Torn Fragility

“It is only your shadow that has found you,” she replied. “Everybody’s shadow is ranging up and down looking for him.” ~Phantastes, George Mac Donald.

“Argh!” I howled, my frustration and anger finally coming to a peak. “This is impossible! It was just a dream…”

I scoured my room but to no avail. The sketch was gone and so was an edge off of my sanity. How could I make sense from reality anymore? Had that woman been real? What about the game she had spoken of…something about a game? Max being a bonus…I racked my brain for my clues but realised that the hag had not given me much to go on. Purposefully. So that I couldn’t escape.

I snorted trying to fight off the tendrils of fear. Quickly I walked calmly towards my door and opened it only to be greeted by gentle silence that of a warm summer day filled with birdsong and the occasional traffic. Fear’s clutch slowly loosened as I hopped downstairs and pulled open the front door.

Real people walked by on the streets. Real cars speeded down the lane. Real children rode their bicycles and played games. It was reality, logical and safe. Safer than a book for the first time in my life, safer than nightmares. No more games, no more frights.

I waved at a woman walking by with her dog, I was so relieved. So…

I was blinded. Everything was too bright, the colours were wrong. My limbs wouldn’t move properly, everything wasn’t where it was supposed to be…my vision was wrong. I wanted to cry but couldn’t. The ground was almost eye level, the porch steps looked like the steps up a pyramid, I could see every single little detail in the grain work…the information flooding my mind was too much. I tried to take a few steps back only to hear an odd clicking sound accompanied by a frantic fluttering noise that one heard birds make when they’re about to take off into the sky.

I stumbled backwards my heart beating audibly faster than I had ever heard it beat before.

Then suddenly, just like that, the disorientation was gone replaced by deep nausea. My head felt like it was up in the clouds floating above me when meanwhile I was lying on my back breathing faster than I needed to. I sneezed and a feather drifted into my line of vision. A brown feather with a green sheen to it.

“I hate you!” I screamed. I tried to get up but was overcome with dizziness. Finally the tears came but I couldn’t care less. Where was Hannah? Where were my parents? Where were my friends? I needed comfort and I needed it now. But that was impossible. I couldn’t escape, at least not in my current form.

“Ugly…Old…Horrible…Hideous…Hag….” I said with every breath I breathed out. “I don’t want to save anyone…I scarcely know him…I just want to go home.”

A concerned face bent over mine, greying hair in a tight bun. Hannah looked older than when I had last seen her, her eyes were sadder but her smile was as bright as ever.

“Hannah!” I shouted and wrapped my arms around her. Even though I had not known her for long she fitted the grandmother role perfectly and was just what I needed.

“You can’t give up now Rose; you have a lot of work to do.”

“I don’t want to!” I whined clutching her tightly. Then suddenly she was gone, ghost like, and my arms hung limply at my sides and my eyes burnt in rage. My fists curled into tight balls and I said to the empty air, “For you then Hannah, because I know you care for him. But after that I’m out of here.”

There was the chilling sound of a woman’s mocking laughter from the house.

I stood up and made my way to the kitchen ignoring the echo of her voice. “Damn right I’ll interfere,” I muttered putting the kettle on.

My thorns had started to show.



It was strange seeing such a domestic scene after the past horrific hours or was it days or weeks? I could no longer be sure but judging by the short length of my nails it couldn’t have been days.

I looked down at my fingers then, how they curled around the warm mug of tea, and how the red gold sunset pierced through the lace curtains and through the rising steam. I was, in a manner at ease but I was merely procrastinating. I would soon have to venture into Smith’s room and see if my all my guesses were confirmed, if this nightmare was a reality.

I chugged down the remains of my mug and scraping the chair back stood up and slowly, ever so slowly made my way upstairs, the creaking of the staircase the only sound I could hear.
I paused at the family portraits at my left. One in particular caught my eye. The striking personage of a serious strict looking man, coldly staring out at the viewer, the oil paint of this one done in small hasty dark streaks as if the artist had been in a hurry to finish and get away from this clearly unfriendly man.

How would it be to have a father like that? I wondered remembering the suppressed pale little boy and his imposing father looming over him like a dark dangerous shadow.

Could I undo the hurt his father obviously caused him? Could I find out what had exactly happened to him? Only one way to find out, I thought as my fingers alighted on the smooth wooden surface of a door. A door that seemed like any other but hid secrets deeper than the eye could see. Secrets buried deep in shadow.

How could I possibly save Max? My own shadow haunted me and I had yet to understand how to tear it free before I could work on doing the same for him. I smiled wryly. Hopefully it would be like a tearing off a plaster, biting and quick.

But if it had been that easy Max wouldn’t have been what he was…and I wouldn’t be here.