Cackling

Dust motes flow through the air and she looks around in wonder. So marvelous this world she lives in. She grins, twirls on weightless feet, her guileless heart spinning around with her. Her dress stirs the air around her, the dress her Mama bought her. She didn't need it, that dress. It's an oddly delicate confection, simple on the top, but with a skirt that flares whenever she spins around, the brilliant colors encircling her as she swishes through life. She still doesn't understand why Mama got it. Already, there have been two holes Mama has sewn with loving hands. It wasn't a skirt made for a girl who jumps in mud puddles and who spins round and round until she falls down in laughter.

"Let me buy you this, honey. While I still can. Soon you're going to grow up and I won't be able to dress you up." Mama said to her. She didn't understand. Mama would always take care of her.

She had seen a girl the other day in her class. This girl, she wore jeans, but they were odd. It was almost like they had been through some tragic accident, but a bloodless one. A bloodless tragedy. Because they were ripped, of course. You could just see those jeans, those pristine swathes of denim, surviving some horrible murder or car accident, except that they were spotless. Mama had clicked her tongue and muttered sadly about "that poor mother."

But the skirt is beautiful. Gauzy and bright, it reaches her ankles and rustles comfortingly whenever she moves. It is filled with the most vibrant colors. When she twirls, she imagines that it looks white, like how her science teacher always said that all the colors combined made white light.

She prances about the attic. The sunlight sparkles around her, the dust dancing with her. She finally tires herself out and sits on the ground. She is so happy, she doesn't even notice the dust settling on her beloved skirt. She lies on her back staring at the ceiling.

Out of the corner of her eye, a gleam of gold catches her attention. She sits up. Walks over to the table. Picks up a book. It's the old kind, where the edges of the pages are all coated in gold paint. Water stains the cover and the pages crinkled as she opened them.

She falls back to the ground and cracks open the book.

Chittering laughter burrowing under your skin. Staying there like a parasite so insidious you don't even notice your dry veins until that malignant guest consumes the host entirely. Until all you can do is lie there, a dead whale buzzing with flies on the shore.

"Anything you need." Hyenas smile the same right before they tear their prey limb from limb, cackling all the while. "All you have to do is ask."

And always the boat. That flimsy piece of a dead tree all that stands between you and water filling, filling your lungs.

You have been on this rock for years, or maybe centuries. Water 'till the eye can see. Only a single, jagged protrusion for you to live on.

They came the first day.

Cells so full of life, they poison themselves, multiplying like an invasive species conquering new territory. The processes of life turned towards the headlong tilt down the mountain to destruction, moving inexorably towards the heart, the brain, the only organs still pumping vitality through the hyper-successful body.

So you do without. Anything to avoid the dancing whispers. Clothes? Yours might be crusted with salt and cold at night, but you are covered. If you shiver at night, it's only because you're alone. Not lonely though. They might gleefully imply that some company might make it all more bearable, but it's not so bad. The hustle of people so wrapped up in their own life, an army of bubbles drifting so close, but never touching for fear of popping, well what kind of comfort is that? Truly, to be left in your own company for a while isn't so terrible. Time for self-reflection and all that.

The chiming of the same high pitched bells, day and night, minute after hour after day. The edge of the rainbow, close enough to hear the sweet ringing, but always yanked just millimeters away from your color-starved fingers.

"All you have to do is ask."

Don't they understand? Why do they always offer, but the things you want they never grant? Save me or leave me be.

No, no. I don't mean it. Don't leave. Of course I don't mean it.

You don't really mean it, right? They are the only ones bringing you food, clean water. Without them you'll die. It's just a little pride. You can swallow your pride for a little, even if it tears through your throat like a ball of barbed wire on the way down.

The burbling of a brook just around the bend when you are two weak with thirst to make it another step. Can't you still hear them, like water trickling through your ears?

Like an innocent ant crawling up a panted leg, you clutch the fabric of your universe in bewilderment as nature tries to shake you off, furious at the audacity of your existence. So you sit, clutching the trees someone murdered for you, hurtling here and there at speeds you can't gauge, to places you don't understand , in a time that marches to no beat but it's own.

And they giggle. Just out of sight, your means of survival and the thing that is stripping you it by bit, mining you like the earth. First they crack open the crust of rationality, to expose your molten core of fluid madness. Can you feel yourself spilling out, corroding everything you encounter as you try to harden once again. There's no coming back, though. Even if you become rock solid once more, you're metamorphic. Something new, something unfamiliar.

But that hasn't happened yet. For now there is just the insistent drilling of laughter.

She slams the book shut. Not even glancing at the gleam of white light shimmering in the corners of her view, she sweeps out of the attic without a backward glance.