Author: Marta Novakovic, V gimnazija, Zagreb
Among the shadows she stood, scissors in one hand and string in the other.
And as she stood, the shadows moved through her, around her, slithering across muddy paths and weaving themselves into coffins, ripping spirits out of bodies, no longer human. There was nothing human at the graveyard that night. The shadows made hissing sounds as they fed and grew, not quite like snakes but a little bit like worms – ominous creatures, feasting on empty arteries.
They gathered around the woman, a flock of translucent black, and then they stilled. Like the sea after a merciless storm, they were soundless but shivering.
Something ancient pulsed through the ground, as if continents were cracking. As if something awoke deep underneath, and its heart started beating – steadily. A deep rumbling of ones and twos and threes. You could waltz to those beats, to the shuddering of the planet.
But a waltz takes two.
„Don’t!“ cried a voice behind her, but she didn’t turn around. Not in a second, or two, or three.
Shadows murmured beside her, wordless soldiers. In a three-quarter time, the heart of the planet beat on.
„You don’t have to.“ The voice was closer now, it tore apart the circle of shadows and approached her, step by step by step.
Shadows hissed as they were shunned away, and the woman turned around. Her eyes were of dark side of the moon and nothing like the sun. Something wicked was restless in them, sucking in all the light that came from the street, when a car would pass, or two, or three. Her skin could have been made out of raven feathers for the way it mingled with darkness.
„I know I don’t,“ she spoke at last, and her voice softened the fabric of the worlds, „but if I don’t, who will?“
His knees would have buckled hadn’t there been shadows that steadied him, shadows that solidified for a moment because she had wished they would. „Why does it have to be now?“ He asked, too frightened to reach for her, to taste the harrowing midnight of her lips and smoothen the wrinkles on her face with his crooked fingers.
„You people. You ruin beautiful things,“ she said, and it rolled off her tongue like a melody, and they had all they could need for a waltz then. „The world was moulded in darkness, and in darkness shall it see its end.“
He remembered clearly the day he’d met her, as if it was yesterday – and it was tomorrow with her, always tomorrow. Future was her name. He rememered their first dance, when she told him she was put on this Earth to bring about the end of the world. He had laughed, then, as one in his right mind should to such a claim, and waved it off, and asked when he’d see her again. „Tomorrow,“ she’d replied. „Not a moment sooner.“
Years passed. They’d had their fair share of tomorrows, and every time they embraced it was something brand new. He’d always feel like she was only slightly out of his grasp, always two steps ahead of him and never looking back.
But at last, at last, tomorrow had come. For the past week he’d been watching the planet fall apart on his old TV screen. The Earth’s crust was cracking more and more, breathing fire and floods, quaking and crumbling like a dying old woman.
He knew where he’d find her, with the scissors in one hand and the string in the other. They used to walk that graveyard when he was much younger, when he believed she was his future and his alone and couldn’t yet comprehend that she was, in fact, the Future of all humanity. „The world has gone rotten,“ she used to say. „The string needs to be clipped.“
„When?“ He’d play along, always. And every time she’d reply, „tomorrow.“
„The string needs to be clipped,“ she told him, now, as she had all those years ago.
„When?“
„Today.“
He wanted to breathe, but the air smelled of ashes and all things foul. His bones would fall apart soon and not only his bones, he could see it clearly now, and it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise, really – he was nothing but an old man, in the arms of a merciless future. Death slept on the pillow beside him, where the woman before him should have been sleeping for decades now. But he hadn’t expected it to be like this. He had dreamt of this graveyard and the grieving grandchildren, of the marble that would mark where his bones would remain. Foolishly, he had dreamt she’d lay beside him one day, he dreamt they’d share an epitaph as they should have shared a bed – dreamt they’d share death as they should have shared life.
But she wasn’t of his world, she wasn’t of any world – she was tailored for destruction and clipping strings, not for his love or any love at all. Everything would end now, he knew. A quiet apocalypse, a snap of scissors. Shadows would carry his soul until it wasted to nothing.
Something stirred beneath their feet, and a tombstone split in half. Then the pulse returned; one two three one two three one two three.
He was terrified of the abyss that stared back from her eyes; she was not of this world. She was not his to love. But he loved her.
„Dance with me, then,“ he said, „one last time.“
She smiled, but if wasn’t a smile of flowers or spring. It was a smile of forest fires, the only light she knew, the most beautiful smile in a world sentenced to death. She took his hand, and her touch was like withered rose petals; shadows disintegrated into melodies.
And so they danced, under an eclipsed moon, they danced to the heartbeats of dying mother earth;
They danced until darkness swallowed all of creation.
