The Newspaper cafe

Is this not the face of an old woman you see before you, wrinkled, and jaundiced by age, mapped by ugly blue veins of bulging rivers, wriggling across parchment dry skin; my eyes once the Azure blue of the calmest ocean, now restless and cloudy. I pull a strand of hair away from my face, strands of old rope unraveled, where once as dark as a raven’s, now snowy white like the owl; and as the owl I walk in my mind, endlessly pacing the room seeking escape.
I sigh and look into the mirror it sighs before me, look deeper, it calls out, beyond all vanities; yet I see nothing anymore, it seems as if all hope has disappeared and cast me into this solitude of newspaper.
Company is a little short here, only the letters gracing the walls are my companions, letters of different sizes randomly placed by their constant movement; though these actions leave spaces in the walls, and create piles of dust that cause me to sneeze a lot.
They too are getting old; their inky black shapes have now faded and few have even disappeared. Some letters remain resolute in their staying together, Foreign Correspondent being one of them, a very dear old friend, bold and traditional.
Oh, the conversations we had on travel and people he had met, the famous and the infamous, such a hoot always jumping around making silly noises, imitating government officials and giving speeches at great length on life’s idiosyncrasy’s; but now only his space remains, unfilled, mourned by us all. The other letters creep past his empty space,
Myself, I cannot bear to look at that wall anymore.
Little Billy sits with me, curled up on my lap, he thinks he’s a cat; of course it’s hard to tell with the letters, he is made from a collection of letters that end in Y, which I admit does have a tail, which he likes to curl tightly around my arm, like an anchor, safe, I know how he feels.
Danger, on the other hand is quite exasperating with his constant whistling, and acts of crazy bravado and of course there’s the Columns, who now stand silent; they ran out of things to say some time ago, though on occasion they will huff or sigh with great indifference; when I read to Billy, ashamed I think for there is nothing new to put in them anymore. Roman and Italic still constantly bicker and probably always will. Sadly the Heading went mad some time ago. There is no time here, so it is very difficult to say when things actually happened.
I look through one of the spaces in my paper walls and see into the café below, it is very busy, lots of people talking and sipping Tea out of fancy blue china cups. Each table is covered with starched white tablecloths, laden with stands full of cakes. Oh, such sweet delicacies, how my mouth waters with imagined tastes. Cup cake’s in candy stripped colours, Sponge cakes dripping with Lemon icing, Marble cakes, swirling with yellows and browns, Macaroons, so sweet you can almost taste the almonds. On top of the counter proudly sits a rich dark chocolate cake, made from my recipe—I cannot look for too long else I shall start to cry and my friends the letters will get wet.
She looks up sees me looking. Her black eyes stare, cold, frozen; they hide such cruelty, cruelty beyond words. She knows I watch, I can do nothing else.
She waits also; she knows it won’t be long. I look down at the other pictures hanging upon the café walls, they watch too, ever hopeful for a release from their prisons. Some I think are new; they look puzzled, wrinkles forming under the glass, while others stare blankly, they have lost all hope.
It is my magic that gave her this power, but there is too much darkness inside her, it should never have been so.
She walks over and puts a finger against the small hole, I can feel her breath upon me as she whispers, not long now old woman.
The letters beside me are nervous, they fear her, but as she turns her back, they begin to talk, scared, yet defiant, they refuse to be silent, Danger has a plan, a very dangerous plan, but what is there to lose?
Stay, as we are, prisoners trapped inside by her magic, disintegrating with each day, slowly turning to dust. I hum a tune to soothe my mind, a song of old magic, sung by the old ones in the French quarters of New Orleans, its origins lost to the swamps. Danger is right, it is now or never, with a practiced ease, I start to assemble the letters into words, new words cutting them carefully from the walls, to create a recipe, ironically the same recipe that put us all in here. It is time now for her to taste her own cake!
With each word that I make spaces appear in the walls around me, it is dangerous, for our world is fast disappearing, I must work quickly.
Butter, Flour, sweet Woodruff, four eggs, I look for the number 4 to save letters, Vanilla, Cinnamon, Chilli, Sonniferium 6 drops only, Nutmeg, Essence of Digitalis 2 drops, Coneion, pure dark Cocoa from Mexico, cream to bind well and Hemlock, this last ingredient will ensure we land safely when we fall from the picture.
As the last word falls into place, we hold onto each other and start to dance, slowly at first, getting faster, faster, twirling around and around, like the Whirling Dervishes, spinning round and round, so fast we become dizzy, dizzy with our freedom or doomed to our deaths. The momentum and power of our spinning makes us fall crashing onto the café floor down below shards of glass fly everywhere, some of us don’t make it, dust and torn fragments fill the air. Some one in the café screams, everyone stops for a second, suspended in time, a Teacup is dropped in the silence, the crash of fine porcelain cuts into the moment and suddenly people resume again their sounds as if nothing had happened, barely a ripple in the motion of time. She walks over to where the picture lays, puzzled she bends down to look at the pieces, seizing my chance; I jump up and push the recipe into her mouth, chanting the words, epeicer, epeicer, over and over again. As the paper fills her mouth, clinging to her tongue, she tries to scream, clawing with her long Red nails trying to tear the paper out; too late the deed is done, the poison is released into her blood.
Finally we are free; my daughter is no more, consumed by her own contempt, and corruption, I have trapped her, she can no longer hurt anyone; her days will be spent watching as I have done for so many years. I shall free the others.
There is a new sign now hanging outside the shop, it reads, “For Sale”.
The wind has changed, my life is over, it is time for a new beginning; and so I pack a small battered suitcase, such few scant belongings as I possess, my only real treasure is the book I now hold over an open fire. Inside these velum pages are my life, my thoughts, my spells, my mind; it is to powerful to leave behind, as my daughter found out, when she took it from me all those years ago, so many years wasted. There are some things in this world that should never be taken, and the pages of this book are no exception. Carefully I place the book into the fire and say a spell to close the final chapter. As the heat catches, the book, Billy and me disappear into the wind.

Word Count 1324