Plot Twist Challenge: "Ripples"-- Abigail Leskey

Ripples

By Abigail Leskey

(Plot Twist: Post-Apocalyptic Society—but they’re stuck in a time loop)

In the kingdom of Donegal in the year 2118,  Sisi Moore was carrying a large lambswool duster up the rough stairs of the belfry of St. Francis’s and wishing that one-thousand-seven-hundred-year-old churches had air-conditioned belfries.

Something buzzed frenetically in the green mug with white cats on it that sat on the windowsill to catch the rain that leaked in whenever the wind came from any direction save the east, and Sisi detoured to look into it. She bent over it, squinting (her glasses were in the confessional...she thought). She was a mirror image to Saint Francis in the window, she in her brown jumper, he in his brown habit.

One red ladybird floated in its back in two inches of rainwater, all six of its little legs wiggling. It floated in tiny circles or ripples, always moving, never escaping.. Sisi sighed. “Oh, aye, ladybird.” She bent to rub her arthritis-tortured knee, and then straightened suddenly as car after car drove into the small parking lot. The king was here early, and she had not dusted the top of the belfry yet. In order to get him to fund St. Francis’s restoration, it needed to look cared for, as it was. 

 Sisi was three steps up the stairs to the next landing when car doors began slamming, and she was six steps up them when a shot cracked so close to her that she dropped the duster to cover her ears.

In the parking lot below, the shot had gone into one of the King of Donegal’s ears and out the other, like the protests of the party to which his assassin belonged.

The news spread as quickly as his blood spread on the rubbly pavement. Before Sisi had reached the front door of the church, his heir knew he was king. Before Sisi had begun giving her ear-witness account to the Guard, his heir, a man with a formally diagnosed anxiety disorder, believed that the King had been assassinated by England and was in the grip of a panic attack.  Before Sisi was done giving her account, he had pressed a button for an option that had been too dangerous to test.

Sisi unlocked her third-hand taupe car and looked back over her shoulder at where men in uniforms were filling the parking lot and filling St. Francis’s. She hoped they wouldn’t track blood on the floor. God rest his soul. She had never expected the king to be assassinated. God rest his soul.

That mist coming from beyond the church looked as if it could be that very soul, low and dark grey. Rippling, it flooded the men in uniforms and they began coughing for life as if they were dying of whooping cough. They began to thud onto the pavement and Sisi ran, a round cleaning lady with a bad knee racing death.

            Her heart pounded, her knee stabbed, her chest hurt, her mind prayed, her mouth screamed.

            The mist caught her. She did not realize that dark grey was around her until she began to whoop for breath. She couldn’t breathe, she needed to run faster, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, she fell and—

           

***

Sisi was walking up the steps of St. Francis’s with no feather duster in her hand, knee hurting badly. Something was buzzing as loudly as she was panting. The air was clean and clear, and when she stumbled toward the window and looked out through one of St. Francis’s sheet-white hands, the parking lot was fogless and bloodless with no men in uniforms either standing or on the ground and no sign that the King had died there.

            The buzzing escalated, and Sisi looked down to see the ladybird trying to fly out of the water with wings that water tension had pasted down.

            Engines. Sisi looked up sharply and saw the king arriving, and her huge, bewildered eyes grew wider and more flummoxed, and then she laughed. “Fell asleep on my feet. What a dream. Now where’s my duster?” She limped back down the next flight of stairs, looking for it as car doors slammed.

            Her head jerked up and her heart seemed to stop as once again a shot snapped out.

Blood spread. News spread.

“This all happened before! Ten minutes ago!” Sisi screamed at a Guard, who shook his big head, covered in orange curls, and steered her toward an ambulance, “sure and she was in shock—”

The mist caught her sooner this time. The guard was bigger and stronger than she was, and fell a few moments later, across her; but she barely felt the thud, no air, no air--

***

Sisi was on the steps of St. Francis’s and after staring about wildly she ran up them, not caring if her knee was hurting. She’d seen things like this on television shows--events happening over and over. It must be because the king had been killed and that had made everyone die. Somehow. Was it connected? It must be connected.

She reached the landing, with the ladybird buzzing in the mug, and even in her panic bent to rub her knee. It hurt terribly. Why did the king keep coming? Didn’t he remember….

No, nobody remembered but her. The Guard hadn’t, the ambulance drivers hadn’t.

