Flight

• Sarah Elliott, Grade 12, St Joseph's High School -
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Write Along 2018' competition

‘I ordered this, clean wood box.’
Empty; A space before me no more devoid than any other, though a near imperceptible void drains me of life. Years of searching and the universe sends me this. The box is unexceptional in every sense of the word. The simplest three-dimensional form; cheaply made and mass produced by exploited tiny hands. A cubic prison for tiny wings. Here is a nondescript box of unadorned wood on the dust-covered floor. A symbol of something I have always had a place for, yet never understood.
Its contents drone an incessant strain, the diminutive proletariat citizens working, working, working, but what for? Am I the bourgeoisie, or the queen? The television flickers with exposed secrets, unspoken yet intrinsically human knowledge, I am less because of my birth, my womb a prison and a dictator. I am the exploiter and the exploited, the repugnant parasitism of the modern world filling every pore.
The humming is faint from afar, an unheard but perceived static at the fringe of consciousness. It is warm and alive, a quick succession of minor semi-quavers that some would mistake for a 19th century impressionist masterpiece. As I place my ear against the grate, the bees whisper to me. And then they scream.
A cold morning, my feet float across the floor, careful to avoid waking the Roman mob imprisoned in my living room. Cold coffee, grit against teeth, a morning sky of no distinction. I hear the hard rapping of bone on wood, perhaps it is the day the grim stranger visits. A shadow in the glass, great scythe splitting my reflection, a skeletal hand takes the doorknob. Only flesh and teeth beyond, garbed in the skin of a man. A hand outstretched, a paper prison within, warm eyes meet mine, a dead engine coughs and sputters. And yet, the engine is not cold, and the detritus of neglect is burnt away like a moth to a flame. The dagger plunges white hot into the vulnerable tissue of my back. Venom courses through my veins as the pain of betrayal cuts short the life of the engine. Warm eyes turn blind as the chill of isolation takes hold. In my hand the carcass of my Brutus, rigor mortis forever stilling his buzzing.
As I retreat towards the enclosure in the middle of the room, the royalties enclosed inside the envelope sear my fingertips, and my entire body aches from the bee’s treachery. The engine has stalled, waiting the spark of the next fortnight, the bees are now life support, and I am Frankenstein, bound for life to the ungodly progeny of my avarice.
The bee’s cacophony diminuendos into a lulling hum as my fingers arpeggiate across the typewriter keys. Tap, tap, tap. The royalty check shines through the transparent paper envelope and greets me warmly, all the while Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s greatest work softly plays softly somewhere between my waking and my dreaming.
‘The box is only temporary.’