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Psychological Symbolist Fiction
The moment was a cardinal taking flight off her patio.
A brief flutter of red, then gone. Then nothing but the silence left behind. The anticipation of another visit.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe not.
The mood was heavy without the visitor. The rain dragged it down as it fell. The light was weak, dim even. Not the light of a bright day threaded with possibilities, but the light of a stale, closed lid.
Her hands were pale, making circles of salt on the breakfast table. Her food grew cold beside her, untouched. Her coffee eased into death’s embrace.
The circles were important.
They were saying something important; she just couldn’t remember what. But her hands knew what to do, how to guide the granules of white into the shape that kept pressing into her mind.
If I make it real, it will leave my mind. If I externalize it, it won’t haunt me anymore. I’ll weaken its hold.
But what kind of hold can a circle have over someone? It was just a shape, after all. Just a simple shape.
Her mind projected it endlessly, like a glowing sea.
It drank every other thought—pulled it inside like a hungry current.
She dreamt about circles. She saw them everywhere.
In puddles as the rain struck. In signs as she drove past. In the rings her coffee cup left behind.
Even in the sound of wind as it passed through hollows.
She couldn’t tell where she started and where the circle started—maybe she was part of it’s pattern?
The worst part was the moon, its soft glow the deepest betrayal because it drew her attention each night.
And the sun? That circle burned its shape into her mind through squinting eyes.
It became a wall, two walls—then four. The inevitability of it hugged her, squeezed a little.
Her breath dragged.
The circle was a ghost, and the ghost was a door.
I love how this uses symbols in such an evocative, almost obsessive way. The text goes especially well with the image of blood on a snowy white circle - a winter that feels both eternal and already tarnished.