Whispers in the Wind

O.K. Mantz

Her mouth drooped down to her sternum and her eyes tore open wide as though attempting a jail-break from her skull. Charlotte’s hair bristled like a thousand worms—as though caught by the hook and drowned, watching with fading consciousness as a fish approaches, jaws wide to devour it.

But it was the wind—that which whispered quietly through Charlotte’s hazel strands of hair—that forced her crazed complexion. It was what the wind brought with it that surprised her—a catalog of memories that she had stuffed deep into the crevices of her soul.

“Charlotte…” the wind beckoned her, pressing its honey-smeared lips against the nape of her neck. “Charlotte…I haunt you still…”

Memories of herself approached her through the air: she stands above her own father, his body convulsing on the tile floor, with blood splattering upwards like a broken fountain, the pennies of countless faces tossing up into oblivion. And then his corpse collapses, imploding like a dying star. His eyes roll up and his figure drains of energy. The santoku kitchen knife slips from Charlotte’s fingers and clatters to the floor beside him, diving into his pool of blood like an olympic swimmer afraid of water.

Memories…they appear as shadows on a windowless room, flickering for a time before evanescing into the darkness. Shadows always linger, but perpetually elude our grasp. Memories are like smoke without a flame, an ocean without depth, a world without a future. And the wind kept stuffing this unreflecting light down Charlotte’s little throat.

Dark clots of blood began to seep from the corners of Charlotte’s lips as her eyes glazed over and the wind brought another vision to her frame of view. Her feet pound upon the dirt, her bare legs cutting through tall grass as she sprints away from her brother, the one who’s chasing her with a bolt action rifle. She trips, her arms flailing into the moonless sky to catch her fall. Squealing, Charlotte crumples through the grass, her face smacking the ground which breaks her nose.

“Why…?” Charlotte whispered to the wind. “Why are you showing me these things? Why are you making me remember?”

Chuckling, the wind panted in her ear like an eager dog, a friendless bird, a world without a future. The air drooled with anticipation—poised not to hear Charlotte speak, but to be her Virgil, Charlotte’s Beatrice. A single tear slipped from her protruding eyes, sliding down her pale cheek, and then threw itself from Charlotte’s body, slicing through the air like the santoku knife that slit her father’s throat.

“I haunt you…” the wind whispered quietly, “because you can do nothing, Charlotte, you can be nothing, if you are a flame without dark smoke, great depth without an ocean, a future without a world that moves towards its own end.”

The wind moved on, brushing past her into the unlit world, rushing through the lonely streets and waving at the few passersby that appeared—then disappeared—throughout the night. The wind moved on, but Charlotte’s memories remained, whispering their own strange words, hearing Charlotte scream with eyes torn open wide.