THE RAINY SEASON, Laura Sanger Kelly, 11/11
11.
A new solution
It had taken Rachel a while to find a block of wood of the same kind.
She had a few pieces cut for her, of the same dimensions of the one Barb had carried around.
She knocked on his door.
“Rachel.” He seemed oddly frightened of her now.
“I felt bad taking your project away from you, so I brought you something . . .” She handed him the block of wood.
He turned it over. On the base Rachel had written “Barb/Patrick.”
“Usufruct means you use it,” she said coolly. “Life is given to us to live. Death isn’t our endpoint.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do understand. You have been misled. Live your life, Barb. Play your music and carve your niche.” She turned to walk away, then stopped. She pulled another piece of wood out of her bag, one with his name likewise inscribed upon its base. “And if I ever see you carving anyone else’s form into another block of wood, I’m going to whittle your form into this lifeless block. Do you understand that?”
He nodded, his blue eyes betraying both pain and loss. She had taken away his certainty in life, and replaced it with something he could not control. His answers had all become questions; he had no power anymore.
As she walked back to her house, she passed the ghosts. There were four of them now, the fourth figure slender and violet.
They seemed to wave at her as she passed by. But she ignored them, happy to walk away from any death.
Laura on The Rainy Season: "My inspiration for this story was glimpsing through the window of an old house just after a thunderstorm; on the window sill were two small statues that seemed compellingly talisman-like in the after storm light. The story evolved from there."
Laura Sanger Kelly is a new writer, with stories published in Not One of Us, Chimaera Serials, Black Ink Horror, and Leading Edge Magazine. Of her work, Laura says, "I tend towards dark fiction, but have a few science fiction stories out there - my story "416175" was published in "Aoife's Kiss" (ed - where it won Sam Dot Publishing's James Award for short story 2007!)"
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