Like a Bird in a Golden Cage
Flash fiction, 700 words. For IAM's Oct. 16 prompt. Happy Halloween!
Silver Laurels released the soul and grieved. This had become all too common. One hundred years ago, when she’d release a soul, she’d traipse onto the next one with a smile. Those souls had somewhere to go, though she knew not whether they’d be pleased with their final home. That wasn’t her business.
Her business was making sure they didn’t linger. Those things which haunted humanity were testaments of her failure:
Ghoul, when a twisted soul began to rot in a rotting body;
Ghost, when a soul trembled to move beyond this world;
Spirit, when a soul trembled for the fate of another and desired to play low-rent angel or avenger.
Such failures were rare. But in these times, she’d needed to add to her dismal list:
Oblivious, when a soul simply had no idea what to do next.
This one swarmed the room, knocking against the winter-frosted windowpanes and bare walls like a captured sparrow.
“Please,” she begged. She hurt to watch it hurt itself. A badly damaged soul would become prey for the dark things which slumbered in the shadows. “Listen to me.”
It tried to re-enter the body. That wouldn’t do. She swatted it away, wincing when she felt its pulsating energy bruise at her touch.
It was so cut off from eternity that it didn’t even feel the yearning. Maybe it would understand if she used concepts from its own shiny, sterile world.
“You need to try to go home. That’s not home, that’s just a … car. A broken car. Totaled.”
The soul bounced against the body, but it lacked the will even to haunt it. In the shadows, something moved. Soon Ebony Laurels would arrive. She would not hesitate to injure a soul in order to remove it. She did not do such a thing out of cruelty. Better a battered soul than an eaten one, which would enrich only the darkness.
“A child who stays out too late into the night gets kidnapped. Do you understand? Go home.”
This was no good. The soul didn’t understand because it didn’t understand home. It had only ever lived in its car. It had never even seen a picture of a white picket fence.
Should she open a window? Would that help the soul understand? But it wasn’t as though eternity dwelt in plein air.
Silver Laurels had a secret weapon. She opened her mouth and sang. One note, one high, silver, clarion note.
The shadows flinched and fled. The soul, a golden comet of pure light in the still air, paused. It oscillated and undulated, entranced.
One note she’d been gifted, one hint, one barest peek beyond the Veil. What a terrible thing for a soul that heard it! For it was like a faded Polaroid, barely an etching, but still it was a glimpse of Home, Silver Laurels’ home, which she remembered only faintly and to which she would not be able to return until the stars faded.
Would this soul see Home? She didn’t know. That wasn’t her business. But if she could convince it to yearn, that would be enough.
“Go!” she said sternly.
The soul vibrated at the frequency she had sung. Faster and faster. The comet tail broke into motes. Was it being eaten?
No, they regrouped, coalescing into an image of man.
The golden soul flashed like a supernova, and then was gone.
“That was close.” Ebony Laurels poked her head through the window, her black curls and sharp scythe darker than the darkness dared to be. “Why do they insist on making this job so much harder than it has to be?”
Silver Laurels stood up and cast a disinterested glance at the unmoving body. It had been a young man, an artist with a stuffed pantry and a table piled with all manner of herbs and chemicals to satiate his heart and stimulate his mind.
“Because they’ve tried to make things easier on themselves.”
She left that room with its bare walls and silence.