THE TOPIC OF THIS CONTEST WAS:
The thud was unmistakable. He slammed on the brakes, and jumped out. Nothing. Panning his eyes across a small field of corn, with red and orange leaves showering down from the nearby forest, he shivered in his thin jacket. He then turned back toward his truck, and starting blinking wildly…
(Stories need only touch on this topic in some way to qualify.)
Before you continue reading, take a moment to consider where you would take that story…
Do you remember the first time I whispered in your ear? Sweet, sweet boy.
You were only five at the time, curled up asleep in a haystack. Long black eyelashes flickered shadows along your freckled cheeks. I stroked your face, and you smiled, but you didn’t wake. I bent down and gave you your first gift, whispering it in your ear, with the breath of millennia.
When you awoke, you, like all those before, thought it had been your own idea. That somehow in your dreams you had stumbled upon the concept yourself.
Sweet, sweet, stupid boy.
I like to drift along the plains, the continents, and see my ideas take shape. Often they are snuffed out too quickly. Sometimes my chosen beneficiaries die too soon, before they can complete their task. Others are ill equipped for the work — too weak, fragile or broken. More often than not I am disappointed to find my ideas languishing, or dead, but sometimes I am pleasantly surprised.
When I visited again, you were a boy of sixteen, still with long eyelashes and sun-kissed skin. You were in your family’s barn, and you’d been busy. Paper sketches of my design were stapled to the wooden walls. You’d begun the very earliest stages of the build. Although there was much to like, there were flaws. I could see you needed to be upskilled with metal work and engineering. But I had faith in you. There was something in your eyes almost akin to a fever that delighted me. When you left to splash your face, I watched the water catch on those eyelashes, and when you took your shirt off I admired your lean muscled body. I lingered too long in the shadows, just watching you, and wishing you could see me. By then I was the stupid one.
Even though I had other beneficiaries, I kept coming back to you. Straying to your room at night, whispering words of wisdom. You grew a beard and I ran my invisible hand along your chiselled jawline as you dreamed. Often I lay down beside you, so that I could feel your hot breath upon me. One time you awoke, alarmed. “Is anyone there?” you called. I longed to reply in more than whispers, but instead I slunk away.
“You’re too close to the boy,” Mother warned. But by then you weren’t a boy. You were a man. “Don’t let yourself be distracted. Concentrate on your legacy.” All of my kind desire a legacy, something which we can point to and say “I did that”. My kind have helped create pyramids, rockets, and nuclear bombs. We’ve stopped wars, started wars and driven the rise of technology. But we remain always in the background, just a whispered dream in someone’s head. An invisible guide. Was it so wrong to wish for something more than a legacy upon the land? I wanted your heart.
I returned one day to find you in the bed of another woman; my idea stalled. I’d never known jealousy or heartache until then. “He’s human. He doesn’t even know you exist. What did you expect?” my Mother told me. “Try to get him to return to your project.” And I did try. I whispered again and again in your ear while you tossed and turned. I whispered of the need to finish what you started, but I also whispered that she was not good enough for you.
I was pleased when your relationship ended, even though your eyes seemed shadowed, and your smile a little shrunken. You returned to our project with a fervour, still working in your parent’s barn, hammering late into the night. It was coming along nicely.
Then, in the early hours of one morning, I thought you saw me.
I’d been playing with a long piece of grass, bending and spinning it at whim, when you cast your eyes my way. “Who’s there?” you asked.
I stood up, and your eyes squinted in my direction, as if you were trying to see.
“Is… is there someone there?” you asked again.
Humans have limited vision, limited hearing. But I believe that day you sensed me.
“I… I know it’s you,” you said. “You’ve been helping me. I… I ‘d like to see you.”
Oh, how my heart leapt.
And so I whispered upon the wind, but one word to keep you company. “Soon.”
A month later the intangible became tangible. I shed my ultraviolet cloak, so that I could be finally seen, by you.
I heard the familiar rumble of your Land Rover returning home. I stepped from your field of corn and stood beside the road, glowing yellow.
I had thought that you would see me.
I had thought that you would stop. I didn’t know you were colour blind to yellow, and my golden form simply morphed into the yellow corn.
Your vehicle ploughed into me, shattering my essence into a million fragments of light.
“Hello,” you called as you stepped from your car. “Is anyone there?”
My whispers melted into the air and curled themselves around you; trying to cling to your eyelashes, as you blinked wildly.
Sweet, sweet, stupid boy.
I left only my broken heart in your world.
