A BEDTIME STORY FOR BREEZY • by Kevin Shamel

She remembered alabaster walls bedecked in jewel-framed portraits and detailed landscapes. She could sit upon on a pile of pillows and stare outside her wide window. Stars filled it. Pinpricks in the black sheet of the night.

But that was a memory. One of the few that crept along as she pieced things together.

Only one thing remained constant: An endless sheet of pinpricked night.

There was one other thing that remained. It was not as constant as the stars, but it was present for a very long time.

It was a sound.

Her, the stars, and the sound.

The Sound.

It was something to hold onto, something beside her and the distant points of light. She let the Sound flow over her, vibrating her insides and outs. The Sound penetrated. The Sound shook things loose. It was the Sound that gave her memories.

So she believed.

So she thought until she suddenly realized that the Sound was coming from her.

It was her voice.

She remembered wide stone steps leading down down and up up like the inside of a seashell. Fingers interlaced. The smells of outside come in on a warm breeze. The heat from her lover. The heat from his hand on her thigh. The heat from the stars shining through the sky above them as they tumbled slowly on the steps.

The Sound was a song.

A sad song of loneliness. A happy song of friendliness. It shook loose from inside her. It vibrated out past her skin, out through her throat and tongue and teeth. Into the space between her and the stars.  Into the Deep.

So she sang, knowing that’s what it was she was doing.

She sang and she let the stars shine beyond her as she slid below them.

The Song soothed the scorching cold from her skin. It pried free her swollen eyes. It started her heart. She felt warmth deep down inside. Deep down where she once drew breath outside of Song. In her own private Deep. Beyond the reach of stars.

She remembered cool evenings on a wide warm rock at the edge of a slow stream. Frogs sang her song and the smells were sweet and darker than the shadows under the water’s forever flowing skin. Alone at last, in the nearest silence the night had to offer, with its symphony of night creatures picking up the song from those who sang for the day. Alone with the stars shining off the ever-darkening water.

There was no measure to the length of her song. It surprised her when she stopped singing.

She kept on in silence, relishing her newfound relaxation.

She thought about where she was going. About where she had been. Neither place was easy to see, especially under the dazzling sky. She realized, after a long ride through the dark that she had never moved. That it was indeed the sky that slipped past. And that her song marked time. That it held forever. That it reflected the stars.

She pondered her journey while it came around her. For countless beats of her heart she listened. And silence taught her a new song.

She opened herself and shone.

She let the Deep inside her.

She let the stars inside.

Quietly, gently, she let them in. They spoke to her. They whispered to her what she’d known all along.

She spun under the rushing sky. She let the sky spin within.

She let the stars live there inside her.

And they sang new songs.

She let the music come out her lips, her hips, her fingertips. Her eyes. She let the songs of her Deep Stars shine on wherever she went.

She let the stars shine against the distant pinpricks in the sheet of constant black. She let their music mingle. And from the distance, from the far far past and from long beyond her end, she heard another song. And another. And countless more. Until each star was singing with its stars inside, and all the stars were hers.

She let them dance around her, and she danced within their song. She whirled and twirled and from her pores fell beads of song drops, shining under endless suns. She was never alone again.

She rolled under the deepening night sky, tossing her eyes open to raze the distance between her and all those distant points of light.

And finally she went to bed.

She slept deep, deep down behind those alabaster walls. With piles of pillows for her spinning head. With comforters and with an arm around her. With memories.

She went to sleep with the Deepest of Smiles, wrapped in the warmest skies.

She dreamt of a night full of stars.

And they all sang her song.


Kevin Shamel lives in an old haunted house in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, two kids, a dog and a cat. He spends his days playing with the aforementioned critters, practicing joyful oddness, and writing. You will rarely find him speaking (or writing) about himself in third person because it”s a very odd practice, even for him. Visit his blog at Shameless Stuff for links to more of his stories and whatever else is going on.


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