The Figure

The Figure

It sits looming in the corner of the second-hand shop. A small trinket of sorts. A faint whisper of mystery..if one was to listen in that particular direction. An easy glance over. A hidden surprise for fingers to softly lift from the ashes of forgotten things in the second-hand shop. The sharp corners, the strange tinges of red in the sun’s glare. A small figure one could cup like a hot coffee, grasp like fine china. A figure, a silhouette. The other lost and forgotten things are silent, even the wind doesn’t breath a gust here. You can feel it. In the air, a presence. A hand brushing across your spine. A women with a curse lurking in the shadows that we have grown to be wary of. Of what? Now that is a wise question. 

*

Sam lounged with her feet on the dashboard. Dirty shoes making very dirty marks. To say this annoyed Jack wouldn’t be a far stretch from reality. His eyes would make frequent calls to that dashboard, a ringing that wouldn’t go away despite the voicemail option. Those eyes flicking back and forth, the way one might change the television channels. Sam remained as innocence as a new-born lamb, legs stumbling on shaky ground. 

She twirled the object in her hand, glancing up at Jack, “Neat huh?” 

Jack blinked, eyes moving from those dirty dirty marks to the figure she held. 

“I mean, it’s not my sorta thing but sure it’s neat.” He shrugged. 

Sam looked at the small figure, jagged edges like the blade of a butcher's knife. 

“Kinda freaky too,” Turning it over she held it up to the window, “I could almost swear…” 

Jack’s eyebrows furrowed downwards, the lines of a book etching his forehead, “What?” 

Sam lifted a shoulder half heartedly and bit her lip, “I could swear it has some kinda blood mark…” 

Jack laughed. Chuckling as he glanced at Sam. They looked at each other with amused eyes. It was silly, they knew that. Of course they did. What they didn’t realise, and would never come to realise, was that this was the last time they would ever meet with fond eyes and crinkling lips. Something made their car become a mangled mess of metal that very chilly morning. A sweet animal who didn’t look twice when crossing the road? Oncoming traffic in the blind spot of all? A dark women with a dark request? Or perhaps a blood stained figure with ragged edges and a forgotten past. 

*

Tony Lee Curtis put his foot to the metal, and the car lurched forward agreeably. The radio was blaring, voices ringing out. “Two young adults…car crash,” Static interrupted the frequency, “Dead on impact.” Tony gritted his teeth, a white knuckled grip on the leather steering wheel that he swung like a baseball bat. Squealing tires breaking the gravel into flying debris that spits on the glass. His car halted to a stop. In the silence Tony got out with small hesitant steps. The world was still, the only sound coming out of Tony was the hitches of breath as he gulped in what lay before his very feet. Two bodies, red ink painting the road and limbs twisted in unfamiliar angles. An elbow reaching for the lips of a girl. Knees worn like a basketball hat, backwards. Bodies like blow up dolls, abused, torn, thrown into the darkness by the harsh world we call home. Tony reached the nearest bush, and vomited up his, not so yummy looking now, turkey wrap. His wife had gone a great length to whip up that meal that chilly morning. She too would grow to understand that sometimes things don’t happen as intended. Tony stood with shaking hands and a shaking mind. He glanced with a breath of gratitude, he was first on the scene. The mess he made could have been any other poor bastard. He brushed his stained lips of the cuff of his sleeve. Out of the corner of his eye sat a small black shadow, created by the figure that loomed above it. Tony reached down. Hand curling around it like a knot. A strange sensation overwhelmed him, circling around his body with sharp needles that pricked his skin. He heard car sirens growing closer in the distance. The knot increased, the sirens screamed in his ear. The sand had run empty in the hourglass. A force, perhaps created by man or perhaps something more sinister, slammed into Tony. His body was unrecognisable. The knot was tied, and a dead man was hanging. If only he hadn’t grasp that figure, if only he had known. 

*

The old man, withered and fading like the seasons changing, lay wheezing in his deathbed. Nothing surrounding him except absent memories, stale air, and a sense of satisfaction. His hand reached out and brushed the dark figure on his bed side table. It had come home to him. His mind wandered, remembering lost pieces to a puzzle unsolved. He saw an old women, much like himself now, cursing him with spit and venom. Vile words like that of a bullet, hitting him with an unnatural wall of power. He remembered throwing away the figure she had handed him. Not sparing a single thought until the stories soon crept through the thin walls. They floated through cracks and closed doors, through whispers and hushed voices. He had followed these stories, about the horror that followed the figure like a dark storm. With lightening like quick fire, your death was you’re history. But he was always seconds too late, for the figure had crossed lakes and oceans leaving its blood stained footsteps in the mud. He was old, but not a fool. He understood that he could never atone for this simple mistake, for cheating the grim reaper with a careless wave of his arm. But as his head reached the soft creases of the pillow he held the figure, and surrendered. Death took him in his sleep. Peaceful, and soft with delicate fingers and gentle arms.