THE WORST OF LOVE  CONTESTANT

Sunlight melted frost from their feet. Wallace watched her blonde strands blow in the autumnal breeze.  Cotton clad her figure, but from this distance it appeared as silk, the way it shone and outlined her curves.

Anne stared back with eyes of coal and the hint of smile he’d fallen in love with.

Ravens collected on her arms worshipping her savage beauty. It had been this way since time began, a sea of cornstalks separated them.
A speckled dove, Anne’s favorite, landed on his outstretched arms, hopped upon his shoulder, and nibbled at his hat. He laughed and hoped the bowing cornstalks would carry it to his blonde beauty across the fields.

The dove finished pecking his hat, nestled his face, and cooed into his ear. Wallace smiled at the message and whispered his own. It stretched it wings and flew. As he watched it fly over the fields, he felt a pang of sadness. They would never be together. Not the way he or she wished.

They were destined to their poles overlooking the earth, caged guardians.

The dove lighted upon Anne’s shoulder. He saw her eyes sparkle in the morning light.

A bark of voices drew his attention. Two men led horse and carriage. They laughed and joked not minding the stalks they strode over.
A murder of crows flew from Wallace’s feet as the carriage approached, halted. One of the men hauled a ladder. “Yep, it’s a pity for the young princess. I don’t know what kind of magic they’s up against, but we’ve done run outta straw. The princess insisted on more.”

He placed the ladder against Wallace’s pole. “Yeah? Well, I heard that they’s are also trying to figure out names and comin’ up with weird one’s they are!”

Wallace heard twine snip. The upper half of his body fell forward.
“I hear,” said the man holding the horse. “That some evil gnome is trying to kidnap the baby.”

Another snip of twine and Wallace fell like a rag doll.

Wallace! Anne’s voice called for him. Ravens and grackles cawed.

So this is it, he thought, it’s the end.

The man tossed him into the carriage; Wallace’s face hit the wooden side.

Moans and weeping sifted up from the pile beneath him. Others? He thought, how many others?

Wallace! Anne’s voice cried out again. The doves mourned.

He couldn’t hear the men above the rumble of the carriage and the mass of weeping beneath him. Wallace thought of Anne. Her blonde straw contrasted to her white form, her dark eyes, and teasing smile. He would never see her again. Never.

The cart stopped. They were lifted and tossed into a wheelbarrow, then wheeled into the castle. Wallace watched in amazement as they rolled through a labyrinth of stone walls and candlelight. Finally, they entered a tiny room. A spindle stood in the middle. A candle licked the darkness beside it. 

Lifted and tossed, Wallace landed with his back propped against the wall. He saw two piles on the floor, the lesser a heap of straw bodies, the larger spun gold. It pooled into golden chains cascading across the dirty floor.

Murder! Murder! cried the voices of  the straw folk. The room reeked of screams and silent accusations.

Wallace closed his eyes to their screams and horror of the sharp spindle’s needle. The door slammed shut, bolted. He thought of Anne. Her soft kisses blown across the fields.

A clank of bolts echoed and the door opened. Another wheelbarrow came in.

“It’s the last of ‘em,” said a gruff voice.

Something soft was tossed on his lap. It wept. Its cry pricked his ears. The door shut.

“Wallace,” her voice whispered above the cries.

He opened his eyes, and there in his lap laid Anne. The glow of candlelight illuminated those coal eyes.

“Anne,” he whispered. Willing all his power and muscles he’d never used, he raised his arm and placed his straw hand upon her brow, touching the blonde strands he’d dreamed about.

Their eyes met. It was enough that they touched, felt, needed.
Again the door opened. Soft footsteps crept in.

A sniff and a gentle, “Thank you,” caused Wallace and Anne to pause and turn to the female who entered the room. She wore a golden crown, red hair spilled down her violet dress. The princess took the fragile creature in a bundle of cream blankets. They could hear the easy breathing of the baby. 

“I love you, my son,” she whispered, then handed him back to the guard. “Take him. Hide him where we spoke.”

“Yes, my lady.”

They heard the princess’s breath catch as the guard’s footsteps whisked away, and she closed the door once more.

She lifted the candle from the chair and set it upon the floor, then pulled a straw body from a nearby pile. Her foot tapped the pedal. The wheel spun. She grasped a handful of straw and began to work. The straw man’s scream filled the room.

The princess focused on her task, oblivious.

Wallace and Anne watched mesmerized as the sparkle of golden chains spooled from the spindle.

The princess pulled straw from the bodies one by one, until the candle burned low and the shadows grew long on the wall.

