I need to write!!!

Ever since reading about 365 tomorrows where these Sci Fi writers plan to have written a short futuristic story for every single day of a year (and these are absolutely fantastic, cramming so much into a mere 200 to 500 words.) ... I've had the urge to write. An easy urge to quell, unfortunately, but an urge none-the-less. It was also apparently, A Storyblogging Carnival's first year anniversary recently as well. It's already past my bed time but I've hit a boiling point with this not writing so I'm going to put up something short. It's inspired by, quite literally, the first thought that comes into my head in the next 30 seconds.

It was just as she opened her mouth that she saw it, out of the corner of her eye: a brief dark shape, flitting in the wings. Against the harsh glare of the twin spotlights, it was a mere blemish, rapid and gone. But it was enough to cut into her focus. Her first note soured, landing a shade flat, and the conductor scowled. Quickly, however, her twenty years of vocal training at the Institute took hold, moving her diaphragm, vocal chords and tongue exactly as she had in rehersals, instinctively, freeing her mind for more immediate concerns.

Who was the shadowy man behind the curtain, what was he doing, and most pressing, where had he gone? She'd been through every inch of this stage as they'd set up for the opening performance, knowing where all the trap doors were and from whence her two suitors in this literal soap opera had appeared in puffs of theatrical trickery. There was not one just inside the wings stage left.

Her aria finished admist the intense yet ordered applause that signaled that not one of the typically tone-deaf opera-goers had noticed her starting gaff. She stood, forced a smile, and tugged politely upwards at her layered dress, watching the stage lights dim and the curtain fall. Before it'd gotten below her knees, she was in the wings, questioning the stage hands. Of course, they denied seeing anything. "Opening day jitters", they said under their breath as they brought her perfumed water.

She lifted a length of rope from the floor, angrily demanding explanations. It was the rope from the last Act. The others laughed, "You know actors," they joked, taking it from her, "so self-absorbed that they drop props as soon as they get a chance, strutting into the wings." After that they paid her no heed, having a complex set to clear. But, she knew the play well enough to know that he had exited stage right.

Shaking off the jitters, she headed back to the dressing room, and a certainly upset musical director. She needed a hot bath and rest before another performance tomorrow. Instinctively, she glanced the hall mirror as she passed, to compose herself.

A man's face looked back. Christine screamed, her voice dissolving into a croak.

Out front above all the exiting guests, the large opera chandelier tinkled with a viscious merriment.

--C.

And no, actually, I wasn't listening to the obvious music at the time, I was just thinking about music and this happened. I know it could be a lot better, but I'm tired.

(Untitled for now)

The original post is below, but I really didn't like it. It grated. So, here's the reworking. I know this breaks every rule in the book, but we'll just keep this one a secret, shall we?

The way back, he drove. Again, the car passed through the dense, solitary New England forest. Snowflakes settled on the spindly, barren branches, outlining them skeletal against the pallid, gray sky. They didn't speak. He focused instead on the jaundiced oval the car's aging headlights cast on the blackened snow and the winding path it led. She sat; her eyes, too, never left the road in front. Their son was in the back seat. A new teddy bear clenched in his fingers. He was soundlessly picking at the fur. One thread at a time. One thread at a time. Miles passed.

The car lurched. The father's knuckles whitened against the steering wheel. His jaw was tighter. The mother shifted, smoothing quickly the crease in her coat. She sat straighter now, her back more rigid against the inertial pull of the car. The boy had broken through the seam. He pulled out the cotton filling, one strand at a time.

The car pulled into a driveway, stopped. Its passengers got out. The back seat was covered with brown and white threads. No one commented. They walked to the door. Snowflakes settled in the boys hair. He shivered.

That night, he cried. The cotton deadened the sound.

=============

The prompt? After asking around, the best I got was "Teddy bear", so, I'm going to run with it.

The second day, he drove. Again, the car passed through the dense, solitary New England forest. Snowflakes settled on the spindly, barren branches, outlining them skeletal against the pallid, gray sky. They didn't speak. He focused instead on the jaundiced oval the car's aging headlights cast on the blackened snow and the winding path it led. She sat; her eyes, too, never left the road in front. Miles passed.

The car lurched. His knuckles whitened against the steering wheel. She shifted, smoothing quickly the crease in her coat. She sat straighter now, her back more rigid against the inertial pull of the car. His jaw was tighter.

The car pulled into a small parking lot. She led the way into the clinic, walking quickly. They were late for their appointment.

Dr. Marshall was at her desk. A glass of water was offered, refused. No, they did not want to see their son first. It was not necessary. The diagnosis was handed over. A clinically precise description of the affliction was read. The conclusion: Normal. The only symptom appeared to be as described. A penchant for tearing apart a single favorite teddy bear at night and sticking his head inside. The bear would not leave his side during the day. It could not be removed by force, nor coaxing, nor reward. Yet when repaired, the gash in its side reemerged as his fingers pulled at it, thread by thread and mechanically pulled out the soft stuffing. It afforded significant breathing space and was not dangerous. There was no cause for concern. The mother nodded and returned the paper. She declined a copy.

Dr. Marshall led the way to the observation room. The boy stood as soon as they entered. His fingers clenched against the ear of the bear. It had been newly mended. His seat was covered in individual strands of brown thread. No one commented. They walked out to the car.

That night, tucked into his own bed, the boy meticulously resumed his silent disassembly. He cried, but the cotton deadened the sound.


I don't think I acheived the effect I wanted, here. I'll give it another shot later.

C.

A Christmas story.

Lots has happened in the last few months and I just haven't gotten around to writing. So upon the rather adamant insistence of my girlfriend that she have a story to read tomorrow morning, I will write a story in 20 minutes. I'm not even going to apologize for the lack of content, I'll make her do that.

