welcome to fractals. a new section of my newsletter, Kaleidoscope, where I share fictional retellings of past life memories and future life possibilities. A creative and self-alchemical practice. Each is a threshold to more love, desire, and self-resurrection.
Sometimes, the greatest lessons happen when the heart cracks open.
PROLOGUE
Her breath pounded through her chest. Ragged shards of hope now broken, slicing up her vocal chords. Panic curled in the soles of her feet. She was in a breakneck sprint. Feet slapping bare on the mirrored marble floor. It was like slipping ice but the frigid bite of her toes barely registered as she ran in what felt like a race for her life.
She had enough wits about her to recognize she was in a never ending hallway lined with door after door. Each spaced out at different distances. Each a different size, a different texture, and a different shape. One looked wind-bitten and worn with faded swirls carved into it that seemed to move and shift as her eyes darted across the intricate patterns. Another was midnight black, so dark it sucked in every single drop of light around it. A metal angular handle protruded out of the smooth paneling. The door was daunting, enticing, and repelling. Her eyes darted to another door that seemed to shudder with every single one of her ricocheting footsteps, as if the pace of her feet was creating a wind tunnel and the door rattled in response. Holding her out. Trapping something forbidden inside. If she’d had more wits about her, enough to pause and think and consider, she would’ve acknowledged that there was a sound coming from behind the door. A chanting, a calling, a whisper of haunting howled song. But she didn’t. She pushed her legs faster.
She didn’t know why she was running. She didn’t know who or what or where she was running from. In all honesty, she wasn’t even sure she knew her own name. But there was not an ounce of time to stop and ponder that calamity, this preposterous and crushing conundrum she’d found her self in. She knew from somewhere deep within herself that no matter what she could not stop this death-rattling sprint. She had to keep moving her legs even though they felt foreign connected to her hips.
Then, she felt a hot breath of air at her neck. A tinge of sulfuric rage singed the wisps of hair that grew at the base of her head and set the rest erect. Oh god. She heard a hiss. Faster. She had to move faster. It was catching up to her and her feet were flying, her legs pumping faster than she knew they could move. It wasn’t enough. Her arms whipped about her body dangerously, as if they were trying to move the very air out of her way. Push. She had to push. Her breath was heaving in a frantic rhythm. A folktale she’d forgotten. A myth she wished she had time to remember.
