The Collector

When she was a child, she had a kaleidoscope. It split the world into fragments, of shape and light. A magical world in a wooden tube, broken and remade again, only the rules were different. Disjointed objects halved, quartered, with no ends and mirrored into infinity. There was a pattern hiding in it, a game to tease out and trace in her mind.

It was as if the tube had inverted itself around her now because she saw a jumble of bright lights and geometry but there was no sense to it all. Her mind was numb, like her body, curled like a comma, delicately on the unforgiving sidewalk. Sometimes her vision blurred with dark shapes that came close and went again, leaving behind a muffled clinking of metal. She understood dimly that she was something to be pitied, would have pitied herself once. But the past was a long way from now.

T-dkt t-dkt… the smell of rain arrived first. It was fresh, devoid of the scent of human bodies and waste. A gentle spray on the skin. The delicate sensation was a shock to a body that had been frozen for some time. Time itself, frozen. A sigh, finally, relief…

A shadow approached, hovered over the little corpse. It shifted as the owner moved around slowly, assessing the goods. A deadly chill had settled after the rain. There were no sounds. The frozen moment dragged on –

An onlooker would have seen a solitary figure, tall and crooked like a cane, but there must have been something else there too, invisible to the human eye. It was a silent one-man show. A terse turn of the head… a drawing up of the shoulders. Finally a single, slow nod. One slender hand extended and held the cold unfeeling face. A dry voice said:

“What is your name?”

The words rang out in the still gloom, like a deadened bell. The soul struggled away from the command to life but the mind was eager to serve, still. A word floated up treacherously.

Amouel.

She felt the surge of life as her heart beat in defiance. Too late. Tethered again. She shut her eyes but there was no escape from the lights dancing beneath the lids. It was a river of light now, the life source itself. What was her name? It was lost. She was… adrift. She was found. She was nobody.

“You will be somebody. Come”

She found herself moving. It was slow and painful, the unfamiliar solidity of her body a burden. She felt heavy and weary with years. But there it was ahead disappearing into the fog. A future, hers, pulling her forward. She followed.