Flash Fiction: Sleepwalker

By: Emma Lou Pike

There are mushrooms growing in a circle around the dead duck in the park. I imagined her sitting peacefully under the old willow tree when Mother Nature decided to bring her feathered daughter back home. Years of swimming on the peaceful lake had left her calm and happy to say goodbye to this part of her journey, and the toadstool altar grew up around her duck body as the white, wide tops of the mushrooms built a shelter for the ceremony of her soul. 

I don’t know what I imagined when I found the man. From a distance, I could see him lying on the bench on the hill. The bench I used to go to when things were too much at home. Walking up the hill towards him I’d thought he had been drinking cider and enjoying the view of the city from this perched perspective, as I frequently did, and that he’d fallen asleep in the Sunday afternoon sun. I’d thought I might go and gently nudge him awake so he didn’t get sunburnt. I’d thought maybe we’d talk about some irrelevant and careless thing and each go on our way with smiles on our faces. 

The knot in the pit of my stomach that still brings a numbing shake to my hands began when I was close enough to take in the full situation. One hand clasped a letter to his chest, the other draped along the grass, the fingers sprawled lightly touching the empty bottle that had fallen down, and the look in his open eyes that matched the silvered clouds above. All drawing the conclusion we would never have the carefree conversation of two strangers on a sunny afternoon. 

The letter addressed to his lover and wife and children was twice touched by tears that day, and I prayed to Mother Nature to take him gently, as she takes back all things. 

Visiting the scene a second time, and approaching the hill, I didn’t walk alone. This time I walked in step with my new friend and guide Mimi Schiele. It was on her advice that I had returned to change the outcome, and so the course of many other things.

It was still dawn when we arrived, still dark and the grass under our feet still glistened with morning dew. We traveled barefoot since there is nothing more depraved than wearing socks whilst sleeping.