#231 Loop

by Steve Whitmore

She dances my final days to sleep, the girl in the musical box.

Our eyes meet through the frosted glass and I will my paralysed eyelids to blink a greeting. She is beautiful, as ever, her features unsullied since first I beheld her on my mother’s bedside table. As a child, I turned her tiny key, believed I breathed life into her soul. Now she returns the favour. Smiling, she arches her hands above her head and rises onto her toes.

There are no chimes now but I will hear them. Above the roar I will sound them till the girl turns fourteen times. My chubby fingers wind the key, six and a bit. Any more, and you will break her, David. Any less, and she will not turn back to face me; the chimes will peter out on the wrong note.

My casket judders as our leviathan warps between worlds, but I do not skip a beat. I keep my eyes upon the girl, follow the chimes to the last. Soon, I am to be another’s delicacy, savoured for my pink skin, my meat. Truly, I am one in a million.

The girl comes to rest, her final footfall timed to perfection. Numb as I am, I feel the delicate lace of her dress as she lays it across my face like a veil.

Now, I imagine closing my eyes, imagine sleep.



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