.

More flashes came, more retellings of all my wrong doings until I felt I could no longer bear the weight of my shame— until I thought I may burst from the heartache I caused and, heartache there was, right before me: my mother crying into my father’s chest, worried at how thin we’d grown; William shielding his face from his father’s fists as he explained he could no longer return to the baker’s shop; Elisabeth staring over the railings of Dunleery Bridge, her belly round, no ring on her finger and a damp letter from Riley telling her he’d fallen in love with a dancer from London.

“Such promise…”

“No doubt…”

The voices sounded proud, indulgent in the reflections laid before me, as though all I had done, all the horrors I had breathed life into, were meant to be praised. I shuddered and pulled my neck away from their embrace, fought despite the guilt I felt to rid myself of their touch. They resisted, gripping me tighter.

“Choose…”

“Choose well…”

“No,” I said. I tugged against the slick surface of their skin and shook my arms until my fingers were free, until I found the rough texture of the rope once more. I lowered my eyes and squeezed them tight, repeated “no, not ever. I will not,” until I felt their embrace linger and fade.

It was moments— minutes, perhaps hours before I dared to open my eyes again, hopeful that the past’s retellings had finally vanished. When I let my shut lids open, lifting them fractions at a time, the past had disappeared, the earlier versions of my sins vacant from my sight. The future, however, was sure to follow, ushered in by the pale young man that stood before me.

“Hello, Miss Matthews.”

Wishing Well #3

Wishing Well Part 3

Part 2
Part 1

The hag’s laughter echoed against the brittle brick around me. Every loud shriek of the sound pierced my ears and my hands took on a terrible shake, making it almost impossible for the rope to stay gripped in my hands.

She stared at me and moved her head left and right, her eyes squinted as though she could not make out what I was. Her eyes—cold and manic— grew brighter.

“Lower and lower, my pet,” she said, slithering on the brick like a python.

I wanted to look behind her, curious how she managed to move, to wind around me in such a tight space, but my eyes would not leave her, my words froze in my throat.

“Lower,” she said again, still cackling. She looked down, below my feet and nodded, her amusement disappeared at a command I could not hear. She smiled once—several teeth missing and those still left were black and jagged—before she slid down, to stop at my feet.

“Must be lower,” she mumbled. She took the bucket between her hands and turned it, making the already tenuous grip I held on the rope loosen.

“Stop,” I shouted, but only received a frown from the now silent hag. “Please, I’ll fall.” When she continued to ignore me, continued to slap her hands against the bucket, I lowered into a crouch, winding my arms around the rope. “Please,” I said, though I knew she could not hear me. “God, please,” I said as the walls spun and shifted to become a blur of shadows and dizzying, disappearing light.

Before I closed my eyes, the spin of the bucket and rope now so fast that my hair slapped against my cheeks, I saw a cluster of symbols jumbling together—large red and black letters I could not read and tiny green naked figures danced and gyrated together.

I closed my eyes completely. My stomach twisted and gurgled until I feared I’d vomit.

“Lower,” the hag shouted. “Lower still, my pet.”

I chanced one peek, forcing my eyes open despite the heavy fear I felt pumping my heart into double beats.

This time, when I heard the hag speak, the sound came from above me, the distance made her words barely recognizable.

I could not feel the spin of the bucket, but the whirls of the brick and the green drawn figures around me told me I had not stilled. My hair stuck against my forehead and I could not tell if it was sweat or well water that had dampened it.

I stared up to find no light, no shadows and no mad hag anywhere. There was only the dimness of the well and two small shapes slightly lighter than the cavernous darkness.

They whispered my name, calling to me in soothing, sweet tones before I felt the brush of their bodies wrapping around my waist.