The Suitcase - a Short Story

There was a room in her house with a large oak door. The door had a key that she rarely turned. Behind the door was a suitcase that she never unpacked. The suitcase was scuffed and had seen much better days.

There was a pair of trousers in the suitcase she could not pull past her knees. In the trouser pocket was a torn cinema ticket from their very first date. That date blew into a whirlwind and blossomed into love. That love aged and declined into forgotten fervour.

There was a silver frame in the suitcase, tarnished with time. In the frame was a photo of a vivacious young woman. The woman smiled with her eyes and laughed from the heart. She was bare of responsibility and wore invincible youth. 

There was a large brown envelope in the suitcase that she had sealed with a lick. The envelope contained letters written before people forgot how to write. The words on the letters captured every feeling there was. Those feelings were forgotten as everyone left.

There was a well-worn jumper in the suitcase she had knitted herself. The jumper still smelled of his skin - safe, reliable, familiar. Many a time she found those traits irritating, but if she could turn back time, she would take it all back.

There was a journal in the suitcase bursting with thought. She wrote in that journal her ideas and expectations. Yet the future passed her and she was standing still. It was only then she realised that time did not wait.  

In her house was a suitcase that she never unpacked. It was a relic that reminded her of everything lost. One day she decided the room was too good to waste with old baggage. So she took out the suitcase and put it out with the waste.

Nisha P Postlethwaite is author of 'The First Sense' fiction eBook based in the Lake District and Cumbria, available from several online retailers. To find out more visit www.nppostlethwaite.com

On twitter I'm  @nppostlethwaite

Please don't forget to like The First Sense on Facebook 

The Struggle - a short story

She found herself at the bottom of a hill before a flight of steep steps carved in the rock. She couldn't remember how she’d got there. ‘Walk with me,’ said a male voice. She hadn’t realised there was anyone next to her. The man was staring at the flat-bottomed clouds, they billowed on top and carpeted the sky. He placed his foot on a step.

‘I can’t come with you,’ she said. ‘I’m not a good person.’

‘I doubt that,’ he replied, climbing the first step.

She hesitated and considered the arduous climb ahead. ‘I've had terrible thoughts … it’s too awful.’

‘We’ve all had wicked thoughts.’ He turned to look at her. ‘It’s whether we act on them that count.’

She decided to climb the steps with him. ‘But it’s not that simple…’ she struggled to find the right words. ‘I’ve had angry, bitter thoughts. I’ve wrongly judged people. I’ve not always been honest with others or myself. Now it’s too late.’

He gently tapped her arm. His touch was like the breeze. ‘The very fact you recognise it means you are a good person. You are not defined by your past.’ He glanced back down the steps before he smiled at her. ‘Who you are now is all that matters.’

She saw they were high above a lake that dazzled like a sheet of glass in the sunlight. She couldn’t understand how they had climbed so high in such a short space of time. She realised there were only a few steps left ahead of them. I’m frightened, she thought.

‘Frightened?’ he said. ‘Don’t be. You’re stronger than you think. You know what’s right, or you wouldn’t be here.’

As they reached the top of the hill, she noticed the serene silence all around them; she could only hear her heart beating gently in her chest. She turned to him. ‘If you knew the terrible things I’ve thought about, you’d never forgive me.’

He shook his head. ‘Only you know your thoughts. Let them go,’ he said. ‘Let it go. You are free.’      

Nisha P Postlethwaite is author of 'The First Sense' fiction eBook based in the Lake District and Cumbria, available from several online retailers. To find out more visit www.nppostlethwaite.com

On twitter I'm  @nppostlethwaite

Please don't forget to like The First Sense on Facebook 

The Man Who Could See Through Skin

He sat within the whispering grasses by the ragged edge of the lake, crouched down as if wounded, out of sight but not hiding - not in the way that he hid from life. He watched the water - not blue, green or grey but a translucent union of all three - wash over the smooth stones and complete the gaps, before sliding back across the long stretch. It was an effortless retreat.

If only he could glide through life. Instead it was volatile and fractured. He climbed the peaks and sank with the lows, but lately the lows had come more often until they flowed into a continuous bottom-line.   

  

No-one knew what he could do. Not really. He had tried to speak of it, perhaps so cryptically, no-one understood what he meant. How could he explain, really? 

How could he say that just by brushing against any of them, he could see right through their skin - across organs, down veins, between layers of tissue, over private thoughts, hopes and intentions – even those not fully realised by their holders. Perhaps he had not explained it clearly at all, but he didn’t want them thinking he was unhinged or a freak.

Among people he felt like an intruder trampling on secrets and tarnishing dreams as he tread on their souls. In time, it became harder for him to look anyone in the eye in case they saw his growing shame. He was tired of watching everything he said in case he gave something - not his right to give - away.  

So he decided to avoid human contact as much as possible, never shaking a hand, touching the edge of a crowd, offering a kiss, or embracing the ones he longed to hold. This lack of human touch only made him withdraw deeper into himself but what choice did he have?

He concluded everything human was mapped along lines, it was obvious, over-thought and calculated, but nature had secrets he couldn't permeate, such as how rivers carved up the land or how buds and leaves reached for the sky and unfolded before his eyes. He only felt true wonder when sat in nature.

Why couldn’t she accept that? Why couldn’t she understand? Instead, she said she couldn’t condone his apathy for others, his numbness to life, lack of warmth and connection; it was as simple as that to her. She started to cry when she said she longed to reach him and pull him out of the darkness, but she didn’t know how to. So it had to end.

Tears rolled over his cheeks and burnt his skin. The fragile walls of his world came crashing down as he always knew they would. She whispered to him to let it go - whatever it was that consumed him. She reached for him, he flinched, but she still took him in her arms. Her warmth made him delirious, and his legs buckled with the weight of his sorrow. 

Still, he didn’t hug her back, or try to explain. He thought she whispered something else, but the words lodged in her throat. As she left, he knew he would never see her again.   

He felt crippled in the grasses but he took solace in the gentle movement of the water. His mind flitted back. How could he have told her what he felt through her skin? How could he say inside her was something else, slowly unfurling and diligently forming - part-her and part-him? How could he say there was another poor soul that could see through his mother’s skin?  

Nisha P Postlethwaite is author of 'The First Sense' fiction eBook based in the Lake District and Cumbria, available from several online retailers. To find out more visit www.nppostlethwaite.com

On twitter I'm  @nppostlethwaite

Please don't forget to like The First Sense on Facebook