Tag: fiction

PART 4.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If it is, then it is towards the end — part 4 of 6. Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, rather than dump the story into one large post, I’m going to chunk it up and let it be consumed over a couple of posts. Enjoy.

A cavernous room lay before her, as large as any vaulted cathedral. Its light came from hundreds and hundreds of candles. Some in sconces along the cream-colored walls, but most placed, dripping, on stacks of wooden crates that piled up high along the columns that arched up and disappeared into a twilight high up overhead. Crates and candles placed willy nilly making the room glow with a warm light that was simultaneously diffuse and constellated. 

However, what caught her attention was what was in the middle of the arched room. 

There, resting securely in a metal ring, sat an enormous beating heart. With a whoosh and suck, the heart expanded and contracted, expanded and contracted.  Steaming pipes converged and spread around it, and along these pipes shuttled what looked like ladybugs. They poured into the heart and swarmed out, before disappearing with the piping upward into the dusky dimness. Steps wound up along one side of the heart to a railing-ringed observation platform. With a whoosh and suck, the heart expanded and contracted, expanded and contracted, and the pipes steamed and quivered from the force.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” said a woman’s voice.

She jumped. She had been so astonished by the sight before her, that she had not been aware of the woman who stood watching her. The woman was dressed in a form-fitting black dress and black elbow-length gloves. The woman had swept back blond hair, cut to the shoulders, and sparkling blue eyes. She was the most elegant woman the girl had ever seen.

“Um, yes it is,” she replied

“A bit hideous,” the woman gaily drawled. “But definitely not as hideous as that thing out there,” and she gestured toward the entrance.

“You know about that? What is it?”

“Oh, you don’t want to know, darling, trust me. But you’re safe. She never comes in here. I think I frighten her, the pathetic thing.”

The woman turned and sauntered away, waving one arm gracefully in the direction of the heart. “Such a good little worker.”

Whoosh-suck, went the heart. The girl, fell in behind the woman. 

“Excuse me, but who are you?”

“Tut-tut. Mind your manners. Besides darling,” said the woman, turning to face her, “I was going to ask you the very same thing.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.  I’m, I’m…” And at that moment the girl was surprised that she could not remember her name. “Lisa?” she said uncertainly

The woman gave out a peel of laughter that sounded like a tinkling of bells. She approached the girl and put her hands on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes.

“Oh no, no, no.  Trust me, my dear. You are not Lisa.”

“What?”

“Mmm. She never could keep her slimy hands to herself,” sighed the woman, and then under her breath she continues, “She’s as ugly as they come, and I say that as her loving sister.”  

The woman pulled out a long slender cigarette, and casually lit it.

“Between you and me, though, she can keep her writhings and ink at the bottom of the sea. Some things are best repressed, right? Or at the very least, denied and locked away in the darkest depths. All that cold hard pressure!” And with that the woman shook herself with what seemed pleasure.

The girl was beginning to think that the woman before her was mad.

“Look, Miss…?”

The woman seemed not to be paying her any mind. 

She continued, “Excuse me.  I’m sorry, but can you tell me how to get ou…”  

The girls was cut off mid-sentence by a cigarette butt bouncing off of her head.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I do that?” said the woman. 

The woman then turned from the girl, who stood thoroughly confused, and sauntered over to the beating heart. With a casual flick of her hand through her perfectly groomed hair, she turned to face girl.  

“Now, let’s get something straight, darling. This, she said like a game show model displaying a new refrigerator, “is Lisa.”

Whoosh-suck, went the heart. Click, click, click went the thousands of shiny, red bugs.

The woman reached out with one of her gloved arms and patted the heart affectionately.

 “God bless her. Lisa might get riled up, but she’s not going anywhere.”  She turned back to face the girl. Looking her up and down, the woman shook her head and clucked her tongue against her teeth. Her expression was one of pity.

“You? Let’s name you Angela. That was what I always wanted. Now Angela, we really need to get you into some new clothes.”

The girl-now-named-Angela looked down at her torn and soot-covered dress, and suddenly she felt very ugly, like a piece of gum stuck to someone else’s shoe. Her hair felt somehow dusty and greasy, and looking at her hands she saw that they were blackened with soot. Her knees were scraped and dirty. 

