The Knell. A Fifty-Word Story for @jayna
Image from Pixabay in Wikimedia Commons - Image in the Public Domain
The knell
McBeth's alarum bell tolled forever, hidden in the back of my mind. Now Poe brings its deceiving echo back:
We're 4. The theater shuts us in darkness. The knell mutes her scream, but I get to see the snatching hand.
Twenty years and I'm still abhorrred by the hellish sound.
@jayna's #FiftyWords used to be a challenge; now it is a contest.
About This Fifty-Word Story
Among all the famous bells in literature, you must remember the alarum bell in the Second Act in William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth:
The notions turned to words, teased out from the opposing concepts of sacred and devilish make up an ideal correlative to narrate events which allude to innocence and evil. Then, either the death or kidnapping of a child by "the snatching hand" of a criminal seemed a good motif for a story.
Now, being the child a little girl and being bells and the passing of time involved (as her twin sister survives her), it was inevitable that Poe's poem "The Bells" (probably composed in 1848, but published in 1849, after his death) came rushing to my hands. There was sine revising, some editing; and Poe was there to accompany my brief reference to the Bard.
Thanks for reading.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://marlyncabrera.timeets.com/2018/12/08/the-knell-a-fifty-word-story-for-jayna/
Interesting story, @marlyncabrera! And backstory. I don't remember the alarum bell. I will have to look it up. (Oh, and I bet you mean 1848, vs. 1948! Hee hee.)
You're right about the date. Fixed! Thank you :D It'd be nice to have your text published a hundred years before XD
This is from Act V, and most famous than the mentions in the previous acts, I think: