2019-06-02 - The Fates and their Scissors

The voice starts as a choir of ill-timed voices more often than not. Male and female voices starting and stopping at different times whispering ‘Harper’ in a siren song of a sort. The susurrence of the sound is only heard inside Harper’s mind. At least up until now. Should someone with the right mental Glimmer focus on her at the right moment, there might be some haunting echoes.

Today the gathering of voices eventually resolves into her dead father’s voice, the timber similar to Tom Hanks’.

<<Harper, munchkin, say good morning to your Papa.>>

Harper is so accustomed to these voices that her world would feel deathly quiet without them. Desolate. She waits to see who will manifest and smiles a little to herself when she hears her father’s voice. For the years from age five through her eighteenth birthday he was her rock, and she, his. Alone together against the cruel, dark world. “Good morning, dad. Did you see I went to the beach like we used to, stood in the waves? I did the whole thing, and I felt you there.”

The first word is a jumble of starts, evening out into an easily heard voice. It doesn’t mince words. <<You’ve been watched.>>

“Yes, I know. But They hardly hurt us. It was more frightening than anything else. But the slide /between/ was jarring.” Harper continues to wash dishes in her kitchen as this conversation continues.

<<You – you – YOU shouldn’t attract attention, Harper sweet- sweetheart. Stay away. Pretend you don’t suh-see them.>>

“That’s hard to do when everything around you is burning down and the room is transformed to an oven, Dad," she replies wryly.

<<Even so-so-so-so,>> the words jog like a scratch on a record. <<You talked about it, didn’t you – didn’t you.>> More statement than question from Thomas Price’s voice in her mind.

“Only to Nicholas, really. And he saw it, too. Felt it just like me.” Harper rinses a pan she’s been scrubbing and rests it on a rack beside the sink to dry.

<<You shouldn’t talk-talk-talk to that boy about what you hear, what you see, Ha-har-Harper.>>

How hard is it to be stubborn in the face of a loving parent’s demands? “But he can hear me, too, Dad. No one has done that before. It’s like – I don’t know,” she whirls around in the kitchen and leans her hips back against the countertop, gesticulating with her hands vaguely in the air. “We’re connected somehow. A golden thread …”

<<You remember what the Fates do to threads, Harper honey. They cut them and someone dies. Do you love that death-wishing boy?>>

Harper shakes her head in denial to all of it. “It can’t be. He’s my friend. I don’t love him like that. He won’t die.” Like you did. Like mom did. Like Bette did. And so many others. “I won’t let him die. He listened to me. He knows to stay together, not to separate. At least… I think he believes me.”

<<Harper, child, you cannot keep that boy safe any more than anyone else. And you know what happens if you care too much. For your own sake even more than his, be careful. If you’re not careful, you’ll bring down a pile of bricks on your head along with anyone standing nearby.>>

“I won’t let him die,” Harper repeats, lifting her chin minutely.

In response there is affectionate, masculine laughter. <<I could never tame that stubborn streak. Hell, I didn’t want to. Promise your Papa that you’ll be careful.>>

Harper closes her eyes and folds her arms tightly around herself as if her father were indeed there and hugging her. “I’m always careful, Dad.”

The voice is already fading. << No honey,>> he says, drifting away. <<You’re not.>> Whispers tease Harper’s ears for a few more minutes, then die away as they always do.