“Yes, I ar’dy told you!”
The adorable girl had her jaw stuck out in the perfect measure of her stubbornness. Her mother was torn between laughing and crying. Why was she being so stupid? Of course she could go… no use being silly about it, after all.
“Well, do try and have fun, dear.” Why was she adopting this horribly worried voice? No matter…better to just drop her off quick--maybe she could still catch the judges’ decision (that Simon was quite the charmer).
The youth’s face radiated joy as the slam of the car door was lost amid the bass of thunder--the first sign of a summer-storm. As the taillights bled into the June heat, Ellende ripped through the heavy air. She imagined that each point of grass was a wicked spring, determined to launch her up…out--all the way to the moon. So she skipped, using their fragrant buoyancy against them, slinging herself forward, faster, with each bound; the satisfyingly elastic resistance whipping back in perfect time with her heartbeat. Her lips began to crack from the force of smiling, she was going so fast, she’d surely die from this manic exhilaration, when--
“Careful there, dear. You wouldn’t want to trip." The voice had a lyrical quality about it, and Ellende began to feel pleasantly drowsy as she listened.
“Come along, now… we’ll just nip you over here to be with all your little friends.” The lady’s words subtly sped up as she uttered them, fitting in perfect rhythm with the child’s heartbeat.
“Yes, Miss Prost,” Ellende sang dutifully.
She skipped to keep up, much to the bemused twinkle-of-a-laugh that belonged to the hostess.
The cloud cover formed a crystalline shell over the lawn, and at once they burst into falling mist. Paper tablecloths drank in this moisture, and archaic truths were spilling, spelling across their thin fronts. And thus the party began.
“More sherbet, dear? My… you do look silly in those hats,” always accompanied by that light, ringing chuckle. There was a piñata (though soggy, the candy inside was sticky-sweet). The beast was hammered to the metronome of heartbeat (or heartbreak?). Vivacity is no means for survival, and it just echoes the colors; the brutally soft music in a life’s end. It was such a silly animal.
From the side yard came the greatest sight yet: a great rotund kiddy pool, over-inflated and violently pink. A hose is snaked out, and slowly the weight of water stills the ludicrous thing.
Dr. House was still muttering from the set at Ellende’s home when the storm proper was unleashed. In her mind, it was all contained in the crystalline cloud-cage that even now enveloped them. Indeed, it seemed as if those licks of light were much too close to accompany the bass of thunder that paired them. But worse still was the waiting; that pause between the bolt and the boom. It was in one of those mute periods that they all streaked inside, seeking shelter from silence and storm.
But Ellende stayed. She refused to leave without getting her turn in the nonsensical pool. It sat there, like some tomb of licorice, just waiting to reverse the norm. But it was that haunting thrill that so enticed her, and thus the youth slid over the lip of the plasticized wheel, and into the crystalline hubcap itself. The rain blending with her prickling tears, diluting their salty bite, the little girl, stopping to see for the first time, realized the world was a much wi[l]der place then she thought. Gravity’s no fun, she noted sourly. It stuck this pool, an’ in time it’ll stick me. Her anger was filtered through defiant surprise as the glass slide aside, and the hostess approached her charge.
“Honey, come inside. You shouldn’t be in that wretched thing. You’ll likely catch cold, or worse yet shiver through some lightn’in,”
Ellende’s glower faltered as Miss Prost neared, looking inexplicably wetter then the little girl. She was at the rim of the pink atrocity, and reaching forward. Suddenly Ellende had the very strong urge to take the woman’s hand; after all, why shouldn’t she? But Gravity took things in its own miserable course, and the grass-points conspired to send Miss Prost, shrieking, to the bottom of the ridiculous bowl with a bounce. She came up, sputtering and spiteful.
“It’s silly, really,” the child offered helplessly. “Us being out here an’ all”.
A pallid arm thrust forth, and seized Ellende in a vice grip; the woman's fingertips pinching just behind the ears. Now it was her turn to sputter, and any hint of defiancy leaked out of her face for the first time in her short, sweet life. Running down her throat, it mixed with her choking breath, and again was that laugh like the sparkle of a bell. The rain pierced the little girl's eyes, and it bled their color down her cheek. A trace of green against the white, that flowed all the way down to join skin pigments in the water below. Projectile blood joined the mixing colors of the boisterous pool, and the youth fell upon her knees. As a grimace contorted Miss Prost’s etched face, (set as stone against the horror), a flash of lightning lit the scene for the voiceless smirks watching at the window. Leaning into her efforts, focusing the whole of herself on the back of the wench’s neck, the mistress guided Ellende’s face past the film at the water's edge, into the spectrum and silence below. A crystalline end, and the world missed a beat and one more heart slowed. The cloud cover drifted apart, and a bleached body (stained with the pigments washed from her skin and eyes) padded against the pink ground. It was a silly thing, the elasticized bounds of life amidst death.
“Well come along then, children. There’s still cake to be had,” and all the while, with that ringing mirth; a laugh like tinkle of a bell.
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author's note: I'm sticking with poetry from now on
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