An August Aria

The sun was dipping low, stretching its light out in a giant yawn that splashed the sky with vibrant fuchsia as it pulled the cover of the mountains over its head. The color caught my eye, stirring something in the back of my heart, a forgotten passion tugging at my cobwebbed mind. I watched the pink fade into deep purple and the gears in my brain began to speak, narrating what I was seeing with the flowery language I once used to build my now abandoned worlds. My fingers started to twitch, eager to dance across the keyboard.

But instead, I turned away, walked into my dreary grey house, and shut out the colorful sky with a soft click of the door. I used to write about fantastical creatures, imaginary worlds, and heroic adventures. I wove tales of wonder mixed with history, mythology, and fairy dust. But the real world kept getting in the way. I got old and tired and jaded. Magic no longer lurked in the corners of the world. The vibrant colors that once inspired me faded into dull greys and browns. Exhaustion from another long day of work lay heavy on my shoulders. I kicked off my shoes, dropped my bag, and hung my keys before dragging myself up the stairs and collapsing on the bed, still fully clothed. Sleep eagerly wrapped around me but as I surrendered to its embrace my mind filled again with splashes of pink and violet.

Then I felt the mattress sag next to me with the weight of another person. My family had ventured up a mountain and wouldn't be back for three more days. Sleep retreated like a coiled snake and my eyes flew open.

“Hi!” The strange woman lying next to me smiled warmly and giggled as I leapt from the bed.

“How did you…who are.. What are you doing in here?” I stammered reaching for something that could be used to protect me and coming up with nothing but the giant Sleepy stuffy that sat on the top of the hope chest. I clutched it in front of me like a cuddly bodyguard.

“Oh, come on! You really don't recognize me?” Her dark brown eyes filled with hurt as she stood up from the bed to look me in the eye.

I took in her features: the long bond curls that fell perfectly to her waist, the soft curve of her cheeks and slightly pointed chin, the smattering of faint freckles on her button nose. It all felt familiar and reminded me of…me? But not the real me, not the overstuffed, wrinkly, worn out me. This was my avatar, the perfected version of myself I used as the heroine of my tales.

“Katerina?” I gasped.

“Oh come now, call me Katie. After all, we were partners in life, before you killed me.”

“I didn't kill you!” I stomped angrily.

“Really? Do you even know where you left me? It's been years. After all those hours we spent together, after all those pieces of your soul you poured into me. Three hundred pages and thousands of hours and you have no intention of ever returning to my story. You literally left me in a burning house with a Nightmare choking the life out of me.”

“That's not true, I wrote the end first, you didn't die in the fire.”

“But you never wrote the part where I escaped.” Smoke began curling from Katie's hair and dress, filling the room with the acrid smell of burning flesh.

“Like all the rest of your wild tales, you just abandoned me. Look at you! Do you even recognize the woman you've become!” Katie vanished from her side of the bed and instantly reappeared on my side, inches away where I could clearly see the hurt and anger burning in her eyes. I stepped backward but found myself already pressed against the wall. “This was not what you were meant to do with your talent Amber!” She shouted. “So tonight you will be given one last chance. You will be visited by three ghosts.”

I had been clutching Sleepy tightly but the familiarity of her warning eased the tension, my shoulders relaxed and I rolled my eyes.

“Three Ghosts? Really, we're doing the whole Christmas Carol cliché? It's August! And my nightmares aren't even original. I have to steal them from Charles Dickens.”

“Just because you get inspiration from great writers doesn't mean you can't put your own original spin on it. Now can you cower in fear again? I'm doing my best to look terrifying. I've got the smoke tendrils and burning eyes. Oh wait, I know…” and then she started to grow stretching tall and becoming black as spilled ink, sucking the last light into the hollow vortex of her chest. Her fair features melted into a blank glassy formless void and only her burning red eyes remained. When she spoke next, her voice had become raspy like nails on chalkboard, “You will be visited by Three Ghosts, The Ghosts of stories past, present, and future. The first will come at midnight.”

Obediently, I cowered, shaking in fear, coughing on the smoke Katie used to fill the room. I sank to the carpet and buried my head deep in the soft plush of Sleepy’s beard. The Grandfather Clock called out, clanging deeply ten times.

I opened my eyes to find myself lying in bed, clutching Sleepy against my chest. Nothing more than a silly nightmare. I rolled over to fall back asleep but couldn't help noticing the faint smell of smoke hung in the air. There must be more wildfires, it's been such a dry year. Then, I drifted back off to sleep.