“Comecomecomecome,” said the woman, and striding over to Angela she shooed her along to one of the many stacks of crates that lined the walls of the room.  

“Top box. Go on. I’ve been saving them for you.”

Angela looked up at the pile of stacked crates. It did not look particularly sturdy, and the many candles stuck from corners and edges and tops.

“Go on! The clothes. They…Are…Adorable.”

Nervously, Angela reached out and grabbed hold of the wooden top of a crate.  She gave it a shake, and it wobbled. Then taking great care, she began to climb, carefully edging her way around candles and up one step after another. The crates moved beneath her and large shadows drunkenly moved about the room, and a few times Angela froze, straining to bring the pile back into balance, before continuing her climb.

Below her the woman casually paced back and forth, looking up at her with a bored expression.

At last Angela found herself beside the top crate. She blew out the two candles there, and lifted up the lid, and saw inside neatly folded piles of clothes. Reaching in she pulled out a black newsboy hat, a kaki skirt with buckled pockets and a cream colored blouse. Then crouching beside the crate she quickly pulled off her dress, buttoned up the blouse, and began to pull on the skirt. The blouse was long-sleeved and tapered ever so slightly at the waste, and the skirt was snug so that Angela needed to take small jumps as she pulled them up. The mountain of crates shifted beneath her.

“You know, you and I are going to be the best of friends,” called up the woman.

At that moment, though, the crates gave way beneath Angela, and with a loud crash they tumbled to the ground with Angela in their midst. For a moment the room was absolutely still.

Whoosh-suck went the heart.  Click-click-click-click went the bugs.

Angela lay outstretched on the speckled grey marble of the floor, and her head pounded from where it had banged against a crate. Slowly, she stood, holding a hand to her head. 

About her crates and candles — some still flickering and some now out and streaming smoke — lay strewn like rubble. Many of the crates had smashed open and disgorged their contents on to the floor — clothes, photos, wrappers, ticket stubs, receipts, and spool after spool after spool of thread. They rolled and pirouetted across the floor of the room. And if the girl-now-named-Angela had looked closely she would have noticed the squashed pink of a small, tattered walrus, baby teeth, the blue shell of a robin’s egg, and a card brushed over with colored paint. But she didn’t because at that moment the woman gave out a wail and collapsed to the ground.

“You clumsy girl! Now look what you’ve done!” She pushed pieces of wooden crate from her, and sat upright. Spools of thread fell from her no-longer-perfect hair.

And then the strangest thing happened. Before Angela’s eyes the woman began to change. Streaks of grey appeared in her hair, and wrinkles slowly began to spread from her eyes to her forehead and cheeks. It was if, like a balloon, she was deflating. With another wail, the woman leapt to her feet, tottered over to the steps beside the heart.  

“This is the thanks I get. I give you everything,” babbled the woman.  “Everything!”

As the woman mounted the steps, her pace slowed, and her posture became more stooped. With each step she leaned more heavily on the railing, until finally she slowed to a stop.

Still holding a hand against her throbbing head, Angela nervously walked over and climbed the steps until she stood just behind the old crone. “She looks like a little girl playing dress-up,” thought Angela.

“Is there anything I can do?” asked Angela, leaning in close to the woman’s face.

“Youth is wasted on the young,” muttered the crone, and collapsed back into Lisa’s arms.  She was as light as a doll, and Lisa hefted her up and held the old woman against her chest.

“Take,” wheezed the woman, “take me…to the platform.”

Cradling the woman, Angela climbed the remaining steps. The red bugs swarmed along pipes, and the throb of the heart made the platform quiver.

“Closer,” gasped the woman.

Angela edged forward. Daring to look down, she saw the red muscle of the heart pulsing and contracting.

Suddenly, a long, thin tongue shot out from the aging woman’s mouth. It darted out, struck one of the red bugs, and before Angela could even blink, bug and tongue disappeared back into the woman’s mouth. With a sigh the woman closed her eyes and her mouth crunched and chewed. Angela was so surprised by this that she dropped the woman, with a thump, to the platform floor. She took several steps back, and watched.

