The Increasingly Transparent Girl - Chapter One
writing·@matthewstott·
0.000 HBDThe Increasingly Transparent Girl - Chapter One
<html> <center><p> <em><strong>Things live between awake and asleep. In the moment after your eyes grow too heavy to stay open, but before the dreams take you.</strong></em><em> </em></p></center> <center><h1><img src="http://i.imgur.com/6u4cg9Ql.jpg" width="600" height="222"/></h1></center> <center><h1><strong>The Increasingly Transparent Girl</strong></h1></center> <center><p><em><strong>by Matthew Stott</strong></em></p></center> <center><h1><strong>~Chapter One~</strong></h1></center> <p><br></p> <p><strong>Melody May</strong> knew something was not quite right when she noticed the fingers on her left hand were no longer there.</p> <p>She awoke to find herself curled in a ball under the giant twisted oak tree in Carsters Wood. Local legend had it that the tree had once stood tall and straight, until a young boy crept up behind it and called the tree by its real name. Caught off guard, the giant Oak had turned to answer. Quickly realising its mistake, the oak froze whilst still in that position and had remained in its new twisted shape ever since.</p> <p>Melody brushed off the crisp brown leaves that had gathered in a thin blanket over her, and blinked away the woozy feeling. It was now much darker than before. She must have slept for quite a while. Melody pulled off her gloves to pick the sleep from the corners of her eyes; it was then that she first noticed that the fingers were missing.</p> <p>To be slightly more accurate about the situation she found herself in that fresh Autumn afternoon, the fingers in question were still there, but they were no longer visible. By which I mean: they were invisible. She could feel them wiggling, and even clutch them in her other fully visible hand, but the fingers were now completely hidden from view.</p> <p>‘Well, now, that is very strange,’ said Melody to herself. Many children of her young age (and, let’s face it, most adults, too) would have acted in a much more panicked and demonstrative fashion to three of their fingers becoming transparent, would perhaps even have let out a scream or two and run red-faced in a little circle, flapping their arms like chickens, but Melody was not by nature a panicker.</p> <p>She placed one of her invisible fingers into her mouth and gave it a suck; it still tasted much the same, plus a little dirt from all the soil digging and fallen leaf swooshing. Next she gave it a sniff, but here, too, the finger passed her rigorous scientific analysis.</p> <p>When she had fallen asleep under the tree (after an awful lot of running, tree climbing, and leaf kicking) she had definitely had all of her fingers. Four on each hand and a thumb each to complete the set. She remembered her eyes drooping, then suddenly having the urge to check that she did indeed have all her fingers, before finally drifting off to sleep.</p> <p>The sound of leaves rustling to her left made Melody turn, but there was no one there. She thought she had seen a long shadow moving, just for the tiniest portion of a second. But by the time her eyes focussed, all that was to be seen were a few brown leaves twirling together in the air. Melody shrugged. The shadow, the disturbed leaves; probably a darting fox, or a badger in a rush.</p> <p>Melody turned her attention back to the mystery of her disappearing fingers. She thought it very likely her parents knew what was going on, as they were both not only adults but also very smart. Her Mum worked in a school teaching Maths, and sometimes Geography, and also Music. Her Dad was a writer, or at least he would be one day. He often read Melody parts of the stories he was writing and, although she didn’t always follow what was going on, he did read them very well.</p> <p>Melody picked up her purple bobble hat from the ground, swept her hand (with the missing fingers) across it to dislodge some clinging, crisp yellow leaves, and pulled it over her long, knotted hair. She looked at her old-fashioned wind-up wrist watch and realised she must have slept for much longer than she’d thought; she had now been in the woods for over two hours.</p> <p>Melody began to whistle a very old tune that she’d never heard before and strolled out of the woods, following the dirt road and tutting at the discarded crisp packet she saw flapping from under a rock. Within minutes was walking down the street towards her little house.