Post by silvertabby on Jul 25, 2008 11:29:51 GMT -5
The good old dream
‘Leave me alone! Go away!’
‘You do remember. Just tell me you do! Say it!’
The woman stopped shivering.
She laughed. Her laughter – high, cold, theatrical – would’ve risen anybody’s hair, just he had no hair… he was very old. Old as the earth its self, so there was nothing else for the laughter to rise but questions.
‘Ah! Your laugh, my dear little kitten…The most delightful of sounds’
he stopped pushing closer to her. He raised a gray, death like hand and touched her pale bony cheek.
‘Like a rose.’ he whispered. His voice was dreadful as though it was coming from deep under earth, from another world, as though the old man was the devil.
The woman was not really what could be called angelic, either, but in comparison, she was human at least.
To his faint surprise, she did not push his hand aside when he touched her.
‘Rose, old man?! Like hell so! Pray tell which is that rose that resembles me? How often do you change the flowers in your vase, dear lord?’
Her voice was cold, yet burning with sarcasm and with venom. Did she hate him? If she did, than she hated him with all her heart, but it wasn’t clear that she did hate him.
He had holes instead of eyes, and she had slashes of emeralds. And he was dead and she was alive. For how long still… that was their silent agreement not to ask, for you see, should they have asked, they would have suddenly been in front of the blunt truth, that neither could know. Since neither of those strange characters was willing to take the risk to hurt their ego, they just didn’t ask.
Who could possibly know the answer to the burning unspoken question? Nobody, for you see, neither the dead gentleman, nor the pale lady in the shadow, believed in any god. They believed in themselves, or perhaps they didn’t believe at all.
So…as long as there was no question, the absence of an answer could not possibly threat to bother them.
‘You are the rose on my thumb.’ the voice was husky, high, too high for a man, barely there, but overwhelming.
Her shock, or perhaps her pleasure hearing his words caused her to shiver.
It was as if she was flattered… or crazy.
‘Do you remember?’ His voice dropped even more.
Than the lady laughed again.
‘Of course I remember. But’ the woman paused, he looked as if he was eating her words in an old unforgotten hunger.
‘But what?’ the wax like man asked when the woman didn’t say anything.
Her eyes, green, were dancing, sparkling, young, almost beautiful again, and fascinating in their own right. Bringing light to her face. The proof that she was human. Alive. Tears. As though treasuring an old secret, something that gave her the right and the power to smile in front of him.
‘But what, Minerva?’
‘But, he regretted, all his life, and deserved to die,…like a man.’
She was smiling while talking, green eyes bright, almost happy.
‘and to be remembered….’
He was closer to her now, angrier, weaker, grayer.
‘and to be immortal.’
Very close, staring her down.
‘You don’t scare me, sweetie. Do it if you want.’
She knew, and he knew he had no wand. But she also knew, and so did she that he could kill her with his bare hands.
She shook her head slightly, amusedly, absurdly, because she knew that would drive him mad and whispered to him.
‘You’re not immortal, Galert. No, no…you can’t die, but that’s not immortal. ‘
Closer.
‘Just sad.’
Staring into her eyes. Mad, tormented…because he knew she was right.
His cold slimy hands grabbing her pale neck…the power to kill her. But what for?
‘Kill me, Gallert. Go on. You have the power to do it, is that what you want/’
But he didn’t do it. not even he knew why he didn’t. perhaps out of pity, or because he knew that was what she wanted, or perhaps out of respect. Nobody knows. Prof McGonagall died that very night, not on her desk, but in her bed, smiling, happy, not strangled, not harmed, not by him anyway.
Rumor has it…well, Hermione, Harry and Ron who read her journal, that is, that she knew she was dieing, because she wrote in her diary, in pretty letters, ‘The end’ just that very night.
The End
Please review
