Short Story: Pictures of You

Photo by Jacob Narkiewicz on Unsplash

     The piece of stiff paper I hold in my hand is only four by six, but it represents a time in my life when I was happy. The colors are saturated, almost infused with the emotions of the moment. They lift off the glossy surface as though they have retained life. The people in photo are happy and smiling, and as I look at it, I can hear the sound of music in the background as though the paper were able to capture not just the image, a record of light, but everything that was happening in that moment. 
     Staring at it, I feel like if I turn now, she will be here. She was just gone for a second but has returned and this is just a few seconds ago.
It is not.
     I learned a lesson; be careful who you let into your life; you don’t know what they are capable of. People have a habit of disappointing you, of hurting you, tearing your heart out and making you watch as they consume it in front of you only to drop it in the dust at your feet before they leave.

     When she left there was a void that I didn’t even know had existed before she came. She arrived in a hurry and left just as quickly after working her magic. She ingratiated herself into my life and my home. She invoked the promise of a future, only to snatch it away without warning; or at least not warning me.
     “It’s not you, you’re a really nice person,” she said as she announced her exit. “You took really good care of me, but I don’t have what I need,” she told me.
     If I’m so nice and I took such good care, then why is she leaving? I ask myself. 
     I know the reason. We weren’t a good match. We were never a good match. Everyone I knew said we weren’t a good match but when you’re not seeking comfort, you miss it the more when it is given and then snatched away. 

     The photo is the last thing left here. A reminder of what could have been. A tantalizing memory of the future. A promise of smiles, laughter, alcohol, and sex that burned so fiercely that it risked consuming everything.

     Be careful who you let into your life; you don’t know what they are capable of. It’s not just a lesson, but a warning

                                                               ***

     I learned a long time ago that there are only three things that are necessary: intent, focus, and the ability to marshal power. You don’t have to have power, just access to those who do and their willingness to use it on your behalf.
     I’m not the first to discover this. There stand in the shadows Crowley, Mathers, and Waite among others. Men of old, forgotten to the modern age, who marshaled themselves to get things done. Dark things, terrible things labeled evil, things unreported that were even worse. But evil is just a word: a current framing of an ever-changing moral code and something that falls outside of it. What is evil today wasn’t in the past.
     A solstice, a time of the day, a sacrifice of something. These are all trite cliches. All that are necessary are the three.
     I sit outside, the heat of the day cooling off as sun drops down, holding the photograph. It isn’t a special time of the day, I’m just out here now because it was too bloody hot earlier. The sun had beat down all day, just as it did yesterday, as though screaming its displeasure at our inability to listen. Like a parent scolding a child for disobeying instructions.
     There is a fire in the pit in front of me, and a cold drink at my side. The fire is there because I like a fire. I like to watch the flames dance. I like to smell the smoke from the wood that is both acrid and sweet at the same time. I like the relief when the smoke turns away and there is that hint of pleasure after pain, comfort after discomfort.

     Gods and devils, angels and demons, they are all the same. Why does mankind feel the need to classify and arrange? They are all just manipulators of forces we don’t understand. They don’t have a moral code. They just do as they please, and sometimes they deem to align that with what we want. There is no reason not to, what is it to them? A distraction from eternity.
     My bookshelves are lined with rows and rows of books based on arcane knowledge: pages of drawings and incoherent ramblings. Consecrate the knife this way, draw the circle with these markings. It’s all rubbish. The authors surprised when the incantations don’t work.
     The chalk must be too soft, the light not quite right, the hour too early. 
     No. The fault is not with the ritual or its preparations. The fault is with them. In every book there is a kernel of truth, a grain so small it is lost in all the dross – but it is there. Intent, focus, power.
     I know what I want, I have festered on it and thought hard about the damage that was done to me. I want it back. Not the promise of that life; that is gone. No, I want my soul back. I don’t care if the void is unfilled, I just want not to know there is a void!
     There is an image in my mind of an outcome. The details don’t matter. I’ll leave that to someone else. The intent is what I concentrate on; an objective to be acted upon. My focus draws the strings together, a tapestry of energy from outside of me. All around me in the air, the ground, stretching out beyond human comprehension. I feel it. It can’t be seen. There is no instrument that can measure it, but I can sense it. I am attuned to it like a string that vibrates when another at a distance is plucked with sufficient force.
     The photograph slips from my fingers and lands on the wood, whole and inviolate for a second or two and then the tip of a corner starts to yellow before turning brown, then black. The surface of the image starts to bubble slightly and then it is consumed in flames as the raw energy of the fire consumes the offering: the physical vestige of a memory gone as quickly as it arrived.

