I watched as the creature - the whatever it was - floated on the soft breeze towards me. It had wings, but it didn't seem to want to use them, gliding through the air instead. As it got closer, my nerves started to act up.
I hate insects.
I hate anything with more than four legs and I'm not that keen on anything with more than two, if I'm honest about things.
I felt cheated as I watched it. The first sunny day in weeks, and I had a chance to enjoy it, sitting in the garden with a book...
Ring, ring. Ring, ring.
Stella looked up. The pay phone beside her was ringing. Turning her attention back to the book she was reading, she tried her best to ignore it.
Ring, ring. Ring, ring.
Glancing around, she plucker up the courage and picked up the phone.
'....Hello?'
'Stella. I thought you weren't going to answer.' the voice said.
'Who is this?' How did he know her name?
'That's not important here.'
'Is that you Danny?' she almost laughed. This was typical of her eldest son. Always the joker.
'Call me Danny, if that makes this easier.'
'Danny, come on....
Her cheeks were as pink as her dress, blotched with red that matched the little bows that tightly held her blonde hair up in two ridiculous pony-tails that resembled palm trees. Her mother did the dog's hair like that as well. Jonathan always wondered how someone could want a second Maltese instead of a daughter.
Was he being unfair? Probably. It was something he slung at Marie as their last fight as a married couple wound down. That fight he'd carried on with such spirit convinced there would be break-up hate sex, but that shot at her parenting skills effectively...
Silence.
The vicar cleared his throat. 'Do you Isabella Riley take....'
'I heard you.' she said, suddenly reappearing from the dream world which had captivated. 'I er... I don't.'
Suddenly aware of a hundred pairs of eyes, she took a deep breath. Ben's mouth fell open. Shock visibly clear on his face.
'Iz?'
'don't Ben.' she murmured. She had to get out of this church. She couldn't possibly marry him. Be commited to one man for the rest of her life. She just couldn't do it.
'But Iz. What? I mean, why?'
'I'm sorry Ben. I really am so, so...
Captive. Surrounded by watr, the woman could not breathe, could not fight, could not even open her eyes. Her waist was bound and her feet were weighted and she was sinking. Soon to be erased.
The man in the boat had asked her one last question before he rolled her out. Now, sinking like a parachuter, she did not think about her little boy at home, or her parents (they would be so sad), or all the things she would leave behind. No. Her last moments, the last grains of sand in her proverbial hourglass, and Mari was thinking about...
She felt like she was drowning. All around her there was water. Freezing. Churning. Flowing. Pulling her and dragging her in multiple directions. She tried to fight against it. Tried hard to kick out with her legs, pull the surface towards her with her arms. But no matter how hard she tried she didn't move, not in the direction that she wanted. It was like the water was a womb and she was trapped inside, a helpless foetus, attached.
As the oxygen in her lungs ran out, and her chest tightened so that she felt like her torso was close...
Time starts... now.
She took a deep breath, and put her head under water. Her robes flowed around her, clinging weightlessly to every crve and bone, floating up around her ankles before settling, like her, at the bottom of the tank.
Beneath the water, everything seemed muted. She could ignore the audience, the leering faces, the peering eyes, the raucus, crude carnival music hummed softly through the water, muted and beautiful, a world within a world. She liked it in here. No pressure, other than the water around her, slowly increasing on her lungs. She began to breathe out, a...
when you click here the prompt will appear and the timer will start
Harry had taught her well. Any failings during the performance would be entirely her fault, but she wasn't worried.
Harry had taught her well.
She felt her hair drift about her head like a mermaids veil, her garments float on the current like a breeze, and the gaze of her lover as she fished for the key.
Harry had taught her well.
She'd concealed the key just as she'd concealed her knowledge of his affair. Not to be outdone, the student became the master of deception in...
"So are you going to Joanie's?"
...
"Why not? It's not like she is a bitch or anything."
...
"She didn't... She didn't! Oh that was low."
...
...
...
"All that?"
...
"Now you are pulling my leg, I knew Joanie like football, but what a way to show it. But you know we should go."
...
"Why? I can't believe you just asked that. Why? Because her parents left her to watch their home, you know that seventeen bedroom house on the hill. She wants a few people over."
...
"I don't know, fifty or seventy."
...
"Oh...
Iridescent, the water moved silently over her head as her toes grazed the soft sand beneath her. In an equilibrium, almost floating but almost standing, she let the water raise her arms. This was limbo.
People always said it was best to keep your feet on the ground, so to speak. When the mind wanders, ideas get lost. Was that the way it really worked, the woman wondered, exhaling and releasing small bubbles of her life-breath into the water. The bubbles traveled upward to the surface, releasing her breath for her over her head. It was true, water made you...