Wren Handman's Blog, page 12

Book Trailer

I’ve created a book trailer for my novel “Wolf,” which I’m shopping around to publishers. Let me know what you think of it!

Black and White Dreams

Most days her dreams are black and white.

Their blood is black ink, their heartbeat the steady click and whir of the printing press. Their flesh and clothes are subtly off-white, paper smooth or permanently crinkled. She lives their lives under streetlamps, in the cold glare of bus-platform lights; and when she goes to sleep she relives those moments, reweaves them into new stories, slides her fingers through their dark ink and paints new pictures. Her faraway friends dance in smoky bars, whisper newfound secrets on long walks down moonlit country roads. She sees them in pictures in her mind, and feels their presence more acutely than a thousand real conversations.

But tonight she’s in every picture in her mind.

Tonight her dreams are memories, sunsplashed laughter and her own heartbeat. Tonight everything is technicoloured, and she can taste the difference. Music echoes from a thousand smiles, her throat burns from screaming joy, and the sunlight plays out, over and over, warming her skin as she draws the blankets closer to her chin.

Most nights she stands alone, and never feels it. She has her friends, three-dimensional in her mind, and they are company she has grown to love over dusty years. But tonight – oh, tonight! – she is the protagonist in her own story. Tonight she could write a thousand paragraphs about her travels, and the adventures she has had will fuel her dreams for nights and nights to come.

Tonight she is in the pictures in her mind; in every single one.

 

Image courtesy of Stuart Thursby. Stuart is an art director and photographer, currently adventuring in the wilds of Germany, where this photo was taken. To see more of his work, or to check out his portfolio, please visit StuartThursby.com.

Heaven – I’m in Heaven -

There’s something beautiful about Heaven; but something melancholic, too.

The colours are brighter here. That’s the first thing I notice; how rich and textured everything is, like a photograph that’s captured the perfect smooth lighting of a Tuesday afternoon in June. The grass is emerald, not green; the colours are soft, like a watercolour painting. I imagine if I ran my fingers through the purple blossoms they would feel like pussywillows, and leave a bright stain on my fingers, but I can never quite seem to reach them.

I can hear the quiet, contented laugh of a child, and I know she’s me. I remember this day, or at least echoes of many days like it; walking one step ahead of my parents, so that I feel both safe and also completely alone in my exploration of the world. I’m wearing a costume that is a part of me, beauty strapped to my back like a knight wears armour. Everything is ahead of me; I am the mutable possibility of an entire life, and every step I take both opens and closes doors. Perhaps I will live always in these imaginary games, become a sculpture or a painter or a writer. Perhaps I will wish the world was as perfect as I imagine it, and become a social worker or a politician or a scientist. When I fall and scrape my knee, will I learn to crave love, or independence? When I drop my ice cream cone on the pavement will I be inspired to make another one, or will I mourn its loss forever, in a secret hollow in my heart?

I’m not that child. Even though she’s me, and the most solid part of this place, I’m no longer her. I think that’s where the melancholy comes from. I’m here, in this perfect place, but I still remember. I remember cars and smog and broken hearts, skinned knees and final exams and burnt dinner right before ten people walk through the front door. I remember hangovers and colds you pretend are the flu, I remember boring movies and the terror of deadlines and the sound of falling. And I miss them.

I miss being alive.

Heaven is beautiful. I’ll spend forever here, and part of me will be – content. I’ll know peace here like I never knew in life. I’ll smile every time I hear myself laugh, and nothing will change. But I will remember, too, when life was unexpected. And a part of myself, however small that might be, will sigh, and remember.

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Image courtesy of Hayley Mechelle Bouchard. Her work can be found at Little Cat Photography, with more information about Hayley on Our Contributors page.

Hurry

She doesn’t see the walk light turn.

She doesn’t see the world.

She has slipped away from it now, taken her mind to a better place. The gentle tug of the leash against her semi-numb skin has disappeared; the faint sound of a car alarm from down the block has faded. The steady thrum of electricity of which she used to be mostly unaware is now completely gone.

In her mind everything is quiet.

She can relax here, in the small place she has constructed between one breath and the next. She can live an entire life in this forest, beneath these towering pines which she has built from glossy 8 1/2 by 11 photographs in the coffee table books she checks out from the library every Saturday afternoon. She has never run through a blanket of shed needles, felt their pricklish tickles on the bottom of her bare but callused feet, but in her mind she laughs as she does, as she runs so fast the air whistles through the hoops of her earrings. There are no people here, no sound at all other than the whistling air, her pounding feet, and the occasional bird call. No heartbeat here, no laboured breath. No wind in the trees, no gunfire or squirrels or shouting or insects, nothing to disturb the peace. Her traitor body could never do this in the real world, but here she leaps over a fallen log with liquid grace, doesn’t miss a beat as her feet sink into soft moss and a carpet of wildflowers. She doesn’t slow to take a closer look, only runs, and runs, and knows true freedom even the small box in the back of her mind.

