2. Sheds of Fate

[Continued from Fear Looming]

My story of woe began on a backpacking trip to Nepal. I had always had a phobia of exercise, but had decided that riding in a bus was an acceptable form of it, so long as one took the occasional selfie photo once I had splashed water on myself. It kept the folks at home happy and the traveller’s cheques flying. 

After several weeks of hard slog consisting of watching scenery stream past the windows, I was struggling to breath as I stepped off the bus step plate. The plate groaned under my backpack laden feet but surprisingly didn't break. This was despite the bus itself being so rust riddled that I could have Flintstone stopped at the village rather than yelling at the driver. While it provided a welcome breeze to my exercise and windswept look to my selfies, the rust holes did necessitate deploying an umbrella inside the bus when the rain had started to pour through several hours ago. 

Swinging my umbrella over my head again now that I was clear of the buses jagged doors, I inhaled the air and coughed. The air although wasn't too thin but was cloying and oily, clinging to my alveoli like glue, it caused me to cough what little air I had, back into the slightly fetid air. Looking up I saw the local people were staring at me, their drab grey clothes contrasting with my neon rainbow running gear. It came highly recommended by the sports vendor and was on sale! Bargain! 

With a slight creak and Chuff-Chuff sound of lycra on lycra, I ignored the fashion starved stares of the locals and made my way towards the local store. After several hours of excruciating bum numbing exercise, I needed some chocolate, but I slowed as I could begin to hear a sound over the downpour... Click-clack. 

Looking around, I thought the rain must be pounding on a piece of tin roof, but all the roofs were covered in wooden shingles. The shingles dull sounding bongs resounding with every raindrop, but not with the strong sound of oak on oak action that I had heard. 

CLICK-CLACK! There it was again. I slowed my lycra shuffle to a crawl and could hear the sound over and over. Click-clack, its monotony putting me into a faint trance. Click-clack, what was this noise? Why had I never heard this melody before? I began my investigation, but I wasn't prepared for what I found. 

At the edge of the village, looking abandoned like a grenade with no pin, there stood the focus of my search. The shed. Its wooden structure was pristine, the curves clean and crisp, like it had only been raised yesterday. Click-clack, the sound resonated from inside it. I closed on the building, looked through an open window and saw the generator of the mesmeric noise, A LOOM! 

Click-clack, and the noise filtered to me through the shed, over the table of stacked threads just inside the window and through the voids without panes. Click-clack, and I watched the operator continue his shedding, the threads moving up and down as he threw the shuttle down the line with an almost religious fervour. 

Click-clack, I watched as another line of beauty appeared on his tapestry. Click-clack, another thread of life was put on the warp of his craft. Looking down at my legs, I stared at my neon rainbow leggings. I felt somehow robbed, like I was banned from this most precious of life's creations. The little playful unicorns cavorting between the rainbows on my thighs seemed to almost mock me. Me! 

Click-clack, I could stand it no longer. If this ethereal operator of the loom could create such beauty, then so could I! Click-clack, under the cover of the resounding beats of wood on wood I reached in through the window, towards the table of threads. Looking back, I should have seen the signs. Should have seen the warnings. The window, looking like a giant maw, its tongue covered in threads, the threat of it biting down and the warning of the pain that was to follow in my life from my actions. 

Click-clack, my hands touched cloth and I brushed my fingers along it until I felt the bundle of thread I craved. Fingers closed around the spun fibres and sealed my fate. For I had taken the Loom operators threads. The wife's thread...

[To Be Continued in Shuffles of Shame]