Twisted Tales for Twisted Minds

The Stairs Untraveled

A child runs up the stairs...and keeps on running once past the steps that have long crumbled.

Have you met a ghost?

Or have you met the guiding angel that is here to bring you to your destiny?

The only answer is to walk that same path, so up the stairs we go, treading carefully, watching our feet slide across moss before gripping against crumbling rock, wishing that what the good Lord gave us wasn't a hindrance to the climb. It feels secure until the last few steps and we are parting trees that pat little blessings on our head like a priest on Ash Wednesday.

Once clear, we burst through the scenery to embrace the chill light of day. The faint tendrils of fog implies stone steps further up and onward.

It feels more solid than before. No slipping on moss, a surity that it's safe to trust in things not seen. These steps dance before us, one-two-three, one-two-three, until we reach the point of nothing below us but our faith, and like Peter we look down and see the void...

And lose faith.

The fall is swift, with no Jesus to guide us in this walk. We close our eyes for that final prayer with tears brushing our eyelashes, "Oh, God!"

Only to land in the arms of a man draped solely in a Tartan, crushing your camera between you.

"Maggie! Maggie, you promised to not lead girls to their death!"

For a fleeting moment you think you went back in time until you remember that you came here for a photo shoot for an elven-kissed Irishman, that your here and now was a business transation to someone you didn't wholly like.

The idea that you were lured hits you like a lie. You had chosen those steps on your own, but not alone.

What was those we? You had never been queen. Nor did you have the religious fervor to even know who Peter was, let alone that he walked on water with a man he trusted more than the one who actually saved you.

And what in the world was up with being too heavily endowed to see your feet? If anything, the camera should have got in the way.

Even more frightening, this Maggie your client called for, she didn't lure you to your death. It was the lack of faith that made the stone under your feet turn to air. The sense that you could have continued and found the end of that path ever upwards without death forced a shudder out of you, and the urge to cling further to this man sent chills down your spine that forced you into damn near clawing him to get him to put you down.

It wasn't until several feet away that you look back and see that you had indeed clawed the man, scoring his exposed chest with enough welts to ruin the shoot. But all he worries about is you, "Are you ok?"

You turn to look back at the stairs and long to try them again, to not look down. A sick sense of hell settles deep in your stomach, but whether it is for your sanity or the knowledge that he would stop you? Who the hell knew. "No...I think we need to leave."

~~~

Yeah, I've been seeing too many Stuart Mackey reels recently.