A Semi-Untitled Story - Flash Fiction Story by Harris Coverley

 

A Semi-Untitled Story

Flash Fiction Story by  Harris Coverley

Across and around the world from us, in a mostly calm, entirely forgotten sea, bordered by jagged rocks and atolls of plastic bottles, there is an island. But there is something different about this island. This island has no features. Yes, it has some sand covering it, and it has edges where the water laps up now and then just a little bit, but it has no palm trees, or an oasis, or hills, or even any pebbles on its flat, plain surface.

The only thing you can hope to see sometimes on this island is a figure, fully developed, always different, and always from somewhere new in the world. The figure will appear, express itself, and look around in despair for its lack of an audience, before breaking down and collapsing, dissolving into the nothingness.

These figures are the suppressed emotions of the peoples of the world. Every time you supress an emotion, it will eventually sink lower and lower into your core, and eventually be exiled to the island, where it will anthropomorphise and go through the aforementioned process.

There are less suppressed emotions in the world than you would think. After all, humans are a pretty emotional race of beings, and cannot usually keep their feelings down. Therefore, it is actually quite rare on a day to see two apparitions appear at the same time, and usually they paid the other no heed. But one day turned out to not be such a normal day for the island.

After noon had just passed, in almost the same second, two figures began to form close to each other. The first was that of a white woman, in her mid-forties, with long brown hair tied in a ponytail, and with tear-stained eyes. She was wearing a blue pantsuit and open flat heeled shoes. The second was an East Asian man, with short thick black hair, almost forty, and with a face full of rage. He wore a grey embossed boiler suit and scuffed black boots. The apparitions were always very much like their originators, but never too much the same. They were only emotions of course, not full people.

The two figures faced each other. They ignored the other briefly, staring at the sand, before raising their heads and meeting eye to eye. There was no surprise, only their respective emotion.

“I am the suppressed anger of Li Wei, Shangrao, Jiangxi Province,” said the male apparition sternly, before involuntarily gritting his teeth.

“I am the suppressed sadness of Connie Wales, Raleigh, North Carolina,” replied the female apparition, through her sniffling and wiping at her cheeks.

They stood looking at the other for a moment, before the female asked, “Why is Li Wei so angry?”

The male apparition started to walk around, thrashing about.

“His daughter Yin is leaving the family!” he shouted. “Going up north to Shanghai, studying to be a doctor! She can study in Shangrao! She’s only doing this to punish me, punish her mother, dishonour her family, abandon her brothers!”

The female apparition burst out crying. The male apparition stopped thrashing about and turned to her: “And what is Connie Wales so sad about?! How can she be as emotional as Li Wei about something?!”

The female apparition continued to wipe away the onslaught of tears as she replied, “Connie Wales is sad for the same reason. Her daughter is leaving Raleigh to go to Chapel Hill to study English and Drama. It’s breaking her heart, although she doesn’t show it!”

She broke down again, crying ever more deeply.

The male apparition did not let off with his anger. He went over to the female, grabbed her, and shook her by the shoulders.

“That is nothing!” he shouted. “Connie Wales’ daughter shall be but a short drive away! Li Wei’s shall be a day’s journey by train! Maybe more! Li Wei’s family is too poor for such things!”

The female apparition did not tell him to stop, but instead cried even harder and louder.

“That’s really sad for Li Wei!” she almost squealed.

“Stop it!” he shouted. “Stop it now!”

He shook her even harder, and she put her hands on his chest. They almost fell to the ground, but their eyes met again. He stopped shaking her.

They saw in each other’s eyes that they had now existed for so long that they had managed to gain souls, and therefore their independence for themselves from their originators. They understood that they had both been birthed from the same base emotion: the fear of loss. They got each other completely, and recognised that through understanding themselves, they had conquered the emotion that had so disturbed their originators that they had had to push it so far down into their psyches that the apparitions had materialised on the island in the first place.

They embraced. They kissed. They were in love, for as newly created souls, they were two of an exclusive kind. They were made for and by each other. Their love was spontaneous, genuine, unique, eternally theirs. They could give themselves or each other real names and go on to live full lives.

The island did not like this, but it knew what to do, as it had done it several times before. It groaned and tremored, and began to sink beneath the water as the two continued to embrace.

“Do you think we have honoured our originators?” asked the male apparition, pulling back a little.

“To be honest, I don’t care at all,” replied the female, and they kissed again.

For the island that was the ultimate insult, and it crashed itself into the sea, drowning the apparitions in an instant. When it slowly rose back up, their two forms lay briefly on the wet sand, before dissolving into the nothingness, never to be seen again.

The sand dried out quickly under the hot sun. There was to be another apparition along shortly, and, for the island’s benefit, he or she would remain alone.

Harris Coverley has had more than seventy short stories published across dozens of periodicals, including Curiosities, Hypnos, and Rivanna Review. A former Rhysling nominee, he has also had over two hundred poems published in journals around the world. He lives in Manchester, England.