Flash Fiction February - He'll Come Back, They Whisper
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 25th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write “a story that ends with a promise”. This story is just over 1,000 words. Enjoy!
The wind threw his short hair in all directions, mixing this brown with the moody green of the grass beneath his head, and lifted a steady stream of salt from the kilogram bag besides his ankle, a white river snaking off the yellow cliffs, towards the restless sea. The silent, thunderous sky brooded in his empty eyes, his lips barely moving with indistinguishable words.
Governist Shearan Bleck watched the young man softly, shielding his smouldering cigar from the buffering, seaside wind. “Where’s your friend?” he said, by way of introduction.
The young man’s fingers twitched but otherwise, he didn’t move. “He went to the town.”
Bleck looked down over the ridge of Whisperer’s hill, along the winding cliffside paths and towards the dark stain among the farming fields and carriage ways. Dilapidated, lifeless, pooled in the slight depression of the chalk hills, Agatha Town brooded beneath the chocolate sky like a cluster of broken rocks before a lighthouse. “Well, that’s not good.”
Silently, the young man moved his hand from his side to rest over his heart. His fingers bunched in the material of his plain, white shirt, riding the hem high over his belly button.
Bleck drew a puff from his cigar, rolling the bitter taste over his tongue. The noise in his head started to get louder. The flash, flash, flash of the lighthouse’ beam beside them made the backs of his eyes ache. The spotty seascape at his back continued to rage on in a silent, thrashing roar.
To think the two boys had been here for at least 2 days now. That this boy in particular had been laying there, somehow still responsive, still sane, still living, even with the ever-increasing noise – the all-consuming noise – burrowing endlessly into his skull.
“The Whisperings must be getting pretty terrible for you about now,” Bleck said, nudging the young man with his boot and trying to put some good humour in his voice.
“I’m not leaving.”
Bleck sighed out a puff of smoke. Judging by the salt, it didn’t really look like he’d gotten stuck here, as the Governist had originally assumed. “Nobody said anything about leaving.”
Resigning himself to a long evening, Bleck sat beside the young man and began to tug him upright and tap his face, hoping a little manhandling might bring him round. It worked somewhat, as a small light seemed to ignite behind the young man’s eyes. But still he stared as blank as paper.
“If he left the safe zone two days ago, and he’s not already come back –”
“He’ll be back.”
Bleck’s jaw tightened. His teeth crushed one end of his cigar, squishing some of its contents out into his mouth. He took a deep breath and let the bitterness scrape his mind clean. “OK. OK. Its clear you care a lot about your friend, and I’m sure you feel you need to wait for him, but you can’t do much for him if you don’t take care of yourself. How much longer do you think you can do this?”
The young man’s lips drew back on a clamped wall of teeth, and he flew to his feet.
Bleck moved to grab him. To snatch him back before his feet crossed the threshold and plunged him into the depths of the Otherside.
But the young man stopped short. The tips of his feet brushed the invisible line as he pulled his arms into his chest. “How!” he screamed. “Howard, damnit! What’s taking you so long?”
The silence whipped his words away, sucking them from the cliff paths towards Agatha Town and barring them from ever reaching the warped walls of that cursed place.
A strike of pain cracked down the young man’s face, and Bleck’s heart buckled.
Sighing some more, he struggled to his feet and clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You’re sure he’ll come back,” Bleck said, tender and mater-of-fact. “And if that’s the case, you know he’ll be here in his own time – regardless if you are still here. Sometimes, young man, you need to take steps to take care of yourself. And there is nothing wrong with that.”
The young man’s hands balled above his heart and tears began to slither down his cheeks. He shook his head.
“In fact,” Bleck continued, “We can leave something behind us and make sure your friend is looked after when he returns. I’ve got a day’s worth of food in my briefcase and an extra bag of salt that should do him real good. Come on, what do you say?”
The young man looked slowly sideways. His eyes rippled, the murky surface of the sea. Bleck thought he looked as grey as the landscape around him. “Maybe …” he whispered, “Maybe it can just be a break. Maybe I can come back tomorrow.”
“Exactly!” Bleck tightened his grip. “In fact, you could always wait for him to pass through in Ourside Agatha Town. You know he won’t be far behind you.”
The young man nodded slowly and didn’t protest when Bleck drew a wide salt circle, set several items outside of it for his friend and pulled the young man himself to sit down in the centre beside the old Governist. He obediently covered his ears when Bleck prompted him to do so. All the while, silent tears gathered in his lashes, every blink squeezing them out onto the freckles on his cheek.
As the Whisperings began to fade for the first time in days, as the voices screaming in his head, the roar of non-existent monsters and windswept masts and drowning sailors and that incessant woman who said, “he left you”, “he abandoned you”, “you always loved more”, “you loved harder and he never cared and he never would” – even as she finally faded away, the young man kept whispering those last words, over and over again.
“Promise me you’ll wait for me, Danny. Promise me you’ll stay right here. I’ll be with you again soon, I swear on everything I have. Just stay here. Just promise me you’ll stay here.”
He didn’t have to speak for Howl to know. It was all over his face.
I promise, How.
25/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .