Irina's Story

Irina's watch told her it was 1241 when she left the room. I imagined the fire light spreading orange and red over Judy's eyeless face on a freezing winter night which would never truly come. And under Judy's metal hoop skirt, how the spinning boy must have grinned and grinned no longer feeling so angry that everything around him seemed dark and without hope. It was found on the floor back in my bedroom ten minutes later, its end still smoking, though the fireplace was empty and dormant, as it had been for the last twenty years.