                                                              ***

     She drives, the glare of the sun ahead in her eyes and she flicks down the visor to shield them. Her mind is somewhere else, and she acts reflexively. This is a routine drive. Every day the same road. The radio plays music that intones the words of love and the glory of God. Who is this God so many put their faith and trust in falsely. Another manipulator of forces that has no care or mind even to know they exist. Random little creatures in the vast expanse of the universe who presume too much because they were born with the flaw of hubris; every single one of them.
     The car rocks violently, and there is the sound of a crunch. The wheel jerks, but she clutches it tightly, trying to hold it as it rips to the left toward the center of the road.
     She looks in her mirror, searching for the pothole she must have just driven through. It must be big enough to put a tarp over and live in she thinks. Those arseholes in the roads division should get out and fix that, someone’s going to come to some harm. There is nothing there. She sees no hole, no dark circle in the road that would indicate the shadow of a large pothole. She shrugs but is disturbed by the lack of evidence, a little shaken by the sudden jarring of the car, and out of the comfort of her distraction.
     The wheel of the car doesn’t seem the same. It’s now pulling a little to the right. The pothole must have pulled the front wheels out of alignment. She’ll have to take it to the shop she thinks. That pull is going to drive her nuts, but she doesn’t have time for this. She never has time.
She looks out through the passenger side window at the trees as she drives.      The road, two lanes wide, sits on a mountain cut, and the hillside dips down into a valley with a river flowing quickly through the narrow slice it’s made over the millennia. There are lookout spots on the passenger side of the side of the road, beauty viewing areas they call them. When did a person have to stop and admire beauty, it’s all around us she thinks as the car speeds along the straight road. Her mind wanders down a path of thought.
There’s a car approaching her, speeding. Everyone speeds on this road. Everyone is always in such a hurry. Idiots she thinks. She instinctively looks down at the dial on the dash cluster. She’s doing 70; this is a 55, but she doesn’t consider that speeding.
     As she looks back up from the cluster another car pulls out from behind the first. It’s trying to overtake a speeding vehicle, trying to outmatch someone who was already going too fast. It’s on her side of the road. She watches it for a few seconds as it gets closer. When will the driver realize this isn’t going to happen and drop back in to where it should be?
     It’s getting closer, and closer. It’s as though the whole scene is taking hours although it must be seconds. All vehicles are moving toward each other. They must be traveling at least 55, but she knows it’s more – everyone speeds here.
     To her left, the hill rears up and there is no shoulder. To her right the road drops off and there is no shoulder. In front of her both lanes are occupied and if she slows or stops it won’t make a difference. She runs all the calculations and permutations in her mind, watching the scene unfold in front of her as her foot is still pressed on the gas pedal.
     Her car tumbles down the side of the hill headed toward the river at the bottom. The stone wall at the top broken and sheered through by the force of the speeding vehicle that must obey the laws of physics. Energy equals mass times speed. Lumps of rock follow her down, distributing the remains of the energy she hit the wall with so that bushes rattle and shake as the rocks roll through. The dirt that has been undisturbed for generations flies up with each impact they make on their way down before they finally splash into the river around the remains of the car.
     Apart from a few trembles in the trees as birds take off from the disturbance that just happened to alight somewhere else with a better view, nothing stirs. The water finds a new path around the car, a wheel turning but getting slower and slower. It’s unaware of the change. It doesn’t care. It continues to follow its nature. There is peace.
     On the road, there are no skid marks, no litter. Only one car has passed here in the last twenty minutes and that unexpectedly, and unaccountably, just veered off the road. It turned sharply and crashing through the old grey stone wall toppling down to the river. There is no debris from the wall, everything was pulled in the direction of the car.
     No sound, no disturbance. No witness. No survivors.

     Be careful who you let into your life; you don’t know what they are capable of.
 

© Emma Steel

Photo by Matthew Moloney on Unsplash