Anne and Wallace looked into each other’s eyes, each speaking the thoughts and murmurs of lovers as their time approached.

We will die, said Anne.

Wallace shook his head and smiled. No, we shall be spun together, my love, two threads of gold woven into one. We shall live forever.

Anne smiled at this, and when the princess’s bleeding fingers reached for them, he saw in Anne’s eyes that she was unafraid.

The princess mixed their life’s straw together upon her lap, and the wheel began to spin. Their souls and straw merged into stardust of magic and gold.

©2009 Jodi MacArthur

Jodi MacArthur serves imagination raw on an open flame. Bring your fork to www.jodimacarthur.blogspot.com. Published online and in print, she is currently working on her first novel, Devil’s Eye.

A platinum moon lowers into a lavender sky. Clouds stretch like cotton balls, swooping, swirling -spiraling downward into fog. The fog plays hide and seek with her bare feet upon a narrow brick road. As the fog creeps away, the bricks unfurl before her like a red carpet down a church aisle. Only, the bricks are black as tar, and Loreli knows this is no wedding.
 
Balancing like a tight rope walker, she is not deceived. For it is not a narrow road she treads, but the top of a thick wall. An ancient wall built up out of nowhere, in reserve for those who attempt its path.
 
Heat flames up from the dark side of the wall, cradling sweat droplets as they fall from her outstretched arms. Loreli imagines, knows, that they are down there, down there where the black spirals sharp and steep, where the dead dream - waiting, waiting for that misstep, the fall.
 
Chest heaving, swallowing hard, she takes the next step forward, and then another.One glance to either side can break concentration. Her eyes avoid flicking toward the gray side, her own grim reality where nothing makes sense and life totals up to disappointments and pain, pin pokes and bee stings, and dead fetuses…How many had she produced? How many tiny lives had her body failed to nurture?
 
Thinking, all this thinking, makes Loreli tremble and shiver. She cries out as she stumbles forward, leaning to the right to over correct, but it’s too late- her left foot falls over the dark edge. A searing heat licks her bare foot, tasting her.
 
No!
 
Her right knee slams into the bricks and she grabs on to the rough surface, catching herself. She kneels there, feeling the seductive heat from the dark lure it’s lies of peace.
 
Breathe, breathe. I need to stay, I need to stay. I can do this.
 
Pushing her self up, she turns her back on the black, and slips her legs over the gray side, the side that is her life. Loreli watches her husband and the pale body that lays beside him.
 
Brian lies on his side, a white cotton pillow bunched under his head. His arm stretches over the white sheets as if reaching out for something, or someone. His breath falls steady upon the quiet, like some jazzy rhythm.
 
Behind the muscled arc of his back is a woman. Gray highlights nestle in dark, crumply hair. Tiny crows feet dig deep around puffy eyes.
 
My puffy eyes, Loreli thinks.
 
The woman’s arms, clad in a sad, blue nightgown, hug her body close, seeking comfort. Loreli hugs herself, mimicking the woman, and shivers.
 
The woman moans and shifts. The soft glow of the night light illumines half her face; night steals the other half.
 
How true, Loreli thinks, how true this.
 
A well known ache fills her heart, and she knows it’s time to press on. A sweltering breeze from the dark side climbs like ivy up her spine and fills her nostrils with the scent of seared flesh and unkempt bodies. Gagging, she places her feet upon the wall and stretches into an upright position. Breathing deeply, she looks once more at Brian, watches the gentle rise and fall of his chest, and wonders at the ignorance of such peaceful rest; wonders at her heart, numb, but not without love.
 
“Will you miss me when I’m gone?” she whispers.
 
One day, she thinks, one day, I will slip, I will fall, down where the dead  dream and the worms crawl. Where they wait.
 
The crumpled shell of her body may still lie, day in and day out, on the clean white sheets, but she, Loreli, will be gone.
 
Until then, she will walk the wall. She will stay as long as she can. She looks ahead into the bleakness and fog, holds her arms out for balance, and places one foot in front of the other, takes a step, and then another, and another.

©2009 Jodi MacArthur

Exiled in deep southern Texas, Jodi MacArthur is a Seattle author hoping to write her way back to the Pacific Northwest. In her spare time, she twitters at her beloved finches, Hitchcock and Emily, and drinks coffee - but never at the same time. Her work has been published at Six Sentences,  6sV2 Anthology, Absent Willow Review, Ray Gun Revival, Outsider Writers Collective and will be forthcoming in Harbinger*33 Anthology (Date TBA), and Yellow Mama (Oct & Dec ‘09).  Website: www.jodimacarthur.blogspot.com