I find it helps to think of her as falling.
She is falling, her hair billowing behind her, when her memory ambushes me by daylight, still falling, still laughing, still blissfully unaware of the marble steps rushing up towards the base of her skull. It is only when she comes to me by night, and I cannot wrench myself away from the dream in time, that I must hear, night after night, and many times each night, the sickening crunch of impact.
By daylight I can keep her falling, and she has been falling such a long time, now, that she must be very far below me. I wonder if her full skirts buoy her? It is my only hope, that if I dive I might yet catch her.
But they will not allow the experiment, my warders, for they know she did not fall.
They know that it was I who pushed her.
And however bitterly I repent it I must watch her spin away from me forever.
Flash fiction inspired by this week’s VisDare. Why not click over and see what other people made of the prompt – or better still play along. There’s still time.
Alex Brightsmith 