She blinks, and sees the light.

She crosses, and smells asphalt and gasoline, and under it, the lingering scent of pine.

She smiles.

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Image courtesy of Stuart Thursby. Stuart is an art director and photographer, currently adventuring in the wilds of Germany, where this photo was taken. To see more of his work, or to check out his portfolio, please visit StuartThursby.com.

Have Your Cake

My mother was a woman who was fond of bromides. She peppered her speech with them: “you can just as easily fall in love with a rich man as a poor man,” “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” “the nail that sticks out is the one that gets hit,” and, of course, “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

I never agreed.

I was one of those children who was always a little too wild, in the way of boys and girls who grow up to be bachelors and old maids. Society abhors a free-thinker, and society abhors an unmarried, quick-witted soul, and I knew from the time I was barely thirteen that I would be both.

When my cousin dared me to go into the haunted house and pluck a chin-hair from the witch inside, I didn’t think twice. I just did it, and got nothing but a broken ankle and a switch-beating for my trouble. At some tender age I declared to my father that it wasn’t fair that my aunt got to go around unescorted but Mama didn’t, and he said it was because she was a widow. “Well,” I announced, “I shall grow up to a widow too!” When Sister Margaret and I got into an argument about Doubting Thomas and the nature of faith, she told me hell was full of girls who thought they were clever. I looked right at her and said, “But I actually am.”

But when my mother coaxed me into the kitchen, and I suggested we switch out orange for lavender in the cake batter, the look of pride she gave me was never matched. In the kitchen, no one minded if my nose was covered in flour and my hands caked in oil. I was no longer a wild child, or, later, a strident woman – I was a baker. I was meant to nourish and in this one place I could; and the more time I spent away from society, feeding it, the happier we all were.

When I bought the shop I thought my sides would split from joy.

I had never known happiness like this.

I am still a wild child. I am still an old maid, and my ways are still strange and peculiar. But if you come inside, and smell the magic in the air, I think you’ll find you don’t mind so much. You see, here I have my cake, and eat it, too. Would you like to take a bite?

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Image courtesy of Hayley Mechelle Bouchard. Her work can be found at Little Cat Photography, with more information about Hayley on Our Contributors page.

The Bridge

Strange how a thing so small could hold the hopes of so many.

He stared at the small shape, the tiny waving hands, the sleepy almost-closed eyes, and it seemed impossible that something so fragile could ever become strong.

“But thus is the changeable nature of humanity,” she said.

He couldn’t fathom it, what it must be like to be so malleable. For the future not to be set, for cause and effect to exist not just externally but within you, within every cell and every thought. He was as he had always been; the same drives defined him, the same pleasures amused him, the same alliances plagued and propped him up by turns. To have those things become mutable. To be so insignificant, and by degrees become meaningful, become necessary. What a strange life humans lead.

“You will have to learn to understand him if you are to care for him,” she reminded primly; but then, she did everything primly, being the essence of propriety.

He nodded, touched a finger gently to the baby’s soft round cheek. It stirred and gurgled but did not quite wake, and he marvelled at the warmth of its small, soft shape. His own fingers were perfectly room temperature; it would not do to cause too many ripples. To be foreign to his surroundings. What would he do with a child? How would he raise it so it would not be alien to its own kind?

“You will do as good a job as you can, and no better. I think all parents feel afraid when they first have a child.”

Afraid? He did not think he was afraid; not exactly. It was more that – having a child – this was not something he had done before. His immutable life was changing already, after seventeen centuries of stillness. What would he be in twenty one years, when the child was ready to seize its destiny? Would he be so different as to not know himself? Was such a thing even possible?

“Go. They’re coming,” she urged, and he kisses her cheek swiftly, gathered the child up from the stroller. Behind him the Bridge stretched, a curve into endless possibility. He knew how to walk the secret roads, hidden paths, and the Bridge would take him where he needed to go in order to disappear. He was the traveller, after all. Who better to hide a child?

“And – good luck,” she said, and her worried eyes guided his steps away.

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Image courtesy of Stuart Thursby. Stuart is an art director and photographer, currently adventuring in the wilds of Germany, where this photo was taken. To see more of his work, or to check out his portfolio, please visit StuartThursby.com.

Cleave

I’ve been doing a lot of work on scripts and screenplays and novels lately, so the creative juices are a bit drunk. With that in mind, here’s the opening to a new novel I’m working on. Hope you like it, and I promise a return to our regularly scheduled programming soon.

“Everything changed for me the day I died.

“At first I was upset – I think that’s only natural. I mean, sixteen seems awfully young to die. I know it’s a bit of cliche, ‘she’d only just started to live,’ but I really did feel that to be true. I had a lot of plans for where I would take my life, and suddenly they were all just so many papers in the wind. But then I took a deep breath – well, not a very deep breath, because I was running out of air – and I thought, those poor people. You know, the ones who got it wrong? The ones who delivered the wrong body to the funeral home. The ones who buried a casket in the ground with a live person – (hullo) – inside. I just thought – after all, aren’t they the ones who’ll have to live with it, for the rest of their lives? Sure, I’ll be dead, but that’s pretty much the hardest part over and done with. It’s the business of going through every day afterwards that wears on you.

