Amaranthine: Beauty Within Darkness

Fathers & Daughters

Author's Note: This story was one of three submitted to @GMTSchuilling 's #IDRedo competition. I'd hoped to make a little chapbook of five, but time flies and Evienne decided to be born in September. :P  Each story was a piece of flash fiction of 500 words, about the regrets people express while dying-- and how we all have the opportunity to deal with those regrets sooner, but rarely do. Two made it to the final round, though this one did not. I plan to publish a collection of #IDRedo pieces, post competition. For now, the story will live here!

"She's got everything she needs, she's an artist, she don't look back..."

For as long as I can remember, that's the song my father would sing for me, strumming on the guitar and intoning in a voice only slightly less grating than Bob Dylan.

I was always a restless spirit, a wandering soul that didn't just dream. From the time I was a little girl wearing a long peasant skirt, a flower crown, and brandishing a paintbrush, I knew the truth. The world was made of pixie dust and I was created to fly through it at the speed of light.

That is how time passes, after all. It is light and music and stillness, united.

Every tick of the clock had always been a death sentence to my ears. I am not sure how or why the thought ingrained itself so deeply, but I knew the year I turned thirty would be my last. I imagined that I'd exit the world as loudly and flamboyantly as I lived in it. There was a Mack truck with my name on it.

Quite often, I was undoubtedly a spoiled princess. A phoenix, I rose from the ashes of the blueprints for a humble and ordinary peasant.

"I'll be home for Christmas, you can count on me."

While my father strummed Dylan, my mother's kitchen in December smelled of cookies, cloves, and the ever-present sounds of Delilah. Annoyingly cheerful positivity would never die, much to my chagrin.

While Delilah sent out peace and love across the globe, I reluctantly journeyed home for Christmas each year. It was never where I wanted to be. I told stories of my life to blood relatives who'd become strangers while making sure the liquor cabinet was stocked.

Halfway through a bottle of champagne, I told my father how I'd come from Manhattan. I'd learned they were going to tear down the Chelsea Hotel, a 1960's icon.

"It's the end of an era. You should go and say goodbye. Walk away with a stone that was once part of a beautiful future. We were all invincible."

I smiled, never having visited the home of so many of the legends my father admired. They were people he thought I was like. I never knew why.

He had tears in his eyes as I hugged him goodbye. It was strange from a man who wasn't expressive, loving, or even kind.

It was our final conversation. The last memory I have of my father was me wearing a Santa hat, drinking champagne, talking about New York bohemian life.

When he died a few months later, I didn't cry. I listened to classic rock all night long.

Sometimes, I hear the strains of a guitar, a classic 60's song. Although he never liked me much, my father's love was an idealised version of who I might grow up to be.

If I could do it again, I'd take a visit to the Chelsea Hotel. It was the end of an era.