My slumber became fragmented as I heard the call of the Grandfather Clock again clanging….one….two….three…but the sound climbed up the musical scale with each successive ding all the way into another octave where it chimed its final ten…eleven….twelve. This was no longer the Grandfather Clock that stood in the corner of my home. This was the Grandmother clock that hung on the wall of my childhood home. The realization sent me tumbling off the worn out tan and orange floral couch. I landed on hideous dark brown carpet that we had replaced when I was twelve. The clock hung next to the lava rock fireplace that my parents had removed when I was first married. And there in front of me, between the living room and the kitchen was the wall I personally helped smash to pieces with a sledgehammer when my oldest was just a toddler. This wasn't just my childhood home; this was the house of my childhood.

I heard the echo of Katie's raspy voice, You will be visited by three ghosts.

My skin crawled, remembering how I believed in ghosts when I lived in this house. They lurked in the basement waiting for me to pull the string, shutting off the light before bolting through the darkness up the stairs. They waited behind the glass of the bathroom mirror. They hid beneath the bed and in the back of my closet. Fear gripped my heart in a way I hadn't felt since I was eight. I did not want to meet any of the ghosts that I once feared haunted this house.

As though in response to my thought, a faint green glow seeped under the bathroom door in the hallway. Not the bathroom, I groaned. If I was perfectly honest, at midnight part of me still believed in Bloody Mary. I reminded myself that despite the fact I was now wearing my favorite old Strawberry Shortcake nightgown, I was in fact almost 45. I stilled my pounding heart, took a deep breath, and strode across the living room into the hall. It would have been much more dramatic if I didn't smack my shoulder against the wall I used to smack into every single time I rounded this corner until the day I helped tear it down. It looked back, symbolically taunting my clumsiness. But it was not the foe I was here to conquer. I turned back to the bathroom door where the green glow grew brighter and brighter, pulling me forward as though in a trance. As I pushed open the dark wood door, I noticed my hand wasn't scarred and wrinkled anymore, a reminder that I wasn't 44, I was 8…and I was terrified.

But Mary wasn't hovering on the other side with the old yellow linoleum and crocheted burnt orange toilet roll cover. Instead I saw a young boy, about twelve. He had disheveled sandy brown hair and his green eyes were full of terror. He strongly resembled Ryan, the boy who lived at the end of the road, but not quite. This boy’s ears stuck out too far from his head and his nose pointed up just a little too much. The terror in his eyes faded into annoyance as he recognized me.

“It's about time!” He grumbled. “I've been waiting here for thirty-six years!”

I stammered, trying to place him, give him a name, remember his story, but my mind drew a blank.

“You don't even remember me, do you?” He glowered angrily. “You have no idea who I am “

“I'm guessing you're the ghost of stories past?”

“And what's my story?” He sneered as only twelve year old boys can.

Helpfully, the green glow drew my attention from him to the source of the eerie light as it seeped from beneath the toilet lid, which shook as though something tried to escape from the bowl.

“Oh!” I giggled slightly. “You're the boy from the Toilet Zone! My first real story.”

“Real story!” He huffed. “No, a story requires a beginning, a middle, and AN END! You wrote a beginning, a middle, and a TO BE CONTINUED! You turned me into your teacher, got an A, and then forgot about me. You just left me here with them!”

The lid flew open and four slimy, dark mottled green tentacles reached over the edge. Two bulbous heads rose high above the toilet their glassy yellow eyes fixed on the two children by the door. Quick as lightening one tentacle shot forward and wrapped around the leg of the boy, yanking him from his feet and holding him upside down in front of one creature. I felt the icy grip of a second tentacle wrapping around my own ankle just before the floor was torn away from my feet and I found myself staring into the curious gaze of the glowing creature.

“No,” the boy shrieked. “They’ve already taken my little brother and sister. You have to find the end of this story. You have to finish it!”

His last words were swallowed in the terrified shriek as the creature opened its wide mouth revealing three rows of pointy black teeth, dripping with dark green mucus. A second later, the tentacle released and the boy disappeared into the creature’s mouth. Below me, the second razor filled maw opened and I could see the endless expanse of a starry night sky inside its belly. This was it. I closed my eyes and screamed.

I sat straight up in bed: my bed, my room, my adult home. I was alone. I was safe.

Or was I?

The bed tilted backward and I found myself tumbling, spinning, falling weightlessly through black nothingness until I finally landed with a loud thwomp! My mouth filled with dry sand and the heat from the hot desert sun baked every drop of moisture out of my skin.

“About time you got here!”

I looked up to see myself surrounded by a bunch of sixth graders. One wore an elegant night dress, fit for a princess, and another was wearing fuzzy footie pajamas. The boy who had yelled at me was wearing a rumpled T-shirt with spaghetti stains, jeans, and bare feet.

