We're writing, we promise... but it's coming along slower as we chug closer to finals week. Currently the lines are: Just this once, then. // She lingered only long enough for the formality.
If you want to write, just e-mail me stories before any get posted (probably over the weekend.)
--C.
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Sunday, May 23, 2004
Untitled
For this next set, we wrote a set of lines that we thought would generate interesting stories and offered them to all takers. The next two stories, from Stephanie and Tony apparently have some kind of bet riding on them. They're really lots of fun (rather than morbid, like mine and Yune's).
(Stephanie's)
There was once a time I was sure - glibly so - that Dick Malaprop was the love of my life. Less than a week into our honeymoon, we filed for divorce.
In retrospect, it all started just with the wedding - a classic Southern horror show of a reception, complete with a squadron of flower girls-a-prancing (fitted in cloying, "salmon" gowns); buffet tables loaded with almond cake and scotch; and swarms of toadying clients-in-waiting.
Dick's family owned the largest button factory in the South, and as propriety dictated, the Malaprops invited everyone and anyone who was vaguely associated with clothing retail, or money. I distinctly remember thinking that I had come to my own funeral. "Welcome to end of Valerie Jones," flashed urgently through my subconscious.
By some miracle, we got through it - Dick, clasping my gloved hand and whispering words of encouragement, me, squeezing back with the urgency of a soiled baby.
Before the last guest was off the porch, we had loaded our things and left for Tahoe. I would have opted for something more exotic - the Galapagos Islands, or maybe Seborga, but I let him win this one, thinking "love is sacrifice."
Sadly for Dick, there are certain faults that become salient in cramped quarters over long stretches of time. As I drove (Dick was deathly afraid of steering - it reminded him of a childhood incident involving a bike and a tractor), he would talk with gusto about his best friend and mother. To give you an idea, a typical conversation went something like this:
Dick: "Did you notice the new mustache I'm growing?"
(It looked like a rat was crawling into his nose.)
Me: "Yes."
Dick: "I think it's a wonderful alligator for the new life I'm beginning today, uh, with you. We. Anyway, there are certain things I just know I'll miss, like Momma's infamous almond cake, which by the way, I don't expect you to reprobate exactly on your first try…but there are other things I can't say I'm not glad to be freed of, like cocktails with those difficult button-clients. Really, some of them were just implausible!"
Me: "...I see."
<Tense pause>
Dick: "Did I tell you about the time Momma rescued the church play from death by philanthropy. She really is the pineapple of entropy! I really can't see why you two haven't become aboriginal friends."
Me: "Well, there were a few instances…"
Dick: "Let's not make any referendums to the past. Promise to forget all ill-will, you must quite abbreviate them from your mind!"
Me: "Of course, Dick."
<Longer pause>
Dick: "Did I tell you about the new mustache I'm growing?"
Suffice to say that by the time we reached the ski resort, I was prepared to take drastic measures. On the way up the landing, I made up my mind not to wait for Dick. If nothing else, I deserved one solitary descent. 'It would be the last time,' I thought dramatically, 'the last time I can be Valerie Jones.'
Once we reached the landing, I slid off in the direction opposite Dick's. I think I might even have tripped him with my ski pole, just to gain a few seconds.
"Wait for me, Val!"
Instead, I launched myself, full-force, off the ledge. As I picked up speed and the wind whipped up my nostrils, I was filled with an unparalleled sense of freedom and power. Faster and faster I flew! People shrieked and covered their eyes. Oak trees careened out of my path at the last possible second.
I felt like a god.
And then, something awful happened. A wayward oak brought me to a painful collision and stop. Welcome to end of Valerie Jones, I thought again, as I lay there staring at an explosively bright sky.
Dick eventually made his way down my prone form and propped me up. As he felt around the wreck, rattling off reprehensions and broken bones (apparently, I had managed to fracture my tibia in three different places), all I could focus on were the measly hairs that bobbed and danced on Dick's upper lip as he spoke.
Without hesitation, I took hold and yanked. I claimed every last one of them, down to their roots, and released them to the wind. They scattered, unrecoverable.
Politeness
(Tony's)
"There once was a time I was sure we would always be together, but I don't know anymore." Marvin was caught completely off guard. His head started throbbing again, it could have been from the drinks last night, but this wasn't helping the situation.
"Miranda what are you talking about, we've been living together in the same apartment for 10 months now." It is a fact that both Marvin and Miranda were happy twenty-something's that shared a comfortable apartment in the city for the last ten months. It is also a fact that they have been engaged for the last three of those ten months. It was thought to be a fact, at least for Marvin, that a spring wedding was in the plans, but it seems this would have to be put on hold.
"It's just that you have changed so much. You're so concerned about your job now, it never seems like you want to have fun anymore. But it's not just that, you've grown inconsiderate of people. You don't greet the doorman, you don't wave or smile to our neighbors down the hall; why, just last Saturday when we were heading home, you walked by the Salvation Army Santa without giving a passing glance, let alone a donation." Marvin never knew Miranda had such a philanthropic heart, she never seemed to care about niceties in the past. He reasoned this must be one of those phases that she went through like the bonsai gardening or her obsession with clowns. All that was left of these fickle pursuits were some poorly cared for shrubs along the windowsill and juggling pins in their bedroom closet. He knew that the only way to survive these bizarre mood swings was to smile and play along until the novelty of the pursuit wore off. This time, however, would prove a little harder, for Miranda had managed to turn a critical eye onto Marvin, and he would now be forced to change his habits. "Oh well, at least," he thought, she didn't want him to learn how to juggle.
"Fine, I promise I will be more kind and considerate. Santa will get his donation, and the doorman a five dollar bill."
(two days later)
A new family moved into the empty apartment down the hall yesterday. The moment Marvin found out, he was in the kitchen baking a cake, or rather his poor imagination of one. While his efforts were admirable, the product was less than pleasing; nevertheless, Marvin wanted to make a good impression for the neighbors and more so, for Miranda, so he knocked gently on the door with his version of chocolate cake in tow. The wife opened the door and cheerfully introduced herself, before two words could be exchanged she had called forth the entire family and Marvin met the husband and their five-year old son. All three had the same shade of light blonde hair and he gathered during the short-discussion that they were probably foreigners from Europe. The neighbors graciously accepted the cake and actually seemed rather embarrassed that they had not dropped by first. They insisted on having Marvin and Miranda over for dinner that night. This was perfect for Marvin as it gave him an excuse to casually mention his good deed of the day.
Having earned his brownie points, Marvin was wonderful company during dinner. Even Miranda seemed to be in a good mood, though this was probably because the neighbors were such wonderful cooks and had prepared an amazing feast. It was frustrating for Marvin that neighbors didn't seem to accept his praise for their exquisite dinner, because it seemed all they could talk about was how amazingly delicious his chocolate cake had been. The entire situation was frankly awkward for Marvin. Their new neighbors seemed entirely too polite and kept apologizing for all the effort they must have put him through to make the cake. Even their blonde-haired son seemed content and happy to sit quietly at the table and eat his food, looking up occasionally only to give an adorable grin.
The moment they returned to their room, Miranda remarked on what wonderful new neighbors they had.
"And that kid of theirs was absolutely precious."
Marvin couldn't agree more and suggested that they send flowers as a thank-you gift for the lovely dinner. Miranda was definitely impressed.
"What the hell is this?"
The next afternoon Marvin found in front of their door a large framed oil-painting and a note from the neighbors thanking them for the flowers.
"Miranda come over here, it's from our neighbors."
As Miranda made her way from the kitchen, Marvin couldn't help but wonder how much money the painting had cost. He guessed it was probably worth a few hundred. It was a very handsome piece and he already knew exactly where he wanted to hang it.
"It's a still-life of flowers in a vase," Miranda noted, "quite apt, but we can't accept it."
"Why not?"
"It's too expensive, it wouldn't be right"
"But how would it look if we turned away their gift, I wouldn't want to risk offending them. Besides, didn't you say that I should be more considerate." Miranda felt trapped by her own words as she realized Marvin was right.
"Fine, keep it. But you have to send something in return"
That night, Marvin went out and bought two bicycles and a red tricycle at the local sporting goods store. He presented them to the neighbors the next day who received the gifts with such extraordinary surprise you would have thought they won the lottery. They couldn't stop talking about what wonderful gifts Marvin had sent and wondered out loud how unworthy they were of his delightful friendship.
"No, I assure you the bicycles were nothing, think nothing of it." "No, you don't have to get anything in return, believe me." "No, No please, just take the bicycles as a thank-you for being such great neighbors, we don't want anything in return."
The next morning, Marvin awoke to find in his bedroom a large red bow affixed to new model motorcycle. By this time Marvin was almost in tears. While Miranda was still scratching her head in awe at how a motorcycle had found its way into their apartment, Marvin had already trudged half-way down to the local jewelry store and pulled out last years savings to purchase a diamond necklace.
"If this doesn't do it, nothing will. No one can ever accuse me of not being polite and considerate." But of course it didn't do it. The neighbors happily reciprocated with a diamond ring easily ten times the value of the necklace received and attached another cheerful note of thanks.
Marvin couldn't stand it anymore. If this was what it took to stay with Miranda then he was better off alone. In a fit of rage he tore-up the oil-painting, ripped apart the motorcycle with welding tools and had the diamond ring ground into pieces. Going to the bank of the river, he took all the remains and tossed them in. Marvin watched as they scattered, unrecoverable.
"There once was a time I was sure we would always be together, but I don't know anymore." Marvin was caught completely off guard. His head started throbbing again, it could have been from the drinks last night, but this wasn't helping the situation.
"Miranda what are you talking about, we've been living together in the same apartment for 10 months now." It is a fact that both Marvin and Miranda were happy twenty-something's that shared a comfortable apartment in the city for the last ten months. It is also a fact that they have been engaged for the last three of those ten months. It was thought to be a fact, at least for Marvin, that a spring wedding was in the plans, but it seems this would have to be put on hold.
"It's just that you have changed so much. You're so concerned about your job now, it never seems like you want to have fun anymore. But it's not just that, you've grown inconsiderate of people. You don't greet the doorman, you don't wave or smile to our neighbors down the hall; why, just last Saturday when we were heading home, you walked by the Salvation Army Santa without giving a passing glance, let alone a donation." Marvin never knew Miranda had such a philanthropic heart, she never seemed to care about niceties in the past. He reasoned this must be one of those phases that she went through like the bonsai gardening or her obsession with clowns. All that was left of these fickle pursuits were some poorly cared for shrubs along the windowsill and juggling pins in their bedroom closet. He knew that the only way to survive these bizarre mood swings was to smile and play along until the novelty of the pursuit wore off. This time, however, would prove a little harder, for Miranda had managed to turn a critical eye onto Marvin, and he would now be forced to change his habits. "Oh well, at least," he thought, she didn't want him to learn how to juggle.
"Fine, I promise I will be more kind and considerate. Santa will get his donation, and the doorman a five dollar bill."
(two days later)
A new family moved into the empty apartment down the hall yesterday. The moment Marvin found out, he was in the kitchen baking a cake, or rather his poor imagination of one. While his efforts were admirable, the product was less than pleasing; nevertheless, Marvin wanted to make a good impression for the neighbors and more so, for Miranda, so he knocked gently on the door with his version of chocolate cake in tow. The wife opened the door and cheerfully introduced herself, before two words could be exchanged she had called forth the entire family and Marvin met the husband and their five-year old son. All three had the same shade of light blonde hair and he gathered during the short-discussion that they were probably foreigners from Europe. The neighbors graciously accepted the cake and actually seemed rather embarrassed that they had not dropped by first. They insisted on having Marvin and Miranda over for dinner that night. This was perfect for Marvin as it gave him an excuse to casually mention his good deed of the day.
Having earned his brownie points, Marvin was wonderful company during dinner. Even Miranda seemed to be in a good mood, though this was probably because the neighbors were such wonderful cooks and had prepared an amazing feast. It was frustrating for Marvin that neighbors didn't seem to accept his praise for their exquisite dinner, because it seemed all they could talk about was how amazingly delicious his chocolate cake had been. The entire situation was frankly awkward for Marvin. Their new neighbors seemed entirely too polite and kept apologizing for all the effort they must have put him through to make the cake. Even their blonde-haired son seemed content and happy to sit quietly at the table and eat his food, looking up occasionally only to give an adorable grin.
The moment they returned to their room, Miranda remarked on what wonderful new neighbors they had.
"And that kid of theirs was absolutely precious."
Marvin couldn't agree more and suggested that they send flowers as a thank-you gift for the lovely dinner. Miranda was definitely impressed.
"What the hell is this?"
The next afternoon Marvin found in front of their door a large framed oil-painting and a note from the neighbors thanking them for the flowers.
"Miranda come over here, it's from our neighbors."
As Miranda made her way from the kitchen, Marvin couldn't help but wonder how much money the painting had cost. He guessed it was probably worth a few hundred. It was a very handsome piece and he already knew exactly where he wanted to hang it.
"It's a still-life of flowers in a vase," Miranda noted, "quite apt, but we can't accept it."
"Why not?"
"It's too expensive, it wouldn't be right"
"But how would it look if we turned away their gift, I wouldn't want to risk offending them. Besides, didn't you say that I should be more considerate." Miranda felt trapped by her own words as she realized Marvin was right.
"Fine, keep it. But you have to send something in return"
That night, Marvin went out and bought two bicycles and a red tricycle at the local sporting goods store. He presented them to the neighbors the next day who received the gifts with such extraordinary surprise you would have thought they won the lottery. They couldn't stop talking about what wonderful gifts Marvin had sent and wondered out loud how unworthy they were of his delightful friendship.
"No, I assure you the bicycles were nothing, think nothing of it." "No, you don't have to get anything in return, believe me." "No, No please, just take the bicycles as a thank-you for being such great neighbors, we don't want anything in return."
The next morning, Marvin awoke to find in his bedroom a large red bow affixed to new model motorcycle. By this time Marvin was almost in tears. While Miranda was still scratching her head in awe at how a motorcycle had found its way into their apartment, Marvin had already trudged half-way down to the local jewelry store and pulled out last years savings to purchase a diamond necklace.
"If this doesn't do it, nothing will. No one can ever accuse me of not being polite and considerate." But of course it didn't do it. The neighbors happily reciprocated with a diamond ring easily ten times the value of the necklace received and attached another cheerful note of thanks.
Marvin couldn't stand it anymore. If this was what it took to stay with Miranda then he was better off alone. In a fit of rage he tore-up the oil-painting, ripped apart the motorcycle with welding tools and had the diamond ring ground into pieces. Going to the bank of the river, he took all the remains and tossed them in. Marvin watched as they scattered, unrecoverable.
Phoenix
(Mike Brzozowski's)
There once was a time I was sure. It's funny how faith works. As a kid, you believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Santa, and whatever other heathen gods your parents invent to get you to behave (or lose your teeth), without question. Of course there's a God-Mommy and Daddy said so, and the nice lady at Sunday School told me the same thing. As you get older, you start questioning some axioms-"why do I have to go to bed at 9, Daddy? Why do you have to go to work every morning?"-but somehow, that one stays firm. It was always comforting to know that, no matter what, He was still there, watching over us.
