Tontine

In which Giselle keeps a long-held promise

Image created on Midjourney

The envelope, when it appeared, should not have taken me by surprise, yet somehow it did. It lay, perfectly centered, on the table before me, taunting me as I drank my morning coffee.

It bore no stamp. No return address. Yet I knew from whence—from whom—it had come. A single word adorned the creamy paper surface, written in an elegant hand I had once known so well.

Giselle

My name.

No, I should not have been surprised. I was, after all, the youngest of our cadre. The most likely to survive. We had all known it would eventually come to me.

I told myself the chill of my skin was due to the cooling fall temperatures, though it was warm in my house.

My eyes shifted restlessly from the envelope. I rose from the table and began to retreat, not turning my back on it. It was a futile effort, for the envelope followed me, hovering in the air before me.

“Coward,” it silently accused.

I did not want to drink from this cup but knew I must. I touched a finger to my name and the envelope transformed into a single sheet of onion-skin paper, again displaying a single, centered word.

Drink

A vial appeared in my hand. I did not want to drink, but the vial and its contents emanated impatience. The moment it touched my lips, the full power of the being whose essence it bore coursed through my veins. As I rose to my destiny, my house, the Earth, its solar system and galaxy—the universe itself—collapsed, slamming into me in an instant. In an eternity.

I bowed to my fate, bereft and alone, now reduced to the promise of an explosion that would in a far-flung future begin the universe anew.

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This story germinated over a full week from a contest prompt from Fractured Lit :

For this challenge, we want stories based on the theme of "Covenants". We want writers to tell us stories of promises, of maybes and never going to happen, to making and breaking vows, to doing our best and still making mistakes. Consider new ways of putting your characters into situations where they make and break promises, where they learn something about themselves in counterpointed situations and experiences.

I like taking prompts from contests, though I don’t enter, as most have fees I can’t afford. I hope you like my take on this one.

I very much wish that Substack would introduce the ability to center text. I wanted to have the words “Giselle” and “Drink” centered on the page. Maybe some day.