Marble Memories (FFM Day 7)

In a room of bone clocks, she cradles a soul in her palms.  The last gasps of his life are hydrangea peach, flickers of fire reflecting off the crystals hanging from each timepiece.  Amber chews on her lip, gaze jumping from wall to wall.  She pushes a thick sheaf of honey-blonde hair from her face, thinking.

When the test results came back, they'd covered every angle.  He obtained a DNR and found a doctor willing to help him pass quick and painless.  He begged for cremation, and left her instructions.  He wanted to be a firework; he told her who to invite, and where to send him off, and what song to sing as the colors of his ashes faded into the night.  

They never discussed what to do after.  What to do with his soul.

Amber started with Heaven.  He'd always been a gentle, kindly man.  He'd take the shirt off his back for the homeless in the winter; he'd set families up in hotel rooms if funds were tight and they needed to get away.  Often, he'd bring home strays.

The glowing lady behind the desk had turned Amber away before she'd said two words.  "His soul is too bright.  We can't take him here."  Her fingers had gone back to clacking on the keyboard of life as if they'd never stopped.

Hell hadn't been much better.  The receptionist had popped her gum, turned her music to full blast, and be-bopped away into the flames.  Her soft cackles had wafted across the clank of pool balls and the whir of snow cone machines as Amber was whisked back upstairs, Hell Hounds licking her heels with pink tongues.

Now, she studies the only chance she has left.  Well, nine chances.  

A waterfall cascades down the face of one clock, minutes rumbling into white rapids and evaporating to rain back down from above.  Flowers, stuck in a constant flux, bloom then whither across the face of another.  The moon, thinning to empty air and expanding again into a brilliant white orb.  The tides, sweeping in and out from a beach of white sand and abandoned seashells.  

Eight unique clocks keep track of the seasons and of destiny and of order.  Each timepiece boasts one aspect of Change--save one.

In the middle of the room, set apart from the rest, the marble clock makes no sound.  Amber steps closer, studying the set ridges of the face, the dips and curves of motionless statue.  There are no crystals hanging below this one; instead, sculpted marble steps march to and from the door where cuckoos usually emerge.  No cuckoo, Amber knows, will ever sound the time from this clock.  Where the other timepieces are bright, with noises and creatures cooing between the seconds, the last clock has only two colors.

She reaches out, swiping a finger over the black and white marble.  The tip comes away layered with dust.

As she ponders what this might mean, the soul in her hand sputters.  Peach becomes pink.  Pink becomes red.  Red, with an explosion of light, settles into a color almost like deep-space purple.  Amber stares, mouth agape, as pinpoints of white speckle the surface, spinning and dancing.

"I think," Death murmurs behind her, his voice more lullaby than grating gravel, "he has made his decision."

"What," she begins, the falters.  Her eyes flicker from Death, in his jeans and tennis shoes, to the soul, to the clock.  "Where does it lead?"

"It leads nowhere.  He will remain here, in this room, in this moment."  Death reaches out, stroking the soul with his fingers.  The ball strains against her fingers and Amber gasps, tightening her grip.  "He wishes to stay as he is, so you will remember him as he was."

"But... But how?"

"Marble," Death murmurs, stepping back into the corner.  He folds his arms over his chest, the material of his tee pulling tight across his biceps.  "It has the longest memory.  By choosing it, he has chosen to carve himself into stone.  Never changing.  Never leaving.  He will always be with you.  He will always be happy."