When did that stop being enough? I wondered as I cast my eyes over the calm gray sea, half expecting-hoping, almost-to see Jesus walking across the water to tell me. I wanted to pinpoint the exact moment my faith began to falter. The easy answer was the day I got the call. How could a loving God, who knows and sees all, do something like this to those kids?
No, that was too easy. I'd become increasingly skeptical with age I knew. The suffering of the world was weighing down on my faith, each meaningless death another stone piled on. But I held on to this hope, this belief. perhaps because I was in denial. Or perhaps because the alternative was too depressing.
I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see. The final words echoed in my head as I turned back just in time to see her for the last time. It was in that split second that I realized just why so many people turned to faith in times like these. Either her life was a mere flicker of light or she would live on in heaven eternally. It's far easier to hope the latter, for it's so hard to say goodbye.
From the back of the boat, her ashes were thrown into the wind. They scattered, unrecoverable.
There once was a time I was sure. It's funny how faith works. As a kid, you believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Santa, and whatever other heathen gods your parents invent to get you to behave (or lose your teeth), without question. Of course there's a God-Mommy and Daddy said so, and the nice lady at Sunday School told me the same thing. As you get older, you start questioning some axioms-"why do I have to go to bed at 9, Daddy? Why do you have to go to work every morning?"-but somehow, that one stays firm. It was always comforting to know that, no matter what, He was still there, watching over us.
When did that stop being enough? I wondered as I cast my eyes over the calm gray sea, half expecting-hoping, almost-to see Jesus walking across the water to tell me. I wanted to pinpoint the exact moment my faith began to falter. The easy answer was the day I got the call. How could a loving God, who knows and sees all, do something like this to those kids?
No, that was too easy. I'd become increasingly skeptical with age I knew. The suffering of the world was weighing down on my faith, each meaningless death another stone piled on. But I held on to this hope, this belief. perhaps because I was in denial. Or perhaps because the alternative was too depressing.
I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see. The final words echoed in my head as I turned back just in time to see her for the last time. It was in that split second that I realized just why so many people turned to faith in times like these. Either her life was a mere flicker of light or she would live on in heaven eternally. It's far easier to hope the latter, for it's so hard to say goodbye.
From the back of the boat, her ashes were thrown into the wind. They scattered, unrecoverable.
Will You Remember Me?
(Yune's)
There once was a time I was sure of my name, at least; of the faces of my parents, my past lovers, the friendly couple who lived in the neighboring house. (Did I live in a house? Perhaps it was an apartment.) Now, when they ask who I am, I can only mutter the eight digits of my serial number. ("One eight two nine six four eight three.") I have trouble recognizing whether the masked doctors who attend me are the same ones who came and ran tests on me the day before. Does it matter? Each one means the same round of pain and questions.
Pain:
They always want a blood sample.
Sometimes they give me drugs. Sometimes they withhold the drugs until I'm hoarse from begging.
Scans where they fasten my body down with restraints that leave red marks for hours afterward. The indentations are just the most visible of the bonds.
A man once stormed into the room, shouting in a foreign tongue. The doctors tried to warn him about something, but he brusquely ordered them away. He shouted some more, then took hold of my hand and broke three of my fingers before the doctors returned to stop him.
But the greatest pain? Loneliness. They never speak to me unless they have to, or during interrogation. Listen.
Questions:
"Who are you?"
"Serial number one eight two nine six--"
"What is your name?"
"I don't remember."
"Where are you from?"
"Somewhere with lots of sun, where you can smell the sea..."
"Don't fuck with us."
"It's all I remember."
"Why are you here?"
"I don't know. Where am I?"
"What's the last thing you remember before you came here?"
"The silhouette of a dancer."
They don't get angry with me, but they stop and leave after that point. I should feel relieved at the ease of pressure. Instead I feel abandoned.
Only once did they ask,
"How do you know it's a dancer?"
"She's balancing on one leg, leaning forward, her arms lifted in either direction."
She was beautiful. I know this even though I can't recall her features.
#
What does a kiss feel like? Both affection and passion are strangers; the thought of lips to bare lips seems like laying one sheet of sandpaper against another. Rough and full of friction, yet reluctant to be dragged away from the other. I miss textures. I would welcome burlap as much as the softness of a magnolia petal.
The hands that touch me are always gloved and impersonal. They move my body however they will. When they are done, I am exhausted as I lie back in my bed, although I did nothing at all. The muscles in my body do not belong to me, nor my bones, nor any hair or cell. The pain--that, they let me keep.
(Did I ever kiss her? I loved her, this much I remember. Or is it that I love her now, for being my closest memory, my only companion here?)
#
Instead of a doctor, a woman enters the room. Her hair is long and braided around her head, and she has a low, husky voice.
"It's called an arabesque."
I stare at her stupidly.
"The ballet position." She demonstrates. One arm extended forward, the other back, a leg stretched out behind her. "I heard the tapes of your interrogation, and your clumsy description."
"It was you I saw before...?"
"Before you got captured."
"Who are you?"
Something flickers in her eyes. "My name is Lara. We're partners. I should have come for you long ago."
"Why?"
"To get you out of here."
My heart leaps. She needs to say nothing more. The thought of leaving this hell is enough to impel me out of the bed and toward the door.
"Wrong way," she says with a grin.
Despite her obvious amusement, I feel panic beginning to fill me. "I thought you said we were leaving."
"We are. But we're going out the window," she announces. She takes off her backpack and starts taking out rappelling equipment while humming a tune under her breath.
"Excuse me?" I say.
She looks up at me. "We're on the thirty-fourth floor. Once this room is unoccupied, an alarm will go off, and both the lift and the stairs will take us too long." She assembles the equipment with admirable efficiency. "You're too weak to do this, so you'll have to take the secondary position."
She has a lean strength that makes me trust that she can handle both our weights. As she instructs me to, I strap myself in behind her as she stands on the windowsill, and then I hold onto her waist.
She says suddenly, "Can I tell you a story?"
It is so unfamiliar to have my permission asked that it takes me a moment to say, "Yes."
"So my grandmother had one of those pearl necklaces. Someone tried to take it from her one day, but she hung on--and the string broke. All the pearls fell and bounced and rolled into cracks. She was left there with the string because, well, that's what she held onto. The moral of the story is to hold on--" Her hands cover mine for a moment, warm. "--to what you actually want to keep." She shifts my grip to the rappel anchor, gently but firmly.
I think I am blushing. "I'm sorry," I say.
She laughs. "It's not that. Under other circumstances I wouldn't mind. But this isn't the time."
And then she pushes off and we are falling. There is no time to tell her that I was already grasping what I valued more.
Air rushing past me through my hair through my skin sculpting me threatening to rip me out of my shape--
But she is there, a reassuring, solid warmth, and when we reach the ground, I confuse her for a moment with the earth: as necessary a baseline for my existence.
"Come on!" She drags me into one side of a vehicle and runs around to the other side. She guns the motor and then we are racing down a bumpy road.
There are so many new sensations. I gather them up greedily, until I am so glutted that everything becomes one blur. A long while later she stops and we get out. I sway, and she has to support me.
"A helicopter will come to pick you up here, and take you to base, then home," she says.
"What about you?"
"I still have work to do."
"If we're partners, I should help you."
"You've earned a rest." Her eyes are full of the same sadness that I saw when she told me she should have come earlier.
I like her expression better when she is merry. Her laughter, I think suddenly, her laughter and her stories and her singing are what make her beautiful. Her whimsical need to tell me the name of a dancer's pose.
"Will you remember me," she says softly, and it's not a question. It's a farewell.
I want to protest, but then she kisses me lightly, then turns and gets back in the vehicle. I watch her drive off.
My lips burn.
#
Hospitals on either side of the border are surprisingly alike. The earnest man in front of me is another doctor, but I can see his face and I can remember, if I try very hard, that he is on my side.
"You were an experimental test subject," he explains. "Memory enhancement for our undercover agents, and something of a self-destruct in case you fell into hostile hands. We never meant for basic long-term memory to be lost as well, though."
"Is it reversible?"
"We have high hopes. Certainly we've advanced the technology since it was first used on you. The military will, of course, cover all the costs."
I take a deep breath. "Do it."
#
My name is Will Brierley.
#
The doctor leads me to a small office, where a prim woman sits behind a desk. "This is Alice. She'll help you through all the paperwork necessary for your medical discharge and so forth."
She smiles at me with professional warmth. "Please sit down, sir." As I lower myself into the chair, she riffles through a stack of papers, pulls one out, and uncaps a pen. "Now. Let's start with your identifying information."
I watch the tip of the pen, poised above the sheet. "My name is Will Brierley." I savor the words, avidly watch her write out each letter. "Serial number--"
I stop. My mind is blank.
"Number--"
There are only ten possibilities for the first digit. Nine too many.
And I do not know what the dancer's pose is called, and I feel that the time and place and way that I learned it was important.
My lips tingle for some reason. My thoughts are numb.
They gave me back the memories I lost, but they took away the ones I still had, the ones I retained somehow but didn't care enough about to hold onto. And like pearls on a broken string, they scattered, unrecoverable.
(It was interesting how Yune and I (next story down) had roughly the same idea for the last line and thus both had Sci-Fi takes on these lines. We're really finding that we tend to prefer certain themes, over and over.)
There once was a time I was sure of my name, at least; of the faces of my parents, my past lovers, the friendly couple who lived in the neighboring house. (Did I live in a house? Perhaps it was an apartment.) Now, when they ask who I am, I can only mutter the eight digits of my serial number. ("One eight two nine six four eight three.") I have trouble recognizing whether the masked doctors who attend me are the same ones who came and ran tests on me the day before. Does it matter? Each one means the same round of pain and questions.
Pain:
They always want a blood sample.
Sometimes they give me drugs. Sometimes they withhold the drugs until I'm hoarse from begging.
Scans where they fasten my body down with restraints that leave red marks for hours afterward. The indentations are just the most visible of the bonds.
A man once stormed into the room, shouting in a foreign tongue. The doctors tried to warn him about something, but he brusquely ordered them away. He shouted some more, then took hold of my hand and broke three of my fingers before the doctors returned to stop him.
But the greatest pain? Loneliness. They never speak to me unless they have to, or during interrogation. Listen.
Questions:
"Who are you?"
"Serial number one eight two nine six--"
"What is your name?"
"I don't remember."
"Where are you from?"
"Somewhere with lots of sun, where you can smell the sea..."
"Don't fuck with us."
"It's all I remember."
"Why are you here?"
"I don't know. Where am I?"
"What's the last thing you remember before you came here?"
"The silhouette of a dancer."
They don't get angry with me, but they stop and leave after that point. I should feel relieved at the ease of pressure. Instead I feel abandoned.
Only once did they ask,
"How do you know it's a dancer?"
"She's balancing on one leg, leaning forward, her arms lifted in either direction."
She was beautiful. I know this even though I can't recall her features.
#
What does a kiss feel like? Both affection and passion are strangers; the thought of lips to bare lips seems like laying one sheet of sandpaper against another. Rough and full of friction, yet reluctant to be dragged away from the other. I miss textures. I would welcome burlap as much as the softness of a magnolia petal.
The hands that touch me are always gloved and impersonal. They move my body however they will. When they are done, I am exhausted as I lie back in my bed, although I did nothing at all. The muscles in my body do not belong to me, nor my bones, nor any hair or cell. The pain--that, they let me keep.
(Did I ever kiss her? I loved her, this much I remember. Or is it that I love her now, for being my closest memory, my only companion here?)
#
Instead of a doctor, a woman enters the room. Her hair is long and braided around her head, and she has a low, husky voice.
"It's called an arabesque."
I stare at her stupidly.
"The ballet position." She demonstrates. One arm extended forward, the other back, a leg stretched out behind her. "I heard the tapes of your interrogation, and your clumsy description."
"It was you I saw before...?"
"Before you got captured."
"Who are you?"
Something flickers in her eyes. "My name is Lara. We're partners. I should have come for you long ago."
"Why?"
"To get you out of here."
My heart leaps. She needs to say nothing more. The thought of leaving this hell is enough to impel me out of the bed and toward the door.
"Wrong way," she says with a grin.
Despite her obvious amusement, I feel panic beginning to fill me. "I thought you said we were leaving."
"We are. But we're going out the window," she announces. She takes off her backpack and starts taking out rappelling equipment while humming a tune under her breath.
"Excuse me?" I say.
She looks up at me. "We're on the thirty-fourth floor. Once this room is unoccupied, an alarm will go off, and both the lift and the stairs will take us too long." She assembles the equipment with admirable efficiency. "You're too weak to do this, so you'll have to take the secondary position."
She has a lean strength that makes me trust that she can handle both our weights. As she instructs me to, I strap myself in behind her as she stands on the windowsill, and then I hold onto her waist.
She says suddenly, "Can I tell you a story?"
It is so unfamiliar to have my permission asked that it takes me a moment to say, "Yes."
"So my grandmother had one of those pearl necklaces. Someone tried to take it from her one day, but she hung on--and the string broke. All the pearls fell and bounced and rolled into cracks. She was left there with the string because, well, that's what she held onto. The moral of the story is to hold on--" Her hands cover mine for a moment, warm. "--to what you actually want to keep." She shifts my grip to the rappel anchor, gently but firmly.
I think I am blushing. "I'm sorry," I say.
She laughs. "It's not that. Under other circumstances I wouldn't mind. But this isn't the time."
And then she pushes off and we are falling. There is no time to tell her that I was already grasping what I valued more.
Air rushing past me through my hair through my skin sculpting me threatening to rip me out of my shape--
But she is there, a reassuring, solid warmth, and when we reach the ground, I confuse her for a moment with the earth: as necessary a baseline for my existence.
"Come on!" She drags me into one side of a vehicle and runs around to the other side. She guns the motor and then we are racing down a bumpy road.
There are so many new sensations. I gather them up greedily, until I am so glutted that everything becomes one blur. A long while later she stops and we get out. I sway, and she has to support me.
"A helicopter will come to pick you up here, and take you to base, then home," she says.
"What about you?"
"I still have work to do."
"If we're partners, I should help you."
"You've earned a rest." Her eyes are full of the same sadness that I saw when she told me she should have come earlier.
I like her expression better when she is merry. Her laughter, I think suddenly, her laughter and her stories and her singing are what make her beautiful. Her whimsical need to tell me the name of a dancer's pose.
"Will you remember me," she says softly, and it's not a question. It's a farewell.
I want to protest, but then she kisses me lightly, then turns and gets back in the vehicle. I watch her drive off.
My lips burn.
#
Hospitals on either side of the border are surprisingly alike. The earnest man in front of me is another doctor, but I can see his face and I can remember, if I try very hard, that he is on my side.
"You were an experimental test subject," he explains. "Memory enhancement for our undercover agents, and something of a self-destruct in case you fell into hostile hands. We never meant for basic long-term memory to be lost as well, though."
