At Jena's

Sibyl is a young school going girl who loses her shadow on her way back home. The adventurous expedition in search of Sibyl's shadow begins just right now.

If one more two and sixes appear Jena wins and Sibyl loses. The dices rolled down the stairs that slipped straight to the snake’s mouth. Jena knew she was a clear win; she got up from the deck and raised herself towards the wooden face of Sibyl, leaning against the only supporting wall to the cabin, she averted at Sibyl’s throw.

 

Sibyl’s eyes were fixed on the ladders. She shook the pot loud for seconds and spun the dice angular towards the end of the board. Yes, Sibyl got the ladder and the buttons quickly stepped up the laps close to Jena, just two blocks away. ‘Sibyl, I assume we do not need any more throws. We are equally good at it, in fact you are better; why not leave this dreary game’. ‘Jena? Is that a request or an order, I’d prefer you get down here.’ ‘O silly Sibyl Sunshine you take these games so severely, I can help letting you win this small game.’ ‘ OK Jena, are you mocking me because I am too close to you and that you are afraid to lose?’ ‘Well my dear Sibyl I am afraid to see you lose when I play the game.’ ‘Jena it’s your turn.’ ‘ OK Sibyl if you wish to see me afraid then here I take the board’. Throwing a teasing smile at Sibyl, she gently tossed the dice and there came perfect two and sixes.

 ‘I need to be home now’ said Sibyl disregarding the board and pot before Jena and submerging her slim fingers into the crimson pockets of the hood to bring out her cell phone. Jena interrupted the call. ‘Sibyl did you do the project work on the beverage factory we visited last week?’ ‘Not yet, why? You did?’

 ‘Tomorrow is the deadline Sibyl’ said Jena with hidden brevity of mockery in her voice. ‘O God, I had no idea. I will fail this term’. ‘Don’t worry dear you will finish it once you reach home and if you need any help I am just a call away.’ Saying this and leading Sibyl down the steps to her door she patiently led her friend’s way out locking the door on Sibyl’s face with the mildest slam.

 

 Sibyl did not realize that by now she was put out of Jena’s house. She paused at the door for minutes counting nothing; as minutes went past she unintentionally stood empty, magnifying the foreign insect brooding on to the plastic vines framing the borders to the door. This minuscule creature often goes unnoticed by the visitors as the fly laid camouflaged within the stomata of the artificial leaves. All of sudden she heard a mingling echo, a sound of touching from behind the not well groomed shrubberies. It wasn't all of sudden. This smooching sound has been resonating since the meek inattentive sound of reproduction. The foreign insect almost sweated off in blue, circling its eyes big and stiff while. It gaped out it’s the jaws wide open to hang its lengthy tongue outward in the humidity in desperate attempts to swig all the blood it has been growing on from the evening.

 But the stifling moisture was not heaved by the unworthy ventilation in the claustrophobic little room. The yellowish green was blushing lilac as the eyeball grew out of the case, seemingly to blush red on the peak of tumors underneath the insects face. It gasped out of oxygen only to grasp the atmospheric humid across the break between the upper lips and tongue. The red pelt off and the tumors changed in some emergent colors, further suffocating the little body. The skin was melting dew drops from the greasy coat as the insect struggled to exhale on the end of a deliberate outburst.

 

 ‘Ouch!’ heard Sibyl. Of course the bud on the vine cannot ‘Ouch’ amidst of this critical cycle. ‘ssshhh’ heard Sibyl again. It was a female voice and before there was something else which grayed in the midway. Possibly it appeared from behind the bush. She called out to the alien sounds migrating to her ears. The earlobes picked the summit as she tip-toed the creepy flight of stairs dying out in half, in having found the boundaries of the silhouette of the bush after which presumably two yards later is where the real unmanned bush braided up tall. Sibyl appeared the scene not expecting herself to be a spectator of something she was listening all this while. 

She evidenced the site with all she was intending to see but as she headed to the left she saw a glow from a cell phone screen tucked neatly in someone’s palms giving some light to the sound which was much clearer to Sibyl’s ears now. Her eyes adjusted to the indescribable stark illustration dead before her. The faint illumination partially sheltered the engagements of the dark figure glued together and silvered the whispering voices merging into one of those sounds made by the leaves oscillating in the wind.

