Denishea opened the door and walked into the dark space. Each of her footsteps echoed in the space marking her passage across the empty stage. She couldn’t see the floor nor the audience. All she could see was the light shining brightly on the hat. It was a tall black hat reminiscent of the musician hats of old. She had never before seen one in person. It’s mysterious black physique called to her. She wanted to touch it. What would it feel like? Would it be cool to the touch and feel of cotton stretched over a frame? Would it drag along her fingers like velvet always wanting to cling? Would it feel like silk allowing her fingers to glide, slip and slide as they explored? Would it be warm having absorbed the heat of the spotlights beaconing glow?
She had to know.
She would know, after all no one hadn’t ever said she couldn’t. Her footsteps hurried, their echoes nearing each other, just mere seconds away from connecting. Her breathing quickened to match. Closer and closer she came until she stood over it.
Looking down, her shadow embraced the hat, quivering in glee in having found the answer to the question, she still had to wait to know. A tinge of jealousy sparked, quickly ignored, as she slowly bent down savoring her first feel. Her hand reaching, fingers balling, until only her index finger remained extended. Without a second thought she pushed her hand forward, through space and time, and poked the hat, gently.
Not an inch did it move. Yet the world for Denishea had shifted.
So much knowledge gained from the most basic of human touches.
The touch that asked the world around it friend or foe? Alive or dead? Good or bad? In this moment, in this time, she learned, the hat had not lied. It lived up to the hype portrayed at the start of her walk across the stage. It was silky where she had touched, yet surprisingly hard. If she pushed hard enough she could cause it to cave, to bend and forever change shape. But, she had no such desire. No, indeed she wanted to poke it more, and so she did. Looking quickly over the hat, she chose her next target, the hat’s inside brim.
Here too she poked and felt a different texture. One unrefined and much more unwilling to let go. It bumped and pushed at her finger daring her to explore more.
She took that offer, unfurling her fingers, she rubbed her hands against the material that remained only several steps shy of abrasive. This must be how they keep the hat on, she thought, as her mind flashed back on the instances of watching on tv as-
-the magicians of old danced and pranced on staff never loosing their hats until they themselves lifted it up to revel in the audience's praise and let loose the last trick. Doves, birds tricks.
Perhaps there was more to be found in this hat, but alas, that was not her goal. She was here for a purpose and the restless moving of the audience announced the time to move on. So she grasped the rim of the hat, delighting in the difference in textures, smoothness and refinement for her four fingers and palm while her thumb dealt with the backwater rough.
Standing to her full height she stepped fully into the light. Realizing only now that the hat was indeed cool to the touch, seemingly unbothered by the heat of the light. Unfortunately, that was not the case for Denishea. She felt smothered by the light encompassed by its all consuming rays. Heat building inside her. Outside her, sweat darkened her brow. Hair that had been a long and full afro, shrunk and tightened into coils that dared any combs in sight to come near.
She felt all of it.
But ignored it and focused instead on the prize that rested in her hand. Looking up she could see no one. Nothing but darkness. The light which she occupied prevented a break in focus. Yet, it did nothing to hide the sounds. The impatient shuffling, the odd coughing fit, the billowing and expectant silence.
Swallowing, she looked down and brought up her left hand and allowed it to do as it had begged since the first poke and plowed into the center of the hat. Reaching impossibly deep, going deeper and deeper and deeper questing for the bottom. Her left arm up to the shoulder when she finally felt it, the bottom or as close to the bottom as it would ever reach. For under her hand was paper. Tiny strips of paper that wiggled and struggled out of reach before her grasping hand could clasp it. Oh she had known it wouldn’t be easy. After all she had watched the others go before. Seen their struggles, their fights to bring forth their destined line. But so too had she seen others who had only to hover their hand above before one leaped to their silent call.
She never had wanted to be one of those. Her curiosity too great to allow such an opportunity to pass her by. To feel the unknown and finally know what lay inside. So she felt no dismay as the fates flitter and flapped, wiggled and crept out of her reach. Teasing her, playing with her, taunting her. No furrowing of the brow did the audience witness only the spread of a satisfied smile. For she felt the barest brush of what she truly quested. There with her index finger leading the way and half her upper body shoved through the opening she felt it. It was a feeling she had never before encountered.
The words to describe it did not exist. There was no one word to describe a bit of something that was soft and crumbly, yet squishy too. Warm at the top, yet cooler the more she pushed. Sharp and spiky, yet smooth and soothing. It was all and yet there was nothing to truly capture the feel, the sensation of excitement, thrill and trepidation hurtling through her, infusing her body with warmth and a natural high of the likes she had not felt in many a years time.
But, alas she could not stay here. There were others waiting for their turn and so with a sigh she pulled slightly back from the hat and the line that had been biding its time slipped into her palm. The paper adding little to no weight, as she continued her slide out of the hat. Out of the mystery yet, to be fully solved. Out until it was revealed before the light no blemish to be found or felt. No evidence of the journey it had taken. Save for the paper that lay waiting upon her open palm.
Closing her hands she clasped the paper close and bent forward at the waist moving slowly lowering the hat to the ground until it rested on the stage floor, its weight settling without a sound. It’s body, no longer supported by her hand. Yet she still held on relishing the last feel of the hat. It’s competing textures striking a cord of intense interest in her core.
Yet she could not stay there.
She knew that.
One by one her fingers left their perches until only the index finger was left and all too soon even that one no longer lingered. Licking her lips she rubbed her fingers against one another as she stood to her full height, her shadow once more having the joy of touching what she would never be able to touch again. Shivering she closed her eyes determined to commit the sensations to memory in the brief time she had left. Before snapping them open to stare out and see once more, nothing.
Only darkness with the light she inhabited. Sighing she lifted her left fist and gazed at it, marveling at the lack of evidence of what she had touched as she opened her fingers revealing the paper inside. Pinching the exposed end with one hand, she carefully pulled, unfurling it, and read the words of her fate
“Curiosity kills boredom. Nothing can kill curiosity.”
Well, didn’t that just fit her to a T!
Smiling she looked up and spoke aloud the words that with each passing syllable grew in volume and density, until it felt like the space in which they occupied felt too full to hold it, and when the last syllable of the last word passed her lips, the room filled to capacity and unable to hold more,
popped.
The pressure released in a brilliant flash of hot pink, deep purple and all of which ran through with jagged and painful slashes of orange and blue. The colors shifted and changed, moving, twirling and pulsating with colors never before seen growing every more until they glowed so bright that they exploded; the sound so loud that it struck the audience simultaneously deaf and blind.
When the audience could see and hear again. There remained nothing of the person that had been. Save for the hat that rested in the glow of the spotlight. Seemingly unmoved by the previous one's performance nor the approaching of a new set of footsteps that echoed in the space. The audience sat forward in their seats. The last one had put on a show unlike any before. Some felt envy, some felt joy, only one felt sad. But all had been moved. That glimpse of curiosity as fleeting as it had been was one they savored and would remember until eternity.
Shhh, silence it was time, another chance, another chosen or another sent back to join them. What would it be? Their hearts quickened in anticipation. What would they see? What would they learn? It was time to watch and observe.
Let the show begin.
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