"The Widow's Walk" (A short story)

 

 

I'd like to share with you a symbolic short story I wrote inspired by the picture below. My mom was extremely touched when my sister sent her this photo she took of a place she visited while sight seeing down south. My mother said this photo spoke to her and she knew there was a story there just waiting to be told, so I tried to tell it.

 

 

The Widow’s Walk

The wooden boards were sodden and bogged, much like her thoughts. She paused with her hand on the rail and was once again stricken by the beauty of the terrible abyss before her. She lifted her soiled petticoat and with one tentative step forward she sunk a little in the marsh and looked down at what should be firm and solid beneath her feet. The greying boards were splintered and wet, although there was no water nearby. Down below the cliff there might be, she had never gotten far enough to peer over, but not up here. There couldn’t be water amongst the dead yellow grass and the parched and crumbling dirt surrounding where she stood. The boards where she trod should be dry and brittle. But tonight, they were not. She was not sure why this bothered her so.

        Perhaps it was because every single night she awoke and started again. Until this night, she had awakened before her black boots touched the path before her. This is the farthest she had come. She had always figured that if she could just make it this far her feet would strike against the wood in a confident state of knowing. They would bound beneath her and soar her to The Point. They would take her to her Maker and all of this would end. Every thought haunting the inside of her skull, the voices tormenting her off of this path night after night, the lonely dread that spread from her cold heart to the tips of her fingers the moment she awoke and had to endure it all over…all this, would be gone. She ached for that bleak state of nothing when she was allowed to exist no more.

        Tonight however, as she craned her long neck to glimpse where the matter-less moor stretched on, she was not sure. She was not knowing. Her feet did not stride, but shook as she tried to shift her weight forward onto her unsteady feet. Is this what she was intended? How could she be sure this was the plan of her Maker and not her Demons?  

        It had been more than forty summers that she had been filled with torment. Three weeks plus forty years ago she had sent her bridegroom on his voyage. She stood with her hands grasping the wrought iron railing around the west balcony of her manor and watched the ship fade away into nothing as it departed, almost certain to never return.

“Jacob.” She whispered when the ship was no more than a mere speck of her imagination against the empty horizon. The name left her lips and clung to the silence around her.

Now, it still hangs heavy in every room of the estate. His name is whispered over and over with the same sound of thousands arachnids scuttling over the walls and echoing throughout the endless corridors. There was not one place of solace for her except her dreams, which were filled with more lifelike and terrorizing unknown than the haunt that habituated within her during her actual consciousness. Whether asleep or awake, she’s always faced with The Path.

Even now, a damp wind breaking her reverie, she could glance back at the crumbling pillars of her home against the moor and feel nothing; nothing but emptiness and the ghost of what once was. She squared her shoulders forward towards the orange angry sky and the rising path leading to freedom in front of her. She felt no constraint in choice or action this time as she took one more creaking step forward onto The Path. 

The wind rushed against her skirts as if it were a punishment, making her stumble and reminding her that she is still unsure and unsafe. She lost her footing and felt the forces pulling and threatening to make her lose her way again. She ducked her head and plowed on. Only a little further. She was almost halfway down The Path to The Point. She collapsed against the wooden rails on the side of her. She thought of the first time she noticed these rails during the past tests when she first began to face The Path many years ago. She thought if only she could reach them she could at least drag her weighted legs forward until she reached The Point but after decades of failing to reach them, the thought became admissible.

        But she was here now. She hooked her boot around the first beam on the hand rail. She wasn’t going to accept any possibility of peril. She paused only for a moment to tuck away the grey streaked auburn tendrils that frizzed around her head in disarray like a halo. Her long hair had been a silken sheet of youth that was as warm as her laugh and smelled of sunshine. Decades ago she tied it in a knot underneath her high collared blouse and hid it away. It made her think of him, and she had no more use for it.

        She hadn’t touched her porcelain face or hair in years, for she was not aware of the living, or the dead for that matter, but always alone standing on her balcony or out on the moor fighting the winds and the demons. She was about to meet him… and Him, and suddenly she was aware. She pinched her pale cheeks and the sudden sharp pain felt as if an icy breath had entered her lungs. She could feel. She was not asleep, but she knew she could not be awake, for when she squeezed her eyelids and fluttered them open again, The End was still in front of her looking so beautiful and serene she felt her throat harden and hot splashes run down her cheeks.  She did not dare glance back to see how far she had come and conquered. She didn’t need to know how much she had attained because she could feel it. She could feel the opposition tugging her back like a magnet intended to return her to grey and brittle and cold desolation. She gritted her teeth and gripped the rugged wood with both hands. For behold, fortune favored the brave.

