The Cycle

Chapter Nine

BROWN earth scrunched beneath her feet. This was not her home.

To her left; to her right, homes made from bamboos and logwoods, smoked from a fire that'd charred them black. The ones that had survived the fire, yet suffered an invasion, had their doors creak and groan, as they hung from single hinges waiting to fall off. Rows of ground homes, reduced to a ghost and burnt graveyard.

This was not her world.

The chimes and tolls, of dreamcatchers and bells, appraised the air like the final call for dead souls.

Then the woman from the box of shadows, emerged through the corner of a one storey house, which had its roof displaced by a tearing force, that left the walls looking like jagged spikes.

This was not her world.

It can't be. I've fallen into a dream.

"Not a dream," said the woman, "a shift of sight."

The woman's face slipped off her mind like faded dreams. She could not hold the image, though the woman stood before her. Clad in a black gown with revealing V neck slit; and flowing hem that kissed the ground. Midnight hair that fell like waterfalls down the side of both cheeks, past her collar bones, and covered the outline of her breasts. Yet, her eyes, nose and lips were blurred images to Mabel's eyes.

This was the first time - the woman stood within arms reach. The woman's presence was a distant call from the dark.

I should know her name, but I've forgotten the syllables.

"Who are you? What's your name?" asked Mabel.

"How much do you care?"

Mabel could tell it wasn't about the name, or who she was. But knew what she spoke of.

"Very," Mabel replied.

"Enough to crack your soul? To splinter your spirit?"

What did that even mean . . .

"Yes."

"Very well," said the woman, and she turned her back; and went silent, then added after a pregnant pause, "just this once then . . . Just this once . . . " said the black clad woman. Her voice, a dying echo as she turned and caressed Mabel's cheeks with cold hands. Then she faded like ink - washed away by rippling waters.

Mabel stood alone amongst smoking buildings. On the edge of lucid dreams and reality. She thought it was done. Until cold fingers crept around her neck; and then, pain tore through her.

It ignited near the base of her spine. Then from her back, an arm pushed past flesh and reached into her. It moved through blood, through bones, through muscles, and filled her with pain that stole air from her lungs, which left her gasping at the blue sky, assailed by a flock of circling pitch black birds, looking for flesh to pick on. She dropped her head, and saw the emergence of a pale arm with black painted nails, from her belly.

There was no blood.

Like her body was hardened earth, and the arm - that of a rising corpse.

The pale arm was caressed by fluttery blue wisps. The pain wasn't just a physical one. But laced with the sensation, akin to the drowning quietness that seeps into a heart struck by loss, grief or heartbreak.

It was the suffocation of a minute, yet significant part of her being; her soul, her spirit.

Life, she was yet to manifest, was being snuffed out. The pain was a great yearning that would never be satiated. Like a yawn or sneeze, which left you hanging on the edge of sweet release. Yet disappears without thought, leaving you frustrated. A thousand prickling pins on your skin.