"Is it reversible?"
"We have high hopes. Certainly we've advanced the technology since it was first used on you. The military will, of course, cover all the costs."
I take a deep breath. "Do it."
#
My name is Will Brierley.
#
The doctor leads me to a small office, where a prim woman sits behind a desk. "This is Alice. She'll help you through all the paperwork necessary for your medical discharge and so forth."
She smiles at me with professional warmth. "Please sit down, sir." As I lower myself into the chair, she riffles through a stack of papers, pulls one out, and uncaps a pen. "Now. Let's start with your identifying information."
I watch the tip of the pen, poised above the sheet. "My name is Will Brierley." I savor the words, avidly watch her write out each letter. "Serial number--"
I stop. My mind is blank.
"Number--"
There are only ten possibilities for the first digit. Nine too many.
And I do not know what the dancer's pose is called, and I feel that the time and place and way that I learned it was important.
My lips tingle for some reason. My thoughts are numb.
They gave me back the memories I lost, but they took away the ones I still had, the ones I retained somehow but didn't care enough about to hold onto. And like pearls on a broken string, they scattered, unrecoverable.
The System
(mine)
There once was a time, I was sure, when things were different. However, no records of it were kept. Our classes did not discuss the primitives from whom we were descended. It was often rumored that they had fought themselves to near extinction, inflicting terrible pain on each other. These rumors never lasted long. Even as my mind wandered in that direction, I felt the familiar gagging rise up the back of my throat, choking my consciousness, diverting my thoughts to more pressing physical needs. I struggled to remember, to hold onto this realization, as I stopped breathing and the blackness washed over me.
I woke up in my own bed. As with every time the System enforces, I knew I had done something wrong. As I lay there, trying to decipher what that might be, I felt the tingling of my constricting windpipe. Another region where my thoughts must not go. I sighed and dressed for work, knowing that my job as a System technician will be sufficiently distracting to prevent another enforcement. I felt the lump in my throat where, when I was five, correction officers had me "locked". It was linked to a small chip imbedded in the back of my head. When the System detected that my thoughts were impure, the lock would close up. It was a common occurrence; people falling to the ground, clutching at their throats. None of us gave it any regard; it was a minor annoyance, having to walk around these gasping forms.
That night, I began to wonder again. Night time was a good time for this sort of reflection as the System was overburdened, sorting through all the semi-conscious thinking that precedes sleep. I have often managed a few distinct thoughts before the enforcement. Tonight was a good night.
The history of the System was well documented. We all had to learn it in school. The Founder, Dr. Joseph Karl, had taken surviving primitives under his charge and developed the System to ensure that no one would think of horrors again. Again. That was a funny word. I suddenly realized, that thoughts like that must have been possible once. Before the system, there had been a time when people could think what they wanted. They could have feelings of jealousy, lust and anger, and with those feelings, love, passion and desire. Most importantly curiosity, a vague word that I had only heard described as the ultimate crime, was actually celebrated. People did not have to repress their own mental wandering just to breathe. It was almost a fantasy, an incomprehensible world onto which I could only glimpse at.
With a start, I realized that I had been lost in this thought for over five minutes. And yet, the lock around my throat was still open; I was still breathing. Almost timidly, I pondered this unusual failure, prepared at any second to feel it shut off. Was it some technical error? Did one of my coworkers fail to replace a vital chip? Had I found some way to shield my thoughts from the receptors?
It was another five minutes before they burst in my door: three men in labcoats who stood by my bed, holding a twisted machine they attached wordlessly to my head. I didn't scream; I was too curious for that. I merely looked on in silence, processing this new occurrence. The men said nothing as they turned it on.
They were too kind to kill me. It was much worse. Instead, I felt, no saw, my thoughts disappear as my mind was wiped. And yet, I was incapable of sorrow as they scattered, unrecoverable.
There once was a time, I was sure, when things were different. However, no records of it were kept. Our classes did not discuss the primitives from whom we were descended. It was often rumored that they had fought themselves to near extinction, inflicting terrible pain on each other. These rumors never lasted long. Even as my mind wandered in that direction, I felt the familiar gagging rise up the back of my throat, choking my consciousness, diverting my thoughts to more pressing physical needs. I struggled to remember, to hold onto this realization, as I stopped breathing and the blackness washed over me.
I woke up in my own bed. As with every time the System enforces, I knew I had done something wrong. As I lay there, trying to decipher what that might be, I felt the tingling of my constricting windpipe. Another region where my thoughts must not go. I sighed and dressed for work, knowing that my job as a System technician will be sufficiently distracting to prevent another enforcement. I felt the lump in my throat where, when I was five, correction officers had me "locked". It was linked to a small chip imbedded in the back of my head. When the System detected that my thoughts were impure, the lock would close up. It was a common occurrence; people falling to the ground, clutching at their throats. None of us gave it any regard; it was a minor annoyance, having to walk around these gasping forms.
That night, I began to wonder again. Night time was a good time for this sort of reflection as the System was overburdened, sorting through all the semi-conscious thinking that precedes sleep. I have often managed a few distinct thoughts before the enforcement. Tonight was a good night.
The history of the System was well documented. We all had to learn it in school. The Founder, Dr. Joseph Karl, had taken surviving primitives under his charge and developed the System to ensure that no one would think of horrors again. Again. That was a funny word. I suddenly realized, that thoughts like that must have been possible once. Before the system, there had been a time when people could think what they wanted. They could have feelings of jealousy, lust and anger, and with those feelings, love, passion and desire. Most importantly curiosity, a vague word that I had only heard described as the ultimate crime, was actually celebrated. People did not have to repress their own mental wandering just to breathe. It was almost a fantasy, an incomprehensible world onto which I could only glimpse at.
With a start, I realized that I had been lost in this thought for over five minutes. And yet, the lock around my throat was still open; I was still breathing. Almost timidly, I pondered this unusual failure, prepared at any second to feel it shut off. Was it some technical error? Did one of my coworkers fail to replace a vital chip? Had I found some way to shield my thoughts from the receptors?
It was another five minutes before they burst in my door: three men in labcoats who stood by my bed, holding a twisted machine they attached wordlessly to my head. I didn't scream; I was too curious for that. I merely looked on in silence, processing this new occurrence. The men said nothing as they turned it on.
They were too kind to kill me. It was much worse. Instead, I felt, no saw, my thoughts disappear as my mind was wiped. And yet, I was incapable of sorrow as they scattered, unrecoverable.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Remains Untitled
(From Rose)
The music played on. The floor-shaking, ear-splitting bass that had kept him awake half the night was still going now, even as the noon sun sneaking its way through the clouds and the slats of his battered blinds revealed that even the most trendily late of parties should have been long since over.
Now that Tom had been jarred completely awake, he realized that the reason he had slept so late was that he had awoken several times during the night, presumably because of the music, and his ire began to rise at the disruption of his carefully guarded sleep schedule. Mentally calculating how many hours he could now allot himself for the rest of the nights that week, he searched through the mess of clothes strewn on the floor for a pair of boxers decent enough to wear in public.
Without stopping for even so much as a quick arm-pit check, he strode to the cargo elevator that separated his ramshackle loft from its mirror-image on the other half of the converted warehouse. Though he failed to notice the lack of the usual post-party plastic cups and mysterious sticky spots, Tom stopped short at the heavy glass door standing ajar.
"Grant?" Tom timidly poked his head into the apartment and called his neighbor's name. There was no response.
"Grant," he said a little louder. This time a Doberman Pinscher strolled out of the entrance to what could only have been the bathroom, given its occupation of a large corner of the otherwise completely open room. The dog had always been fairly friendly to Tom when he ran into it on his way out in the mornings, and he relaxed, as his sniffed hand seemed to meet with approval.
"What's your name?" he whispered. "Butch? Buster?" They'd been introduced once, a long time ago, in a time when his owner hadn't seemed so busy or so cold (to both him and the dog) as he was of late.
He followed Butch/Buster through the artistic maze of leather sofas and steel and glass tables to the swinging metal door. Steeling himself for the worst, he slowly pushed it open, letting the dog stick his head in around him, and peered around. As he took in the damp bath mat, fogged-up mirror, and abandoned bathrobe, in the otherwise in-order space, his worry began to ease.
Determined to be able to enjoy his own shower in peace, Tom followed the music to the open window further along the wall of the long, narrow room. Disgustedly, he clambered onto the edge of the tub and pulled himself through it to the miniscule balcony that had put this half of the building out of his price range. Just as decided to do his neighbor a favor by moving the expensive stereo equipment out of reach of the downpour and reached for the mouse-chewed cord, Tom caught a glimpse of his neighbor. Unmoving and unblinking, he sat out in the rain.
The music played on. The floor-shaking, ear-splitting bass that had kept him awake half the night was still going now, even as the noon sun sneaking its way through the clouds and the slats of his battered blinds revealed that even the most trendily late of parties should have been long since over.
Now that Tom had been jarred completely awake, he realized that the reason he had slept so late was that he had awoken several times during the night, presumably because of the music, and his ire began to rise at the disruption of his carefully guarded sleep schedule. Mentally calculating how many hours he could now allot himself for the rest of the nights that week, he searched through the mess of clothes strewn on the floor for a pair of boxers decent enough to wear in public.
Without stopping for even so much as a quick arm-pit check, he strode to the cargo elevator that separated his ramshackle loft from its mirror-image on the other half of the converted warehouse. Though he failed to notice the lack of the usual post-party plastic cups and mysterious sticky spots, Tom stopped short at the heavy glass door standing ajar.
"Grant?" Tom timidly poked his head into the apartment and called his neighbor's name. There was no response.
"Grant," he said a little louder. This time a Doberman Pinscher strolled out of the entrance to what could only have been the bathroom, given its occupation of a large corner of the otherwise completely open room. The dog had always been fairly friendly to Tom when he ran into it on his way out in the mornings, and he relaxed, as his sniffed hand seemed to meet with approval.
"What's your name?" he whispered. "Butch? Buster?" They'd been introduced once, a long time ago, in a time when his owner hadn't seemed so busy or so cold (to both him and the dog) as he was of late.
He followed Butch/Buster through the artistic maze of leather sofas and steel and glass tables to the swinging metal door. Steeling himself for the worst, he slowly pushed it open, letting the dog stick his head in around him, and peered around. As he took in the damp bath mat, fogged-up mirror, and abandoned bathrobe, in the otherwise in-order space, his worry began to ease.
Determined to be able to enjoy his own shower in peace, Tom followed the music to the open window further along the wall of the long, narrow room. Disgustedly, he clambered onto the edge of the tub and pulled himself through it to the miniscule balcony that had put this half of the building out of his price range. Just as decided to do his neighbor a favor by moving the expensive stereo equipment out of reach of the downpour and reached for the mouse-chewed cord, Tom caught a glimpse of his neighbor. Unmoving and unblinking, he sat out in the rain.
SIlence
The music played on. For almost a day, while the batteries lasted, the fallen CD player spun, the faintly cheerful sound of early 21st century pop music seeping out the dropped headphones. Even that too fell silent, as everything around it had. The only sounds left now were the rustling of a sheet of newsprint skittering across the street and, in the distance, the sound of a stalled car engine as it slowly burned it’s remaining fuel before also going silent.
Theirs was the first bomb to fall. Even while international tensions had escalated, no government believed that it would come to this. Chemical weapons were just too horrific, too dangerous. The threat of mutually assured destruction was simply too great for any political leader to want to even consider it. But when the first bomb hit Greenwood, Delaware, just short of its DC target, this unthinkable nightmare became a reality.
The country, for all its technical sophistication, could only give the county police five minutes warning. They acted as quickly as they could, but five minutes could do nothing for Greenwood, population 648. It did nothing for the mother watching her children in the playground; nothing for the supermarket clerk counting out change; nothing for the young girl sliding the new Britney Spears CD into her CD player. Even the birds fell as they sang. The toxin was well designed and merciful. As the light breeze carried it through the streets, people simply fell where they were standing. The pain, if any, was shortlived. For the few on the outskirts of town, cowering in their basements and cars, death came within minutes as it seeped slowing in through ventilation systems and window cracks. The silence enveloped them too.
A gentle rain began to fall. In the center of the park green, there stood a statue of the founder. Riding gallantly into town on a bronze steed, he now surveyed a field of sightless eyes and motionless bodies. In the dead quiet, it almost looked like he was crying as he sat in the rain.
Theirs was the first bomb to fall. Even while international tensions had escalated, no government believed that it would come to this. Chemical weapons were just too horrific, too dangerous. The threat of mutually assured destruction was simply too great for any political leader to want to even consider it. But when the first bomb hit Greenwood, Delaware, just short of its DC target, this unthinkable nightmare became a reality.
The country, for all its technical sophistication, could only give the county police five minutes warning. They acted as quickly as they could, but five minutes could do nothing for Greenwood, population 648. It did nothing for the mother watching her children in the playground; nothing for the supermarket clerk counting out change; nothing for the young girl sliding the new Britney Spears CD into her CD player. Even the birds fell as they sang. The toxin was well designed and merciful. As the light breeze carried it through the streets, people simply fell where they were standing. The pain, if any, was shortlived. For the few on the outskirts of town, cowering in their basements and cars, death came within minutes as it seeped slowing in through ventilation systems and window cracks. The silence enveloped them too.
A gentle rain began to fall. In the center of the park green, there stood a statue of the founder. Riding gallantly into town on a bronze steed, he now surveyed a field of sightless eyes and motionless bodies. In the dead quiet, it almost looked like he was crying as he sat in the rain.
Johnny
Since I can't seem to steer away from morbid stories, I instead write terribly sad ones that are lame by the same token. I will say that I plagerized the idea for writing about the mentally handicapped from Josephine, but butchered it horribly. If it weren't for the no rewrites rule, I would definitely rewrite this.
The music played on; the gentle tinkling of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" filling the room once again. It was already an hour past Johnny's bedtime but his mom and dad didn't seem to notice. Johnny had been so enthralled by the tiny music box and its familiar melody, turning the key repeatedly with his clumsy oversized fingers. It would have been a shame for anyone to deny him this treasure over as trivial a concern as bedtime. Mom and Dad simply sat and smiled gently at their now fifteen-year-old son.
It had been hard on them when she'd given birth to a boy with Down syndrome. Little Johnny had needed perpetual care; it couldn't be helped. At the age when most kids were able to bathe themselves and were heading off to kindergarten, Johnny sat and gurgled in the shower while his mother carefully scrubbed him with a washcloth. It would be two more years before he could be enrolled in kindergarten.
Now, on his fifteenth birthday, Johnny had finally made it into third grade. For the double celebration, Mom and Dad had bought him a music box. They watched his face break out into that familiar flattened, lopsided grin when he discovered how he could make it play beautiful music. The excitement never left his face, even with each repeated playing, long into the night.
