Monday 7 April 2014

250 Words: Tales from the City: Dodona the oracle

My little sister was always unhinged, we just didn’t notice so much when she was very young because small children tend to garble on a bit and make little sense.  But as she grew some of the stuff she started to come out with all of a sudden… talking almost in riddles… of people she’d never seen and places she had never been… more and more we got scared, especially as this kind of talk became more prevalent, and it became all she would say.

I remember visiting her in the hospital.  She would sit on her bed rabbiting on to herself, or maybe to us, almost constantly, with this distant, sad look on her face.  It freaked me out and I stopped going.  She got worse and worse- she wouldn’t stop to eat or drink (they drip fed her) or sleep (eventually she’d pass out).

Anyway she died when eighteen from a bout of flu that swept through the hospital taking several patients with it.  Or so I’ve believed for five years. 

Now I’m being told that lots of what she said came true and she was taken away by the government or something and she’s still alive somewhere being forced to predict the future or some such bullshit.  “What a load of crap,” I thought after I read the letter.

And then the photograph arrived and I came round.  We’d never seen her body, they’d pretty much buried those girls before we got there.  So maybe… just maybe.

No comments:

Post a Comment