https://sundayphotofictioner.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/sunday-photo-fiction-october-30th-2016/

Trapped…

You can see me can’t you? Please. Look. Look really hard. The eyes. You know these eyes. They are my eyes.

I try to follow the familiar figure as it passes through the limited scope of my vision. I Fight with everything I have, straining until my mind almost bursts from frustration, but they won’t move. Nothing will move.

Thankfully Paul reappears, pulls back the covers, then smiles towards the rumble of footfall.

I ache. Please Paul. Turn. Turn towards me. Look. You of all people must see.

A small figure leaps from somewhere to my left, landing on the centre of the bed. With a bounce he spins to face me, flips the cape behind him, lifts the black mask from where it sits askew on his grinning face, crosses his legs, and then upturns the large black bag.

Sticky, tooth rotting candy tumbles towards me.

“Wait until Mum sees this Stevie. I can’t believe she let you go this year.” Paul ruffles Stevie’s fine blond hair and then my heart squeezes with pain as he passes by so close I can smell his cologne.

Stevie watches the door and waits. When all is silent he selects one of the large teeth-smashing all-day-gob-stoppers, peels back the wrapper, fixes his eyes to mine, and then grins.

On the inside, I shiver.

Regret

My stomach lurched into my throat as, without warning, the chopper suddenly dropped several metres. Steve’s eyes flitted back up from where my hands rigidly gripped my harness and I caught the last hints of his mirth before he could smooth his features.

He leaned in close so the barely dulled whamp-whamp-whamp of blades wouldn’t drown out his retort. “I’m sorry, but how can this still get to you?”

“If man was meant to fly…”

This time his head tilted back and even the pilot turned at Steve’s deep, booming roar of laughter. “It’ll be fine Mam. You’ll do fine.”

I wished I could channel his confidence, but he wasn’t the one forced to stand and face them. They would be wanting more than just the platitudes of sympathy Steve had prepared. They would be screaming for answers, explanations, blood. They would view me with the same ire as the perpetrators and be justified in doing so.

“We could have stopped this Steve. We could have saved them all.”

Steve’s ear-to-ear grin vanished like the smoke it was and he turned to stare down at the waiting crowd. There was nothing he could say.
There was nothing any of us could say.