I actually wrote this piece last week but didn’t finish it in time for Friday, so I decided to keep it for this week. It was inspired by another prompt from the Storytelling Collective’s Flash Fiction February, namely this Tolkien quote: “We are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”
This brought to mind some kind of ancient, powerful, orating being, so here is what I came up with:
Wrong Channel
“We are endless. We are timeless. We are the beginning and the end. We are not bound b-” The Glowing Glorious One stopped, their usual introduction halted by the look of utter puzzlement on the face of the teenager staring at them in the mirror. “What?”
“A-” the youngster said, slowly finding their tongue. “Are you Bloody Mary?”
The Glowing Glorious One sighed, a slow, tired sound like a mountain exhaling. “No, small one. I am not, in fact, Bloody Mary.” They gestured vaguely to their luminous form, hoping the general lack of crimson in their appearance would underline their words.
“Oh.”
“Listen…” they said, all-seeing eyes scanning the middle class bathroom. This was hardly the first time this had happened, and they could immediately see what had gone wrong. “Don’t complicate things so much. Lose the insence and the incantation, and extinguish the candles before the shower curtain catches fire. Just lock the door, turn off the light and say her name 13 times. You got it?”
“G-got it!” The youth said with that mixture of unsureness and confidence that only someone that age could manage.
“I swear, you lot get worse at passing on instructions with each generation, with your books and your internet, all tempting you to elaborate. If you don’t start valuing a strong oral tradition again soon, you’re going to start an apocalypse. Understand?”
“Sh-sure.”
The Glowing Glorious One sighed again, and the next moment they were gone.
On the other side of the mirror, the teenager extinguished the candles, snuffed out the incense and thought maybe they’d be better off spending the evening playing Minecraft.