The Last Story
Susan Gibb

The first word of the last story I write will have to fly like the non-random darting bows of a bat, sensitive as sonar to wring empathy quick and flowing with relative response from its readers.

The first sentence of the last story I ever write has to have the hook of a talon to catch and latch onto its prey. To intrigue and entice one to follow the crumbs dropped as sensual adjectives and excitingly active verbs.

The characters, particularly the protagonist, must be interesting as an unopened present yet as intimate as an unborn twin. I find her hiding in the farthest corner of the decade before. Between lovers back when relationships were rides in a prototype mini-submarine that navigated under the surface of blue-green rippled seas. She is a slice of a woman I've been, with bites taken out that are hardened as crust.

She brings with her the salt scent of the ocean, the gritty caress of beach sand. I will not give her the same heartaches, the same man. She will be paired with a man who has drifted through in an earlier time, unappreciated by the woman she was at the time. She will know the right things to do this time around and come through it with proud scars of delicious sweet knowledge.

Fiction is reality twisted to fit into a fantasy concept of what could have been. Fiction is the root of the tree that is hidden from earthly eyes. Fiction is life as it might be, good, better, bad.

But I play with my puppets gently and let them sleep back into sweet escape when I'm done. Bundled in cotton batting soft as clouds, their eyes close in repose of dreams that will bring them back to life when another last story calls them again to lace up their slippers and dance.

~

words: Susan M. Gibb, Connecticut (Spinning / Hypercompendia)

image: 'Eternal Return' - Natalie d'Arbeloff, London (Blaugustine)
this image is a still from a video, more about it: Eternal Return - notes
& the direct video link: Eternal Return - video

~

notes on the process: 365 days / 365 stories