Paranoid (Collection of Short Stories)

Casehistory: Alison - poem adaptation

Alison. That was, is and always will be my name. That's what he told me. And he will have to tell me everyday for the rest of my life. Because I won't remember.

The mantelpiece; permeated by memories I will never call too mind. Its stands triumphant, the trophy of her existance. But, as I lift a photograph, I'm fit by realisation. She isn't here any longer.

She's laughing, the little blonde girl. She hasn't a care in the world, in those large, flaxen eyes. She dresses modestly, in a blue-pleated frock that matches the ribbons in her braided locks. The clothing compliments her six-year old figure. What a bright girl she was.

The young lady in the next photo has her arms draped around an older woman. The lighting predicts a soirée of some sort. It is the same girl - eyes the speckled eggs of a golden goose, hair a tawny-bronze of ringleted shadows. My mother's only daughter, trapped forever in this photograph. What a bright girl she was.

In this picture, a man is cradling her inches from the polished floor. She had her arms outstretched, gazing her flecked coins into his dense, neverending evergreen eyes. Her dress stalks behind her, a sulking mass of facetted sequins and flowing fabric. She is strong and free and radiant. She needs no introduction! She is the Degas dancer with the autocratic knee. Captured in the moment of utter exhilaration. What a bright girl she was.

I would like to have known my husband's wife. In the wedding album, she is a delicate figure with a mahogany mane cascading over her fragile shoulders like a chocolate avalanche. Her skin is a mocha latté, and the man beside her, grinning lopsidedly, is drinking in her rich, creamy features. The gown she wears is not quite as flamboyant as her dancing dress, but the simple curves flatter her physique. What a bright and beautiful girl she was.

It had been the day of her final dance rehearsal. After pouncing into synchronisation with her theatre colleagues and completing a flawless routine, she had left. It had been a long night when she stepped gingerly into her father's car. A hysterical fan, drunk and immensely unstable on two legs, stumbled into the course of the oncoming vehicle. Her father had neglected his seatbelt and, when the collision occurred, the windscreen had been the last thing he'd seen. They both died that day.

She had been a bright girl: the little blonde girl, my mother's only daughter, the Degas dancer, my husband's wife. Alison. I am a mere remnant - a reflection of a girl that once was, that used to mean so much in this world. Why did she leave me, a goldfish of a woman, behind? All I used to know, she knows and has allowed me to forget so that the globe can continue to turn. The one thing she doesn't know, is that I am her future. The bright girl is...gone.