She lowers herself into a magenta sofa, her favourite spot.
White-framed windows cast shafts of light and shade on her memories.
She has a visitor, a neighbour for tea.
Around the room, bulbous green glass fish, tawny wooden ducks and papier-mâché angels provide the backdrop to her opening scene. Mounds of multi-coloured bowls and crystal glasses covet the precious shelf inches in her attic room. They share her story.
“Where to start, my dear, where to start.”
Tucked under the ceiling slope, a multi-coloured throw. She remembers the evening when the large tapestry was presented to her by her fellow thespians. Its tassels tickle the floor now, teasing the faded woven rugs.
Her twisting ferns challenge the nourishing light, stretching, reaching higher. Wasn’t that the point of everything? Reaching, striving. She had danced, sung, loved it all. The attention, the applause, the accolades, the reviews. She had been a star.
The mahogany sideboard lays stage for a porcelain pig, two smiling cows, a red robin, and a black cat, surrounded by her collection of sepia photographs.
Was that her, resplendent in yellow?
“My dear, let me tell you about that evening.”
She remembers, with uncanny detail, individual stage positions, backdrops, every partner, the musical scores, the orchestras, even the stagehands.
Distressed wooden picture frames encase terrier triplets, sleeping sheep, horses in shade. Animals put out to pasture. It happens to us all, she muses. Just last year, her final curtain-call, her last encore; the stage doors had closed behind her for the last time.
Daylight tangles with the soft lamplight, illuminating her memories. Her story slows to an end – her not-so-still life at the top of No. 6.
She closes her azure eyes to her imaginary friend, and exits like a star, quietly, but with flair.
Published by Ad Hoc Fiction – Flash Fiction Festival Anthology Volume 5 – August 2022
