You need to confess something? Or someone confessed something to you? ;-)
My Confession On Danya's twelfth birthday, though she had no idea that that was the day it was, she finally reached the top of the tower. She had resorted to number the floors as she climbed the stairs, though some of the lifts in the building still worked and made it easier to jump ten floors or so at a time. They were erratic in where they would go to, and some clanked alarmingly and shuddered when they moved and she avoided them as much as possible. But she had counted fifty-eight floors, and finally, on the fifty-ninth, she had reached the top. The floor seemed smaller than the ones at the bottom of the building, but they were a long way away and maybe that was her imagination. This floor had doors to the outside to a large, fenced in walkway that ran around the entire floor and from there she could look down over the landscape, and out towards black, lowering clouds that promised sooty rain and pollution. The clouds were unbroken in all directions and a wind blew strongly, so much so that clung to the railings that fenced her in and braced herself against it, worried that they might blow her away. The ground below was distant and even the trees looked tiny to her; she could obscure any she chose by holding her thumb up in front of it.
Despite the cold she lingered there for a while, realising that the air tasted funny; acrid and burnt, which it never did inside the building, and that she'd forgotten what it was like to have wind tickle her skin and tug at her hair (nearly waist-length now). When the first spots of rain fell, bearing tiny black dots of ash in clear, yellowish liquid, it was like a cold shower with a reluctant tap and she hesitated to go back in for a few moments longer. She noted, with a sense of sadness, that there was no sign of people anywhere, and then she remembered the goblin -- but there was no sign of that either. She doubted she could see a green, creeping thing against the landscape, but she tried anyway -- and failed.
Back inside the building she explored the floor a little more, finding that there were inner rooms clustered around the core; each small and holding a single table and two chairs. Screens sat on the tables but were dead or inactive, and dust covered everything. She went in each room only to make sure that she'd seen everything, and so she almost left the last room as fast as she entered it, assuming that everything in there was something she'd already seen. But as she turned to go a flash of colour caught her eye and she looked back: on the table, covered in dust except for a narrow band where the screen had protected it, was a folder of some kind. Red.
Curious, she sat down on the chair and dust puffed up around her in a grey cloud. She held her breath while it settled, and brushed the dust slowly off the folder. It still puffed up over the desk, but not so much, and the cover of the folder revealed itself: My Confession.
The folder contained three pages of paper and it didn't take her overly long to read them, and when she had finished she tidied them back in to the folder and carried them back down the long, echoing stairs of the tower to the fifth floor where she slept and placed them carefully under her pillow. She was sure that what she'd read was important, but she knew she didn't understand it. Yet. She also knew that she was determined to understand it, and she felt that what was in the tower might just help her get there. She found some food; bread and cheese she thought, though some of the packaged things were hard to identify and tasted nothing like how she remembered food tasting, and sat and thought. Then she stood; according to this Confession there were floors below the ground floor of the tower, probably cellars or something, and that was where she needed to look next.
Greg - not sure if the news reached your part of the world, but if not... search for Kamloops residential school. This was as close to a prompt as I could get to it at the time. Maybe later I'll come back around to it.
Continuing to enjoy this tale. I'm not sure how you're managing to avoid making it utterly depressing, but you are. I suppose that's thanks to Danya.
2 comments:
You need to confess something? Or someone confessed something to you? ;-)
My Confession
On Danya's twelfth birthday, though she had no idea that that was the day it was, she finally reached the top of the tower. She had resorted to number the floors as she climbed the stairs, though some of the lifts in the building still worked and made it easier to jump ten floors or so at a time. They were erratic in where they would go to, and some clanked alarmingly and shuddered when they moved and she avoided them as much as possible. But she had counted fifty-eight floors, and finally, on the fifty-ninth, she had reached the top.
The floor seemed smaller than the ones at the bottom of the building, but they were a long way away and maybe that was her imagination. This floor had doors to the outside to a large, fenced in walkway that ran around the entire floor and from there she could look down over the landscape, and out towards black, lowering clouds that promised sooty rain and pollution. The clouds were unbroken in all directions and a wind blew strongly, so much so that clung to the railings that fenced her in and braced herself against it, worried that they might blow her away. The ground below was distant and even the trees looked tiny to her; she could obscure any she chose by holding her thumb up in front of it.
Despite the cold she lingered there for a while, realising that the air tasted funny; acrid and burnt, which it never did inside the building, and that she'd forgotten what it was like to have wind tickle her skin and tug at her hair (nearly waist-length now). When the first spots of rain fell, bearing tiny black dots of ash in clear, yellowish liquid, it was like a cold shower with a reluctant tap and she hesitated to go back in for a few moments longer. She noted, with a sense of sadness, that there was no sign of people anywhere, and then she remembered the goblin -- but there was no sign of that either. She doubted she could see a green, creeping thing against the landscape, but she tried anyway -- and failed.
Back inside the building she explored the floor a little more, finding that there were inner rooms clustered around the core; each small and holding a single table and two chairs. Screens sat on the tables but were dead or inactive, and dust covered everything. She went in each room only to make sure that she'd seen everything, and so she almost left the last room as fast as she entered it, assuming that everything in there was something she'd already seen. But as she turned to go a flash of colour caught her eye and she looked back: on the table, covered in dust except for a narrow band where the screen had protected it, was a folder of some kind. Red.
Curious, she sat down on the chair and dust puffed up around her in a grey cloud. She held her breath while it settled, and brushed the dust slowly off the folder. It still puffed up over the desk, but not so much, and the cover of the folder revealed itself: My Confession.
The folder contained three pages of paper and it didn't take her overly long to read them, and when she had finished she tidied them back in to the folder and carried them back down the long, echoing stairs of the tower to the fifth floor where she slept and placed them carefully under her pillow. She was sure that what she'd read was important, but she knew she didn't understand it. Yet. She also knew that she was determined to understand it, and she felt that what was in the tower might just help her get there. She found some food; bread and cheese she thought, though some of the packaged things were hard to identify and tasted nothing like how she remembered food tasting, and sat and thought. Then she stood; according to this Confession there were floors below the ground floor of the tower, probably cellars or something, and that was where she needed to look next.
Greg - not sure if the news reached your part of the world, but if not... search for Kamloops residential school. This was as close to a prompt as I could get to it at the time. Maybe later I'll come back around to it.
Continuing to enjoy this tale. I'm not sure how you're managing to avoid making it utterly depressing, but you are. I suppose that's thanks to Danya.
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