“Beyond the Mist” by Christian Mayer, XI: flash fiction

Beyond the Mist

A stroll through the misty gates, where the swirling angels emerge from the gas to blow their misty dust into my eyes. And I wake up far from that mist, not in any modern explanation of hell, but a black empty room, where you can’t even see yourself snap or step or pull your hair over your eyes to hide. And maybe my eyes are just blinded by a new mist, a less mundane one that deceives rather than covers--a misty cloud of black that doesn’t cover my eyes, but makes it so I can’t see.

Or I wake up, suffocating, and dig my way back to the surface; and there’s normal mist, not heavenly and magic, that clings to the scarf of a woman and condenses upon the petals of her lilacs, and disguises her tears as drops of the mist. And she lays a lilac down at the base of a small marble headstone, the swirling misty pattern of the stone mingling with the sky, the words carved with malice. She takes the rest of the lilacs and places them gently on the ground, towered over by a rose quartz monument, inscribed with the subtle precision of the ancients. I stare as she caresses the marble, soothing it like a bird who had fallen from its nest. And as the morning mist cleared, and the sun appeared in the eastern sky, the woman remained, waiting for the headstones to sink back and the sun to fall down and to see them animate back into her trembling arms. And even as the mist rose to clouds, she cried for her quartz and marble. And the sun did fall, and the stones did sink in the cool mud, but her boys didn’t come back.

—Christian Mayer, XI: flash fiction