Little Game

Anthology #1: From the Ashes

My body lied on something cold. Something firm, covered in what felt like dirt, mud, bark, sand and something finer than sand.

My eyes remained closed but I felt a chill crust encase my eye lids. I didn't want to open my eyes, in case this foreign substance blinded me. Slowly, I moved my arm, which I discovered his under my torso, to wipe my eyes. I peeled open my lids and what I looked at was a quivering pale pink hand. My skin was clinging to my bony wrist and fingers that I could count the vibrant veins in me.

The powder that I wiped from my eyes was a chalky white colour but I saw hints of grey. Then my vision was all grey. I looked past my bony limb and stare at the vacant sky. Overcast. The clouds moved slow and the only acknowledgement of the sun was through slender beams that would pop out underneath the clouds.

I stared down to see the trees which were all stripped from their leaves. The Swedish aspens that swarmed the forest just beamed their green leaves and had barely started to turn colour yet. But the leaves were stripped and the gentle white that coloured its bark was painted black from the tip to the root. The bottom of the trunks there was white powder. Even below the trunks, mixed with the soil, the powder spread sparsely across the field, making it look like it snowed.

It was not cold. Drawing my attention back to myself, I saw that I lay amongst a pile of blackened wood and clusters of evaporating powder. I looked down at my body and saw that the powder covered me. The dust covered my black longsleeve and my tattered cotton pants. As I sat up, I quickly realised my surroundings were made of the same broken timber and mini hills of white dust.

But as I tried to wipe the powder from my clothes, it turned the palms of my hands grey.

This wasn't dust. It was ash.

There had been a fire. What was burning?

What had burnt to leave so much ash?

I tried my hardest to move but a plank trapped my legs. I chose to stay put but my eyes travelled further past the burnt rumble. I recognised the empty paddock that was filled with yellow dandelions. And past that small patch of flowers, lay a hidden bush the took us down an artificial stream that the proprietors made home for their koi.

My eyes stung.

I pivot my body to the right and look for any sign that this is not true. The rumble looked more or less the same but my sight stopped at a burnt doily. This specific mat had a bright red love heart at its centre, crocheted on by a particular maiden who spent years trying to convince me that a simple love heart is neither masculine or feminine. The memories burn of me stating that I didn't like when she made everything with love hearts. I remember her kind smile as she said that the placement of a heart was to show love for anything.

Now the doily remained half burnt, the red love heart blackened and destroyed. My mind flared with many possibilities and then I forced myself to empty my head.

Emotion rolled over me and I felt my blood turn to ice. The loss that I've never felt made my heat beat loud in my ears and my fingers hot. A wail violently escaped my lips and I dared myself to go louder. Tears rolled down my face and the liquid mixed with the remaining ash on my skin. I shook with the force of my scream. My throat started to hurt and I sputtered saliva, tears and ash down my chest.

When I calmed down, through tearful eyes I looked around. My home and the people who made it that way were gone.

I slumped back down and let the tears roam freely down my face. I felt nothing. I had nothing left anyway. As all I've known was destroyed I knew that I have been left forgotten again. As an abused orphan, it took years for me to even coincide with the kind women of this shelter. Aside from the doctors that took me away from time to time, no one would ever pay me any mind in the early years. So now that the people who have made my recent torment almost invisible are now dead, I can't move. I can't breathe.