FFP#18 – This Is What They Say
They say she walks the highway at night, wearing a white dress with a high ruffled collar, barefoot. The usual. Every man who sees her pulls over, anxious to help a young woman, a beautiful woman. A woman. As soon as they ask, “Do you need some help?” “Do you need a ride?” “Hello?” she disappears. But in her place, wholly visible in the dark, illuminated by the moon or by headlights or by the aura of some other life, some other world pushing its way through the cracks and weaknesses of our vaporous walls, all that remains in her place is a rounded stack of smooth white stones. A pile of stones, a mound, a swell, a breast of rock.
Every man who sees these stones has the urge to gather them up, to hide and protect them. If they took all the stones, they know they’d be haunted forever. Who was the woman? What did she want? What do the stones mean? But if they take just one stone, they could easily carry it in their pocket, as a reminder, a story, a glimpse of the supernatural. One stone weighs practically nothing at all. One stone is equal to a few spare quarters: there if needed, but otherwise not really thought about. So some men take a single stone and the others just drive away.
They say that when the men who took the stones are near death, the woman in the white dress appears. She holds out her hand, gently, slowly, and the dying man, regardless of how weak he is or how much pain he is in, will get out of bed and frantically search his pockets for the stone. He will search and search no matter what his family or nurses or doctors tell him. No one sees the woman except the man and when he finally finds the stone, finds it and kisses it and kisses it again, he asks her to have it -– “Please, please take it!” he pleads with her –- and at long last he dies. But his is not a normal death. Very quickly, the man’s skin begins to thin and peel away (the way the skin of roasted almonds might flake off), revealing a body of gray pebbles in his place.
No one knows what to do with these pebbles. It seems silly to pour the rocks into a cushioned coffin, and it’s impossible to burn them into ash. In the end, all the pebbles end up in the same spot: scattered between and among the tombstones in the church graveyard, covering dirt and weeds, forming a clean path for visitors.
They say that early in the morning, just before dawn breaks, if you happen to walk through the graveyard, you’ll hear a thousand men singing softly. There are no words to the song, it’s just a simple tune really, but once you hear it you’ll hum along to it for days, and at night you’ll dream of the woman, you will see her walking in the dark, in a white dress, barefoot. She’ll turn, but her face will be a blur, as though her tears have smeared the contour and details of her facial features. She’ll remove her gown, exposing a nude body underneath, a living body, a human body. But soon this body begins to deteriorate. Fingers fall off, hair is shed, and as each part hits the ground it turns into rock.
Eventually, a canal of rocks is formed from her body and you become water, pouring fast and quickly into a stream. You carry each other along. You don’t know where you’re going, but you feel everyone and everything there with you. You’re no longer alone, you are the world and together you’re flowing, and you think to yourself, “It all began with one woman,” and you hum the tune, now realizing that this is the same song every bird sings, every wind whistles, every tree whispers. This is the sound of water flowing over rock.
They say we’re lucky to live in this town, to live near the highway where the woman walks. Maybe, I think, maybe if you’re a man. I drive the highway almost every night, and I’ve never seen this woman, this woman who makes this world more mysterious. I look for white stones along the road and all I find is pumice and broken glass. All I know is nothing. All I know is being alone. All I know is what they say and that what they say goes. Who are they, anyway? I’m planning my escape to the city, to another life, in the opposite direction of wherever the woman in white is headed.
Tags: flash fiction project
Uncategorized | 
May 10, 2010 6:14 pm
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