The Blue Labyrinth and the Shadow Girl. (A work in progress.)

This is a work in progress. It's something I've started but whilst I have the ideas in my head, I'm not quite in a position to write all of them down just yet; but nevertheless some of it has been written, and seeing it just jotted down in pencil for the moment is frustrating to me, so here it is typed in part, so that I can see it on the page and hopefully later be moved to write more. Just a short, dark little piece with a slightly odd cautionary fairy-tale bent to it. The Girl is unnamed as yet, and at the moment I feel no inclination to name her, although as the story progresses I have a feeling that this may change.

Anyway, just wanted to get it written down somewhere.

The Blue Labyrinth and the Shadow Girl.

She’d run away tonight. Not permanently, you understand, just enough to escape from the house for a while. She’d been about to draw the curtains for the night, caught up in the stifling ritual – finish working, start getting into a really good movie, get yelled at for not going to bed before her mother, whose routine was paramount, argue her case, get yelled at by both parents (one of who was merely a sheep) and finally stump sullenly up to bed, imagination-time murdered again – but for tonight her eye had been unable to ignore the spectacle before her.

     The darkness had risen up out of the midnight garden, warm and soft in its partial blindness, and had beckoned to her, grasping her chin in its black-gloved fingers and gently guiding her head until it was not only the corner of her eye that watched it. There was the barest illumination from the moon casting the world into a confusing labyrinth of blurred silhouettes outlined in watered down lightning-blue.

     She watched the shapes drifting in and out of comprehension, morphing figures that flickered into a ceasing existence with each new cast of the moon’s broken nets. She felt the darkness draw back, retreat into those unnerving lights that constantly sought to oust it from its place, tensing itself, arms pulled closer now to fend off each unseen attack. The darkness was blind, and it wanted her.

     She threw her curtains further back along their lines, hooks clicking one by one until they no longer hindered her view and all that stood as barrier between her and those strong arms was a single plane of sugared glass, so fragile she felt she could sink her fingers through it, though she dare not – to be coated in sugar glass and shatter upon the concrete would not be a fitting event. She slipped out of her pyjamas, crumpling bodies of soft cotton slithering down thighs and over breasts, her eyes fixed, unchanging, on the blank stare of the night-time, ignoring the frenzied flickers of the moon-lightning as they ran gossiping quicksilver at the shock of her nudeness. The darkness did not move.

     She dressed in black.

     She crept down the stairs, hands as well as feet padding down the step rises in an attempt to spread her weight. She couldn’t risk the squeaky floorboards.

     The darkness was blind, and it needed her.

     She listened for her father, hearing him kill the fire and switch off the lights in the living room. She tucked herself in to the shade of the study bookcase until his woollen shape exited the living room door across the hall and headed up to the next floor.

     Treading carefully, elbows drawn close to her sides and fingers extending outwards in front to prevent accidental damage, she crossed the kitchen floor and was at the odds-and-ends drawer, sliding it out on silken rollers to retrieve the key.

     Slow insertion.

     Try not to rattle.

     Easing turn –

     to the muffled click.

     She closed the door behind her and locked it again.

     She backed down the steps, not turning away from the house just yet, eyes unwillingly fixed on the golden squares left gazing out at her, holding still for just a moment longer to check that no-one had seen her or moved to follow. Holding still.

     She turned away and walked down to the darkness.

     It rose up to meet her, the fingered shadows of a hazel tree flicking the moonlight out of the way. She stretched out her arms to greet it as she stepped into the thick cloak of the spreading willow, and the darkness embraced her. She stood there for a while as they got used to each other. They relaxed into each other. She felt her breathing even out after the nervous hitching of her escape and savoured the rich wet scent of the garden that sheltered them.

     The silence lasted for a few minutes longer, the girl stood motionless in the arms of the night – and the wind shifted sharply to blow in a rasping rattle through the shrunken willow leaves. She lifted her head to gaze into the eyes of the darkness and read what it wanted. The branches thrashed then as the night screamed its request again.

     It wanted her to help it move.

     It leaned upon her and she juddered under its velvet-hot weight. Knees buckled under the dead mass. Joints locked in protesting encouragement.

     She was shaky to start. Her girlish limbs seemed insufficient for her task, unwieldy and over-long, and too thin for muscle, and she fell at first, with the shame of her weakness spreading in dew-damp swells across the front of her trousers. She felt the body of the darkness gather round her shoulders again, balancing its weight more evenly this time, an unspoken plea for a second attempt. Her knees were hugged in, arms caging, eyes mantled. She could not bear this desire.

     The darkness was blind. The darkness clutched at her.

     Her head rose. Hand-plane swiped at the coward’s tears. Calves flexed in a load-bearing arc to push her to her feet. All tears were gone now as she held her hand out to the darkness.

Sarah Cuming : 06 Jan 2010 22:57 |  Tags: Creative Writing Prose The Blue Labyrinth And The Shadow Girl Work In Progress |  Comments (2) |  Report a problem