Once again, the woman was changing. Except this time, she was a balloon taking on air. The stoop straightened, the hair colored, and curves filled out the dress. The woman propped herself up with long, elegant arms, and gracefully got to her feet. She pressed her dress out along her filled form. She turned this way, and she turned that, as if checking for any imperfections, and then she turned to face Angela. Her expression was one of bemusement.

“We women have to have our little secrets, no?”

“I…I,” stammered Angela.

“No darling, we’ve already been through all that.  Not ‘I,’ ‘Me!’”

The woman turned and surveyed the wreckage of the boxes on the floor below.

“My goodness what a mess you’ve made.”

She paused with her hands on her hips.

“Well, we can’t worry about that now. It’s time to go. It’s what you said that you wanted. Come along.” And without waiting the woman descended the steps to the room’s floor. She marched over to a small wooden door that Angela had not noticed before. It was recessed in the wall, and standing beside it, the woman waited for Angela to join her.

“Now,” said the woman, “Make me proud.” She reached out and patted Angela’s clothing and, licking her fingers, she rubbed them against Angela’s forehead. She stepped back to admire her handiwork. “They’re going to love you.” She pushed open the door. “Oh, and darling, try to have fun!”

Perplexed, Angela peered at the door, and then slowly walked through it. With a soft clack the door closed behind her.

PART 3.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If it is, then it is towards the end — part 4 of 6. Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, rather than dump the story into one large post, I’m going to chunk it up and let it be consumed over a couple of posts. Enjoy.

With a start she raised herself up, all senses alert. She held her breath and focused all of her attention on listening.  

Nothing.  

Something had changed. She was sure of it. She raised herself up on her arms, and strained her senses at the dark, strained until it hurt.  

And then she heard it.

A scraping sound, like a heavy sack being pulled across a floor. The sound stopped, and then a few moments later returned.  

“Who’s there?” She called out, but no reply came back.  

The sound approached and grew louder, and now she could hear a rasping breath.

Panic overwhelmed her, and frantically she began to crawl away. She scrabbled across the ground, and paused to listen, gasping for breath.

The scraping had ceased. Replacing it, though, was the unmistakable sound of footsteps. Slow. Confused, but unmistakably searching.

Unsteadily, she stood. Her joints ached from being curled up for so long, and she felt dizzy, but even so she stumbled away, moving as quickly as she could with her hands outstretched in front of her.  

“Oof!”  

Her vision burst with yellow sparks, and she fell to the ground. She had run into a wall. A wall! It was something. The first something she had encountered in this place. 

Ignoring the pain, she crouched and pressed herself as tightly as possible against the invisible wall. It was rough as if made of stacked stones. The footsteps thudded closer, and closer, and then faltered. She took shallow breaths and kept absolutely still.  Every particle in her shook with fear. She heard rasping breath. She heard a shuffle. And then another shuffle, and then the steps began to move away. Bumping and thudding, they became fainter, and more faint, and then ceased to exist. 

And now we have come in a circle, back to the start of our story. We are with a girl, once named Lisa, in a very dark place, who is blindly feeling herself forward on her hands and knees. She whispers to herself over and over, “There has to be a way out,” and her hands pat out frantically in front of her, over the dusty stone. 

Suddenly her hands find only empty space. So suddenly in fact did this happen that she almost falls forward, and she feels a cool, wet breeze blowing upward from an even greater emptiness. Her hands shake, and she thinks, “What if I had fallen into that?” 

Slowly, keeping her fingers cupped over the pit’s edge, she inches along on her knees. 

But her thought is interrupted. There it was again, faint but definite, the sound of the steps. How long had it been following? Days? Weeks? Years…the thudding, erratic steps coming for her.

“Please,” she sobs, and then under her breath, “You have to keep going,” and moving away from the pit, her hands feel quickly in front of her. So quickly, that at first she doesn’t notice that the stone floor has changed to something smoother, and then her hands are rising up a wall. Not rock, but concrete maybe. Wobbling she stands, and once more begins to run, her left hand keeping contact with the wall. 

At first nothing changed. And then far ahead, like a pin being stuck through a black piece of paper, a prick of light appeared. It flickered like a star. It bobbed like a firefly. Gradually, dustings of light began to coat her surroundings — a vaulted ceiling of brick, a marble floor, and cement walls. Ahead, she saw an archway grow and pouring from it light, and warmth and a familiar sound. Not daring to look behind her, she strained herself forward toward this light.