The car doors slammed just as Sisi sat down on the landing, her knee giving out from exertion and her brain from shock. If she was the only person who knew time kept repeating, there must be a reason for that.

The shot rang out as Sisi realized that she must be the person who could stop that shot.

“Ma’am? I asked you a question,” the Guard said later, blinking at her.

Her brain was whirling with thoughts. She had to find the assassin next time; from the sound and the area she’d seen the Guards investigate specially,  he must have been in the belfry or under it or near it—a lower landing? The ground floor?  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear it.”

The mist came again, and Sisi braced herself and gasped out her last breaths.

***

Sisi turned on the stairs and raced down them. Find the assassin and hit him with--with what? She grabbed her mop from beside the utility closet door when she reached the landing it was on, and raced on, gasping and nearly falling when her weight landed on her knee but still running. He was on none of the landings. The car doors slammed before Sisi reached the ground floor. She checked the last landing as the shot snapped out, above her. From one of the landings she had checked--or from one of the higher ones.

She ignored the shouts from the parking lot and ran up the stairs again. She couldn’t stop the assassination now. But if she could find the assassin--if she could find the assassin, she could stop it next time. She almost laughed. Sisi Moore looking for an assassin. She usually was looking for lost dusting cloths!

Up and up, past St. Francis, higher and higher, up under the bell—the buzzing ladybird, dust, and no assassin.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs below her, heavy ones of more than one person, and Sisi limped down toward them with a sigh. More questions. Suffocating again. What a day.

“Put your hands up! You’re under arrest.”

Sisi put her rough hands up and started laughing hysterically. “You think I killed him! What a day!”

She was still laughing when the mist slipped into the Guard car. The Guard driving her away panicked as they mist filled their noses and mouths, and as Sisi choked the car veered and flew off the side of a cliff, exploding.

***

            Sisi was on the stairs, not suffocating, and not on fire. She began scrambling up the stairs, automatically, and then turned and limped down them. She shouldn’t have tried to find the assassin. That had been stupid. No, she should just tell the king to get down. Or shield him. Or something. What a day.

She stood, shaking, in the parking lot as the cars drove in, waving them away frantically with both short arms. “There’s a plot! He’s going to be shot!” she screamed as car doors began to slam, but nobody heard her.

The King got out of his limousine, and Sisi ran unsteadily toward him, crying because her knee hurt and she was about to die to protect a bad man, her warnings incoherent and her white socks falling down.

The king’s guards closed around him to protect him from the disturbed individual, and as Sisi collapsed against one of them, the shot snapped out, quieter heard from here, and the king fell dead.

The fog came as Sisi was sobbing while she was asked how she had known the king would be killed.

***

            Sisi sat on the landing under the window of St. Francis, rubbing her knee and quietly crying. Looking for the assassin had been useless, warning the king had been useless, and her knee hurt too much to stand up now; she had fallen on the stairs and crawled up to the landing. This cycle would never end, and she would be the only one who knew that it was a cycle.

            Sisi rubbed tears off her cheeks and sighed as the ladybird buzzed. She should free it, poor thing. Not that it mattered, the world would end soon. But why not give it minutes in which it was not suffocating?

            Sisi couldn’t stand up, so she reached up for the mug. Her shaking hand knocked into it and it fell on its side on the floor, water and ladybird rippling out onto the wooden floor. The water puddled and drained into one of the cracks between boards, and as the car doors slammed the ladybird slowly walked onto dry wood, leaving a wet trail from its wings.

            A few landings down and right below, a woman with a gun stepped out of the utility closet, stared out of a half-opened window of St. Patrick and St. Francis disagreeing about a snake, and bit her lip as the king emerged from his limousine. She aimed her gun carefully, right at his head, and put her finger on the trigger.

            A drop of water struck her back at the second her finger pulled the trigger, and she twitched and then cursed as through the window she saw nobody fall.

            Sisi heard the shot snap, and sighed despairingly as the ladybird began to walk up the wall. But—the shouts outside were more trained, less dismayed.

Sisi grabbed the windowsill and pulled herself upright, and stared out inefficiently through St. Francis’s brown habit to see the King, alive and well, being driven out of the parking lot. “Whew,” she breathed, and bent to rub her knee and thank God.

The ladybird found a crack between the wall and the window frame, and crawled outside.