* * *
Johnny stepped off the bus and shivered in the light drizzle. He was back from work again. The music box was threaded securely on a strong chain around his neck. Mr Warner wouldn't let him play it while he stacked the boxes but he dutifully turned the little silver key whenever he was off his shift. It helped him feel at peace with the cold world. His was world of staring eyes and overly kind but sadly distant people. Now that his parents had passed on, no one would talk to him; but for staring and quickly looking away. But when the tiny tinny music filled the air, he had a friend who talked and who understood.
He had left his house key at work again. Johnny sat quietly on the curb and waited for his roommates. They wouldn't be here for another hour and for that time, Johnny would be alone. The simple notes of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" faded into the evening as he sat in the rain.
Currently grooving to: Oasis - Don't Look Back in Anger
Drought
Wow. Yune sent me 5 PAGES of good writing. This is a fantastic story, even if it did take her about 2 hours.
The music played on, even as Seth searched for its source. He had been startled to hear the first breathy notes of pipes when he had first ventured into the shadowed woods where the villagers dared not go. It meant someone else had been foolish and desperate enough to come here. And yet the song was a light, joyous one. No one had been joyous since the drought had begun.
He followed the melody almost mindlessly, and it led him into a clearing where lay a pool. But another sight distracted him even more than the water. A woman was sitting on a fallen log with her back to him, swaying dreamily to the music. Her hands were clearly empty. But she was facing the water, and along its edge grew reeds.
The reeds. The wind was blowing on the reeds in just the right way so as to produce melody.
"Witchcraft," he whispered, and crossed himself.
The woman leapt to her feet and whirled to face him. The music tangled into discord, then faded entirely. The air seemed hollow without it. She started to run, but Seth sprang forward and seized her wrist, jerking her to a halt. She tried to pull away, but he was far stronger than she, and he stilled her enough to get his first good look at her.
The village whispered that there was a wood-witch. They never said that she was only a girl, slender enough to be lifted by a wind and far too young to have cheeks so hollow or eyes so haunted.
"You're the witch?" he asked, his thoughts sluggish.
She stopped her struggles and lifted her chin proudly. "The winds are mine," she said. "I use them for no ill. If that still makes me a witch, then so I am. Did you come to hunt me down and tie me to a stake and burn me?"
"No, I--" Seth almost released her to gesture at the waterskins he had dropped in order to catch her. "I was looking for water. Our wells have gone dry."
Her eyes narrowed. "That's none of my concern." A gale buffeted him so suddenly that he nearly fell over. Instinctively he hunched over and leaned hard against it, dragging her down with him. The wind threatened to tear him away from the earth that he clung to. He tightened his grip on her arm, until he heard her gasp with pain.
"I'm sorry," he said, and released her. She was only a girl, and half-starved; he almost could have wrapped his fingers twice around her wrist. "I didn't mean to hurt you." His tongue felt large and clumsy in his mouth. "Just...you were going to leave, and take the music with you."
She immediately stood and stepped away, but she did not flee. The haughtiness had faded from her face now, and there was a furrow between her brows. Slowly, with the wary movements of an untamed creature, she bent to pick up one of his waterskins and offered it to him. "When you leave, then, take some water. The pool is fed by an underground spring, and there is plenty even when there are no rains."
He reached forward and took it from her. When his fingers touched the waterskin, she flinched a little, as though even that mediated touch was startling. She had been here in the woods, away from people, a long time.
He stood there, feeling a strange reluctance to turn away. "The priest says you have cursed us," he said.
She looked at him disdainfully. "As though I would care enough to meddle in your village's affairs. Men chased me out of them four years ago, and I now thank them for it. Besides, if your god is so strong, should he not be able to overcome my paltry powers and bless you with rain?"
That was the priest's other accusation: lack of faith. Seth was not the most devout of men, though. He didn't believe the priest. And he didn't believe this girl, either. "Doesn't it get lonely?" he asked her.
She stiffened. "I'm happy here," she said. "I don't care for walls and iron and the pettiness of townsfolk." And she slipped away before he could protest.
He filled his waterskins and returned home, thoughtful. His wife Sharra greeted him with relief. "Never go there again," she pleaded with him.
"We needed the water." He touched her face, so gaunt and troubled.
"It's a cursed place. I don't dare let anyone else know where you got this, or that we have it at all."
But she used it willingly enough, and in time Seth judged that he needed to fetch more. This time he wandered the woods calling, "Wood-witch!"
"My name is Lynn," she said irritably from behind him, and he turned to see her glaring at him. "What do you want?"
"I wanted to ask for more water from your pool."
She made a dismissive gesture. "It's yours, as long as you don't bring the entire village down upon me."
"And..." He hesitated. "Could you play the reeds again?"
Her face softened. "There's no music in your village?"
"There's been no time for merrymaking since the rains stopped coming," he said.
She nodded at last, and he followed the girl over to the pool, where he filled his waterskins to the sound of the winds flickering over the reeds with a delicacy no fingers or lips could have managed.
He came regularly after that, until Sharra's protests finally faded for lack of effect. He learned how Lynn's mother had been a witch before her, and burned at the stake. She had managed to escape, and had learned to live in the woods. She had a quick temper, but he had been right: there was something in her that still craved human company, and if he stayed long enough, she would always come.
She gave him a whistle, fashioned out of wood. "I will always hear it," she told him. He wore it on a cord around his neck, and the next time he entered the woods, he blew it and was delighted to hear an impossibly complex trill of melody. And sure enough, Lynn came soon afterward.
One day he said to her, "You should come back to the village with me. Sharra wouldn't mind. We've always wanted a child, but we never could have one."
"I don't think I could be any man's daughter," she said, but the words lacked the edge they could have held. "I've lived alone and answerable to no one but myself for too long."
"At least see my home," he urged her. "Sleep a night on a bed instead of on dry leaves."
She wavered.
"Sharra can cook you a meal. You must be weary of living off of whatever you can forage."
And she sighed and said, "All right."
So the two of them left the woods. Seth took his usual discreet path to his house. Sharra always watched for him from the window. But this time she met him at the door.
"How dare you?" she spat.
Lynn immediately drew back. Seth looked at his wife questioningly. His expression only seemed to enrage her more.
"You think I didn't know? But did you have to come rub it in my face?"
For the first time he realized how Sharra must see Lynn: not as a poor, barefoot child with tattered clothes and browned skin, but as a young woman with a fierce wild beauty evident even through the grime.
"Sneaking off so often...I knew it was a woman. Off in the woods for a lover's tryst."
"That's not so," he said calmly, but she was already going on.
"And now you bring her back here! You think you can set up this chit in our home? We built this place together! We had everything we needed. You don't need this trinket or token or whatever it is you've been hiding around your neck--"
"Sharra," he said, but she had already snatched it up, breaking the cord and leaving a sting at the back of his neck.
"What is it? A whistle?" She laughed without humor and blew into it, contemptuously.
A fragment of song emerged.
Sharra stared at it, then dropped it and backed away. "What is it?" she said again, this time in a whisper.
The villagers had already begun to gather at the spectacle of a public fight. Now the circle widened, as though no one wished to stand too close to him. He scanned the faces, all of them familiar to him, none of them friendly. He was only glad that there was no sign of Lynn. She must have managed to escape.
"Witch," the ugly mutter began to rise, and Seth felt a sudden chill.
There was a ripple in the circle, and then the priest thrust himself forward. "Witch," he repeated with an ugly smile.
Sharra shrieked, "No! He's not!" She lunged forward for the whistle, but the priest got to it first. He turned it over in his fingers thoughtfully, then fastidiously cleaned the mouthpiece on his sleeve before venturing the slightest of breaths into it.
The notes were pure and clear and ironically bright and cheerful.
"This," the priest said softly, "is surely witchcraft. Seth, is this yours? Did you make it?"
There was a truth and a lie before him. He thought of men combing the woods, of seizing Lynn's frail frame and holding it against a stake while they tied her to it.
"Yes," he said.
Sharra screamed again, but two men held her back while others moved in on Seth. Still more left under the priest's strident orders to fetch wood...and a torch.
Seth did not offer any resistance as they build the wood pile, then placed him at its center and secured him there. What was the point? Even if he could win free, he was not like Lynn, to be able to live content in the woods away from other men.
Someone brought out the torch. The priest accepted it, then turned to him.
Seth turned his head aside. He could see Sharra's stricken face as the priest thundered, "Ask the god for forgiveness!"
"Help me," Seth whispered. But he was not praying to the god.
The priest lowered the torch. Flames began to lick their way up the tinder. The wood was dry, of course, and it flared into heat against the soles of his feet in only a short while. The winds were strong, and fanned them even higher. But the minutes seemed to slow for Seth, stretching almost languorously.
He leaned his head back against the stake and looked up. The skies above were dark. He watched the clouds gather with unnatural swiftness, so that even the sliver of the moon grew so thin it vanished, and a veil drew across the stars.
Then he felt them on his face. Raindrops. She had brought the stormclouds here.
Then they began to fall upon everyone else, and a shout went up. "Rain!" People threw their heads back and let the water soak their clothes, their skin. And there was the hiss of steam added to the tumult, as the rain became a torrent and doused the fire beneath Seth.
"It's a miracle!" someone said, pulling on the priest's sleeve. "The god has declared him innocent!"
The priest scowled, but someone else picked up the cry and there were suddenly hands busy at the ropes that tied him. Some people cheered him, but there was too much chaos now, everyone rushing home, busy trying to find container to catch water. They were running in the streets, the mud, and for the first time since the drought had begun, Seth heard laughter in the village.
One person was standing still and smiling, all her joy for him. He went to Sharra and embraced her.
She held him tightly. "Seth, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry--"
"It's all right. I understand. I did wrong, too. I should have let you know."
She clung to him, sobbing. He waited until she had quieted, and then he gently put her from him.
"I have to go to the woods," he said.
She stared at him. "But now the storm's blowing!"
"That's why," he said as gently as he could. "It will be the last time, and then I will come back. I promise." He kissed her forehead, then left her while she was still standing there, bewildered.
He knew where he would find her. She was not at the pool when he reached it, but he sat down upon the log and waited. He didn't need a whistle this time.
She came after a few minutes. She sat next to him and leaned her head against his shoulder. She did not say, I'd best stay here. He did not say, I'd best see you no longer. She did not say, If I had brought the rain earlier, you would have stopped coming here. He did not say, Thank you for my life. If she cried, any tears that wet his shirt were lost among the raindrops.
After the silence had drawn on long enough for all their words to remain unsaid, she stood up and walked away. She did not look back.
The rain felt like needles when it struck his skin, and the winds whipping between the trees bitter cold, but his shoulder felt strangely warm as he sat in the rain.
Currently grooving to: Ben Folds - One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn
Monday, May 17, 2004
The Hunt
Here I just gave in to the urge to write a morbid, disturbing story with a treasure map and all the trimmings. Then I got freaked out by the character that I had created and wimped out somewhat.
It didn't matter who went first, they were both going to die. Tom Vane smiled at the realization, a twisted, awkward smile mutated by the livid scar running up his face. He regarded his last two prisoners, pondering, almost academically, just whom to kill. They had such fearful little eyes, behind all the rope and gag.
He was getting too old for these little mental games that he'd so enjoyed only a few years ago. With an almost careless glance back, he fired twice.
Two red splashes appeared on the wall and two faceless bodies hit the floor, one on the other. Tom waved some underlings over to clean it up. He had a map to look into.
The fabled treasure of Bluebeard was waiting. Gold, antiques and artwork stolen from Spanish ships crossing the Atlantic; it would be quite a collection. It was stashed deep in one of the thousands of tiny little caves that dot the English coast. A single treasure map had been drawn, lost in some attic in some coastal village in the Scottish moors, stolen by looters of Bluebeard's Highland castle after his death.
Ten years ago, Tom Vane, the young ambitious Oxford historian, had set out to find this map and with it, the treasure. When funding from the University dried up after three long years, Tom was more determined to find this map than ever. A crew of ruffians and lanky pirates in tow, Tom had started to raid attics and basements. First, they snuck in at night, but eventually in broad daylight at gunpoint. Two years of frustration followed. Soon, a methodical search for a map had evolved into wonton robbery. They took what they could, loading their ship with coins, jewelry, silver and even golden lockets torn from the necks of screaming girls. As they descended the coast, robbery became plundering, became pillaging. Rape and murder soon followed as their search turned up empty time and time again, as Tom's face became twisted by a mass of deep scars from these bloody scuffles. Hundreds died in their unyielding march for this map. The feared crew of Tom Vane left footprints in red.
Along their route, the bodies of the crewmembers that had objected to these change lined ditches and lay broken at the bottoms of seaside cliffs. The crew that had started out as petty thieves was now mostly replaced by seasoned killers. Even so, the turnover rate among the crewmembers was still very high. Only the bloodthirsty Tom Vane and an equally heartless right hand man, Richard Crawley remained.
Finally however, the search appeared to be over. A single rolled map had been found in the cellar of the unfortunate elderly couple that was at this moment being mopped off the hardwood deck. As Richard gingerly unrolled it onto the large mahogany desk, Tom began that twisted smile. He immediately recognized the dense tight cursive print of the infamous old pirate. The handwriting that he had studied for years while in Oxford detailed the precise location of this ultimate hoard. Richard immediately understood the pause.
A man driven singularly by avarice, he was ecstatic. "Now we've found it. Now we can finally end this meaningless killing and claim a real reward."
Tom Vane, didn't look up. Instead the smile spreading across his face grew almost demonic. He felt the comforting warm steel of the pistol clutched mindlessly in his left hand. With a chilling stare at his partner of nearly eight years, he tore the map in two and let the pieces fall to the floor.
Best friends
I'm so sorry... I was trying to avoid morbid pirate stories with a treasure map (see other story)
(Mine)
It didn’t matter who went first; within minutes of each other, both James and Frank were again side-by-side in the bathroom worshiping the white porcelain. This position was not unfamiliar for these two sophomores. Ever since being assigned as roommates on the first day of freshman year, they’d discovered a mutual love for drinking games. As their friendship blossomed over kegs, cases and forties, the drinking games got simpler and simpler. Now instead of cards or quarters, they simply chugged in turn… until one of them stumbled down the hall and unloaded. The second would never be far behind.
Between booting and flushing, James managed a weak smile at his un-drinking buddy. “We’ve got to stop this before we kill ourselves.”
Frank didn’t reply; he’d already passed out.
It was a common sentiment. Lately, as Frank had turned 21, these midnight games had become an almost daily occurrence. One or the other would vow to stop but it wouldn’t be three day before they again found themselves in what had become “the J&F stall” right by the bathroom door.
This time, James was serious. The next morning, as he loaded up on aspirin and orange juice, he decided that he, they, needed to get away. College life simply surrounded them with too much beer and stress, both factors that snowballed into those miserable nights. A road trip to the country would be perfect; maybe even a visit to his tee-totaling grandparents and a month of no drinking would set them straight. They were already failing their classes, stopping out would be no big deal academically.
By the time Frank came back from the shower, grimacing at his own hangover, James had already planned a route from LA through Utah and all the way into Texas. He was feeling better already. Convincing Frank took all of two minutes; he agreed to anything when he couldn’t think straight.
