Through the Circle

Written by Monika Terezia Biro
Edited for FalWriting by Tabby Smith

‘Local woman disappears’. 

    Christine read the headline and sighed. She felt sad for the woman’s family, yet worried for all the trouble it caused the town. Every now and then, someone disappeared, and every time, tourism dropped. Christine needed the tourists to make a living. It wasn't what she wanted to do, selling trinkets and whatnot, but what she wanted was long gone.

    As she started reading, a couple of customers came in. They browsed without really looking. Figures, window shoppers. Christine sighed again, resuming her reading. The woman had been out in the park in the middle of town when she disappeared, which in itself was strange. The park was very small, surrounded by shops and restaurants on all sides. Someone should have seen something.

    “I heard it was a fairy ring,” one of the customers said. Christine looked up. Had she spoken out loud? But they kept talking among themselves, slowly browsing the aisles.

    “Do you believe that?” the other one snorted.

    “Where else could she have gone?”

    “I don’t know. But do you really think a circle of toadstools made her disappear?”    Christine had heard of that story many times before. Fairy rings, when or where you crossed them, could make you disappear from this realm into theirs. And, well, Christine didn’t know what happened to those that did. Did they die? Get eaten? Sacrificed? She had no idea. Though it made her think of something else.

    Once every two and a half years, in a cloudless sky, a ‘blue moon’ appeared. People claimed that if you, on this particular night, walked out of the door with your left foot leading, while keeping your eyes locked on the moon, your wishes came true.

    It was almost closing time and there had only been a handful of customers all day. Christine inhaled, puffed up her cheeks and then slowly released her breath. Time to go home to do nothing, talk to no one and start all over again. Sometimes she wished she’d disappear. No one would notice.

    Christine locked up the store, put her left foot before the other, gazed toward the moon and walked on. It was a perfectly crisp night, stars shone with the full moon on the rise. She soon found herself in the middle of the park, where the trees grew most dense. In there, she saw a small clearing. 

    She gasped. An actual fairy ring! Toadstools marked a perfect circle in the midst of the clearing, lit by the moon. Christine hadn't felt this excited in years. She might actually disappear!

    She smiled thinking of tomorrow's headline and without hesitation, she stepped into the circle…

…and fell down an old, hidden well. A sickening sound of bones breaking, as her skull smashed into the walls. The stench of a decomposing body engulfed her.

     Christine was acutely aware of her imminent demise. Limbs, spine and neck bent in impossible ways, warm, sticky blood smeared her face. She felt the other body under her, as well as the cold, soggy bottom of the well. Yet, there wasn’t any pain. Was she in shock? Or had she injured her spinal cords? Christine prayed for the latter.

     She had wished to disappear and had gotten it granted. Christine had felt alone in life, always the outsider. Though in Death’s embrace she somehow felt at home, safe. As if every choice had led her right here, to this moment.

    It would take days for her to die. Months before they were found. 

    At least she wouldn't be alone.