Gasping, she reached the archway, and paused. The light squeezed into her vision too, too bright, until finally, her eyes, like dried sponges slowly began to soak in the sight before her. 

PART 2.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If it is, then it is towards the end — part 4 of 6. Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, rather than dump the story into one large post, I’m going to chunk it up and let it be consumed over a couple of posts. Enjoy.

Pump-pump. 

She heard a heart beat. In the inky black, she heard a heart beat and breathing. 

Pump-pump. Gasp. Pump-pump. Gasp. 

Then she sputtered back into oblivion.

***

Pump-pump.

Pump-pump.

She could not see. Everything was pitch black. She could feel that she was sitting with her feet tucked under herself. But the darkness was so thorough that she could not see herself. Through her clothes (a doctor’s gown?) she felt the coolness of a hard floor. Blindly, she lifted fingers to her face, and felt them push against the flesh of a cheek. She slowly let them pass over the smoothness of a forehead. Then she lowered her hands to the floor in front of herself, and, kneeling now, crawled herself forward. The ground was smooth. Stone perhaps. Or concrete. She worked in a tight circle, and in all directions that is what she felt. Stone, smooth and cool. No walls.

Her eyes began to play tricks. A patch of light floated across her vision.

“Hello?!”

She crawled forward. Shapes seemed to rise up, flowing and pulsing across her vision. They snaked up, writhing in all directions.

“Hello?! Can anybody hear me?”

She paused. Her ears rushed with the silence.

Pump-pump. 

Pump-pump.

She lowered herself gently to the floor, lay on her side and brought her knees up to her chest. Deep down inside she heard a small voice say, “I always knew they would abandon you. Why wouldn’t they?” And then she fell asleep.

***

How many times she awakened and slept she did not know. At first she crawled, patting her hands in front of herself, but eventually she stopped. What was the point? Nothing ever changed. The cool stone. The drenching blackness. And silence, except for a heartbeat — a breathing. These sounds of a body were not connected with her thinking. They existed elsewhere. And so sleeping became waking, and waking became sleeping.  

Dreams coursed around her. She was flying over green trees. She was walking next to a boy, and he looked into her eyes. She was buttoning a shirt, only to find the buttons coming undone even as she moved on to the next. She was in a cellar, and something was coming down the steps, coming down to kill her.

PART 1.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If it is, then it is towards the end — part 4 of 6. Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, rather than dump the story into one large post, I’m going to chunk it up and let it be consumed over a couple of posts. Enjoy.

She listened. The sound. Was it receding? Bumping and thudding it went. Yes, bumping and thudding, it became fainter and fainter. She allowed herself once more to breathe. Her heart beat quickly, and in the darkness that enveloped her, she eased herself away from the wall of cool stone that was at her back. Desperately, she again stretched out her hands and felt her way forward, trying to keep her breathing shallow and quiet. 

“There’s no way out!” cried a voice in her head.  

She fought down the panic. “Somehow I got here,” she thought.

There’s no way out!” cried the voice again and again. “There is no way out!”

“Where am I?” she whispered out loud. “Where am I?”

***

Once upon a time there was a girl named Lisa, and she found herself lost in a place so inky black that she lost her name and began to doubt that she even existed. And once upon a time there was a girl who chose her own name, who rediscovered herself as both a bird and a young woman, and who built from her own words a castle surrounded by rich gardens that rolled out like a dress during a deep curtsey. It all started, though, when the girl named Lisa came home from school one day to find that her mother had cleaned out the closet in her room. 

For years the closet in Lisa’s room had been dependable, and like so many dependable things in life, she had taken it for granted. It had been her one proof, though proof of what, exactly, she was uncertain, as she had bounced from her father’s to her mother’s, from camp to camp, and from school to school. All she knew was that the proof was necessary. The closet contained calendars with photos of pop stars (a gift from one of her mom’s boyfriends), coffee mugs from Disney World (from when she had gone with her dad and his new wife), a telescope, puzzles of the United States (to help her learn her capitals), a tent (a gift from her mom’s former boyfriend), shoes, necklaces (gifts from the parents of her mom’s current boyfriend), ticket stubs from movies that she’d gone to on birthdays, foil wrappers from Easter chocolates, baby teeth she had lost, the crushed egg of a robin kept in a plastic bag, and mixed in down at the very bottom of the pile were spools of thread and a card streaked with colored paint that someone had given her when she was little. Willie, Lisa’s stuffed walrus from her childhood, was stuck under a teepee that was part of a story line that went with an expensive set of dolls.