That afternoon as James got back from working things out with his professors, Frank had already gotten started on his own favorite hangover cure: an ice-cold forty. He opened one for his roommate. James took one look at the proffered beer, the dopy “buzzed” grin spreading up his friend’s face and went over to his desk. He resigned. Taking the beer, he tore the map in two and let the pieces fall to the floor.
The Trip
(Rose:)
It didn’t matter who went first. Since she seemed so adamant, he went ahead and casually strolled through the door that she held open for him, knowing that his nonchalance after their little spat would irritate her all the more. She was so cute when she was riled up, especially when it was about one of her pet issues. So of course anything that offended her pseudo-feminist sensibilities was good for a kick, as was any nay-saying about the independent, self-reliant spirit she valued so much.
Oh yeah, he was already in trouble for that. Just half way into the first day of what was supposed to be a week-long road trip, and already they were lost, and he had made her mad just by pointing that out. You could tell, because she hadn’t opened her mouth in at least a good fifteen minutes.
That really was not a good sign when country music was playing and it didn’t bode well for what was supposed to be their adventure of a lifetime, their fitting end to what everyone told them was the best four years of their lives.
The planning had been brilliantly executed. Compiling lists of cheesy tourist sights and the architectural landmarks that they had always oohed and aahed over, plotting out distances that each one would drive each day, scheduling around mandatory family visits and the call of their new jobs – they had made sure that every tiny detail was in place, investing as much time as necessary during the “study breaks” of their depressingly final set of finals. Somehow they’d overlooked figuring out how not to get at each others’ throats when things like this arose.
As she hunted down the sour candy straws that he’d noticed were her staple gas station purchase, he went to the clerk to check what he was already certain were the directions to get them back on t heir route, origin San Francisco, final destination New York. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to point out the ridiculousness of her idea of how to get there just as she walked up to the counter, but at least now they really did know where to go. She paid in silence and handed him the keys as they walked out to her RAV4, which he had agreed to taking only after demonstrations of the not- so-horrible gas mileage and a rather convincing argument about naps and storage space.
Just as they reached the sign announcing their entrance to Yosemite, she opened her eyes and restored her seat to its upright position, confirming his suspicion that she had been feigning sleep for the past two hours.
After they had paid the entrance fee, she turned to him with a teasing smile and said, “What’s for dinner?”
Later, their simple meal of grilled corn on the cob and steak settling peacefully in their stomachs, having enjoyed the stars from their posts by the dying embers, they climbed into the sleeping bag. As she started going over their neatly printed plans for the following day, it occurred to him suddenly that the key to really enjoying themselves, to celebrating their friendship and their past four years together, to really having the adventure of a lifetime, was to get rid of the plans. To a stunned, but not wholly displeased reaction, he grabbed hold of her papers and he tore the map in two and let the pieces fall to the floor.
It didn’t matter who went first. Since she seemed so adamant, he went ahead and casually strolled through the door that she held open for him, knowing that his nonchalance after their little spat would irritate her all the more. She was so cute when she was riled up, especially when it was about one of her pet issues. So of course anything that offended her pseudo-feminist sensibilities was good for a kick, as was any nay-saying about the independent, self-reliant spirit she valued so much.
Oh yeah, he was already in trouble for that. Just half way into the first day of what was supposed to be a week-long road trip, and already they were lost, and he had made her mad just by pointing that out. You could tell, because she hadn’t opened her mouth in at least a good fifteen minutes.
That really was not a good sign when country music was playing and it didn’t bode well for what was supposed to be their adventure of a lifetime, their fitting end to what everyone told them was the best four years of their lives.
The planning had been brilliantly executed. Compiling lists of cheesy tourist sights and the architectural landmarks that they had always oohed and aahed over, plotting out distances that each one would drive each day, scheduling around mandatory family visits and the call of their new jobs – they had made sure that every tiny detail was in place, investing as much time as necessary during the “study breaks” of their depressingly final set of finals. Somehow they’d overlooked figuring out how not to get at each others’ throats when things like this arose.
As she hunted down the sour candy straws that he’d noticed were her staple gas station purchase, he went to the clerk to check what he was already certain were the directions to get them back on t heir route, origin San Francisco, final destination New York. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to point out the ridiculousness of her idea of how to get there just as she walked up to the counter, but at least now they really did know where to go. She paid in silence and handed him the keys as they walked out to her RAV4, which he had agreed to taking only after demonstrations of the not- so-horrible gas mileage and a rather convincing argument about naps and storage space.
Just as they reached the sign announcing their entrance to Yosemite, she opened her eyes and restored her seat to its upright position, confirming his suspicion that she had been feigning sleep for the past two hours.
After they had paid the entrance fee, she turned to him with a teasing smile and said, “What’s for dinner?”
Later, their simple meal of grilled corn on the cob and steak settling peacefully in their stomachs, having enjoyed the stars from their posts by the dying embers, they climbed into the sleeping bag. As she started going over their neatly printed plans for the following day, it occurred to him suddenly that the key to really enjoying themselves, to celebrating their friendship and their past four years together, to really having the adventure of a lifetime, was to get rid of the plans. To a stunned, but not wholly displeased reaction, he grabbed hold of her papers and he tore the map in two and let the pieces fall to the floor.
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Adaptation
When you ask random people for challenging sentences, be careful that you get what you wish for. (If you're new to this, the bolded sentences/phrases are forced to be included verbatim as first/last sentences and the rest we fill in to make a story... in hopefully less than an hour.)
Here, I cheated terribly... (I was entirely clueless and uninspired). Yune did better.
Mine:
Here, I cheated terribly... (I was entirely clueless and uninspired). Yune did better.
Mine:
"Whatever happens, the word 'penetrate' must be in there somewhere."
James sighed. Like every screenwriter in Hollywood, he was very familiar with directors' superstitions, but Patrick Dumas was worse than most. Most directors wanted annoying but fairly benign things included: a very minor character named Steve, some hidden hello to a family member or mention of God, stuff like that. But Sir Dumas, as he insisted on being called, was just plain weird. Every script, before he would even consider it, had to have a particular linguistic quirk, something that he would "discover" the day before. Last night, James smiled to himself, Sir must have been reading something his wife certainly didn't approve of.
But James really needed some income and "penetrate" was an easy enough word to include. There were ample possibilities: "penetrate defenses", "penetrates the frigid depths of ones soul" something like that. Of course, he had to be doing an adaptation, and this meant he'd have to fudge a little dialogue, something the author probably wouldn't approve of. Oh well, it was an adaptation after all and the golden phrase "based on" would suffice to deal with that problem.
As James headed back, Patrick Dumas breathed a little easier. He hadn't expected the new writer to agree so easily. The last few had turned away disgusted by the requirements for his chef-d'oeuvre. Now that he'd found a willing screenwriter, he needed to go back and consult his aura. He was so uncreative without it. He cut a good sized piece of the 'cid blotter tucked into his desk drawer. "Aura enhancer" he called it and it did help him tune into his inner muse.
Lately, it had appeared as various crustaceans, inspiring him to make a movie based on Cannery Row. As with previous movies, the muse had given him all the instructions he needed to make film into the huge success. Now that step one was done, he needed another shot of inspiration. As he slipped the paper under his tongue, the world ebbed and flowed like the tide and he felt in tune with the ocean.
This wasn't a happy trip, however. The ocean became rocky and things swam at him viciously. His aura appeared, in the guise of a lobster this time, and swung its menacing pincers at him. He had done something wrong. What, he didn't know, but something was wrong and he would have to pay. He ran, pincers nipping at his heels crashing into giant reefs and forests of seaweed. He stumbled into a shipwreck, jumping down the hatch.
It wasn't until he hit the cold water of his pool that the lobster that was chasing him suddenly disappeared.
Coded
And a funny, if terribly silly, one from Yune:
"Whatever happens, the word 'penetrate' must be in there somewhere."
"That's the code word?" he asked in disbelief. "'Penetrate'?"
His superior did not deign to reply. Probably out of embarrassment.
Agent 314 acknowledged the orders and tucked his phone back into his pocket. As he made his way back from the men's room to the table, he tried to think of ways to slip the code word into casual conversation. Everyone was done with dinner, and now had turned to not-so-idle chatter.
"I try to read every article I can about the war," one man was saying.
"Yes," Agent 314 put in quickly, "but it's hard to penetrate all the misinformation we're fed by the media."
The man said, "That's why I read so many. Somewhere among them must be the truth."
"A lot of them use the same sources," a woman pointed out. "We're still left groping for the real facts."
Agent 314 studied her without being overt about it. "Grope" was his recognition code word. Was this his fellow-agent?
She was blushing faintly, as though the use of the word embarrassed her, but she had only used a form of the word. He dithered, uncertain.
Then a waiter leaned over him and said, "Are you done, sir?"
Agent 314 hadn't made a dent in his food at all. The lobster on his plate could have been a biological specimen for all that he had touched it. He'd been so busy trying to make contact with his superior that he'd spent most of the dinner in the men's room, where the reception had been abysmal.
Suddenly the lobster launched itself upward and Agent 314 realized that his enemy must have identified him somehow and planted it. What better secret weapon in a seafood restaurant? He sprang to his feet, knocking his chair over, and nimbly avoided the deadly crustacean.
He had no time to pull out a weapon. All his concentration was spent on evading it. Was the woman his comrade or his enemy? Would she help him or had she arranged this all in the first place?
He learned the answer--and successfully completed his mission--when she stood up, pointed her lipstick like a gun, and the lobster that was chasing him suddenly disappeared.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
The Secret Cave
(Mine)
"I still have your key."
She turned sharply on her heels and glared at me. "Really?" she cried, "why didn't you say so earlier?" Even ten years later, her eyes lit up just like when we were in middle school together. She really hadn't changed at all.
I nodded, a vaguely familiar tingling feeling rising up the back of my neck. It was the perpetual excitement that I had every time I spent time with Jo. She had been the school tomboy, Ms. Joanne Phelps, to our catholic schoolmarms but woe on anyone who dared call her that outside of classes. It was always Jo, always has been and apparently, looking at her walking in those rolled up jeans and grease stained T-shirt, always will be.
We had been best friends since 4th grade, when she'd found my hiding spot back behind the school barn and declared it her new palace. She had been the one to find the buried "dinosaur bone" when we were adventurers in the Sahara, the one that fought off the shadow Indians as they tried to take her throne, and the first to try out the "wings" we'd made of pine board and chicken feathers from Momma's kitchen. That had resulted in twenty horsehair stitches which she proudly wore around school for a month. During that time, we were soldiers fighting a bitter war of freedom for our tiny kingdom.
Over the summers, I spent the days at her house. She lived in the old ranch at the end of road. Her momma had taken to drink after her dad died and it was really just Jo and a couple of ranch hands who kept the farm running and the cattle fed. We built a veritable treasure trove of memories up in the back attic. She had this big metal cookie tin that we filled with our stories and drawings. She was a very good artist, drawing vivid sketches of the monsters we fought and the various roles we played and pages of maps detailing the expanse of land we ruled. That attic was in many ways the culmination of all that we did as kids. We'd called it the Cave of Immense Secrets and we swore on our word as spies to swallow the plans to its location even under extreme torture.
It was the key to her house that Jo was pulling off my keychain right now. She had given it to me so I could sneak in the back and tiptoe up the stairs without facing the drunk anger of Mrs. Phelps. I'd always kept it a secret from Momma; it went with me, tucked in my sock, when we moved to Kansas and was the first key I put on my keychain at college. "Meet me on the steps of CIS, at midnight," she declared, using the acronym we'd developed to keep the cave a secret. Her eyes were twinkling again.
And so thus, I found myself on her dust-covered front porch and it's boarded up windows, no different, now, from every house in town. That tingle was rising up the back of my spine. Something howled in the distance and I shuddered involuntarily, scanning the dark street for Jo.
Her momma had passed on shortly after our move. At the insistence of community, Jo was supported into a boarding school on the money from selling the cattle. The ranch was never sold: a dilapidated building on the outskirts of town wasn't in much demand, especially since all the jobs were moving to the big city. Jo had suffered through the rest of her education, escaping as soon as she turned eighteen and becoming a truck mechanic in the city. She'd been the one to track me down, fresh out of business school, and at her insistence, I'd driven down to meet her for the weekend.
Jo interrupted my reverie by shining her flashlight straight into my face. I hadn't even heard her truck pull up. She laughed at my jolt and pulled me to my feet. In seconds, I was looking out through the broken attic window at the blackness of dry Midwestern grassland. Jo was busy scanning the floorboards for the loose one under which we kept our box.
"Found it!" she cried, lifting out her prize and laying out its contents on the dusty attic floor. The pages had yellowed but the memories and the adventures were still there. Soon we were lost in the past, laughing and joking -- children again.
At some point during the night, Jo disappeared. I was too engrossed to follow, knowing full well that she'd get me when she needed a second person for our games. Even when her screams lashed through the darkness, I simply smiled, finished the paragraph I was reading and got to my feet. Jo had found the "monster" she was hunting and was probably doing a pretty decent job attacking it with whatever she had found handy. Only when I heard the inhuman growling did I start running.
Out in the dusty street of the deserted town, my worst fears were confirmed. Jo's body lay collapsed, her broken neck leaking blood into the parched earth. The last monster she ever fought was real. Later on, they determined it was a coyote.
==========
Much thanks to Mark Gebhard for these lines.
"I still have your key."
She turned sharply on her heels and glared at me. "Really?" she cried, "why didn't you say so earlier?" Even ten years later, her eyes lit up just like when we were in middle school together. She really hadn't changed at all.
I nodded, a vaguely familiar tingling feeling rising up the back of my neck. It was the perpetual excitement that I had every time I spent time with Jo. She had been the school tomboy, Ms. Joanne Phelps, to our catholic schoolmarms but woe on anyone who dared call her that outside of classes. It was always Jo, always has been and apparently, looking at her walking in those rolled up jeans and grease stained T-shirt, always will be.
We had been best friends since 4th grade, when she'd found my hiding spot back behind the school barn and declared it her new palace. She had been the one to find the buried "dinosaur bone" when we were adventurers in the Sahara, the one that fought off the shadow Indians as they tried to take her throne, and the first to try out the "wings" we'd made of pine board and chicken feathers from Momma's kitchen. That had resulted in twenty horsehair stitches which she proudly wore around school for a month. During that time, we were soldiers fighting a bitter war of freedom for our tiny kingdom.
Over the summers, I spent the days at her house. She lived in the old ranch at the end of road. Her momma had taken to drink after her dad died and it was really just Jo and a couple of ranch hands who kept the farm running and the cattle fed. We built a veritable treasure trove of memories up in the back attic. She had this big metal cookie tin that we filled with our stories and drawings. She was a very good artist, drawing vivid sketches of the monsters we fought and the various roles we played and pages of maps detailing the expanse of land we ruled. That attic was in many ways the culmination of all that we did as kids. We'd called it the Cave of Immense Secrets and we swore on our word as spies to swallow the plans to its location even under extreme torture.
