crafting · dreaming · short stories · stitching · wording

down in fogharty’s cove

13Nov 2011

I’m working on my Red Hood, tonight. I found a lovely little girl’s coat, the softest fur you could imagine! It’s going to line the cloak’s edges, and the hood. I have always wanted a lovely hood, lined with scrumptious plush! If I have enough left over (as I am dearly hoping) I will be able to make myself a muff, to match!  It really is lovely stuff, and I’m glad I decided to combine the two, instead of trying to make a capelet out of the wee coat.  Oh, so darling, almost as soft as rabbitfur. Almost.

Of course, nothing could ever be quite as perfect as rabbitfur.

A story came to my mind:
It opens with a young woman, late for a party.  She is talking to herself, all the thoughts in her mind, her little frets and hopes for this party which, she hopes, will give her a lovely holiday from her dreary school semester.  There is a tiny rip in reality, and she doesn’t notice slipping through.
There is a woman that lives in a farmhouse.  Her children are all grown, and it’s been a long time since she felt beautiful.  Her life is governed by time, time, time, time. She doesn’t feel she’ll ever escape from the big clock over her kitchen sink (or the one in her pocket, or on her fone, or in her dreams…) and she feels more and more trapped, more and more withered every hour.  She finds herself becoming numb. It’s comforting to listen to the car pass outside her kitchen window. She’ll head it, and look up – on the hour, near every hour.
It takes her a week to realise that a car passes by with perfect regularity.
It takes her a month to realise that it’s always the same car.
At first, she is horrified. Her life, her very being, her ragged existence narrowed down to such an inexplicable, arbitrary fluke, like a dropped stitch in the fabric of the universe. She comes to dread the car’s passage; she pulls her blinds and turns up the music.
Still.
Still, she finds herself noting it’s passage, and some time after that, finally, starts to notice little things about the car. It passes every hour: always the same giddy careening around the corner, a startled slow-down just after skidding on some loose gravel. Then a slow increase, until – on the hour, exactly – it sails past the house.
It is winter before she realises that if she concentrates, and gets outside in time, she can see the driver. It’s a young woman, with hair so light it’s almost silvery-white. Her lips are moving, her eyes giving the road a careful once-over, confident and reckless as only the young can be.
The farm-wife makes a point to watch the car, now. She sets down whatever she was doing, and slips outside. To see the car, to see the girl. It’s same – the passage is always the same, every time. She spends weeks searching out any variability, and can find none.  It’s as if the car – and its passenger – aren’t making an hourly trip at all, but one passing repeated over and over and over.  After a while, the woman (standing in her coat, shivering as snow collects on her eyelashes) starts to believe that it is only one stip, looping over again like a skipping record. A strange recording, played just for her, to mark the passing of the hours.  Or perhaps…to fill them.

This isn’t where the story ends, of course. Something happens – it has to. I think I know how it ends, I think I know what comes of the lonely woman, and the gay young girl, and the drive, the dropped stitch, the tape loop. Do you want to know?
You shall have to wait for me to write the story!