Red String
By: Amy Weed
Watching the world from my chair in air, gets boring easily, as my boss never lets me do anything but watch the humans
below. So I sneak off often and float down.
A white robe flutters around me; a string of flowers in my hair. I hover behind brick buildings I’d only even seen to observe the humans closer. But they don’t seem to notice my floating up above the pavement.
They all look a bit different: tall, short, slim, chubby, blue eye, brown eye, green eyes, hair of all types of density; all so
different looking, and yet the same.
Longhaired and small, is the one that draws my eye.
I follow.
The creature stops often in its walk, speaking to others, and walks a ways with a few as it collects more humans around
it.
Curiosity floods me: a touch would tell if the creature is air or solid, I had always thought myself as air, maybe I my hand
would breeze by, maybe not.
My fingers reach, and send a ripple through the human, though it did not seem to notice otherwise my presence.
Then lines, strings, come off in droves from it, spreading out, connecting to some around it, and other strings went for
miles and places I couldn’t see.
One human next to it connects by a thick yellow string, another a frailer yellow one. A black rope spans the length of
the street to the owner end standing in front of a show.
A strange one, a deep crimson string, thick like a rope is pulled taunt and straight it goes off in a single direction. I touch
it and I could tell the distance, dozens of miles away.
I take the string in hand; it hums in my hands and breath warmth into me. I tug, the human’s left hand jerks: the string
was linked to the ring finger.
I had to know who was on other end,
I follow and follow and follow, slowly father away from my chair on air.
Along the way, it transforms into a thick red chain, and it continues on till I my chair is but a whips’ of memory in my
mind.
The end came quickly; it linked to a creature with short hair and a larger build. The chain hugged his left ring finger, the
chain weighing down the rest of the body.
The human laid on a cushy thing, not as soft as my chair on air, and blows air out long and soft. It stared out a small
window into the bright sunlight.
I tug at the chain, what was this meat sack doing here, when it obviously did not want to be?
The creature does nothing, and I tug harder, pulling with all the might I could muster, and at last the human stirs, looking