It was the key to her house that Jo was pulling off my keychain right now. She had given it to me so I could sneak in the back and tiptoe up the stairs without facing the drunk anger of Mrs. Phelps. I'd always kept it a secret from Momma; it went with me, tucked in my sock, when we moved to Kansas and was the first key I put on my keychain at college. "Meet me on the steps of CIS, at midnight," she declared, using the acronym we'd developed to keep the cave a secret. Her eyes were twinkling again.
And so thus, I found myself on her dust-covered front porch and it's boarded up windows, no different, now, from every house in town. That tingle was rising up the back of my spine. Something howled in the distance and I shuddered involuntarily, scanning the dark street for Jo.
Her momma had passed on shortly after our move. At the insistence of community, Jo was supported into a boarding school on the money from selling the cattle. The ranch was never sold: a dilapidated building on the outskirts of town wasn't in much demand, especially since all the jobs were moving to the big city. Jo had suffered through the rest of her education, escaping as soon as she turned eighteen and becoming a truck mechanic in the city. She'd been the one to track me down, fresh out of business school, and at her insistence, I'd driven down to meet her for the weekend.
Jo interrupted my reverie by shining her flashlight straight into my face. I hadn't even heard her truck pull up. She laughed at my jolt and pulled me to my feet. In seconds, I was looking out through the broken attic window at the blackness of dry Midwestern grassland. Jo was busy scanning the floorboards for the loose one under which we kept our box.
"Found it!" she cried, lifting out her prize and laying out its contents on the dusty attic floor. The pages had yellowed but the memories and the adventures were still there. Soon we were lost in the past, laughing and joking -- children again.
At some point during the night, Jo disappeared. I was too engrossed to follow, knowing full well that she'd get me when she needed a second person for our games. Even when her screams lashed through the darkness, I simply smiled, finished the paragraph I was reading and got to my feet. Jo had found the "monster" she was hunting and was probably doing a pretty decent job attacking it with whatever she had found handy. Only when I heard the inhuman growling did I start running.
Out in the dusty street of the deserted town, my worst fears were confirmed. Jo's body lay collapsed, her broken neck leaking blood into the parched earth. The last monster she ever fought was real. Later on, they determined it was a coyote.
==========
Much thanks to Mark Gebhard for these lines.
Currently grooving to: Tracy Byrd - Drinkin' Bone
The Weight of a Feather, the Weight of a Heart
(Yune)
"I still have your key. Don't you want it back?"
"Yes," she said. "But you can slip it under my door or mail it to me."
"Then how can I be sure you've gotten it?" he asked in reasonable tones.
Angie sighed and put her head down on the desk, setting the phone aside for a moment. She remembered her mother warning her not to give her spare apartment key to just anyone. But Chris hadn't been just anyone--they'd been going out, she'd trusted him, and then he'd had to change after his trip to Egypt during spring break. She didn't want him to be able to enter her apartment anymore. He wasn't being a creepy stalker, just...different. She put the phone back to her ear to listen to the stranger with Chris's voice.
"I just want to see you," he was saying. "Can we at least talk in person once? Then I'll give you back your key and I promise I won't bother you again."
Defeated, she said, "Okay. I've got some free time tomorrow--"
"Now. Please."
"Why?"
"Because I have to see you before 2.00 pm today."
She blew out her breath. If he wanted to see her so badly, couldn't he fit his other appointments around her? "Fine. Meet me on the steps of CIS in twenty minutes."
"I was thinking we could go out somewhere."
She closed her eyes. He had used to say that before they went out on a date. I was thinking we could go to the beach, or to the movies, or anything, it hadn't mattered; as long as she was spending it with him, she'd known the night would be wonderful. The memories made her voice less sharp than she wanted. "I've got research to do, Chris. I have a whole bunch of equipment running that I can't leave for long."
"Your office, then," he said. "Somewhere private, at least."
"Fine," she said, defeated, and hung up.
In all honesty, she wanted to talk to him too. She missed him and his gentle sense of humor. She hadn't thought they would make it, a grad student in electrical engineering and an assistant professor in anthropology, but they'd done so well for the first two quarters. She'd been going to ask him whether he wanted to move in with her, since she'd given her key to him anyway. And then...
She was useless for the next twenty minutes. She wandered around her office, unnecessarily checking the cameras and computers that were part of the research project she was working on. Some impulse made her turn on one of the cameras and discreetly aim it so that it would capture the area around her desk. She didn't think Chris would do anything irrational, but something kept nagging at her.
He showed up precisely on time. He reached for her for the casual kiss of greeting they'd always shared before, and at first, pure habit led her to relax into his embrace. She missed these little shows of affection. Then she recalled herself and jerked away. She didn't miss the flash of hurt on his face before he smoothed his expression.
"Angie, what's wrong?"
"You are," she burst out. "Ever since the start of the quarter. You've been acting differently. More...resigned. Deliberate. And that's not the Chris I know."
He looked away. "Ever since I got back from Egypt, you mean."
"Yeah. Chris, what happened? When you left you were so excited about traveling through the desert, getting to see the old tombs..."
"I got to see them. That's what happened."
She shook her head. "You say things like that, too."
After a moment he said, "Angie, you're an atheist, right? You don't believe in an afterlife?"
The question was so unexpected that she actually answered it. "No."
"The Ancient Egyptians had a jackal-headed god, Anubis. They believed that when you died, Anubis would balance your heart against a feather, and if your heart was heavier, you would be eaten by a terrible demon."
"It must have been a very sated demon," Angie said after a moment. "Because, no pun intended, the game seems weighted to me. Chris, what does this have to do with anything?"
"I love Ancient Egypt. Its religion, its history, its culture... But there was so much left to learn. And when I had the chance to learn more, I took it." He smiled sadly. "I never believed in ancient curses. You can still get in trouble today, though. Even though they're fair in their own way. You get judgment under their own system."
She didn't understand. "Did you find something out there? Another tomb? Did you mess with it and get in trouble with the Egyptian authorities?"
He ignored her. "And they give you a little time first. Enough to tell the people you care about that you love them."
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Excuse me," she managed to say before stumbling out of the office and blindly making her way to the restroom, where she cried into a crumpled ball of paper towels. Then she washed her face, hoped her nose wasn't too red, and walked back toward her office. On her way back, the power went out. She cursed half-heartedly. Whenever you thought things couldn't get any worse... Just as she reached her door, the lights flickered back on.
"Chris? Sorry about that."
He was gone.
At first she panicked, but then her glance fell on the clock and she saw that it was just past two. He'd probably had to run to his meeting. She sighed. What he had said about loving her--that was the sort of thing she needed to hear before they could patch things up. Not this ancient mystical crap. And he'd had to leave without a word or even returning her key--
No, on her desk was her spare apartment key and a...feather.
Angie stood still for a moment. Then something made her turn to the camera, rewind it, and hit playback.
She skipped through until she got to the part where she ran out of the frame. Chris was left there. Slowly, he removed something from his pocket: the key. He laid it carefully on her desk, then straightened. His posture was that of a man awaiting something.
There was suddenly a shadowy figure appeared just behind him--
The image suddenly cut to emptiness.
Angie could've screamed. That had been when the power had gone out.
...perhaps because of the smothering presence of an even greater power?
She didn't believe this, she told herself fiercely. But something inside her knew. She started crying again, because although they had given him enough time to tell her that he loved her, they hadn't given him enough time for her to tell him the same.
When she groped for the box of Kleenex, her hand fell on the feather instead, and her fingers tightened around it.
It was astoundingly heavy, at least as much as a bowling ball. She ended up lifting it with two hands.
Her own heart lightened. They were fair, Chris had said. And Chris had been a good person. What if they did tip the scales one way, but not always in the wrong direction...?
She didn't need the confirmation, but she carefully clipped out the figure she had captured and sent the cropped image to a couple of zoologist friends, saying that it had been seen on her grandfather's ranch. Because it was so blurry, and because there were no jackals in California, they determined it was a coyote.
"I still have your key. Don't you want it back?"
"Yes," she said. "But you can slip it under my door or mail it to me."
"Then how can I be sure you've gotten it?" he asked in reasonable tones.
Angie sighed and put her head down on the desk, setting the phone aside for a moment. She remembered her mother warning her not to give her spare apartment key to just anyone. But Chris hadn't been just anyone--they'd been going out, she'd trusted him, and then he'd had to change after his trip to Egypt during spring break. She didn't want him to be able to enter her apartment anymore. He wasn't being a creepy stalker, just...different. She put the phone back to her ear to listen to the stranger with Chris's voice.
"I just want to see you," he was saying. "Can we at least talk in person once? Then I'll give you back your key and I promise I won't bother you again."
Defeated, she said, "Okay. I've got some free time tomorrow--"
"Now. Please."
"Why?"
"Because I have to see you before 2.00 pm today."
She blew out her breath. If he wanted to see her so badly, couldn't he fit his other appointments around her? "Fine. Meet me on the steps of CIS in twenty minutes."
"I was thinking we could go out somewhere."
She closed her eyes. He had used to say that before they went out on a date. I was thinking we could go to the beach, or to the movies, or anything, it hadn't mattered; as long as she was spending it with him, she'd known the night would be wonderful. The memories made her voice less sharp than she wanted. "I've got research to do, Chris. I have a whole bunch of equipment running that I can't leave for long."
"Your office, then," he said. "Somewhere private, at least."
"Fine," she said, defeated, and hung up.
In all honesty, she wanted to talk to him too. She missed him and his gentle sense of humor. She hadn't thought they would make it, a grad student in electrical engineering and an assistant professor in anthropology, but they'd done so well for the first two quarters. She'd been going to ask him whether he wanted to move in with her, since she'd given her key to him anyway. And then...
She was useless for the next twenty minutes. She wandered around her office, unnecessarily checking the cameras and computers that were part of the research project she was working on. Some impulse made her turn on one of the cameras and discreetly aim it so that it would capture the area around her desk. She didn't think Chris would do anything irrational, but something kept nagging at her.
He showed up precisely on time. He reached for her for the casual kiss of greeting they'd always shared before, and at first, pure habit led her to relax into his embrace. She missed these little shows of affection. Then she recalled herself and jerked away. She didn't miss the flash of hurt on his face before he smoothed his expression.
"Angie, what's wrong?"
"You are," she burst out. "Ever since the start of the quarter. You've been acting differently. More...resigned. Deliberate. And that's not the Chris I know."
He looked away. "Ever since I got back from Egypt, you mean."
"Yeah. Chris, what happened? When you left you were so excited about traveling through the desert, getting to see the old tombs..."
"I got to see them. That's what happened."
She shook her head. "You say things like that, too."
After a moment he said, "Angie, you're an atheist, right? You don't believe in an afterlife?"
The question was so unexpected that she actually answered it. "No."
"The Ancient Egyptians had a jackal-headed god, Anubis. They believed that when you died, Anubis would balance your heart against a feather, and if your heart was heavier, you would be eaten by a terrible demon."
"It must have been a very sated demon," Angie said after a moment. "Because, no pun intended, the game seems weighted to me. Chris, what does this have to do with anything?"
"I love Ancient Egypt. Its religion, its history, its culture... But there was so much left to learn. And when I had the chance to learn more, I took it." He smiled sadly. "I never believed in ancient curses. You can still get in trouble today, though. Even though they're fair in their own way. You get judgment under their own system."
She didn't understand. "Did you find something out there? Another tomb? Did you mess with it and get in trouble with the Egyptian authorities?"
He ignored her. "And they give you a little time first. Enough to tell the people you care about that you love them."
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Excuse me," she managed to say before stumbling out of the office and blindly making her way to the restroom, where she cried into a crumpled ball of paper towels. Then she washed her face, hoped her nose wasn't too red, and walked back toward her office. On her way back, the power went out. She cursed half-heartedly. Whenever you thought things couldn't get any worse... Just as she reached her door, the lights flickered back on.
"Chris? Sorry about that."
He was gone.
At first she panicked, but then her glance fell on the clock and she saw that it was just past two. He'd probably had to run to his meeting. She sighed. What he had said about loving her--that was the sort of thing she needed to hear before they could patch things up. Not this ancient mystical crap. And he'd had to leave without a word or even returning her key--
No, on her desk was her spare apartment key and a...feather.
Angie stood still for a moment. Then something made her turn to the camera, rewind it, and hit playback.
She skipped through until she got to the part where she ran out of the frame. Chris was left there. Slowly, he removed something from his pocket: the key. He laid it carefully on her desk, then straightened. His posture was that of a man awaiting something.
There was suddenly a shadowy figure appeared just behind him--
The image suddenly cut to emptiness.
Angie could've screamed. That had been when the power had gone out.
...perhaps because of the smothering presence of an even greater power?
She didn't believe this, she told herself fiercely. But something inside her knew. She started crying again, because although they had given him enough time to tell her that he loved her, they hadn't given him enough time for her to tell him the same.
When she groped for the box of Kleenex, her hand fell on the feather instead, and her fingers tightened around it.
It was astoundingly heavy, at least as much as a bowling ball. She ended up lifting it with two hands.
Her own heart lightened. They were fair, Chris had said. And Chris had been a good person. What if they did tip the scales one way, but not always in the wrong direction...?
She didn't need the confirmation, but she carefully clipped out the figure she had captured and sent the cropped image to a couple of zoologist friends, saying that it had been seen on her grandfather's ranch. Because it was so blurry, and because there were no jackals in California, they determined it was a coyote.
Mr. President
Somehow we have even more lines ... tireless, we are. Personally I found these lines extremely difficult, but you don't want to hear me whine. You just want to read what we wrote and maybe get a laugh out of the incompetence.
For mine, I was trying to bring in an earlier story, so you should read that first. They only barely overlap in universes but it helps put this in context.
For mine, I was trying to bring in an earlier story, so you should read that first. They only barely overlap in universes but it helps put this in context.
Tom began sleepwalking again. He always did that the night before his big speeches. It was the only way he showed his true anxiety. The public saw only the fearless president. They had grown to expect much from the graying man who spoke with an easy confidence, the man who never paced in the Oval Office. Even now, as the rebels were descending upon a stunned planet, only his husband, John, saw him rising from their bed and begin pacing up and down the bedroom. John knew better than to wake him; it only made him jittery and unfocussed the next day. In light of this international crisis, Tom needed all the composure he could get.
Just three hours ago, the world had been balanced. Way up in space, the planetsiders were defending well against the rebels and apart from a few casualties in space, there was relative peace. That all changed a few minutes after 2100 hours when a traitor starfighter had destroyed the main defense station. She had died, but that wasn't going to stop the rebels from having open access to the Earth's surface. Tom was meeting with them tomorrow. John shook his head sadly as he watched the President wearing away at the carpets, oblivious in his sleep.
