A Voice Like Powdered Sugar
A fiction extract on the power of voice and words
“I remember playing harmonica. Every night I played one song, for that is all I knew. ”
The words sifted through the River Thames’ night air like powdered sugar. Each word falling like a sugar flake onto her listeners tongue. Aptly, she paced her sentences, slowly feeding them sugar to fuel the crave for more. They hung onto her stories and deep brown eyes like barnacles. Use your voice. He had never said for what purposes.
“Everytime I’d play the tune, I would fall into a sleep-like trance. My worries were washed away like streets cleaned of sewage, I could see clearly again. Can you imagine?”
This was when their eyes would go cloudy, falling deep into her well of words. On and on she went, hauling glossy words to the well’s surface. Her hand clasped the whisky glass on the bar, the other scooping up her victim’s hand as if it were soft butter against a knife.
“Imagine that everytime you sing that tune, your worries drift off, sunken in the River Thames like lost time. Your wife’s incompetencies, her mutterings disappear. The house’s deed sold, money stashed for your London mansion. ” She had watched him over the past month, following every step as steady as the passing of the clouds. He would leave the house for his antique shop at precisely 8 AM on all weekdays, except Wednesday. Wednesday he would head to the market to trade in antique ware, to compile new purchases and his manservant would tend to the shop.
“Can you play that tune?” Her left finger edges itself around his ring finger, while she whispers. “Listen carefully when I hum now.” And as she hums, his eyes fixated, his mind wandering, she pulls off the gold wedding ring. Maisy’s fingers tap along his hands like a four-legged spider, in the rhythm of the tune.
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