BY Sara Dobbie
At the bottom of the well I have all the time in the world. Damp, mossy stones circle their way to the sky, a tiny sphere of distant light. The atmosphere up there is warm and sunny and filled with birds, but the air cools by degrees as it descends deeper into the earth, as if it is frightened, as though it knows it shouldn’t be circulating this far down. I think and I dream. I sleep. I am not buried, I am not trapped; I am hiding.
Sometimes, the stars send down spider silk threads with messages attached on thin slips of parchment. Fortune cookie predictions, like you are admired by your peers, or good things are just around the corner. I lick the back of the tiny papers and stick them to the wall, an ever-growing collage of unlikely futures.
This morning in the small hours before dawn I receive a new message. Come up, it says. So I unpack my extra-extendable ladder and climb three hundred rungs to peek out at the world. Two cats perch on the wall of my well, one black and one white. Still as statues, they stare at me like gargoyles protecting a hallowed entrance. I ask them if I am coming or going, if I am ascending or descending. They don’t answer but hop lightly onto the grass in unison and trot toward the mouth of a nearby cave. I know they want me to follow, so for the first time in many months I lift my legs over the side of my well and tiptoe through the darkness like a shadow.
In the cave, brightly painted images cover the smooth rock wall. I see myself crudely drawn, my family and my friends. The time I sat under the lilac bush hoping to see a grasshopper with a friend from down the street. The time my sister lent me her wide red belt to wear to the school dance. I turn to leave, angry at the audacity of the cats, but they hiss and block the exit. I pore over the pictures, caught up in bittersweet nostalgia. I shut my eyes tight to stop seeing and when I open them I notice a wooden door. I step through the arch and wend my way up and down and around an endless staircase.
I become exhausted and sit down, causing the air to bend and reconfigure. The room is now warm and cozy, and I am no longer alone. A figure sits in an armchair, the body of both man and woman, the head of a goat, and great wings like an eagle. It tells me in an unknown language that I am wasting away, that I am wasting my time. I do understand, I say, that there is goodness, but there is also an infinity of badness. It laughs at me and says sink or swim the choice is yours. I climb onto its lap and rest my head against its chest. We don’t speak to each other anymore, preferring the kinship of silence over the monotony of words. We fall asleep and dream together of another planet drenched in swirling oceans where thousands of people are sinking or swimming.
When I awake I am back in the bottom of my well, my hair and clothing soaking wet. My extra-extendable ladder leans firmly where I left it, mutely projecting myriad potentials. I decide, after some consideration, not to pack it away anymore, but rather to leave it where it stands, as a possibility, or maybe, as a fore drawn conclusion.
Sara Dobbie is a Canadian writer from Southern Ontario. Her stories have appeared in Milk Candy Review, Fictive Dream, JMWW, Sage Cigarettes, New World Writing, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Ruminate Online, Trampset, Ellipsis Zine, and elsewhere. Her chapbook "Static Disruption" is available from Alien Buddha Press. Her collection "Flight Instinct" is available from ELJ Editions. Follow her on Twitter @sbdobbie, and on Instagram at @sbdobwrites.