Contest. Short story written to a prompt and less than a thousand words. |
Sara sat on the edge of her bed, staring out her window into the late night countryside, listening to the night sounds that seemed to speak to something deep within her. The moon was nearly full, which meant her dreams would become more vivid until the moon should wane once again. Sara came from the big city where she underwent all kinds of therapy for her violent outbreaks, and nothing seemed to help except for coming to the country retreat. The therapists seemed to think she suffered from some sort of claustrophobia, but it was merely conjecture, they really didn’t know why she threw violent fits like she did. Something about the countryside seemed to calm her. In the countryside, she didn’t have endless temper tantrums and was allowed some sort of life with normalcy. Certainly, she still threw her fits, but they didn’t carry the fervor which caused spittle to fly from a deep well of hatred. Her dad thought it was just the great outdoors that appealed to her, and its vastness allowed her a place to fit in. The only alternative to the countryside was drugs or locked away in some facility, in which case, she would be drugged. The belief that drugs would make her better caused her to become a shell of her normal self, a near lifeless zombie. Sara’s father spent his life as a doctor and making people feel better, yet couldn’t help his own daughter. He was bound and determined to do whatever it took to make her well. Taking a lot of time off for her was about all he could do. He raised her in the countryside and had to hire help to home school her. Really, she would receive her GED sometime this year. He encouraged her to take some online courses and perhaps become a medical transcriptionist, but would allow her to make up her own mind. Lately, Sara found herself staring into the night sky. It was in these quiet moments when she thought she heard something on the very edge of her hearing that was whispering a name, but she couldn’t quite make out the name. Though she might sit for hours in the night, listening to the night sounds, the name eluded her. At breakfast, her dad had madeher a cheese omelet. It wasn’t as good as her mom used to make when she was still around, but it was good enough. Sara often thought it was funny that he could make people who were sick, better, but he was very limited in the kitchen. If it wasn’t for Sara digging into the recipe books, she would probably live on cheese omelets and pizza. She found this book full of recipes at the local library, but it wasn’t the usual food stuff. In fact, it was a book of spells and that was something her dad would never understand and, therefore, she never shared with him. It was interesting reading, but most of it looked like total nonsense to her. What idiot needed a love spell? Other than the love spells, Sara wanted to believe and one thing in the book that was supposed to help her believe, came in a jar. Well, not exactly in a jar, but faith could be found by repetitiously collecting one hundred mosquitoes and then letting them go, at least, that is what the book said. In truth, something about whole idea of communicating with nature, naturally, just seemed right. Catching the mosquitoes proved more difficult than she thought it would be. After several failed attempts at getting them into a jar without letting them back out again, she finally came up with a screen box separated into two compartments. This way, she could put the mosquito into one compartment and let it go and then close up the whole box. Then she could open the door and force all the mosquitoes to one side by centrifugal force, then, quickly closing the inside door. A lot of thought went into Sara’s collection. As she progressed, she couldn’t help but imagine each Mosquito as a tiny bit of energy that she gathered. Once she got to a hundred, she didn’t want to let them go. In fact, for perhaps the first time, she wished she had a friend to share her accomplishment. Finally, she did let them go and it felt as if she was letting a part of herself go. Waking up and once again staring off into the night, Sara finally realized she had found the friend she inadvertently wished for. It was Hecate whispering her name. Her goddess was calling her name. She realized she was given the means to control her own life and felt something was terribly right. From this moment on, things were going to start going her way. She wouldn’t need to throw fits any more since now she had the means to ensure she got what she wanted. Things were terribly right. |