July 2024: Elephant in the Room – Ellen Clarke
Elephant in the Room
“What’s that doing in here?”
Marcus turned, saw nothing but the same tired sideboard that had sat against the wall as long as he’d lived in the house. He looked back at Shaun, eyebrows raised in a way that said you’re daft, there’s nothing there.
“You don’t see anything.”
“Nothing to see. Could at least have picked the wall with a window in it.” Marcus gestured to the other wall, the windowed wall, the field outside the house with grass tall as a man waving in the wind.
“Storm’s coming,” said Shaun. “Maybe that’s why it’s in here. Like ants, knows it’ll rain.”
This time Marcus spoke his earlier thoughts aloud. “Mad, you are. There’s nothing there.”
Shaun got up from the floor where he’d been flopped like a dropped doll, one leg up on the sagging couch. He stopped in front of the sideboard, looked up and spoke to the empty air. “Oi,” he said. “Pick me up. Mind me head on the ceiling.”
Marcus rolled his eyes and looked away, out the window at the lowering clouds. When he looked back, Shaun was recumbent in midair, smug and full of wonder. He laughed at Marcus’s slack mouthed shock.
In slow motion, Marcus unwound himself from the recliner and walked, hands out in front, towards where Shaun hung in the air. He reached up to wave his hand around Shaun’s body like he was feeling for the strings that had to be holding him up there. He met no resistance.
“That’s the difference between you and me,” said Shaun from up near the ceiling. “You’ve never been willing to look at the things you don’t want to see.”
Marcus had a scowl on his face, hands still searching for wires. “That’s bullshit. What are you seeing that makes you able to fly?” He grabbed Shaun’s foot and pulled, but whatever was holding him up held fast.
“Freedom, it is. Seeing what’s really there.”
“It’s not freedom, it’s delusion. There’s nothing there.”
Shaun laughed down into Marcus’s frown. “I deluded myself up here? I’m a sorcerer. Messing with your mind, man.”
Marcus bunched his hands into fists. “Come down,” he said. “Stop messing around.”
“Makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Refusing to see,” said Shaun, leaning back on emptiness. “What if I don’t come down?”
“Ah, get out,” said Marcus. “Get out of my house, I can’t with you.”
Shaun laughed again, slapped his hand with a thwack on the invisible surface beneath him. “You heard the man,” he said. “Time to go. Greener pastures, and all that.”
Shaun spun in the air, never quite hitting the ceiling, until he was lying flat on his belly up there, spreadeagle. The floor shook, and shook again, and the house protested as the wall with the window splintered and gave way. The tall grass flattened as something unseen passed through it, into the oncoming storm.
Marcus stood at the wreckage of his loungeroom wall, listening to Shaun’s laughter, blown back on the wind.
Ellen Clarke
Right Left Write’s July prompt was Magical Realism.
Find out more about Right Left Write at www.queenslandwriters.org.au/rightleftwrite.
The competition’s August genre prompt is Action/Adventure.
Right Left Write’s July prompt was Magical Realism.