She Moved In Worlds - Part 3

By JP Mihok

Separated from Nancy by an inexplicable disaster, 'mid ashes floating in the wind, Laia sees the other's trail and pursues... to the roaring caverns. Part 3 of an adventure narrated in verse. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: JP Mihok
• Release date: Nov 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9780994030832

Book preview

Chapter Twenty One

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The tents were all silent, the banners alone;

(Sennacherib, Byron)

The world—a rusted cannonball —

mounts high; a fount of light applauds.

It hurls through heaven's starry hall,

a toy in flight for laughing gods.

And inside, past its rusted rim,

the molten minds of millions swim.

Had she remembered it, or dreamed

a dream of violence which hurled

her through that grey extended scream?

Her clothes were wet; her singed hair curled.

Lay rose from mud and looked around.

Beyond a fringe of flowers swirled

a mass of smoke.

The circus grounds

had burnt to cinders at a stroke.

Lay wiped her brow. Her hand came black.

This was too serious a joke;

the gods had better take it back!

Hysteria nudged at her mind.

She brushed it off and, stolid, squelched

across the blackened waste, to find

her only friend - whom Fate had filched.

A flood of tears obscured her eyes.

She shook her fist; a moment swayed.

Life had no promises but lies;

no happinesses meant to stay!

The tents were blasted clean away.

She poked an object in the mud.

A plastic eyeball rolled to glare

reproach at her.

Deject she stood;

at all the ruins 'round her stared.

A scrap of clothing beckoned her.

She rushed to pick it up, and clutched

the fluttering tatter.

Here, there were

prints in the mud!

She hoped...too much!

She bent to study them, and found

the prints - one bare, one booted foot -

which tracked across the muddy ground

aswim with rain and bits of soot.

They led her in a tortured route

around the smoking embers; bent

in wandered ways beyond the mute

and charred remains of circus tents.

They disappeared beyond the dome

and left no trackings on the rocks

where Mister Bangle's trailer home

rusted upon its concrete blocks.

She turned again and looked again

at all the strewings of the scene.

A clenching fist she shook in pain

at this, and all that this could mean.

I'll find her! grimly gritted she.

Her eye was captured by a gleam

of silver. What could only be

the mannequin, stood melted by.

Lay headed back to it, to see.

Its mistress, now, would surely die -

her husband gone... the servant she

relied upon, thus rent awry.

The flames had blackened it; devoured

the plastics at a random whim;

melted its skeleton, and scoured

away the artificial skin.

It stood askew, in horror grim.

A movement - whirled, she looked behind.

—Just ashes floating in the wind.

She stared about. She hoped to find,

to pass the horrid news to him,

old Mister Bangle; then her eye

arrested at the circus dome.

There, no more holograms would fly

across the air; no ghosts would groan;

now stilled, the echoes of applause.

The roof had melted, burning; flowed

down every arch and, wrinkled, slumped

upon the walls. The gobbets glowed

in black and iridescent clumps

where they had twisted in their throes.

The ashes stirred. Air currents mourned

with hollow moans amid the waste;

bestowed her cinder-specks which burned

corrosive.

Choking with distaste,

Lay roused her motions into haste.

Then paused before the trailer, torn.

She wished to hurry on elsewhere;

but visioned Missus Bangle there -

unknowing, helpless, and unmourned.

In face of such a fate's despair,

she flinched before the other's doom.

I'll speak to her.

Her thoughts were drear.

She clambered in the metal tomb

with screech of hinge; in dimness peered.

With husky voice she, mournful, called

(to help the other be prepared—

deluded hopefulness forestalled

by her identity declared—)

"It's only me - remember - Lay -

the other girl from yesterday."

No sound nor stirring met her words.

She stepped the musty corridor,

the floor a-creak beneath.

There were

no other motions to be heard.

A moan of wind - or else a snore?

She glanced behind each open door.

No Missus Bangle anywhere,

nor anybody here