Flash Fiction on Fierce Femme
The Paradox of Recollection
An unraveling
The sun doesn’t rise here; it merely bleeds through the smog, an indifferent specter over the City of Glass.
I stand amid Market Square, where once-solid architecture now shimmers with an eerie translucence, like the bones of forgotten giants. My reflection distorts in the panes, a ghostly image of a man who might have been.
It’s always been this way, I think – or maybe it hasn’t. In this city, the past is as fluid as the present, a swirling maelstrom of memories and imagined futures.
I’m not alone in the square; there are others, shadows of people flickering like old film reels in the diffused light. We all share the same glassy pallor and the same vacant eyes.
I’m here to meet someone, or perhaps I’ve already met them. My memory, like the city’s skyline, is fractured and refracted.
There’s a woman – her name is a whisper at the edge of my consciousness. Her face is familiar, yet unplaceable, like a dream that fades upon waking.
She’s the key, I remember, to something I need to understand, something crucial about why we’re all here, caught in this endless now.
As I move through the square, the world around me shifts. The buildings bend and twist, their glass facades warping under the weight of forgotten histories.
It’s not just the unstable city; time seems to ripple and fracture.
One moment, I see the woman clearly – standing by the fountain, her red dress a stark contrast against the pallid backdrop.
The next, she’s gone, replaced by the haunting echo of laughter, a child’s giggle resonating through the emptiness.
I catch a glimpse of her again, this time in the reflection of a store window. She’s speaking, but her words are lost to the wind, carried away before they reach me. Her eyes, however, hold a message, a plea that cuts through the fog of my mind.
They seem to say, “Remember why you’re here.”
The twist comes like a blade – sharp and unexpected. The city around me shudders, and I realize, with a jolt, that it’s not the city that’s shifting but me. My memories, my sense of self, are unraveling.
The woman is not just someone I need to find; she’s a part of me, a fragment of my psyche that I’ve lost in this maze of glass and shadow.
I suddenly understood, with terrifying clarity. The City of Glass is not a place but a state of mind, a manifestation of my fractured identity.
The people here are not real; they echo my thoughts, projections of a mind grappling with its dissolution.
The woman, she’s my anchor, the part of me that refuses to let go, clinging to the hope that I can piece together the fragments of who I once was.
The climax crashes over me in a wave of realization. The city, the woman, the endless now – it’s all a construct, a desperate attempt to hold onto a sense of self that’s slipping away.
If there is one, the resolution comes in the form of acceptance. I can’t escape this place because this place is me. To leave is to cease to exist, to surrender to the dissolution of self.
As I stand in the square, the city’s glass walls finally dissolve, leaving me in an empty void.
The woman steps forward, her form solidifying, and she smiles – a sad, knowing smile,
“Remember,” she says, her voice clear and resonant.
“You can never truly leave.”
And just like that, the City of Glass shatters, and I am left standing in the middle of nothing, the last fragments of my identity slipping away like grains of sand.
The last line echoes in my mind, a final, haunting refrain:
”We are but reflections in a mirror, destined to fade.”
Ani Eldritch 2024
