Dear friends, today I join the @bananafish team in celebrating the fiftieth edition of Finish The Story Contest.
It's dawn in my country. The incapable dictatorship that we submit with the army continually subjects us to long hours of power outages and internet outages. They want to make our lives very miserable, but we resist, in many different ways. Today, I resist my way. I stop sleeping and write, I have fun. I do this thing that I love and Finish The Story Contest creates the perfect opportunity with a beginning of history written by @f3nix that immediately seduced me. The old man's character has the perfect dose of evil. I hope I have done him justice.
It's a great contest and @bananafish is doing it fantastic.
Congratulations, friends!
Fifty editions are an example of passion and constancy. And that's art.
I am grateful.
The Abysmal Biscuit
The unusual item jolted on the worn chair, reacting to the vibrations of the old diesel-powered train. The convoy, the last of his lineage, still fulfilled its duty along the Brașov-Sighișoara route allowing students to return to their homes every weekend. To the rhythm of joints and sleepers, the whiteness of the remains continued to dance tremulously before the eyes of the young woman as the frames of her glasses slipped slowly from her nose.
In a tinkling clink of bracelets, the student closed the lid of the box and moved away as far as possible from it, crushing herself against the seat's padding. The lazy air of the air conditioner stuck to the bottom of her dry throat an acrid plastic taste.
And then she saw him. The old passenger had returned and was staring at her through the windows that led from the corridor of the car to the cabin. She listened to her own scream erupting and fill the cramped cab.
"I didn't want to scare you, young lady."
"N-not scared. No worries, sir." Somehow, Joelle managed to gather the few polite words her manners demanded. She could not have said how long he had been watching and if he had seen where curiosity had taken her. The glasses, temples up in the air, laid on the seat beside her.
The old man was tall and lanky, his burnished skin resembled the ancient scales of a dragon. Dressed in work trousers and a raw cotton shirt, he gave the impression of being one of those peasants whose families had inhabited the Carpathians for centuries.
Joelle's gaze passed involuntarily from the man to the funeral urn disguised as a biscuit tin: the representation of a merry-go-round in a lacquered colored wood and graceful workmanship. The children were swirling with their bent busts, perhaps because of the speed of the carousel. Their mouths were wide open and their hands clung to the poles skewering the horses. With a lump in her throat, she remembered the fleeting memory of just a few hours before, when a train was huffing at the central station and a gentle old man asked her help because he couldn't open the cabin door. She felt like something ruined down from her lungs to her guts.
"I see that you like my craft." In the silence, she could detect the old man's fingers caressing the box inlays.
"It's adorable. A gift for a grandchild?" Joelle realized only now that the object was his only baggage. In the warm twilight, the colors of lacquered wood seemed even more lively. The conifers thickened on the sides of the train, sliding quickly to the edges of her field of vision.
"Oh. A gift, says the young lady. Like a toy, perhaps?" The old man's eyes were two black bottomless pits. His gaze had slowly become vitreous like that of a deep-water fish, yet at the same time penetrating.
"Yes, a toy. I like how you see it, miss." The passenger continued, his voice getting thinner.
Only then, Joelle realized where they were heading: the train had just passed the old mill and would soon pass through the tunnels beneath the mountain.
"You may have noticed how I depicted all these children. Observe, miss, between a horse and the other: they are not alone." By pronouncing the last vowel, which he abnormally prolonged, his voice tone had become a slow and drawling rattle.
It was still too early for the wagons' lights to turn on and the tunnels were preparing to swallow the convoy.
A sound of nails carving into the wood tore the thoughts of the young student.
The darkness of the tunnel swallowed the train cars one by one. "The young lady doesn't want to look a little closer. It's getting dark and you'll miss details.
The old man's bones were very thin under his lustrous skin. His nails were stained with paint. Indeed, the children were not alone. Here and there, between a horse and a carousel horse, whose turns were accelerating, there were small shadows crouching. The faces were represented with incredible realism. The air escaped through Joelle's open mouth as the old man's voice merged with the music of the fair.
Then the lights in the wagon dimmed and things settled into his familiarity. The seats regained their worn touch, meekly defeated by use. An old chewing gum embedded next to his boot eased his perception. She thought she might have been exaggerating. The old man lifted the box a little further.
"Don't rush the contemplation, young lady." The old man's voice sounded fine, musical. "You must taste the details before you take over the whole, so to speak." He chuckled a little waterfall, but immediately something harder became beneath the sweet tessitura.
"Allow this old man to be bold. Perhaps you think that, since he is a divertimento, you are licensed to treat him with irreverence? Your innocence hastens your judgment."
The light of the wagon flashed.
Joelle struggled to pay attention. The metallic music of the loudspeakers repeated turn after turn of the colorful beasts of the carrousel. There were not only horses there, but a wonderful caterva: hippos, giraffes, gorillas, cranes, an enormous tarantula, a cancerber, a hydra; the eyes of a tropical Medusa that left her petrified... and children. Many. Some clinging to their saddles; others leaning forward vomiting, crying, screaming.
The old man was there. He manipulated the handle of the awful machine, smiled and showed little teeth stained with nicotine. The eyes were the eyes of a squirrel. He wore a hat with colored stripes, festive and ridiculous over the hirsute fur.
The platform spun. Joelle tried to cling to her seat, to the beaten leather whose touch she knew by heart. She found the cold flank of a two-headed whale. The paint on her saddle was fresh.
The train announced its stop. The old man came down with his cramped legs to the platform. Bent over, he was carrying the box of biscuits with effort. It was heavier. It was cold. He wanted to get out of the station, but his legs were quite numb and he didn't hate turning the turnstile. It interrupted the flow of passengers.
A small, somewhat strabic young man slipped down his right.
"Allow me, sir, to help you," he said and cleared the way. He offered his arm to the old man for support. His Scout uniform was badly ironed.
The old man smiled and looked into his eyes. He had a serious look despite his youth.
Marcus. The old man knew immediately that his name was Marcus.
Freedom for my country!
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://adncabrera.vornix.blog/2019/04/02/my-end-for-finish-the-story-contest-week-50/