And to boot, it's seasonally appropriate. Have a happy holiday. My sincerest apologies for doing the traditional Christmas story. It was this or be morbid.

It was Christmastime again. The lights up and down the little suburban neighborhood twinkled and flashed in a dizzying array of reds and greens. The plastic Santa lawn ornaments glowed, rocking back and forth in the lingering light of evening. Their tinny prerecorded "Ho, ho, ho"s faded into the hum of traffic rushing to and from the mall. Lights were strewn all about, declaring to the oncoming night that, again this year, the longest nights of the year would certainly not be the darkest. In some of the more tasteful displays, reindeer made entirely of tiny white lights dipped their heads to graze upon red ornaments placed with engineering precision. They were still, unstartled by their flashing surroundings.

Up the street, and away from the curb, seeming out of place in the hubbub of glittering lights, a single naivety scene injected an all but forgotten remnant of religion to the holiday. The gesture was subdued, as though Joseph and Mary wanted to keep their tiny miracle solely between them, lit by a single flickering candle. Onlookers could easily be more interested next door, in the group of glowing carollers bundled against the plastic snow who repeatedly reminded anyone listening that Santa Claus was coming to town. It was not a message that was easily lost among the preponderance of Santa hats, Santa cards, and all number of impersonators cropping up at malls. In fact, by all accounts, Santa Claus had already come into town and had been there for months, since Hallowe'en.

At the mall, people were bustling. Crowding their way into stores promising low, low prices on the best gifts of the season, shoppers grabbed, pulled, queued, and charged. Shelves of boxes and toys were picked through. Sweaters and socks were considered and then quickly abandoned for discount MP3 players and the newest DVDs. While cash registers beeped and the line for the ATM grew longer, everyone counted the last days of Advent, as the "last shopping days before Christmas." Christmas had gained a reputation as a season of giving, but commercials and retailers were stressing the rather oxymoronic concept of "giving to yourself".

In the corner of the mall, a boy, no older than twelve, had waited in line as the shelves were restocked with the must-have toy of the year: a webslinging, live-action Spiderman figurine. Now, clutching his much anticipated prize, he wove his way to the register. Twenty minutes in line later, the perky girl at the checkout counter in the tinsel red-and-white hat congratulated him on getting one of the last ones. "You're going to have such a good time with this one," she beamed. He smiled back, certain she was right, handing over the wad of dollar bills he'd been saving for months, just for this. It came out to just the right amount, with but a few pennies change. Perfect.

(OK, now you, reader: if you like your breakfast cold and your steak rare, read ending A. If you prefer your breakfast warm and your meat well done, skip to ending B, below.)

A:

As he walked out the store, visions of Spiderman swinging from rooftop to rooftop filled his head. He was already mentally building a set in his room; his sister's Barbie filling in perfectly for the role of Mary-Jane, in perpetual need of rescuing. "Help, help!" she was crying as DocOc waved his ultra-titanium mechanical appendages threatening to blow up the mayor's office. Just as he was heading to the corner where he'd promised to meet his mom, he passed by one of those collection bins for toys for disadvantaged inner-city children. It was half-empty, in a dark corner of the mall, busy shoppers could hardly spare it a glance, much less a thought. Suddenly, this pre-teenage boy was stopped short. He remembered his mother, describing the dangerous and harsh living conditions in the inner city, admonishing him never to go there alone. He imagined a small boy, his age, getting not a thing this Christmas season, thankful to have a least roof and a cramped bed to share. What would Spiderman do? How would his hero solve this situation?

It was decided then and there. He dug into his pocket and spying a nearby girl collecting for the Salvation Army, handed her his last four pennies. "Merry Christmas, Miss" he said, politely. "Thank you, and Merry Christmas" she smiled at him. He was already gone; his mind again on the plight of Mary-Jane and Spidey. He knew that he'd earned such a great new toy for being so generous. I love giving, he thought, after all, it's Christmastime again.

B:

As he walked out the store, visions of Spiderman swinging from rooftop to rooftop filled his head. He was already mentally building a set in his room; his sister's Barbie filling in perfectly for the role of Mary-Jane, in perpetual need of rescuing. "Help, help!" she was crying as DocOc waved his ultra-titanium mechanical appendages threatening to blow up the mayor's office. Just as he was heading to the corner where he'd promised to meet his mom, he passed by one of those collection bins for toys for disadvantaged inner-city children. It was half-empty, in a dark corner of the mall, busy shoppers could hardly spare it a glance, much less a thought. Suddenly, this pre-teenage boy was stopped short. He remembered his mother, describing the dangerous and harsh living conditions in the inner city, admonishing him never to go there alone. He imagined a small boy, his age, getting not a thing this Christmas season, thankful to have a least roof and a cramped bed to share. What would Spiderman do? How would his hero solve this situation?

It was decided then and there. From the bag, he pulled his brand new, hard won figurine. It's die-cast suit reflected the twinkling mall lights. Casting it a long last glace, he gingerly lowered into the bin, resting it gently on an extra large teddy bear. "Make him happy, 'kay, Spidey?" he whispered as he let go. Without turning back, he rushed to meet his mom.

A single bell-ringing girl in a Santa suit followed him with her eyes as stood by her nearby collection basket. She smiled, thankful for these little magical moments. "It's Christmastime again."

OK, that was more like an hour. I must admit, I robbed the idea of split endings from a book I read a long time ago. I wrote ending A first. The twist, where the reader expects him to give the toy but he doesn't appealed so strongly to me, but not even I could be that cynical on Christmas Day, so I put the classic ending.

I hope you enjoyed.

-- C.

A quick update...

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.

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.

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.

Will You Remember Me?

(Yune's)

(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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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:

"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.

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.

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.