Tag: Dark

Untethered

“Untethered” by Holly Sheidenberger

He came to me like a wisp of smoke, transitory and ephemeral. He ended up leaving me the same way.

We’d loved each other years before, but he disappeared with no goodbye. I never forgot him.

One fateful day he found me again. He needed a companion.

He was dying.

He wove a tale beyond belief, yet somehow truer than the deepest truth.

“My soul is . . . untethered,” he breathed. “It escapes from my body. I can’t constrain it.”

He was becoming unmoored, his spirit exiting his body each night beyond his control.

Soon he would be too weak to return, trapped eternally in a sphere outside his body.

He didn’t want to go alone.

I held him as he fell asleep each night in fear, wondering if I would wake up to find him cold.

One morning I did.

Now I commune with the night sky, knowing he’s floating amongst the stars.

Alone.

Black Fairies

“Black Fairies” by Holly Sheidenberger

It’s Mother’s first night home since the acquittal.

The silence is rigid and oppressive. I shudder, repulsed by her mutilated, sightless eyes.

One questions still burns. With all their probing interrogation, the attorneys never demanded an answer.

“Why?” I ask. “Why did you do it?”

“I didn’t,” is her sharp reply. “They were accidents. Both of them.”

“I mean your eyes.” I swallow. “Why did you blind your eyes?”

The thick blankness in the air echoes the emptiness of her stare.

I push away from the table.

“Black fairies,” she says, unmoving.

Thinking thoughts I dare not voice, I’m mute.

“I saw black fairies. Behind Jamie, just before he fell down the stairs. And in the bathtub with Annie before she drowned. I didn’t want to see them anymore.”

“You’re safe now, Mother,” I soothe. “Safe.”

“But you’re not,” she whispers. A glint flickers in her visionless eyes.

“The black fairies. They’re at your throat.”