Return (a short story)

Revision II

Return

She has eyesights of deep-sea fish, almost completely blind. She lay in the center of the hall, like a lifeless corpse. The calacatta tile floor is like an icy serenade to her, only makes the fire burn within. She quietly flows under the thinnest of ice, awaiting the gentle touch of sun.

She rolls her head to where he’s at. He stands in the corner, awkwardly. His upper lip twitches a little when he tries to squeeze a V. Her eyes are like broken mirrors to him, the fragments of vanished memories reappear into his mind and reflect back onto the glasses he’s wearing, etches of those blurry, untold stories. He flusters, and eyes averts immediately, the blank white wall clears his face to its usual vacant and staring. ​

He has to remain calm, even though he thinks his heart will explode in any seconds. He hopes that no one catches his distraction earlier.  The villagers will kill him once they know the girl can trigger his memories back to the present. 

He’s been a guard in this 30 feet giant corrugated box since he could remember.  Everyday, the bright white light stretches itself and yawns through a tiny oval sunroof onto her orange dress. He hates orange because it screams hope at him. For most of the time, darkness swallows everything here. It’s not the dark that envelops the last light into its serenity, nor it's the dark that comes before the sunrise. It’s a kind of dark that erases his feeling of being and reconstructs it into a cage. 

“Lonely,” his voice splashes the silence like the ocean waves crash violently against the sands. “Do you know what loneliness is?” 

“It’s like the fallen maple leaves in Autumn,” she has a calm, quiet and low voice that makes everything she says sound like a lullaby that was sung by a young mother to their child.

“Fallen maple leaves?” He replies with confusion in his voice, “I don’t understand.”

“The fallen hedge maple leaves fall off on the sidestreet, away from the soil, you know, where they were born. They are just laying down the sidewalk, and quietly waiting for its death,” her voice dissolve into the image she describes.

“Quietly awaits for its death,” he chews her words to understand its meaning.

 “I think some feelings will never fade away in time. My body still remembers its taste,” her voice is so fresh, delicate and just like the rain-washed air drifts in through the sunroof. 

It's drizzling outside, he wants to inhale this tender moment.

“The maple leaves,” she continues. “Dry, absence of water, with mixture of the asphalt, and remaining dirt from the soil, passerby and bikes’ wheels,” her voice echoes through his blood and vessels like the rain washes the soils and glosses the leaves. 

“That’s the taste of being forgotten and lonely,” she said, “never be able to return to the soil and complete the circle of life.”

“They are just quietly laying there, and waiting for its death,” she repeats herself. 

He doesn’t know how he ends up standing on the top of the sunroof. The only thing he remembers is her voice, summoning his soul returns to its origin, somewhere in the oasis, he thinks. The wind blows through his skin, and he trusts gravity will take him to home.

His face reflects back onto him from the broken glasses, the blood splashes everywhere on the floor and just like her dress because of the midday bright light shining upon him, full of life and fire.