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Micro-fiction 073 – Tear (Echoes series)

A tear in the wallpaper brings the past and the present together as a man lies struggling with his last breath…


The Tear

A rip in the bright, floral wallpaper, a fold that once fell listlessly, is now suspended in time, its animus halted by a lack of motivation. But its inaction reveals what lies behind, with layers of older wallpaper jostling for survival, gulping at the air. As I lie in bed, older than I think I am, younger than I have any right to be, I study it, following every detail of the curl, the fractures in the floral pattern, the decayed edges, and the layer upon layer crouching behind, each torn back a little less, revealing the surface of another time, and another, and another, stretching back through the past of this ancient house.

My eyes sting and ache. Have I been crying? I can’t see so well, but somehow I’m able to focus on the tear in the wall to this left side of my bed. It’s near the ceiling, too high to be easily discerned except by someone in my prone position and it faces the grimy window on the opposite wall, where the thin light of the present attempts to wash away the resilient skins of the past.

Around me there are pale shadows fussing at the tubes in my arms, rearranging bedclothes, tut-tutting about my hippocampus but I see through them, and squint at the tear.

“Hello?” A voice buzzes at my ear. I ignore it.

“Hi!” It is persistent. I stare at the tear, noticing that the wallpaper has changed, its now a deep red.

“What?” I respond to the change in the wallpaper.

“Hey!”

I try to swat the voice, moving my head. “Go away.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh, not you.”

“Who then?”

“The wallpaper idiot.”

“Who’s the wallpaper idiot?”

“Shut up and let me concentrate.”

“What are you concentrating on?”

I realise the voice is younger than my own. “The wallpaper, it’s changed.”

“No it hasn’t, it’s always been red.”

“What? Where are you?”

“Right here.”

“In the wall?”

“Don’t be daft, here, in the bed.”

“But that’s where I am.”

“Oh. I can’t see you.”

“What can you see?”

“Uh, well, the red wallpaper, a window with red curtains drawn back, the latch broken so the air puffs out dust sometimes. I like watching it try to reach the tear in the wallpaper.”

“So you can see that can you?”

“Of course. But where are you?

“I’m in bed too.”

“Not the same bed?!”

“Apparently not.”

“Perhaps we’re the same person?”

“Seems unlikely. I’ve not heard you before.”

“No, same. Why are you in bed?”

“I’m not in it, I’m on it. I like the peace and quiet.”

“Not ill then?”

“No, just thinking about life and stuff.”

“Uhuh.”

“Well, I remember my mother worrying about me not having many friends.”

“Did you?”

“Oh yes, but I didn’t bring them home, didn’t really want to.”

“Why not?”

“I just have other things to do. I like, thinking and planning, and making things.”

“Sounds like a solitary life.”

“Oh no, there’s so much to do, so much to think about, to learn.”

“So you are fulfilled.”

“Yes. But I need peace and quiet. I can’t stand the noise. I like to spend all my time getting on with things.”

“Do you share these things?”

“Share? No. I like it when people see them and enjoy them, but it’s enough to give life to objects, create a form out of wood, or stone, or paint. They create a deep roots these new-born objects, they’ll outlast me, connect me to a future which will have forgotten me, but within which I live on.”

“That does sound lonely, not exactly full of human emotion.”

“No, no, that misses the point. It’s a horizontal life, not a vertical one. It’s a life that extends out beyond the present, far beyond, like a slingshot into space, hurtling outwards at its own pace, eventually returning to earth to find life has moved on without it, as though two moments of time are disconnected then coexist in parallel, in the same place.”

“I’ll have to think about that.” The other voice is silent. I stare at the tear in the wallpaper, see the layers behind shuffle slightly in the murky light. I blink and find the red replaced by a striped pattern of blues and greens.

“I’m not well.”

This is a different voice, younger. “What did you say?”

“Asthma. I keep hallucinating.”

He seems to be struggling to breathe.

“Lack of oxygen the doctor says.”

“Ah, doctors, they don’t know as much as they think they do. The personal stuff at least, family history, immediate environment.”

“I don’t think they’re interested in that; but my mum said they kept me alive when I was very young.”

“Said?”

“Yes, she died a few years ago.”

“Oh, mine too, a long time ago. Was it an accident?”

“That’s what they told me.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I know it wasn’t. She thought I had died. She threw herself down the stairs. I heard her.”

“That’s strangely similar to what happened to my mother.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I saw her look down at me when my eyes were closed. She ran out of the room and I heard an awful silence before she landed in the hallway below. I’ll never forget the feeling, the loss, the regret. I don’t know what I could have done to stop her, but I still feel guilty.”

“That’s how I feel.” I look at the tear in the wallpaper and tighten my mouth. The walls have changed again, now it has large balloons, pale blues and creams.

“Ah, you really are in pain.”

There is no answer. But I feel the affliction, as though it was my own. It is a balled fist, with claws clutched around it. This voice, this absence of voice is fighting for its own breath.

“Don’t despair little one.” I feel compelled to comfort. “Try to calm yourself. You will survive. You will know fleeting love, and lost beauty, but you’ll taste the exhilaration of momentary madness. And there’ll be times of anguish too, but they’ll help you identify the small joys when they come, and the freedoms that is life itself.”

The pale shadows have returned, and flock around me. I cannot see the wallpaper for a moment. But I hear tear fluttering.

“I must see.” I arch my back in a fury as a hand is laid on my forehead. I close my eyes briefly then allow them to flicker open.

The wallpaper has gone. The tear has gone. The wall is now bare, with stained brown brick and mortar crumbling to the floorboards. The bed has too gone. The house is empty, with the voices and the shadows departed. I am just a puff of air that floats from the window in the gathering twilight, swirling gracefully until the final strokes of sunlight soothe me to the floor where I settle in for the long night, and summon the memories of a life and many forms.

[End]

Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher, Vurbl and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.

Text, image, audio © 2021 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells,  Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, and Scrivener.


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