Dark December [A Holiday Filled Horror Anthology]

Under Sky & Stars by @StoryofAshlyn

Under Sky & Stars

A short story by StoryofAshlyn 

Jo built a playing-card house of murky memories and dim morning dreams...

But lover didn't want to be locked safe inside.

#

She leaves in the morning.

When the first light has caught fire from the church steeple. When the 4:30 runners are long done lacing sneakers and dodging branches. When Skye, asleep on the couch, stirs but does not awaken.

Child tucked close to his chest, mouth lax, he snores. Colors from the TV flicker across his temples. Her parents' house is small – the walls are thin – and the smell of her father's smoking percolator and cigarette wafts onto the patio. Onscreen, Johnny and Baby tug each other close, snap apart, skirt flailing, leather sharp on darting white hands.

If she places her hand on his shoulder, she can feel the tug of his heartbeat. Slow. Sudden. A start. The gentle push-pull, pull-pull of a wave as it retreats from the shore.

ICE COLLISION CATASTROPHE.

Headlines buzz behind her eyelids. After four years on the school paper these things become instinct. A hammer: CAUTION: SHIPWRECK.

Footsteps, and she's across the room closing the doors. Icy fingers tucked in her pockets. Uncertainty on her cheeks.

It's a Monday; a school day. She should be sprinting for the bus but instead she lingers at the faded corner between dream and memory. The details are painted on the backs of her hands, her forearms, down to the half-moon arch at the top of lover's nose, child's whisper-gold lashes, the merry-go-round advertising tune at the top of the commercial break.

LEFT-BEHIND STRANGERS IN SAD TALES.

On that she closes the door. Opens her eyes. Climbs out of the card house she has constructed, the paper filaments of tendon and tenderness that keep her anchored close enough to sane.