Through her fingers-(a short story)

“When all the stars are falling down Into the sea and on the ground, 

And angry voices carry on the wind, 

A beam of light will fill your head 

And you’ll remember what’s been said 

By all the good men this world’s ever known.” Melancholy Man-The Moody Blues

The song played quietly in the background as he looked around the dimly lit room, not sure why he was here, only knowing that the eerie purple “come in” sign in the window called for him to see what lay beyond the shuttered door. 

The old hunchbacked woman gazed into his blue eyes as she shuffled the deck, and reaching out her hand, gnarled and wrinkled like an old withered tree, felt her grasp his fingers with a surprising strength and looked up into her rheumy eyes. She had him hold the cards for just a moment and then pulled them back with a nod, as if he had enough time with her beloved treasure, and then she calmly began to sort them one by one into some kind of order that only she knew. He lifted his hand and ran his fingers through the brown shaggy locks of hair that had fallen into his eyes and then looked at each card she placed had before him.

 “You will return to me” she said with a throaty younger womans voice which startled him, and he watched as before his eyes, she began to change. Her hands that held the remaining cards became smooth and a ring on her finger he hadn’t noticed before began to glow a strange green. Her eyes became a beautiful shade of jade, the rheumy opaqueness now gone. Her hair lay in brown waves down her back and there was no longer even a touch of grey. He looked around the room which hadn’t changed at all and then back at the old, now young woman seated before him. She smiled and handed him an object, a mirror he realized, that was facedown. “I’ve waited as a hundred stars fell, like each tear as the years passed and I knew you’d come, I just didn’t know when” she said passively, then took his hand in hers. 

Confused, he looked down in sudden shock to see that his hand had now become a gnarled tree-like appendage and hers silky smooth like a young woman’s. He lifted the mirror with a trembling hand and gazed at his image, and as her laughter filled the space between them, he heard a scream from within his soul.

Just trying out a bit of short story fun today…..let me know what you think.