One Sunday night, however, when Lisa came back from her father’s she found her closet emptied, and on her dresser was a music box.

“Mom, what happened to all my stuff?!”

Lisa’s mother stood in the doorway to the room, with her usual pasted on smile.

“How about a ‘Thanks mom’?” said her mother. Here voice had a cheerful quality to it. The kind of cheerful that never listens. 

“I can’t believe you! Those were my things.”

“Lisa, it was a big mess. It was attracting bugs for goodness sakes, and it exhausted me. Do you want that? And this is so much better. Didn’t it exhaust you?”

Lisa walked over and fell backward on to her bed and stared at the ceiling.

“Besides, next year you’ll go to college.”

“So?”

“So? You don’t need that junk anymore, and anyway, I’m the one that lives here full-time. God, what will a roommate think of you? Little Miss hoarder.”

Lisa still lay on her sofa, staring at the ceiling. Her mother stayed in the doorway, waiting, as if still expecting to be thanked.

“Did you see the music box I got you? The therapist says that’s what you nee…”

As the words were coming out of her mother’s mouth, Lisa was up. In one motion she grabbed the music box and hurled it against the wall. With a crash, the box splintered apart and fell to the floor. In a fury Lisa turned towards her mother.

“I…Did…Not…Ask…For a music box,” she said with a cold fury. Her words were like a hammer. Hit. Hit. Hit. She panted, and glared straight into her mother’s eyes. Her mother, though, had not even flinched.

“Fine.” Her mother held up her hands. “Fine. Be your father’s spoiled daughter.”

“Get out!” screamed Lisa. “I can’t wait to be out of here!”

“That makes two of us,” her mother replied, and then turned and walked away, the door left open to the room as if to show the world Lisa’s shame.

For years it had been like this — a life lived as if she were a clenched fist. If Lisa’s mind still contained memories of Sebastian, Willie, Verbs, and the City spread about like the panes of a stained glass window, well, she wouldn’t have known where to find them. Her dad had remarried, and Lisa had smiled at the wedding and carried the ring on a pillow. There were half-sisters born, and the young son of her mom’s boyfriend brought into her life. She went to camps in the summer, played field hockey in the fall and soccer in the spring. She had friends who gossiped about each other and with whom she chatted online. Mostly, though, her days seemed to skip across her life like a stone skipping across the smooth water of a lake.

Did Jared like her?

OMG, she totally wasn’t ready for the math test!

She should write for the newspaper so that she’d have a better chance of getting into a good college.

 Skip. Skip. Skip.

Her mother’s boyfriend had moved out, and her mom had gone on a trip. That’s when Lisa had lived with her dad and his new family full-time. And then her mother had returned, and there was nastiness, and lawyers, and Lisa had moved back in with her mother, and a judge had decided that her father owed her mom money.

Skip. Skip.

And around her, like the passing of the night with its vibrant city lights, the Land of Not (which is what the city had used to be called) had slowly, imperceptibly awakened to a dawn emptied of color. Where it had once been a stained glass window, it was now a sidewalk – flat, hard and stretching out as far the eye could see. Each day was one foot in front of the other. Where the King’s tower had once stood was just another building, with scaffolding up its side. Where the ocean had once caressed the warm sand, were plastic cups, and other debris blown off the streets. And where the frogs had once called along side the river bank, a highway rushed and rushed and curved its way along the bay.  

But none of this mattered. In fact, none of it was even noticed. Lisa did not care about things like that anymore. 

It was not to say that the city had become ugly. It hadn’t. The water towers on the roofs, and the brick buildings, and the skyscrapers, and the roads crammed with honking cars – all of these things still carried the same energy of dreams being broken down, piece by piece, and then built back up. No, the problem with the city, if indeed there was a problem, was that it now held Lisa in an embrace so tight that breathing was becoming difficult. An embrace so tight that it was hard to even see the brick buildings, the skyscrapers and the roads crammed with honking cars. They clamored and pounded to be admitted into her mind. It was like the city, once so fluid and ever-changing, had hardened, and hardened, and hardened some more, and Lisa was caught on the inside, crumbling. There was always something that needed doing. Errands to get done. Homework to do. Things to buy, and therapists to see.