* * *
Tom spoke on the evening news. He was seated beside the rebel leader:
a surprisingly young man who looked quite dashing in a pinstriped sports coat. They had spent the day through the details of the power transition. The rebels, for all their guerilla fighting techniques were very peaceable. There was going to be no more fighting, fifteen years of that had been enough for both sides. Tom even managed to convince the greenhorn of the necessity of keeping the existing, however inefficient, system of government on planetside. Now, in front of billions of viewers, Tom lowered his pen to sign the final turnover document. He didn't flinch, exuding the calm elegance he had cultivated over his thirty-year political career.
The young man for whom a life in politics was just beginning didn't have it so easy. It hadn't taken an hour for him to realize the enormity of the role he was being thrust into. During his speech, he'd faltered and tripped over his words, running over the periods and inserting pauses mid-phrase. He shouldn't be the nervous one; heck, he was the victor. His was the side that history favored. But as his pen headed for the blank space under Tom's signature, it shook uncontrollably. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.
A firm steady hand gripped his own and with the slow strength guided the pen to paper. It was Tom. Gently, but loud enough so he could be heard on camera, he said encouragingly, "We all panic; you should have seen me pacing last night."
John looked up, startled, at his husband. But then, he understood. The transition would have happened regardless. The world needed faith in its new leader. This public gesture; it allowed him to avoid a paradox.
For the Sleepwalkers
(Yune's)
Tom began sleepwalking again when they moved to the new house. His mother would come into his room in the morning, only to discover mud on the carpet and grass stains on his feet. She said nothing except, "Wake up, dear," and waited until he was out of the house before she began fretting.
Her husband had been a sleepwalker as well. Night after night she would wake up to find the sheets thrown aside, only the indentation of his body left in the mattress, his warmth already gone. She would always rise, throw a robe over her nightgown, and run outside to find him. In the beginning she had called his name, but eventually she had learned that Edward couldn't hear her in that state, even when she caught his arm and spoke directly into his face. The only thing she could do was guide him firmly back to the house and into bed, while he looked over his shoulder with unseeing eyes, yearning for whatever had drawn him out into the night in the first place.
She never learned what it was. On one of his midnight searches, Edward crossed a street to find it and was hit by a truck.
Things had been hard after that, but she lavished her love upon their son instead. It had frightened her when he too started sleepwalking the night after the funeral. She consulted a family friend.
"He may be trying to look for his father," Carlos suggested. "Instead of dreaming, he actually goes out and seeks Edward."
She shuddered. "Sleepwalkers aren't that purposeful, are they?" But what had been so compelling to draw Edward from her side? It hurt to think that she hadn't been able to give him everything he needed: love and companionship and a child, a well-kept home and his every domestic need provided. And yet something had still been lacking.
For Tom too, now? She tried to be twice as much of a mother, to make up for Edward's absence. She packed him lavish lunches and filled his day with play dates, took him to watch G-rated movies and tucked him in every night at nine o'clock, kissed his forehead, and prayed.
But the next day she would always find his footprints in the garden.
She had chosen the house for its small size--suitable for the two of them--and its proximity to his school, so he wouldn't have to adjust to new classmates. A change of place without all the empty spaces to remind them of Edward would help, she had thought. The real estate agent had tried hard to push the garden as a plus, but she had no green thumb, and it was overrun with wisteria vines and wild rose bushes. She had figured they could simply keep the back door locked and get their ration of greenery from the evenly-mowed lawn out front.
At first she wondered why Tom, obviously capable while sleepwalking of opening and closing doors and minding the small set of steps out back, could not manage to pull on socks and shoes before venturing outdoors. But a few minutes of thought cured her of her annoyance over the dirt tracked into her neat house. At least Tom was not heading out into the streets, where he might meet the same fate as Edward.
One night, she deliberately made herself a cup of coffee at nine o'clock, and settled herself at the kitchen table. She had never stayed up past midnight before. Her days were rigidly scheduled, and her body followed the clock she set for it. But tonight she grimly clung to her caffeine and waited.
Tom's door opened. Barefoot, he walked through the kitchen and then out into the garden. She followed and stood in the doorway to watch him.
There was a maple tree in the corner; he went straight to it and clambered up its trunk with an agility that bespoke prior experience. She drew in a breath to shout at him and make him get down immediately, but then she remembered that he would not hear her.
He climbed high enough that the branches began to bend dangerously under his weight. He hung onto the limb with both hands and swung his body down, landing perfectly. Then he threw his arms up the way a gymnast would after a successful vault, and then he laughed.
She froze. She hadn't heard Tom laugh for a long time.
There hadn't been any laughter in her house for a long time. Even when Edward had been there.
She remembered one more thing Carlos had said before they had parted. "Give the boy a little room, won't you?"
She had stiffened, appalled at the suggestion. She had been so certain that what Tom needed was more of her in his life. But maybe her mothering had grown claustrophobic. Maybe he did need some space apart from her, space to grow and be himself.
And hadn't Edward too once been more spontaneous, back in their days of courtship? Somehow, once they had married, she had fit him into the neatly bordered hours she lived by. It had been comfortable for her, but perhaps dull for him. And when the daily routine had grown so cloying that he had escaped during the only time he could, when he was unconscious...
She watched Tom play in the garden for a little longer, and then went back inside. She shouldn't let her presence invade on this short period of release. Her own sleep that night was restful, and when she went to wake her son up the next morning, her smile wasn't forced at all.
Tom was a dutiful son by day and a free wanderer by night. His sleepwalking troubled her no more. It freed both their hearts, for it allowed him to avoid a paradox.
Tom began sleepwalking again when they moved to the new house. His mother would come into his room in the morning, only to discover mud on the carpet and grass stains on his feet. She said nothing except, "Wake up, dear," and waited until he was out of the house before she began fretting.
Her husband had been a sleepwalker as well. Night after night she would wake up to find the sheets thrown aside, only the indentation of his body left in the mattress, his warmth already gone. She would always rise, throw a robe over her nightgown, and run outside to find him. In the beginning she had called his name, but eventually she had learned that Edward couldn't hear her in that state, even when she caught his arm and spoke directly into his face. The only thing she could do was guide him firmly back to the house and into bed, while he looked over his shoulder with unseeing eyes, yearning for whatever had drawn him out into the night in the first place.
She never learned what it was. On one of his midnight searches, Edward crossed a street to find it and was hit by a truck.
Things had been hard after that, but she lavished her love upon their son instead. It had frightened her when he too started sleepwalking the night after the funeral. She consulted a family friend.
"He may be trying to look for his father," Carlos suggested. "Instead of dreaming, he actually goes out and seeks Edward."
She shuddered. "Sleepwalkers aren't that purposeful, are they?" But what had been so compelling to draw Edward from her side? It hurt to think that she hadn't been able to give him everything he needed: love and companionship and a child, a well-kept home and his every domestic need provided. And yet something had still been lacking.
For Tom too, now? She tried to be twice as much of a mother, to make up for Edward's absence. She packed him lavish lunches and filled his day with play dates, took him to watch G-rated movies and tucked him in every night at nine o'clock, kissed his forehead, and prayed.
But the next day she would always find his footprints in the garden.
She had chosen the house for its small size--suitable for the two of them--and its proximity to his school, so he wouldn't have to adjust to new classmates. A change of place without all the empty spaces to remind them of Edward would help, she had thought. The real estate agent had tried hard to push the garden as a plus, but she had no green thumb, and it was overrun with wisteria vines and wild rose bushes. She had figured they could simply keep the back door locked and get their ration of greenery from the evenly-mowed lawn out front.
At first she wondered why Tom, obviously capable while sleepwalking of opening and closing doors and minding the small set of steps out back, could not manage to pull on socks and shoes before venturing outdoors. But a few minutes of thought cured her of her annoyance over the dirt tracked into her neat house. At least Tom was not heading out into the streets, where he might meet the same fate as Edward.
One night, she deliberately made herself a cup of coffee at nine o'clock, and settled herself at the kitchen table. She had never stayed up past midnight before. Her days were rigidly scheduled, and her body followed the clock she set for it. But tonight she grimly clung to her caffeine and waited.
Tom's door opened. Barefoot, he walked through the kitchen and then out into the garden. She followed and stood in the doorway to watch him.
There was a maple tree in the corner; he went straight to it and clambered up its trunk with an agility that bespoke prior experience. She drew in a breath to shout at him and make him get down immediately, but then she remembered that he would not hear her.
He climbed high enough that the branches began to bend dangerously under his weight. He hung onto the limb with both hands and swung his body down, landing perfectly. Then he threw his arms up the way a gymnast would after a successful vault, and then he laughed.
She froze. She hadn't heard Tom laugh for a long time.
There hadn't been any laughter in her house for a long time. Even when Edward had been there.
She remembered one more thing Carlos had said before they had parted. "Give the boy a little room, won't you?"
She had stiffened, appalled at the suggestion. She had been so certain that what Tom needed was more of her in his life. But maybe her mothering had grown claustrophobic. Maybe he did need some space apart from her, space to grow and be himself.
And hadn't Edward too once been more spontaneous, back in their days of courtship? Somehow, once they had married, she had fit him into the neatly bordered hours she lived by. It had been comfortable for her, but perhaps dull for him. And when the daily routine had grown so cloying that he had escaped during the only time he could, when he was unconscious...
She watched Tom play in the garden for a little longer, and then went back inside. She shouldn't let her presence invade on this short period of release. Her own sleep that night was restful, and when she went to wake her son up the next morning, her smile wasn't forced at all.
Tom was a dutiful son by day and a free wanderer by night. His sleepwalking troubled her no more. It freed both their hearts, for it allowed him to avoid a paradox.
Yune would like to mention that the title for this piece was taken from a poem by Edward Hirsch.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
I broke it... my bad.
In a somewhat stupid attempt to try out the new blogger commenting (if it ain't broke...), I broke my old template. I know, the old CS adage of always having a backup was not followed. That's life. Thus, there has been a radical change in the formatting of the webpage as I switch over to a default (and hopefully working) template from blogger.
--C.
--C.
Once.
Much thanks to Jim for these lines and for putting up with how much I torture myself in these inane ways.
He died. At least his brain did. Over the course of a month, they'd been monitoring its slow decay and so that morning, rather unsurprisingly, the little green screen plugged into his temples flashed red. There was very little that anyone could honestly do. Even now that all other aging and disease has been brought to a near halt, neural degeneration was still a big killer.
His body, however, was far too valuable to the movie industry to give up. They had spent millions of dollars on building the fine skin and perfect musculature and absolutely symmetric features; it would cost simply too much to have another Phillip Monroe bred. Even the vocal chords were developed for the perfect deep resonant timbre of the swaggering male lead. His famous smile and signature jokes made millions at the cineplexes. Yes, undoubtedly, Phillip Monroe was quite the investment.
The solution was obvious. For years the scientists have been working on mental replacement implants. All they had to do was review the lot of his movies, study the steady elegance of the way he moved, examine shot after shot of that smile. In a short two months, Mr. Monroe was good as new. The scientists had even included a single hairline slot at the base of the cranium where his future directors could just insert a disk with lines and staging and he'd perform flawlessly. It was the way of the future.
Phillip Monroe was reintroduced to society at an exclusive evening gala. All of high society was there, from former co-stars to top name executives. He had a single thirty minute speech prepared and, of course, he delivered flawlessly. He winked at the stunning lady in the front row as he mentioned his excitement for working with his future co-stars, right on cue. He flashed his smile more than enough times and some of his best jokes rolled right off his tongue, just like when he'd first said them.
As his thirty minutes were ticking over, almost right to the second, he made an elegant conclusion and turned the podium over to the various directors and producers that were slated to speak after him, to thunderous applause. The next few speakers were far from memorable. There was the joke of how he'd never forget his lines again, to polite titters from the audience. Mostly talk was on how a great actor had literally been resurrected from the dead, how what had once been a man was now a star.
At the cocktail party afterwards, everyone wanted to be seen with the man of the hour. More than a few times, Phillip would smile that perfect smile, and reel of one of those jokes. Including a slightly off-color but terribly funny one about a woman he once loved. In the ensuing laughter, a tall slender and slightly tipsy blonde touched his arm, remarking, "Ah, but what do you really know of love, now?"
An awkward silence froze conversations throughout the room. As the truth slowly dawned on various partygoers, a silicon chip decided that the silence was waiting for another prepackaged piece of wit. The handsome face broke into that mathematically precise grin and the resonant timbre began in measured cadence.
"I knew a man, once…"
Currently grooving to: Papa Roach - Last Resort
Monday, May 10, 2004
I wonder...
What does it say about me, as a person, when my spontaneous short stories are about:
A suicidal novelist
A verbal spy
A failed murder attempt by someone's wife
A cheeky prisoner
A mischeivous kindergartener
A Jewish nurse that rescues babies
I wonder.
(Compared to?
Yune:
A horrific extraterrestial parasite
A space traitor
A French archeologist wooing an English lady
A thief that robs the women he sleeps with
Rose:
A writer inspired by a strong woman in a French cafe.)
Yeah, ok, so I'm not that weird.
A suicidal novelist
A verbal spy
A failed murder attempt by someone's wife
A cheeky prisoner
A mischeivous kindergartener
A Jewish nurse that rescues babies
I wonder.
(Compared to?
Yune:
A horrific extraterrestial parasite
A space traitor
A French archeologist wooing an English lady
A thief that robs the women he sleeps with
Rose:
A writer inspired by a strong woman in a French cafe.)
Yeah, ok, so I'm not that weird.
Currently grooving to: Ani Difranco - 32 Flavors
The Morning After
(Yune)
The postscript had been hastily scribbled, and Roger had to squint it into legibility. Call me sometime. 291-29... Was that a four or another nine? Then a six or a zero? He shook his head and carried the note into the kitchen, where he helped himself to breakfast. She hadn't even bothered to stick around the next morning. Thank goodness--he had no further interest in her anyway. He couldn't even quite recall her name. Martha? Margaret?
The doorbell rang. He opened the door to find her--Maria, that's it--standing outside the door.
"I forgot my keys," she said, brushing past him. "And I need an umbrella."
He watched helplessly as she tracked mud onto the carpet. She seemed an entirely different person from last night, when she'd been so soft and warm in his arms. It was the red business suit, he decided. It gave her an air of authority and made it difficult to confront her. And it didn't help that he should have been wearing pants. He made a mental note to himself. Answering the door naked, not a good idea. Especially when it's not your own apartment.
"It's raining?" he asked to break up the awkward silence as they both searched the mess that was her living room.
"Yeah, hopefully an end to the heat wave. The rain was a welcome relief, until I got wet." She smiled wryly.
He found the umbrella, stashed in the space between the wall and the couch. "Hey, found it," he said, lifting it.
"You're wonderful!" She came to him and claimed the umbrella, then hesitated. She put it down and took his hands instead. "Actually, that's the third reason I came back. I wanted to say sorry for just leaving you like that."
"Don't worry about it," he said, startled.
"It's just that I haven't invited a guy into my apartment in years. So I kind of panicked. But I feel like I can really trust you. We'll be all right, yeah?"
"Yeah," he said weakly.
She kissed him, then left with the umbrella in her hand and a smile on her face. He thought he even heard her humming.
