LE MASQUE VIDE (THE EMPTY MASK)

When we lived as kids by the sea, my sister and I found a body washed ashore. She thought that we had found a mermaid and immediately felt sad and horrified about it; I, older and wiser, realized that what we had found was a dead fisherman. His beard looked like seaweed, he had no eyes and lacked some limbs.

First, we agreed to leave him there; we were no one to decide on what the sea had decreed. But soon we understood that rotting under the sun and becoming food for the seagulls was not a fair ending to what probably had been a life of bravery and courage, so we moved him among the rocks and covered his head with a shelter made of planks and ropes.

My sister thought that he needed some eyes and she filled the scary holes that led to his long gone brain with branches of lilies, small blots of blue and violet.

Our life went on and we forgot about the seaman. There were long days of light, rain and storm. My sister grew up and became a woman; me, I don't know very well what I ended up being.

One day I returned to that beach and found it very different. I visited the rocks where he rested: he didn't look like a fisherman anymore. A sense of apathy and ennui filled by heart. Upon my head, a flock of birds flew in circles chasing each other.

#ShortFiction