 

The figure dismantled as it came out into two distinct bodies of different heights as the taller one mounted on the shorter stature from behind humping on all fours like a dog flopping on the hard packed sand. Titling her visions with clear intent arrested on the enfolding shadows, she witnessed the rotation of heads closely with the gentle hold of the smaller head in the hand of the taller shadow. The faces in the dark separated and soon a vague nudity approached from the disappearance of light. It was Jennifer, Jena’s sister, in her sophomore year. Her sharply edged curves came visible now while she stood topless folding the unbuttoned frost pink cashmere entwined to her fingers, her hairs tousled on her bare shoulder lumps. Sibyl made a passing interest on her nakedness since she has grown knowing the nakedness of Jennifer very well from childhood. ‘What are you doing?’ Sibyl asked.  Her question was left standing in the manner that Jennifer frequently let things stand as she looked indifferent and characteristically unsurprised and as well as unobstructed by what Sibyl has seen of her. ‘Go home’ replied Jennifer.                

 

Disembarking from the fork where the bushes petered out to the course strewn with shells and shadows, Sibyl strolled along the brick basement of the house towards the fenced gates. As she went out the gates she eyed the dark street with no dwellers, only a flickering dull shine appearing after intervals at distances getting far as her shadow grew close to the end of the road.She crossed over her neck collar glancing back from the end of the road, the one fourth view was not much clearer to the little corner of her eyes and so she turned back on a full straight angle.  The street was empty, no wind, no appearance, a friendless street with no barking dogs.

 

She kept standing still wondering at the vividly drawn fencing around the trees, until she lowered her sights. Sibyl felt that she is unable to see because of the dark, she swayed up again and saw everything far is more than clear but she couldn’t see the ground few inches from her feet. She thumped down scouring the cement with her eager palms. With bare ground on the palm plates she stood up. The dull shine accosted her, emerging hollow and distant.

 

The night glowed big as the Alice in Wonderland’s bottomless pit.  She calmed down from the gaze and punctured her senses to the apprehension that she weighs a lot lighter than she should be. Her stares crawled down in keen observation of herself. Her inspection worried her fragile glial cells, making her unreceptive to the hopeless swings of metabolism. Sibyl still had the loosely dangling duffel bag. She also had the pounds of black dense curls, falling on her the waist in spring rolls. Stuffing the bag beneath her chin, she looked into the bag to bring a big book in the settlements of her thin fingers. Yes there was what her fingers were looking for, she felt the big book. Then what did she miss! Sibyl jostled up her belongings all at once and stood empty like before. She padded forward with her subconscious self as her mind crippled unconscious. The lights flickered from a greater distance. As she bowed herself to the ground she discovers she is missing the ground. There is none of her on the axis.

 

She has lost her shadow. Sibyl continued the search closing her eyes in her best attempts to remember where she left the shadows. No, she did not leave it to Jena. She started to re joggle if she had kept it in the wardrobe mistakenly while clothing to be at Jena’s. Or did she leave it inside the geometry books the night before. She halted the whirlpools of probabilities and rubbed her elbows increasingly reaching out at constant measures of radius from the centre of the circle she sat on. Her brain again brushed of the beverage factory assignment, she resolved all out of the vast bottomless pit. May be the snake ate her shadow, she wandered. Sibyl knew well that she would fall off the ladder without shadows. She pulled herself slightly from the centre, calculating ‘maybe the venom intoxicated the silhouette to slow death and it died away in midway’.

 

Gradually the dense paint swamps into her bones covering in thick layers round like the silk chocolate weighing tonnes. Sibyl parts off the easy grip and minds to the midway of the end of the road to get her dead shadow back. She strengthens up straight to speed back. She saw the beautiful fence, the tree and the jam packs of archaic houses along the antiquated cement avenue. But the pathway was not patent like before. She stepped forward in back and started pacing in better steps. After hours and miles she reached to her pockets getting her cell phone light to her facade seeing the time, minutes past midnight. There were no miss calls, no messages from mother or Jena. ‘Ma is always concerned, she made no calls?’ exclaimed Sibyl, slow between the unseen slit of her silent lips. She looked around if she recognized this place.

 

Yes, she recognized the place, she has been here before and spent a long time here sometime in past. She magnified the trees, the fencing, and the houses. All were so familiar to her senses, she smelled them right. The vicinity stood slant to her sights. The fences arrested her watch. Yes, she has been to the same place and she has been here all these hours. It was the very antiquated circle and Sibyl has been walking on the similar block for hours. Awe struck Sibyl; she saw the dull burn again, now pointing at her with teasing hooks in hexagonal specks. Sibyl stood just at the beginning of the road; left with miles to walk before the light.