I tell stories

Sandra’s grandfather told her not to stand in front of the broken mirror.

“That’s what did your grandma in,” he said. “I’d smash it proper, if I dared.”

She didn’t understand what he meant. That Grandma was vain? Yes, she was, but it wasn’t her fault. That was society, expectations. And you can’t get killed by vanity.

So she stood, and looked, in defiance of him.

Her cracked reflection stared back, lips trembling as if desperate, pleading to be released. Eyes darting to look off-pane, when Sandra’s didn’t move.

Tentatively, she touched the glass.

It was broken from the inside.

I said the gallery was only paintings, so she took me to see Judith Slaying Holofernes.

She said first, there’s a wash. Invisible, buried, yet subconsciously shaping the whole feel. Not painting, but psychology.

Then comes the construction in oils and brushstrokes. Not painting, but engineering.

Then beyond technique, see how the artist casts herself as Judith and her rapist as Holofernes. Not painting. Judgement.

Further still, see how she was tortured with thumbscrews to make her admit her accusation was a lie. And see her response, this image, saying her hands remain unbroken.

“Painting makes pictures. Layers make art.”

—–

This story was from the prompt ‘Artemisia Gentileschi’. Judith Slaying Holofernes is her most famous work, but she made the Judith story a bit of a speciality.

When Death comes, they said, he’ll be a pale man with long white hair, and his eyes, you will not see them.

“Why not?” I asked.

“He keeps them hidden,” my uncle said, “under the brim of his hat. The moment you see them is the moment you die.”

I didn’t believe him, but there were lots of things I didn’t believe in.

Like wearing seatbelts.

The crash was… hot, I think.

And he knocked on the window, that pale man. And he offered me his hand, and I could have refused.

But oh my Lord, he had beautiful eyes.

It was me who found the infection, but I didn’t know it at the time.

I only knew the forest had suddenly stilled. I saw trees skeletal in the height of July, bark flaking away from the trunks. The ground completely bare, as if the leaves had dissolved, not fell.

I walked away, back to where the forest still lived.

Maybe, then, we could have done something. But I put it down as a quirk of nature, and let it be.

It followed me.

Now plants die as it creeps outwards. Metal corrodes. And we have fewer places to run.

—–

This one’s from the prompt ‘necrosis’.

The Queen was devastated when her husband’s daughter ran away.

She sent her best man hunting. When he failed, she disguised herself and roamed the forest, searching night and day.

When she finally returned to the castle, she found the Princess back, seated on the Queen’s throne.

“The witch returns,” the Princess said. “Seize her.”

“Why?” the Queen cried, as the guardsmen levelled their bows.

“For what you did to me.” The Princess leant in, her breath cool on the Queen’s ear. “Because you replaced my mother, and you just wouldn’t die.”

And she kissed her. It tasted of apples.

Arfa stood on the cliff-edge, arms spread like she thought she could fly.

Below, the waves beat the Cornish coast into sharktooth spikes.

Merlyn rested her hands on her staff. “Scared yet?”

“No.” The wind whipped at Arfa’s hair. “I’m not scared of anything.”

“Ah, of course. The only thing to fear is fear itself, yes? Stand firm! Never run! This is what people say you must do, to be a king. Though this also reveals an interesting fact about people.”

“What?”

Arfa felt Merlyn’s staff rest in the small of her back.

“They’re often wrong,” Merlyn said, and pushed.

—–

This happened some time later than Once and Future – there’ll be a few more tales of Arfa, but I kinda doubt they’re going to come out in chronological order.

It’s from the prompt ‘phobophobia’.

I’m being stalked by Ron Barassi.

He follows me home, to the office, into this café. And now, he’s sat down next to me.

He says: “You suck at this.”

“What?”

“Every day, you come in here, make doe-eyes at that waitress and never actually talk to her, then go to that job you bitch about. You get one life, kiddo. When you gonna get good at it?”

I manage a wan smile. “Practice makes perfect.”

“Bullcrap,” he says. “Practice makes permanent.”

We drink our coffee. I smile at the waitress, but don’t speak. Ron scoffs, but habits break slow.

—–

This story was from the prompt Ron Barassi. What he actually said was ‘only perfect practice makes perfect’, but my version has less words in it.

This story was written by Kim Ross. Kim also wrote Ghostly Image, which was published here a couple of weeks ago.

—–

Within seconds a blinding flash obscured the horizon summoning a tsunami, submerging the city! Holding my child Madi against me, we wrestled torrid forces, dodged debris through a waterlogged wasteland rapidly filling with decay.

Survivors were crowding upon a lone roof. We swam to them.

“What happened?” I asked a stranger.

Menacing jets flew overhead. He said, “They’re not ours!”

A white mushroom cloud burst blanketing us in fallout, immediately blistering our skin.

Hysterically I cried, “We’ve been nuked!”

Madi screamed. “War sucks —”!

My desiccating lips screeched, “Why —”?

I touched Madi’s face as our flesh disintegrated into ash…

Now there was no-one left to eat them, the apples dropped from the branches of the Knowledge tree.

One such, ripe and red, fell and rolled out of sight.

It sat there and fermented in the sun.

And that’s how Magpie found it.

The gardener came by later, having got over the depression that always comes when your chicks fly the nest. He found a pile of apple cores and Magpie leaning against the tree, full, contented and smelling of cider.

The trickster bird looked up, and hiccupped.

The gardener looked at the apples, then looked at Magpie. “Well… bugger.”