</p> <center><p><img src="http://i.imgur.com/r50y7Mcm.jpg" width="240" height="320"/></p></center> <p>The house was the only one she had ever known, and was squashed between two much larger homes that had added lumps and bumps of extra rooms all over to increase their value, if not their good looks. One of the neighbours had once offered to buy Melody’s little house so they could knock through another wall and have the largest house on the street, but Melody’s Dad had shook his head. ‘Money isn’t everything,’ he’d told Melody.</p> <p>Melody’s Dad was full of wise sayings like this—for example: ‘Never put bacon on a radiator.’ Melody had nodded her head, and from that day forth she never had (apart from once when she forgot).</p> <p>Melody closed the bright red front door and pushed her purple bobble hat into the pocket of her green coat.</p> <p>‘Mum? I need to speak to you,’ Melody called into the warm household.</p> <p>‘I’m through here, Melody, in the kitchen,’ replied a voice belonging to Melody’s Mother.</p> <p>Melody hung her green coat on the peg and walked on through, to find her Mum sat at the kitchen table, three or more pencils protruding from her thick mop of curls, which were loosely tied up and out of the way of her face. Surrounding her was a mountain range of papers and workbooks.</p> <p>‘Hello, Mum. I have something quite strange to share with you,’ said Melody, taking a seat at the table. Her Mum didn’t look up as she tried to appraise three different bits of schoolwork at the same time.</p> <p>‘Hm?’ came her reply, from around the pencil she was gnawing on.</p> <p>‘I fell asleep in Carsters Wood, below the big twisted oak, and when I woke up I found I wasn’t altogether there.’</p> <p>‘That’s good honey, as long as you had fun.’</p> <p>Melody could see that her Mum was not perhaps giving all of her attention to Melody’s unique situation, so buried was she in her own task. Rather than push her Mum further and risk a snapped word or two, Melody scraped back the kitchen chair and went in search of her Dad.</p> <p>She found him in the shed at the bottom of the back garden.</p> <p>‘Melody! How are you? Good, good I hope? Yes!’</p> <p>‘I’m mostly well, I think,’ said Melody. This wasn’t a lie; partial invisibility aside, she felt in good health.</p> <p>Her Dad was sat in an ancient and tatty armchair with a wooden board across his lap, on which was perched a laptop. He’d once seen a TV programme which showed that this was how Roald Dahl used to write, and had decided if it was good enough for Dahl, then it was surely good enough for him.</p> <p>‘Dad, something quite odd has happened,’ said Melody, holding up her left hand with its now invisible fingers. She stopped and peered at her thumb, or what was left of it. In the time it had taken her to walk home, talk to her Mum, and then wander into the shed at the bottom of the garden, her thumb had become partially see-through.</p> <p>‘Oh, dear,’ she said, wiggling her now transparent thumb.</p> <p>‘You are going to love this new story of mine, sweet pea!’ said her Dad. ‘It’s got monsters with teeth who pretend to be a harmless old couple and a brave young hero called Molly Brown who gives them what for!’</p> <p>‘Yes, that does sound good,’ Melody agreed.</p> <p>‘I just woke up with the whole story rattling around my head this morning! Had to dash out here and start tip-tapping on my laptop, get it all down before it escapes! Stories can escape, you know, if you don’t pin them down.’</p> <p>Dad ducked his head back down and began to let his fingers dance at a million miles an hour over the laptop keys. Melody watched him happily for a few minutes, then went back into the house to watch some TV. Better to let her parents know that she seemed to be disappearing a little later, when they weren’t both quite so busy.</p> <p> ***</p> <p><em><strong>Hey there! Authors get paid when readers upvote their posts. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up and vote for it. Thanks, Matthew.</strong></em></p> <p> ©Matthew Stott, 2016. Reproduction is strictly prohibited. </p> <center><p> <em><strong>Become a</strong></em><em> </em><em><strong>Stranger</strong></em><em><strong>! 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