Printed from WriteWords - http://www.writewords.org.uk/archive/19437.asp

The Legacy

by  tusker

Posted: Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Word Count: 307
Summary: Cheated a bit. This is a part of a 3,000 words story.




Before he threw himself off Devil's Rock, Sadie's father sent her a note asking for forgiveness. Now she is back in their holiday chalet; a chalet full of childhood memories.
'Damn you!' Sadie screams above the roar of a howling wind and raging sea, outside. 'Damn you!' she screams again, hurling an empty bottle of red wine at a boarded up window.
Suddenly, the chalet door blows open. Spinning around, half-expecting him to enter, a candle wobbles in the fierce draught and it topples down from the parafin heater to the floor. Then a single flame snakes out to play with the fringes of an old armchair sending little darts of fire scurrying.
The wooden chalet creaks and the swinging door crashes back and forth against a Formica table as the wind's breath strokes her cheeks like an anxious caress.
Walking over to the door, Sadie lifts her face up to the wind and seaspray remembering her father once saying as they piled driftwood onto a bonfire, 'Fire is a cleanser, Sadie.' And she recalls him on another occasion telling her as he bathed her cut toe with a handful of seaweed and seawater that salt was nature's great healer.
FIRE. SALT. Now his words are imprinted on her mind. They dip, dive across her vision. FIRE. SALT. The sea heaves like a mass of black treacle and darkness spreads outwards without any trace of an horizon. A hand seems to push her outside and as she stumbles over pebbles away from the chalet, her father's words dance and writhe on top of crashing waves, before her.
Now icy water buffets her bare feet and legs. Now its leaping up to her thighs and raising her arms above her head, letting salt water batter her body, she watches her father's chalet explode into a ball of fire.