Prologue

In the whimsical circus world of Anomaly City, it's Aretta's last year to prove her worth and the competition is fierce.

 

“All the world’s a stage, 

And all the men and women merely players” 

~William Shakespeare  

When I was young my father owned a glass cube that he used to check every night before sleeping. He showed it to me one night and I felt it in my hands. I felt the sharp edges and the clear faces. I would look through it, the diamond like markings on each surface and gawk. It was beautifully cut and the pieces cohered together so remarkably. But then, to me it served only an amusing toy. As I lie in bed and examined it, my father with his voice of lapping waves and his touch like the warm sands that covered a lonely beach, sat next to me one night and said, “Do you see what’s inside, Aretta?” His eyes watched me with a distant spark that gave me all the life in the world. I smiled, in my ignorance, as I turned the cube and peered through to see his swelled nose like a peach behind it and those eyes again.  

“Daddy,” I giggled the word, “it’s empty.” In his smile something sly and amused formed. And in all his sagacity, he turned the cube in my palms, felt the edges with his nails and carefully opened its top. I stared with large eyes. I hadn’t seen the top. In all my time in playing with it and examining it had never occurred to me that it could be opened. He reached in but his fingers didn’t show through in the cube; as if they’d disappeared. He tilted the cube to my view. The inside was laced with a black covering, and he pulled from the container a small chain threaded of silver and a white cut pendant held by tiny silver prongs at its end. I couldn’t take my eyes off this gorgeous object. I watched his face, as he laughed again.  

“Everything… is not always a clear cube, Aretta,” Father said, waving me foreword. I leaned in closer and her roped the necklace round my tiny neck. I parted my raven black hair to the side and felt the pendent in my hand. An illusion. I should have remembered that when all this was happening. I lost the necklace though. It happened so long ago. I still keep his memory close. The cube and his smile too. It’s all I need of him I believe.     

Aside for him, one of my earliest memories, I must confess, is of the stage; the florescent lights blinding my view from the shadowed figures of an eager audience; the electrifying taste of awe in the air and the pure vive of curiosity. Where other toddlers may have seen their mothers outreached hands in a lonely world, I saw the eyes, the many eyes of the audience. Watching. Waiting. Where others may have spoken first, the adorable names of their caretakers, I uttered nothing. My words dragged out into song. Every ounce of my tiny lungs I poured out for them. I breathed and I will die…for them. Where lullabies calm infants to sleep it is the sincerity of their applause I find calming...lulling and, though I hate the taste of the polluted words on my lips, addictive.    

Author's Note

This is the prologue of Anomaly City, tell me what you think!

Reviews

[Flarare Weet]

the prologue was beautifully written x)

[SierraT]

Wow, thank you! :)