Writing inspired by the following SWC prompts:

The Echo
Write a story or poem which both begins and ends with an echo.

The Echo

by Connie Phlipot

AH—Aah—aaah—aaaah… The buildings on each side of the street threw the sound back and forth, softer, gentler each time, a ball seeping air, finally deflating with a soundless thud. There was no one else in sight. Anneli ran down the street in the shadows of the buildings. Her feet clapped against the pavement. The walls clapped back. She put her hands over her ears. A rat dashed into the light of a street lamp. She screamed. The walls resounded. AAGH, Aagh…

“No need be scared. They don’t hurt nobody.”

Anneli swerved toward the voice. She hadn’t noticed the bench next to what might one day have been a barber shop. A strip of red and white vinyl cloth flapped against a pole. A gnome stood up from the bench and stretched out its hand.

Anneli jumped backwards in fear, surprise. “What are are you? Who are you?” The gnome looked up at Anneli with a woman’s soft eyes. A large shawl covered her head and shoulders. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I was frightened by the dark, the rat. That’s all.”

The woman pulled the shawl from her head, releasing a cascade of orange and purple hair. Years ago, Anneli would have appraised her as a hippy at best, a druggie at worst. Now, she didn’t know, it had been so long since she had seen anyone besides her uncle and his half-blind cat.

“You new to this neighborhood?” the woman pointed down the street to cardboard boxes and tents nestled against the buildings. Knitted, woven and crocheted shawls in radiant blues like handfuls of a sun-splashed lake interlaced with the lacy pink of a tulip magnolia hung from lines strung between street signs and blinded traffic lights. Where did they get these dyes in colors Anneli thought no longer existed?

“Yes, I’m just taking a walk.” Her voice no longer echoed. The make-shift houses and shawls absorbed the sound.

The woman laughed. Sparks of light flashed from her hair. “Would you like some tea?”

Tea. That was what people offered you in the old days when you visited. Now you were lucky if you could find a few sips of water in an abandoned fountain.

“Yes, please. I mean if you have enough. I haven’t had tea in a long time.” Anneli’s throat quivered at the thought of the warm, tannic drink entering her mouth. She felt a little faint, or elated, as if she were sipping a strong brandy.

The woman laughed again and pulled her toward the dwellings. She waved her arms above her head. A greeting? Or that gesture they used to use to make a motion-detection light come on in the office.

A small light, a real fire or an LED or a computer screen, flickered in front of a tent. Another gnome-like figure pulled aside the tent flaps, picked up the light and walked toward them. It was a real flame atop a stout candle. Anneli swooned at the memory of decorative fire on holiday tables, atop birthday cakes, in a menorah. Like the joyous colors of the shawls pleasing the eye, the soul, without concern for basic needs.

“Got a visitor!” Anneli’s hostess shouted. The other woman waltzed or fox-trotted a few steps delighted at having company. “I’ll make the tea.”

The three of them squatted around the candle and drank from metal cups. Three other women joined them, all with shrouded heads. “Are you cold?” one asked Anneli, pulling a shawl from an overhead line.

She was cold, despite the warmth of the tea. A shiver had begun deep inside her chest and spread in waves to her arms and fingers. The woman draped the shawl over Anneli’s head and shoulders. Instantly, she was warm. She fingered the material — it was finer than any silk she’d ever handled, warmed than llama’s wool, softer cashmere.

“Do you know what it is?” The woman asked. Anneli shook her head, no.

“Of course, you wouldn’t. We don’t talk about it much.” The woman went into the tent, returning with a cardboard box like shoes used to come in. Instead of a cardboard lid it was covered with a clear plastic-like substance, under which dozens of insects crawled spewing a thin filament.

“Spiders?”

“Yes, you must of learned in biology class that spiders’ webs are stronger than steel. Our foremothers developed a way to harvest these webs. Except for scavenged cardboard and canvas, this is our only building material.”

What an invention. If only it had been developed decades ago before all the bridges collapsed. “Is it a secret? Your process, I mean?”

The women grinned in unison around the candle. “Of course, there are not enough spiders for everyone left in this world.” The grins turned menacing like the carvings in a halloween pumpkin. The women circled closer to her, enclosing her in a claustrophobic web. Anneli stepped backwards, looking for an exit from the circle. Why had she ventured so far away from home? Had she forgotten how dangerous the streets were? How dependent her uncle and the cat were on her for food and companionship. She had been so desperate to escape from that cloying dependence, for at least an hour, she’d walked out of their basement apartment without telling her uncle where she was going. She didn’t know where she was going. Just out, to fill her depleted soul with something like fresh air.

She turned away from the once welcoming group and started to run. 

The women grabbed her shawl, almost tripping her, but she ran, panting, through the dark streets. The walls echoed her footsteps, her anxious breathing, her screams.