Chardelia Foss and the River of Fear

I am Char to my friends and Dee to my Mum. I am Delia to my Dad and Lia to Louis. At the gates they will call here comes Char. In the morning she will call Dee up the stairs. In the evenings Goodnight Delia. On squabbling Saturdays Leave me alone Lia. It is fitting. There is a plurality to me. A number of uneven unequal sides. Forever changing, always moving, never fixed. I want to be like the water.

I was fifteen when I discovered it. Many people warned me against but it only spurred me on more. It wasn't the same as the rest, I didn't intend to treat it as such. It could be dipped in and out of, like a toe in a bath, each time rippling different circles of understanding, giving up new secrets; revelations that ripped like tiny tears against my skin. I fingered the corners, held the ball of my fingers against the parchment. It was alive, to me. A living plurality of meaning. And leaving me floored as well.

Unseen Current

Splissshh. Lssssh. Spssssh. Lllllsshh.

As lilting waters rose, the prisoner sensed the boat that bore his weight, inch higher. An unseen current washed in. It lifted him up. One word kept calling. He heard it amplify his imagination. The river he sailed as a boy flashed in his mind's eye. Those friends who pushed him in the waterfall. He banished them from his life completely. It would only invite more torment to wonder what happened to them. Whether they recalled as he did, the palpitations of fear they'd created. Like waves of water rippling outwards. He heard the word again. As if someone whispered in his ear. It mingled. As real as the sound of lapping water. As real as the creaking wood of the boat. As dangerous as the distant chatter of his two jailers. Amid their violent shouts towards him, they were the last two people to whom he now spoke. They'd become the only friends he had left.

Memories of a childhood amid mountains flooded back. A youth amongst nature gave him the yearning to be a park ranger. Again, he remembered the river he knew as a child. A bittersweet memory. The rock pool he made with his brother. When they tried to enclose a small pool of water, it trickled and escaped, bit by bit, day by day. His father told him it was inevitable. You could never own water. It always flowed away. It moved to new streams, transformed and ascended to the sky.

Those carefree days had been...what was the word? Possible! Opportunity seemed a ripe apple. Until he received the call. It was best not to think about it now. Look where it landed him. Instead his thoughts roamed round his tired mind. He thought of his wife. No doubt battling anxious thoughts herself, albeit some distance from him. His two sons. They liked wrestling. No doubt they wrestled each other to the ground this very moment. Centuries of violence unable to annihilate itself. These thoughts of his family – the only family he had left – kindled a subtle flame of love and warmed his heart with dim heat. However, the meagre hope extinguished when his mind sensed the perils which awaited.

The silent word felt deafening. With aching wrists he tried to cup his ears through the handcuffs. He was glad they gagged him. Glad they took away his right to a voice. He was afraid what he might hear himself say or scream out loud. At least they afforded him this last dignity. There were no words left to say, not to them anyway. For his family all he could think of was the three-word mantra of peace he tried to live his life by. Ultimately he knew it would not prove enough to keep him on earth. It would not prove enough for anybody.

Drip. Driiip. Drp. Thick droplets of dirty water fell heavily from the cavern ceiling, landing like slugs on the prisoner's bare back. Reluctantly he inhaled the rank odour. The cavern smelt damp and musty. It was a smell he knew. Something close to death. The stench floated in pungent waves of toxic air and sulphur drifted in his nostrils. It clogged his airways with malodorous concentrations, making him retch. Still there were splashes in the river beyond. Imagination gripped him again. It could have been the tying of a mooring to a jetty. When his unseen captors muttered dangerously, the strange cold echoes of their voices revealed the cavern was larger than he first thought.