Skip. Skip. Skip.

Was that her heart departing her? Over the buildings and out to sea it went, while left behind was something black an oily, or black and hard, or maybe, just empty.

“Lisa! We have to get going!”

Lisa woke with a start. It was the next morning. She turned and looked at her clock. 6:45. She had exactly 10 minutes to get ready for school. Pulling herself out of bed, she grabbed a pair of pants off the back of a chair and slipped them on. Even as she did so she cleared away the strands of dream that still stuck to her face like a spider’s web. It had been something about a flood. Something about tentacles — dark and caressing her with a trembling love.

“Lisa?!”

“I’m awake!”

Lisa pushed the dream from her mind. It unsettled her. She pulled on a t-shirt from an already open drawer and stood before the mirror.  

That was when she noticed that something was not right. Something that she could not place, like an itch that doesn’t disappear with the scratching. There she stood.  Her black hair had its usual morning pre-brush straggle, and when she reached her hand up to touch her face, her reflection reached up and touched its face, too. But Lisa could not escape the feeling that who she saw in the mirror wasn’t really her – that the person looking back did not belong to her.

“I’m going!” she heard her mother yell up from the first floor.

“All right, I’m coming!  I’m coming!”

Lisa grabbed a brush, scooped up her socks and shoes and ran out the door. And as the sound of her bare feet clumped down the steps, if anyone had been there to notice, they would have seen that her reflection remained in the mirror — that it narrowed its eyes, and smiled, before stepping out into the room.

All that day at school Lisa felt off. Her head felt light, and it seemed like her voice came from far away. It was lunchtime, and she was sitting with her friends, Jenny and Kate.

“Didn’t you used to be friends with Sebastian?”

“I don’t know if I’d say friends.”

“Oh god, Jenny, not Sebastian again. He is so not your type. Do you think he’s her type?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“See? Lisa says he’s not your type.”

“Oh be quiet.”

“Jesus, who’s Miss Sensitive? I’m just saying – wait, rewind. You knew Sebastian, right?”

“Kind of. We played together when we were kids. I think my parents knew his dad or something. It’s sort of embarrassing.”

Lisa’s two friends stared at her, waiting for her to go on, but she didn’t. She just stared at her salad, and then put it aside. For just a second she felt herself drifting up from her seat. Lisa grabbed hold of the table, and looked at her friends. They hadn’t noticed anything. Instead, Jenny looked at a cheese stick that she was holding in front of her face, before letting it drop on to her tray..

“Ug. School food is so disgusting.”

“Wait. Do you want to hear disgusting? I heard that Erica saw Mr. Ziniac kissing Mrs. Palmer in the teachers lounge!”

“Kate!” Jenny shrieked. “Are you trying to make us puke?!”

Lisa pasted a smile to her face, but inside she thought, “What’s wrong with me?”  She felt weak and hollow, like she was water pouring out through a sieve. And as she felt herself emptied she began to feel cold. Her body shivered, and her teeth chattered. The feeling continued through French, and Calculus. Lisa was sure that someone would notice, but classes went on as normal, until finally school let out, and Lisa walked home.

The streets seemed to rock beneath her feet, and once Lisa had to reach out and hold on to a metal lamppost because she felt as if a breeze had lifted her from the ground.  Cars honked and baby strollers and pedestrians continued to stream around her. The sun shone down on the awnings of the shop fronts and restaurants, and no one noticed Lisa’s struggle. With all of her will, she managed to get home. Her hands shook as she opened the lockbox and took out the key.  

Leaving the door open, she entered the empty house, and began to walk up the steps to her room. Each step wore her out, and she paused half way up the stairs in order to rest her forehead against the wall.

Finally she made it to her room.  

The last thing that she saw was the shattered remains of the music box on the floor.  

The last thing she heard was a voice coming from behind her.  

“Happy birthday,” it said.

And with a puff, Lisa felt herself blown out like a candle.