        The path turned upward. It became increasingly steeper and more slippery; the last obstacle is always where one loses their valor. It is the final battle where the soldier dies to become a hero, but nonetheless dead and no more than dust. She felt the grass, a vibrant green, scratching at her knuckles as tall as the rails, and chanced a glance down. The plants and foliage pushed and shoved from under the wooden path. Life had been hidden much too long and now it is gasping for breath. She smiled at the shades of green that turned yellow and brown and black once she had moved away from them. She was life; she was making it towards abounding life.

        In the midst of all the darkness, she found that within her there was an invincible light. She had not known this until now, when the demons began to fall away from her. She grew taller with every sound of snapping chain and wails within the confines of her mind until she was large with stature and might.

        She was no longer afraid. Because, she thought to herself as she climbed on, I will never really die because I existed once before, I was never actually born. She turned her face to the sky, her matter-less moor, and closed her eyes trying to remember The Time and let the soft purple and yellow light play against her eyelids.

        Her hands reached on but felt no more wood for her to grasp. She had reached The Point. She let her arm dangle down into the emptiness. How strange is it going to be to feel nothing? Be nothing? No, she corrected. How much stranger is it to be anything at all?

        The crossed gate in front of her was her last barrier. But she was no longer doubtful or wary. Fear and faith cannot exist in the same place at the same time. She was surprised when the gate swung away from her rather than towards her. It made perfect explanation though, why would she take two steps back to allow room for the gate when she had already come this far?

        Her toes escaped the ledge as she edged closer to peer down over the cliff. She drug air through her slowly so she could revel in this moment in which she had searched and longed for during her thousands of days of banishment. She opened her eyes.

        “Oh!” her voiced scratched aloud for the first time since she had whispered his name one last time as she took in the sight before her. This was not what she expected. It was more wonderful and full of splendor then she had ever imagined. This is her purpose and her decision.

        She turned around slowly to see what was behind her one last time. She did not look because she was unsure. She wasn’t glancing back because a part of her was still tied down and imprisoned; she looked to see upon which she had stamped. She wanted to search the bluff leading to her stone dungeon and scoff at her demons. She gasped though, as her hand searched for the rail to lean against. There was nothing behind her. Nothing but space and atoms and all things that truly exist, for everything else is only opinion.

        Facing forward again and into the treasures folded in the purple and yellow clouds, she felt the gate threatening to close shut. Her knuckles were white so she released them one by one and held her arms straight out to her sides and rocked her weight forward onto her the tips of her boots… onto nothing.

The warm wind whipped and snapped at her robes until she was no longer bound. Heat spread from the roots of her hair and she felt the knot at her neck untwist until her hair was a blazing billowing fiery red torrent of warmth around her. She smelled sunshine for the first time in years.

        Just as she was braced for impact she glided further upwards. She was a dove. She landed on a gold tapestry of silk that stretched on. A golden path to follow, but she was certain of where this one ended. Her Maker. Her feet struck the ground in a confident state of knowing.

        She glided on until she could see no path before her. Declare thy great worthyness. She felt, rather than heard, a deep rumble say.

Compared to this light, she was an infant, scarcely able to speak. She tried to lift her chin but couldn’t. But she had come so far! Your light is too brilliant for me to bear. She moaned. Her voice floated like a series of musical chords.

        No my angel. She felt her neck straighten and become weightless as it was lifted tall and straight. You are my light, and I am yours.

Her heart exploded with blessedness and the wretched walls in her mind burst free with song as she remembered.

        The golden path and light before her was then replaced by the view of her matter-less moor, this time unhindered by a gate, rolling on and on into eternity. She saw a speck in the horizon growing closer rather than farther this time, and she knew. She felt her feet fly. Miracles do exist among the ubiquity of the mundane. Light can conquer demons.

And now, she knew what it was to exist even if she didn’t really exist at all, or never did.

        “Jacob” She whispered again. The speck resonated before her. “Josephine.” He finally answered back.

“Jacob,” she said more loudly.  “Jacob, oh My Jacob. I am Freed.”