Eternal Florence

Written by Laura Vance

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Written by my creative writing professor's instructions to paint the story of an "eternal summer," this short story explores the fear that often accompanies religion and truth. Truly a wannabe edgy introspective deep piece that is currently submitted to Writer Advice.

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“Do you believe in god?” Her ghost asks me the question now, preserved in her prison of immortal youth, but it is the answer that continues to haunt me.

We were lying in the field outside of our ample country home when she first posed that impossible question. The world was divine in that childhood summer sort of way, except for the jarring lack of certainty in her voice. She would often talk about life and the galaxies like she knew the science of them all rather personally. But as we stared at our twinkling, smiling friends in the sky, a drop in her cadence suggested that without this god, one day, they, too, would disappear as utter nothingness conquered the expanse of everything.

She was scared. Florence was never scared because as far as she was concerned, her word meant gospel. But she was scared. That made me scared. And because I was young, because I was Florence’s parrot out of sheer, idealistic little sisterhood, I suppressed how she could make me feel like I was brushing fingertips with the ones that made the stars. I suppressed it all because I would be damned before I ever showed her unfaithfulness.

“No,” I decided, willfully omitting any contrary feeling. “I don’t think so.” I said this as if I personally knew this god. The concept of a higher power had not yet occurred to me in the fullness of the religiously devout, which we never were.

I’d like to think that none of it would have mattered, anyway. If Florence had told me she had created the world in one day and taken a nap for the other six, I would have believed her. I would have followed her anywhere, truly, and I might have before God flipped His coin.

I thought He hated her. Why else would He steal her from me? After looking at my tiny sister in her tiny little casket when she had been living life so extremely a week before, I believed in God. Not out of devotion or out of obligation. I believed out of terror, because one day when I wasn’t looking, He would take me too, just because he knew it would scare me.

I believed in Him, and I hated Him back. Every mild cruelty was a punishment beneath the ultimate curse of the empty bed with unwrinkled sheets, dormant on the other side of my room. God was real as He was ruthless.

“I don’t think I believe in him much, either,” Florence had said in her pensive way as we lounged in the grass. The world as we knew it was singing its everlasting, restless song as we decided if it was an accident or not.

“Why?”

For the first time in my life, I witnessed Florence without an answer. She said nothing. Her silence made the world into something foreboding, like the nervous pattering of a heartbeat.

She took a breath. “People say God is love, but there’s nothing loving about uncertainties.”

I never figured out who these “people” were.

“Let’s not think about that now,” I told her. “We’ll have forever to figure it out.”

Now I’m resolved to figure it out on my own as each uncertainty piles on top of the next. I don’t have another choice, do I? Was she taken for pleasure, or taken for some holy, altruistic reason that I will never understand? Uncertainty is maddening, and I used to think that God was cruel for it.

This evening, I lay in the grass, just as we did before. Back when the late afternoon died in twilight’s arms, and everything made more sense because nothing made sense at all. I have laid in that spot, our spot, every night since she left, searching for reason and searching for Florence. Searching for God.

She has been long gone to me – they both have – yet I still hear her innocent question clearly, as if Florence – impossibly young and perfect – is still by my side.

“Do you believe in God?” she asks again, the breeze carrying her whisper through the cosmos. The grass blades tickle me. The trees eagerly lean forward to hear my conclusion, to learn if it has changed. I look at them all, and I experience them all, soaking in their divinity. With still breath, the world waits, and Florence waits with it, tense and eager. So, I give them my answer.