Author: Sheila Murdock
Location: San Diego, California
Sheila Murdock has dabbled in journalism, firewalking, surfing, medical transcription, Feng Shui, organic gardening, and free-form cupcake baking. Having left a career as an administrator and manager in California’s biotechnology industry, she is now where she desires most to be: at home in San Diego raising her offspring and leading a vegan lifestyle. She is also a freelance copy editor, writer and marketer. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in
Bewildering Stories, Cynic Online Magazine and
From the Asylum. In addition, she's an associate editor for
Newmyths.com, a science fiction and fantasy e-zine.
Five Blinks of a Life is loosely based on the execution by guillotine of Charlotte Corday during the French Terror.
Five Blinks of a Life
Blink.
Lavender and jasmine scented the afternoon air in our small dwelling.
Dust motes floated in the sunshine coming through the window, a
procession of miniscule dots. They drifted back and forth across my
sleepy eyes in time with the rhythm of Mother's rocking, and the silky
warmth of her breast lulled me to dream.
Blink.
Father's heavy hand and drunken breath awoke fear. The adrenaline
pumping through my limbs propelled me out into the city to seek solace
and safety. Streets teemed with the stench of ripe bodies, animals and
waste; a mass of seeming confusion, but all had a direction. My
destination was the creaking, wooden stage of the old theater and the
thunderous applause of an audience.
Blink.
The morning rays shone tepid in the winter sky above the waking city.
Light sharpened the lines of the stone buildings and warmed the bodies
assembled in the cobblestone plaza. I heard a loud, sleek whistle
travel through the air, or was it the collective gasp of the audience?
I felt a sudden, painless jolt.
Blink.
Large fingers entwined with my dark tresses to turn my head and my
memories back.
My benefactor's eyes, once sharp with purpose, were shrouded with pain
and death as the six-inch blade sat sheathed in his mottled chest and
ambitious heart. My ruby scarf mingled with his blood and his
bathwater. I waited for his life to seep from the edges of the blade
to form spiraling red ribbons upon the liquid surface. It had not
taken long for his minions to arrive and restrain me.
Now, the large fingers hold my head near. It is a stranger. My
confused eyes dart behind him to a gleaming steel structure which
frames his torso. The French Madame is his prostitute, the Scots
Maiden his equalizer, and power and authority are his motivation. The
stench of the stranger's breath invades my nostrils. His snideness
tightens his merciless fingers still in my hair as he turns me to the
plaza crowd.
Aloft, I see that I am on stage and treated to familiar cheers from a
field of many earnest faces. As always, I smile at an enthusiastic
audience and my anxieties subside.
I blink once more before the applauding crowd begins to fade into the
blackness of a dark history. The curtains of my eyes descend to close
on my precious, fleeting memories. My lids shield my mind from the
sight of my peers whose bodiless heads share my fate in a red woven
basket.
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