04Lonewolf's Short Stories

🏷️ Phoenix 🏷️

Inspiration: The poem 'Lady Lazarus' by Slyvia Plath
(Word Count: 1043 words)

Ash stirs on the cold stone floor. Laying next to it is a knife covered with blood.

She has done it again.

Shaking my head, I put down the food tray and called my partner with a brisk,
"William!"

He entered the room quickly, saw the pile of ash, and swore.
"Again? When?"

I did not answer.

He indicated towards the ashes,
"Well, go on Matthew!"

I hesitated. He only silently crossed his arms, his eyes boring into my skull as he silently reminded me of his power over me.

Reluctantly, I knelt and fingered the ashes. They were freezing. I tore my hand away, still feeling the dark shadows crawling on my skin,
"Cold. She must have only just done it."

Impatient, William picked the poker from the empty, fuel-less fireplace.

"No, don't! You know how angry that makes her-"

Ignoring my warning, he began roughly prodding the pile of dust. His voice and eyes as cold as the cage he had used to trap her,
"Come on you witch, I told you to not waste your lives! Imagine if you ran out. Then what would I do!?"

"Ash, ash-
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there..."

Croaked a voice much more ancient than the thirty-year-old body it belonged to. A voice as horrible as fingernails on a chalkboard. A voice which made us both freeze, and the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

"I told you it was a bad idea!" I hissed.

William, with foolishness rather than bravery, continued to taunt the immortal lady into showing herself, though he knew as well as I that she couldn't control the time it took for her to rise again like the one after whom he had named her on all the posters he had placed around the village.

But Lady Lazarus grew weary of what was declared by the villagers as 'A miracle!'. As she had once told me, her immortality had been a gift, first saving her after what would have been, under any other circumstances, a deadly accident when she was ten years old. But, it had soon become a curse on her. As she often lamented, "like the cat I have nine times to die. But nine lives are not enough for this cruel world to torment me with, no. But nine times nine."

My thoughts were interrupted as William, deciding that sharp words were having no effect on the grey ashes, which I now noticed were beginning to take on a lighter shade, began to insincerely plead as he prostrated himself,
"Oh great Lady Lazarus, please reappear. My apologies for my, um, insistence. It's only, you do know what good business your great power brings."

"Oh, yes." came her cold reply, seemingly to appear out of thin air, a whisper in our ears,
"For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge. For the hearing of my heart – it really goes. And, of course, there is a charge, a very large charge for a word or a touch. Or a bit of blood. Or a piece of my hair or my clothes."

William straightened, his Adams apple bobbing nervously,
"Well... yes. You know how much the people value your gift."

"Gift?" her voice hissed, and I noticed the ashes beginning to shift and spark slightly, "Is it a gift to never enter the eternal gates of heaven? Is it a gift to put myself to sleep, exhausted, only to awaken to this accursed world time and time again!?" her voice cracked, "is it a gift to watch all those you love die and be unable to join them?"

"uh..."

"'Gift.'" She spat, "It is no gift. It is a curse!"

"Well, perhaps I should have said blessing instead." Responded William, unsympathetically as ever, "You may view it as a curse my 'lady', but the profit you rake in..." his face morphed into an expression which I had witnessed in many men in my lifetime. Greed.

But I had no time to reflect on money and the evil it brings, for the ashes continued to whirl, faster, and faster, hotter and hotter as they lifted off the ground. We both took a step back as they got higher and higher, brighter and brighter. They were no longer a dull grey, but a fierce orange as she cried out, her voice full of thunder,

"I have warned you enough times, William.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air."

I backed away, towards the metal door, but William stayed rooted to the spot as the embers took the form of a beautiful woman, clothed in fire. She spoke,

"I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby."
She hissed as she advanced towards him.

"Please Florence," he cried out, backing away slowly as ring of keys he held slipped from his fingers and clattered on the floor, "I-I've protected you and l-looked after you all this time! I kept you s-safe from this cruel world. Y-you wouldn't want to throw all of that away now, would you?"

She did not answer, but gripped his face with her hand.

I bent over, my hands covering my ears as his screams, as horrible as the pervading smell of burning flesh, pierced the air. She released him, and he fell to the ground, hysterically sobbing.

Looking down at the man, she curled her lip in disgust,
"Never call me Florence again you snake. Don't pretend you every cared for me, or kept me safe. It is people like you who are the source of the world's cruelty. As for you and your precious profit... No longer will I be a caged animal to entertain that- that peanut-crunching crowd."

She moved towards the door, now unlocked and open, and I nervously stepped out of her way.

As she looked at me, the fiery anger in her eyes softened to a soft glow,
"You were the only one who listened and understood me. Thank you, Matthew."

I inclined my head,
"Go well, my Lady Florence."

And she turned, fleeing into the early dawn, looking in all her glory as beautiful as the rising sun.

The phoenix was free.