“Bryson?” I blinked the sand from my eyes and looked at the others. “Vivian, Sage, Quin, Xander. You're all here.”

“Yeah, we're right where you left us, in the middle of the ancient Egyptian desert in our pajamas!” Vivian, the princess dressed beauty, growled.

“I'm sorry, I promise I'll get back to you.”

“When?” Xander demanded.

“Come on guys, she's had some rough years,” Sage proved she still had the gentle heart I gave her.

“But,” the boy in the footie pajamas spoke timidly. “You wanted to write us for your little boys. You wanted them to share our adventures. But they're not little anymore. They'll never get to enjoy us.”

“Quin,” I began but I couldn't find any argument. He was right. “Maybe JJ…” but I already knew that he'd be too old before I ever found the time. “I'll have grandchildren one day…”

“It's fine,” Xander shook his curly redhead. “You wrote me to be used to abandonment. I expected this.” He turned and began walking away.

“At least we have each other,” Vivian sighed. “I just wish you wrote the part where we all became friends first.” She turned to follow Xander.

Quin and Sage looked at me sadly, as though they wanted to say more but they, too, turned and followed Xander. Bryson crouched down and looked deep into my eyes. I saw it then. The piece of my soul that I put into him. It flickered faintly, barely there, threatening to go out with the next soft breeze.

“Goodbye.” He whispered and then the wind picked up, scattering him and all his friends into a thousand grains of sand, burying me deep as I sunk lower into the dune, slowly suffocating me.

I sat up in bed gasping for breath, grateful to find myself safely back in my room. But the clicking of keys coming from the corner betrayed that I was not alone. Stealing myself for one final ghost of future stories, I took a deep breath and looked into the corner. Sitting at my ill-used desk typing away was my oldest son, behind him stood his two younger brothers. They all looked about five years older. I called to them, but none acknowledged my presence. They remained quiet and focused until Cas finished typing and leaned back.

“Well, it's short, but I don't know what else to add,” he sighed sadly.

The other two leaned forward, reading over his shoulder. “I think that about sums up her life. There's really nothing else to say.” Boo shrugged.

I climbed from bed and peered over their shoulders to see what they were writing. Just as I feared, it was my final story, my obituary. The first paragraph listed all the usual family stuff: my parents and sister, when and who I married, and my three children. The second paragraph made me shudder with remorse.

She attended University where she received a degree in history and French. She never used either. She always dreamed of being a writer, but never finished any stories. Instead she ran the dining hall at her Alma Mater where she was overworked and underappreciated and ultimately met her untimely demise when she was buried beneath twenty cases of frozen chicken tenders.

“Hey guys, if this is it, what are we going to say at the funeral?” My youngest queried.

"Of course that's not it," I shouted at them, but they couldn't hear. "I did more than this!"

“Good point,” Cas shook his head. “Maybe we shouldn't have one. I mean, really, who's going to come?”

“Yeah, you're right,” Boo agreed.

“Oh come on, kids, what about all my employees, my friends, the neighbors, your friends that always hung out here. People will miss me, won't they? You'll miss me, won't you?”

“We should just go to dinner instead,” JJ suggested.

“Wait,” Boo stopped. “We can't make the same mistake as Mom. We need to finish this story the right way. There's one more thing we need to add.”

Click, click, click…he typed out one final sentence: It was very unclucky.

“Oh!” Cas dramatically gasped. “That's perfect!”

My children then laughed as they walked toward the door.

"Where do you want to go?"

"I'm really craving chicken tenders, how about Canes?"

"What do you think you are doing? You can't reduce my life to a joke!"

But they didn't hear me. They kept walking and I turned back to look at the summary of my dreams unrealized. Something fell on my head, another on my shoulder. I looked up to see hundreds of chicken tenders falling like raindrops tumbling toward me. I raised my hands protectively over my head bracing for my untimely, and very unclucky, demise.

Clang….clang... The deep mournful chime of the Grandfather Clock called to me as though tethering me to a lifeline that would pull me back to the present. Five….six…I woke with a start.

Everything seemed normal. I jumped from bed and yanked open the blinds. The sun stretched out it's early rays in a sleepy yawn, splashing over the east mountains with vibrant orange, shimmering gold, and subtle pinks. My heart stirred once more with passion that sent my mind racing. The movement of leaves in the garden caught my eye and I was certain I saw a wood nymph peek out from the branches of the willow. A robin flew past the window carrying a sprite on its back. The world sparkled with forgotten magic begging to be brought to life on the page and my fingers itched to dance across the keyboard. I smiled at the possibilities as I sat down at my computer and blew off the layer of dust.