I wrote a piece, hoping to submit…which I did, but I think I messed that up because I used the wrong subject line. Oh well. But I submitted something, which is a thing. I haven’t done much writing with that as a goal for far too long. Self confidence is a bit low at the moment. I like the story, so I’m going to pop it here. Hope you enjoy. It’s a bit dark and heavy…so avoid if gloomy and sad isn’t for you.
A Light Task Before the Rest
The candle is nowhere near burnt out, but smoke curls upwards nevertheless. Mother checks the window for a draft; Dad says we should have shut the door like he told us to. You settle back, rubbing at eyes that stared at the light too long. It’s not too dark, but dark enough that what we were doing is taken away with the light.
“I was sewing.”
“And I was reading the newspaper.”
You just look at me but your face is as closed as your book, and I haven’t learnt to read properly yet so I don’t know what you’d say anyways. I sigh softly and the smoke twirls like fingers looking for somewhere to point.
“Why did you blow the candle out, Mary?”
“I didn’t!”
“Don’t lie to your mother, child.”
“But I didn’t.”
I shuffle back into the nook between empty fireplace and wall, arms hugging shins and chin pressed between knees. I had sighed but I swear not hard enough to be heard so definitely not hard enough to blow the candle out.
You unfurl from the chair, long limbs stretching up and up like tendrils of smoke, and drift out of the living room where the dark in the hallway snuffs you out. Soon, I hear you mooching in a kitchen drawer, metal things scraping against all the other things.
Mum and Dad are talking low to each other, waving part sewn socks and part read paper at each other as though presenting evidence for the greatest inconvenience.
I sigh again and clamber up, bare feet padding on the bare boards. I know the way, but the dark gives places new dimensions, and my fingers reach out for the wall, for the doorframe to the dining room and then the tall plastic plant in the corner where the kitchen door waits. They seem so very far apart, too far, as though absence adds too much distance to the in-between.
“You’re almost there, little sister.”
Fingers find the door and I push. You’re still rattling things in the drawer, but it sounds wrong…messy and frantic.
“They’re all gone,” I say.
“I know.”
Frowning I walk over to your voice, hands out to catch you, but they find nothing. I can hear the metal things and the way the drawer creaks, but you aren’t there. My scalp feels ice cold and tight like it does when I wake in the night.
“Almost there. Just a little farther.”
I think I see you now, a darker shade of shadow, and—
“I found the matches, Mary!”
Mum’s voice tugs on my gaze and I see light seeping across the hallway floor. Where had she found some? And then you sigh, long and low, more like a draft than an expression, and I hear it even though the sudden and terrible silence is whistling in my ears. When I look for you, the dark is the deepest I’ve ever seen.
Scared and frustrated, I step forwards, hands out for the drawer that I know must be almost hanging out and there is nothing…nothing…and still nothing. Not even your absence could make distance this close and the familiar so out of reach. The light is all I have.
Turning, not catching myself on the chair leg, not stubbing a toe on the table, not finding the one splintered floorboard that I never manage to miss, I walk back. I can hear Mum humming as she sews and the rustle of the newspaper and Dad’s tuts over more news that disappoints. Familiar, close, so much easier to reach than…
The room is bright and just as it was, as it always is. Mum and Dad focus on their tasks, and you’re in your chair, leaning forward, book angled favourably towards the candle.
You must’ve played a trick, slipping past me in the dark, and I punch you a bit angrily and a bit playfully on the arm. You look across and smile too sadly for me to stay mad and I settle in the nook by the fireplace still trying to read you, but you’re as blank as the book’s pages you’re holding and the front page Dad is reading with utmost care and the constantly moving open eye where no cotton is threaded.
The door is closed, no draft plucks on the thin curtains, and smoke rises straight as bars.
The candle is nowhere near burning low; still as tall and as fat as it was when you all went out and the lights followed a little later. And it was dark when I woke up and couldn’t find you, and no one said just go back to bed it’s all going to be okay…and there was darning to do, and the paper still had to be read and there was still more study to be finished when you got back.
“Why did you blow the candle out, Mary?”
And I didn’t.
No one did.
You rise up: a shadow not bound to the light…as free as the dark filling the room. What was lost, I wonder: light to the dark or dark for the light because everything in both is just the same.
Metal things scrape in the kitchen drawer, but they sound more like keys scrabbling and grating at keyholes that just won’t let the key in. I don’t know who you are now…but I walk barefoot into the kitchen: no hands stretched out, no fear of the distance in the dark in-between.
“I found the matches, Mary!”
I don’t turn around this time. I’m already so very far away and there’s nothing left the light can show me. Mum calls out again but I have to go. I can finally read you in the dark and I’m almost there.
Sian_ink 