sea phantom
Chiara coughed. Then inhaled. Dust and a strange, metallic smell. Her ears felt like cotton. She couldn’t hear anything around her. Her eyes were shut and she dreaded opening them.
She moved her hands. Sharp things grated her palms. Something slimy and thick covered them and she really didn’t want to give it a name. A heavy burden pressed down on her back.
A dull sound, li the water moving under the surface of the sea, awakened in her ears. She forced her eyes open. Her elbows propped on the ground. All the fingers spread out, she pressed her hands on the tiled floor among debris and cracks, shards of glass and fine grey dust. It was cold. Why was it so cold in the theatre? And someone was screaming. Why would someone scream?
She twisted her body and she felt – she heard – chairs collapsing on one side. More dust drifted. She propped her chest up and called her knees to her, feeling her legs grate on the shards on the ground and her silk stockings rip against the splintered wood.
She saw the hand beside her.
Someone was shouting, “Help! For God’s sake, help!”
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Protagonist of Ghosts Through the Cracks
It’s the weirdest of things, thinking about that life now. It feels like a dream, a sweet dream, sometimes. But so far away, I’m not even sure it was ever my life. I know it will never be again.
I was born in the Dragon Backbone Mountains in the south of China, in what I used to think of as a village, and I now would call a group of huts among the rice paddy fields. It was a beautiful place. I knew it even then. I remember the sun on the liquid terraces, the mists before the sun rose. The sweet summers. I do have many nice memories of my birthplace.