One Wonderful Flash Fiction Piece by Hazel Storr

 

Awakening

In the beginning was the word. Just one word, one single, shining, breathless, pulsing pregnant word, the DNA of all meaning, all life, all past, all future, time without end.

            In time, that pulse breathed life into dust, the whole became part and humans walked the earth. And as they were fragments, so too was their world, their meaning, and the word became words.

            Nonetheless, there were some that retained, deep in their essence, that awareness that words are tiny sparks, microcosms of that great and glorious conception. And they loved words, the mystery and the beauty, knowing that they were a strange and beautiful recollection of that halcyon time before existence, and a promise that one day they would return there.

            From her first breath, Christabel knew such truths; could read them written into the very fabric of her being and her world. In the ebb and flow of waves beyond her window, in the steady rhythm of the lighthouse, in the rise and fall and harmonious cadence of her parents’ voices, she felt the pulse of her heart, the heart of every living creature, mirroring the silvery contractions of the universe in one eternal, ever-expanding throb of pleasure.

            As she grew older: metamorphosis. Woman to tigress, woman to deer, woman to dove. Eventually, her incarnations coalesced; hunter and hunted; savage and civilised; fierce and peaceful. And words, the juxtapositions and conjunctions; metaphors and metonymies; rhythms and rhymes, the brilliant sparks unified her aspects into one glorious whole: woman.

            And she loved.

            Her desire now was to share her words with those that could not feel the sparks. She was not particularly concerned about fame, or recognition, or money. She was not excited by success nor afraid of failure. In her deepest being, she wanted to create beauty, to engender the sublime, to bring forth the tranquillity of harmony. She wanted to speak, wanted to write. She knew that was her destiny, her gift, what she was born to do.

But woe - man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards.

 

It happened. 

 

Afterwards, raging serpents writhed and twisted around her head. They coiled around her throat, stopping her voice, as their hands had done.

Silence held an unspeakable, unbearable truth. Words fled; without them thoughts died still-born, unformed. A flickering streetlight, a cracked pavement - memories, tissue-thin and gauzy, ruptured, bled away. Soon, only a shadowy silhouette of the memory survived.

And the world, oblivious, went on. 

Christabel did not grieve. She did not recognise the unutterable sense of loss, of absence, of wrongness. She did not feel the suffocating silence, a gag smothering her. She did not hear the gulls scream, nor smell the sour stench of rank, reeking bladder-wrack on the nearby beach, nor see the desiccated cigarette butts discarded carelessly on the floor. She did not acknowledge that she could no longer bear to look at herself.

She did, however, know anger, a blazing pyre in the night.

It hissed and spat, a sibilant whisper if any dared approach her. Hard eyes turned men to stone if they dared look at her; she could not bear their appraisal, nor control the nameless rage that being trapped in their gaze elicited.

For a time she was swallowed up, lost alone in the depths. In the cavernous darkness she cowered; sea-snakes twining, binding her, an impenetrable, entangling net. Spasmodically, she submerged, sinking, thrust down to the stony sea-bed of vile and savage beasts, only to fight her way up and then be forced down again. Gravel scraped-

It seemed impossible that there should ever be an end to it.  Until one day, the time came for the depths to disgorge their contents into the cool, clear air. 

Like a new-born babe, parchment-pale, scrunched in a ball, she emerged into the light.

She unfurled, rising gloriously into a new day. Before her, the shining face of the depths gleamed, smooth and glassy.

A mirror.

It was time.

She stepped forward, turning the gaze that had turned men into stone upon herself.

She saw her silhouette first, the rippling, sinuous movement of her hair. Then light washed over her and she saw them; serpents glowing and gleaming, twined red, bronze, gold; a glorious, terrible beauty, an elemental power. The shadows fled. She understood.

No hissing now, but a susurration of beauty and longing and anger and sorrow and yearning. The serpents uncoiled from her throat; her lungs filled with cold, pure air.

Words washed through her, sparklingly beautiful. Her voice returned, and with it hope, destiny, a future.

Metamorphosis: woman to tigress, woman to deer, woman to dove, woman to serpent. All in her now, all parts of one single, shining, breathing whole. Woman.

And where there had been congealed silence, words now flowed like golden lifeblood; gleaming words of innocence and experience, purity and power, horror and hope: their brilliant beauty a consolation from pain.

And as she spoke the sparks swirled like prayers into the sunlit air, a hymn of hope and comfort. Ash turns to flame.

Hazel Storr lives in the beautiful cathedral city of Durham, England with her partner and son. She is an enthusiastic teacher of English and Creative Writing and is currently completing an MA in Creative Writing at Teesside University.