Stories of the Cellar Door

Billy jumped in his skin as the lightning flashed again, illuminating ground-level sculptures of books, hearts and hands, for less than a second. Metallic vases of long-dead flowers cast shadow-fingers against tombstones under the electrical burst. Claire swished her torch from headstone to mossy headstone, pulling her hood tighter round her oval face against the lashing rain. Escaping strands of mousey brown hair stuck to her cheeks like spidery legs, as she strode through the dark in her black, rubber wellies. She crunched along the gravel path, catching glimpses of names and dates as she went. “I know it’s here somewhere, I found it at the weekend.” She twisted to look behind her. “I’m sure it was just past that weird tree.” As she spoke, the wind whipped the last remaining orange leaves from the gnarly tree, through Claire's torch beam and into Billy's face. “I don’t like this at all.” Billy batted at his numbing cheeks and lifted his shoulders to his ears. “It’s wet and co...

Water gushes over the windscreen in waves as unrelenting as my grief. The streetlights blurry starbursts in my struggling vision. Black cloud hangs with menaces above, banishing celestial light from view. The bottle bangs my teeth, even at this low speed. But the bourbon tastes like freedom spilling over my tongue. 'It’s like dancing at the end of the rain' she’d say. But only when she was sky-high happy. I never danced with her. The rigidity of my nerves and the well-structured failure of my confidence built a prison around me. I never even tried to escape. I promised, in her final days, as time and options drained away, that we would dance. She smiled, touched my cheek and said 'I never needed you to be anyone else.' I’ve never seen the end of the rain. Only an occasional merging of droplets and air that wet my face and left me damp, disappointed. She often told a story of how she saw it once, as a kid, in a windless field. How the drops fell like a curtain ...