He waited several more minutes to make sure she wouldn't come back again, then shook his head. He of all men knew that some women fell easily, but Maria...
He sorted meticulously through the piles of stuff scattered throughout her apartment. There were quite a lot of loose bills. Her jewelry box was a real find. A few small antiques proved portable and likely to yield a decent profit.
Her keys were on the dresser; she'd forgotten them again in the haste to fetch her umbrella and make amends to him. They seemed to be her only set. Why not? he thought. It would delay her re-entrance to the apartment and give him more time before she could find out exactly whom she had really trusted.
He closed the door behind him, pocketed the key, and walked off whistling.
The postscript had been hastily scribbled, and Roger had to squint it into legibility. Call me sometime. 291-29... Was that a four or another nine? Then a six or a zero? He shook his head and carried the note into the kitchen, where he helped himself to breakfast. She hadn't even bothered to stick around the next morning. Thank goodness--he had no further interest in her anyway. He couldn't even quite recall her name. Martha? Margaret?
The doorbell rang. He opened the door to find her--Maria, that's it--standing outside the door.
"I forgot my keys," she said, brushing past him. "And I need an umbrella."
He watched helplessly as she tracked mud onto the carpet. She seemed an entirely different person from last night, when she'd been so soft and warm in his arms. It was the red business suit, he decided. It gave her an air of authority and made it difficult to confront her. And it didn't help that he should have been wearing pants. He made a mental note to himself. Answering the door naked, not a good idea. Especially when it's not your own apartment.
"It's raining?" he asked to break up the awkward silence as they both searched the mess that was her living room.
"Yeah, hopefully an end to the heat wave. The rain was a welcome relief, until I got wet." She smiled wryly.
He found the umbrella, stashed in the space between the wall and the couch. "Hey, found it," he said, lifting it.
"You're wonderful!" She came to him and claimed the umbrella, then hesitated. She put it down and took his hands instead. "Actually, that's the third reason I came back. I wanted to say sorry for just leaving you like that."
"Don't worry about it," he said, startled.
"It's just that I haven't invited a guy into my apartment in years. So I kind of panicked. But I feel like I can really trust you. We'll be all right, yeah?"
"Yeah," he said weakly.
She kissed him, then left with the umbrella in her hand and a smile on her face. He thought he even heard her humming.
He waited several more minutes to make sure she wouldn't come back again, then shook his head. He of all men knew that some women fell easily, but Maria...
He sorted meticulously through the piles of stuff scattered throughout her apartment. There were quite a lot of loose bills. Her jewelry box was a real find. A few small antiques proved portable and likely to yield a decent profit.
Her keys were on the dresser; she'd forgotten them again in the haste to fetch her umbrella and make amends to him. They seemed to be her only set. Why not? he thought. It would delay her re-entrance to the apartment and give him more time before she could find out exactly whom she had really trusted.
He closed the door behind him, pocketed the key, and walked off whistling.
Portrait of a Six-Year-Old Escapee
(Mine)
He closed the door behind him, pocketed the key, and walked off whistling. It was final. I was incarcerated for the first time in my short six year life. It was absolutely aggravating that dad was so cheerful about it. Doesn't it say in some parenting manual that you should at least feel sorry for your kids when you ground them? Isn't there something in Freud between the oversized breasts and phallic symbols about children's emotional development? I could feel my brain scarring for life. HELLO!? Scarring going on RIGHT HERE. Oh look, Dad's back. "Stop screaming and take your punishment like a good widdle boy". What the hell? Can I fire this stupid brick of a man and get a trained father? Anyone worth their purchase cost should know about mixed messages. I mean Mom has it down. She does this good cop routine that's amazing. Complete with cookies and a good story. Oh and there he goes with the whistling again. Stop it already. Get yourself a tuner at least… that's supposed to be an E-flat. It's the damn "Friends" theme, not the rhythmic scraping of a broken record across a green chalkboard.
I rooted around for Mr Bunchkins. Where was that bear when I needed him? Damnit, he was definitely in the room yesterday. He better not have run away again. Really, how far could the damn thing walk without me. Ah, there he is, under the Play-doh reconstruction of New York City. Yeah, that was unfortunate. There's now little bits of Harlem stuck on Mr Bunchkins' ass. That definitely doesn't look good. It didn't help that he should have been wearing pants. Yeah, I'd torn them off to make a curtain for my Batcave out in the yard. Then Dad came by with the lawnmower. Boy was he not happy. It was almost worth the lost Batman to see Dad's face in response to the crunching sound and that awful burning plastic smell. And the grass got real high in the yard for a while after that. High enough to play jungle tiger with Mr Bunchkins. He'd keep running and I had such a good time being the tiger. He had to have stitches a couple of times too… we were pretty rough. But he's a really comfortable bear.
(an hour later)
Look I'm sorry. Oh, who am I kidding, no one is listening to me anyway. Dad's probably fallen asleep watching TV downstairs. I didn't mean to run away from school; I like it usually. But it was so boring at naptime. The rain meant that we didn't even have the option we usually did of playing in the sandbox that day… and I certainly had too much energy for sleeping. It was human body day and Ms Jenson had poked the kidney picture a dozen times already. I certainly didn't care what I looked like inside. Mom usually tells me I have a clean boy underneath all my dirt when I take a shower and that seems to be enough for her. So why do I need this kidney and liver stuff anyway. Well anyhow, I decided after Ms Jenson had closed the door for naptime that I was going outside. She couldn't stop me and mom usually lets me play in the rain anyhow. So I left through the window. The rain was welcome relief, until I got wet. Then it sucked. And I couldn't admit defeat and go back in, could I?
Well Dad works next door at the office and I wanted some of the hot cocoa he always has when I come over. But that would have been if I had a real Dad. But this untrained moron rushed me home and locked me in, without my cocoa. And he was whistling. Such a bad father, really.
Look, I REALLY need to go to the bathroom. RIGHT NOW. DAD!!! HELP! This isn't going to be good. I haven't wet myself in a long time. DAD! I'm banging on the door… wake up!
Oh look, Dad left a note under the door. Imagine that. He was sure sneaky. Let's see… "I'm going back to work, tiger! Take care. Dad." Oh look, how cute, he left a second note with a PS. I'll bet it says something about how he's working late too, just my luck.
"PS I'm sorry about locking you in earlier, but I've unlocked the door now. You were asleep." The postscript had been hastily scribbled.
He closed the door behind him, pocketed the key, and walked off whistling. It was final. I was incarcerated for the first time in my short six year life. It was absolutely aggravating that dad was so cheerful about it. Doesn't it say in some parenting manual that you should at least feel sorry for your kids when you ground them? Isn't there something in Freud between the oversized breasts and phallic symbols about children's emotional development? I could feel my brain scarring for life. HELLO!? Scarring going on RIGHT HERE. Oh look, Dad's back. "Stop screaming and take your punishment like a good widdle boy". What the hell? Can I fire this stupid brick of a man and get a trained father? Anyone worth their purchase cost should know about mixed messages. I mean Mom has it down. She does this good cop routine that's amazing. Complete with cookies and a good story. Oh and there he goes with the whistling again. Stop it already. Get yourself a tuner at least… that's supposed to be an E-flat. It's the damn "Friends" theme, not the rhythmic scraping of a broken record across a green chalkboard.
I rooted around for Mr Bunchkins. Where was that bear when I needed him? Damnit, he was definitely in the room yesterday. He better not have run away again. Really, how far could the damn thing walk without me. Ah, there he is, under the Play-doh reconstruction of New York City. Yeah, that was unfortunate. There's now little bits of Harlem stuck on Mr Bunchkins' ass. That definitely doesn't look good. It didn't help that he should have been wearing pants. Yeah, I'd torn them off to make a curtain for my Batcave out in the yard. Then Dad came by with the lawnmower. Boy was he not happy. It was almost worth the lost Batman to see Dad's face in response to the crunching sound and that awful burning plastic smell. And the grass got real high in the yard for a while after that. High enough to play jungle tiger with Mr Bunchkins. He'd keep running and I had such a good time being the tiger. He had to have stitches a couple of times too… we were pretty rough. But he's a really comfortable bear.
(an hour later)
Look I'm sorry. Oh, who am I kidding, no one is listening to me anyway. Dad's probably fallen asleep watching TV downstairs. I didn't mean to run away from school; I like it usually. But it was so boring at naptime. The rain meant that we didn't even have the option we usually did of playing in the sandbox that day… and I certainly had too much energy for sleeping. It was human body day and Ms Jenson had poked the kidney picture a dozen times already. I certainly didn't care what I looked like inside. Mom usually tells me I have a clean boy underneath all my dirt when I take a shower and that seems to be enough for her. So why do I need this kidney and liver stuff anyway. Well anyhow, I decided after Ms Jenson had closed the door for naptime that I was going outside. She couldn't stop me and mom usually lets me play in the rain anyhow. So I left through the window. The rain was welcome relief, until I got wet. Then it sucked. And I couldn't admit defeat and go back in, could I?
Well Dad works next door at the office and I wanted some of the hot cocoa he always has when I come over. But that would have been if I had a real Dad. But this untrained moron rushed me home and locked me in, without my cocoa. And he was whistling. Such a bad father, really.
Look, I REALLY need to go to the bathroom. RIGHT NOW. DAD!!! HELP! This isn't going to be good. I haven't wet myself in a long time. DAD! I'm banging on the door… wake up!
Oh look, Dad left a note under the door. Imagine that. He was sure sneaky. Let's see… "I'm going back to work, tiger! Take care. Dad." Oh look, how cute, he left a second note with a PS. I'll bet it says something about how he's working late too, just my luck.
"PS I'm sorry about locking you in earlier, but I've unlocked the door now. You were asleep." The postscript had been hastily scribbled.
The Expert
(Mine)
He closed the door behind him, pocketed the key, and walked off whistling. Jailers these days were so cocky, thinking that a set of modern steel bars gave them an almost carefree power over their prisoners. Steve knew better. And he was going to show them just how little bars actually mean to a master.
The first escape was simplicity itself. Steve had come in with a perfect long wire woven into his shaggy hair. A quick lock-pick and he was out. The lone guard, Marsden according to his nametag, was dozing. A Midwestern town holed up from the rain, didn't notice a shaggy man stashing an orange jumpsuit in the outside dumpster.
The next day, around noon, Steve strolled into the county jail, dressed in a fine wool suit, smoking a nice Cuban and clean shaven. He'd had some rather profitable times the night before; his prison boots had left muddy prints at every house on Main Street, it seemed. As Steve casually stripped down to his boxers and changed into the orange jumpsuit that they'd provided, he joked with an astonished Marsden. "I needed a shower and a shave, you know how it is. The rain was a welcome relief, until I got wet." He whistled as they led him to his cell.
A few weeks later, they'd gotten a new warden. A little while after that, on a warm Wednesday night, Steve was ready to make his second break. With a carefully secreted rock from the exercise yard and five years of experience pitching in little league, Steve tripped the alarm system. The jail was one of those newfangled electrical deals that double locked all the cells as soon as the alarm was tripped. One part of his excursion a month earlier was to switch a couple wires. His cell door clicked unlocked within an instant and he slipped out. Jackson came running, yelling for him to stop, reaching for his gun. It didn't help that he should have been wearing pants. Wednesday nights, as pretty much everyone in the jail knew, Jackson's lady friend, Samantha, came over. Steve had waited until her squealing had reached that particularly high note before pulling his little stunt and his timing had paid off splendidly. As Jackson turned a fantastic shade of red, Steve waltzed out, switched off the alarm, blew a kiss to a gasping Samantha, and liberated a few bills from the confines of a convenient wallet. Jackson resigned the next day. He was thoroughly embarrassed, while Steve changed into yet another orange jumpsuit, making obscenely suggestive gestures indicating a certain short length on camera.
Steve was under maximum security now. The county wasn't about to be a national laughing stock for a third time in a row. At the same time, they weren't going to bow in and send him over to the state prison. Instead, there was a 24 hour security detail pretty much right outside his cell and these new guys looked business. They just hadn't anticipated a little outside help. As Steve escaped through a freshly gaping hole in the prison's plaster roof, a single yellow note came fluttering down on top of the debris.
"Thanks for the jumpsuits and the housing guys. I hope you had as much fun as I did. PS. Please learn a new song to whistle other than I'm a little teapot." The postscript had been hastily scribbled.
He closed the door behind him, pocketed the key, and walked off whistling. Jailers these days were so cocky, thinking that a set of modern steel bars gave them an almost carefree power over their prisoners. Steve knew better. And he was going to show them just how little bars actually mean to a master.
The first escape was simplicity itself. Steve had come in with a perfect long wire woven into his shaggy hair. A quick lock-pick and he was out. The lone guard, Marsden according to his nametag, was dozing. A Midwestern town holed up from the rain, didn't notice a shaggy man stashing an orange jumpsuit in the outside dumpster.
The next day, around noon, Steve strolled into the county jail, dressed in a fine wool suit, smoking a nice Cuban and clean shaven. He'd had some rather profitable times the night before; his prison boots had left muddy prints at every house on Main Street, it seemed. As Steve casually stripped down to his boxers and changed into the orange jumpsuit that they'd provided, he joked with an astonished Marsden. "I needed a shower and a shave, you know how it is. The rain was a welcome relief, until I got wet." He whistled as they led him to his cell.
A few weeks later, they'd gotten a new warden. A little while after that, on a warm Wednesday night, Steve was ready to make his second break. With a carefully secreted rock from the exercise yard and five years of experience pitching in little league, Steve tripped the alarm system. The jail was one of those newfangled electrical deals that double locked all the cells as soon as the alarm was tripped. One part of his excursion a month earlier was to switch a couple wires. His cell door clicked unlocked within an instant and he slipped out. Jackson came running, yelling for him to stop, reaching for his gun. It didn't help that he should have been wearing pants. Wednesday nights, as pretty much everyone in the jail knew, Jackson's lady friend, Samantha, came over. Steve had waited until her squealing had reached that particularly high note before pulling his little stunt and his timing had paid off splendidly. As Jackson turned a fantastic shade of red, Steve waltzed out, switched off the alarm, blew a kiss to a gasping Samantha, and liberated a few bills from the confines of a convenient wallet. Jackson resigned the next day. He was thoroughly embarrassed, while Steve changed into yet another orange jumpsuit, making obscenely suggestive gestures indicating a certain short length on camera.
Steve was under maximum security now. The county wasn't about to be a national laughing stock for a third time in a row. At the same time, they weren't going to bow in and send him over to the state prison. Instead, there was a 24 hour security detail pretty much right outside his cell and these new guys looked business. They just hadn't anticipated a little outside help. As Steve escaped through a freshly gaping hole in the prison's plaster roof, a single yellow note came fluttering down on top of the debris.
"Thanks for the jumpsuits and the housing guys. I hope you had as much fun as I did. PS. Please learn a new song to whistle other than I'm a little teapot." The postscript had been hastily scribbled.
Currently grooving to: Santana - Everybody's Everything