Toti's Journeys: A Short Story

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The existence of the badstofa seemed mythical, floating in a frozen abyss of silence. The flames of the candles licked the winter air, and the shadows seemed to dance along the walls with the howls of the wind. Toti’s head pounded and his thoughts crashed against him, like the way ocean waves crashed against the coast and the wind stitched itself into the valley. Agnes floated in and out of consciousness and Toti found himself asking himself too many questions that he believed only God could answer. Why? Why did God decide that the events she faced throughout her life would cause her to sin against Him and man, with such a strong intellect about Christianity? “I have failed her,” Toti unconsciously mumbled to no one in particular but himself, the shadows against the wall seeming to grow bigger and higher than him, as if God was mocking him. …show more content…

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” Toti pondered the passage he heard his father reciting after they became aware of Agnes’s request for his spiritual guidance. Was God punishing Agnes? Had the man who she had fallen for, the one who said to have been named after Satan the Devil, angered God? His thumb rubbed against the wooden cross he kept in his pocket, and the pounding in his head and the ringing in his ears seemed to change. He shook it off and his attention snapped back to the badstofa. He could just make out Margret and the others breathing, restless and disjointed like his own. He turned to Agnes, her eyes hollow and lost as her lips and hands trembled with the creaking of wood. Did he love her? The question seemed to strike him in the side, his breath sharp as he looked up from his lap and he clutched at his chest, shocked by the thought as if it wasn’t his own. The thought and the feeling seemed so unnatural to him, women had never crossed his mind and

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