“That was what was going through my head the moment when I died.

“I won’t describe the gory details, because – well, they’re pretty gory. I think we’ve all seen enough movies to understand the basic biological processes of death, and suffocating isn’t the most pleasant way to go. On the plus side, it gives you a lot of time to contemplate your life – weigh up your successes and your mistakes, decide that you’ve done alright. On the other hand, it gives you a lot of time to contemplate your impending demise, and that can be – a little scary. I mean, it’s one of life’s greatest unknowns, isn’t it.

“I wish I could fill you in on what death’s like. I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject, since I got back. Unfortunately it seems, like so many of life’s greatest questions, that there isn’t just one answer. Everyone who dies, or I guess I should say almost dies, tells a different story. So I can tell you what it was like for me, and you’ll probably find it very interesting, but it doesn’t mean it will have any relevance to your life – to your death, rather.

“But here I go. For me, after the gasping and the dying part got done, I felt a warmth spread through my body. Everything became really light and clear, that kind of white light you hear so many people talking about. It wasn’t like a tunnel, though, it was everywhere, and I wasn’t in it – I was part of it. It was very peaceful, very relaxing. I remember wishing that my mother was there, because I felt like that was part of the bargain, but I wasn’t too upset that she wasn’t. I guess I thought that would come, in good time. I remember taking a deep breath and thinking, ‘that’s so much better.’ Then I took another deep breath and thought ‘actually, that kind of hurts a little.’ And then I heard people screaming and I thought, ‘oh, my eyes are closed,’ and I opened them, and I was lying in a coffin in a graveyard, and there were five people standing around me shrieking. It was a bit of a rude awakening.

“My death was a set of freak circumstances, but my revival was, and I quote, “impossible.” Everyone says you can only survive an hour or two buried alive in a coffin. You might wonder how I got in a coffin in the first place – I wasn’t goofing around or anything. See, I went into the hospital to have my appendix removed. The operation went really well, but on the way to recovery the orderly, who was moving me, left me in the hall, just for half a second. And this other orderly, who was moving a girl around my age who’d just died, left her in the hall, just for a half a second. I think actually the two of them left together, if you know what I mean, just for half a second. Anyway, I guess in the confusion, one of them left the death certificate on my trolley instead of the other trolley, and a guy from the funeral home took me because I had the certificate. You might be surprised that someone could mistake a breathing person for a dead corpse – but apparently he had just had surgery too, or he must have done anyway because he was on heavy-duty painkillers, plus he was in a hurry because he was late, and the funeral was happening that afternoon. Luckily there was no embalming, or I would have really been in trouble. They just wrapped me in a shroud, put me in the coffin, and put the coffin in the ground.

“Then the orderly wheeled the dead girl to my recuperation room, and they realised I was dead, which I’m sure was quite a shock. Then my foster parents came to identify the body and discovered I was – you know, not me. So there was a bunch of panic and running around and people shouting at each other (or so I imagine. Remember, I was suffocating in a coffin at the time), until they finally figured out where I might have ended up. So they hurried out to the cemetery and dug me up.

“They say the longest you could possibly survive in a coffin is four hours, and I was under the earth for five. The weirdest part is, as soon as they opened the lid I gasped and started to breathe again. They didn’t need to resuscitate me or anything – no CPR, no defibrillator. They did bring me back to the hospital, and then my foster parents made them transfer me to a different hospital because, you know, the first one buried me alive and everything.

“I wasn’t going to sue – I mean, accidents happen, you know? – but my foster parents insisted, and since I’m only sixteen there wasn’t much I could do. I was awarded nine million dollars – seven from the hospital and two from the funeral home. It’s in a trust until I turn eighteen – or until this court decides that I should be legally emancipated. Which I hope you will.

“I’m sure you’re concerned about what a sixteen year old might do let loose on the world with nine million dollars and no parents. So I’ve written this draft of my financial goals, so you can see I’ve thought it through very carefully. If you’ll please refer to Article A? I guess you don’t do that in family court… they do it all the time on TV… well, may I approach the bench? Here you go. You’ll see it’s all laid out there. Of course, ten percent will go to charity, and I decided to round that up to a million. One million will go to my current foster parents. They do so much, taking care of so many children, and they never seem to have enough money – they can’t even afford to feed their kids properly – so hopefully this money will help them to be better parents.

“Four million goes into green investment strategies, so I can live off the earnings. You’ll see a detailed list of which companies I’d like to support – I’ve already talked to a financial advisor. One million will go towards purchasing a home, and any balance will go into an account dedicated to the upkeep of that home. The final three million will go towards starting a charitable foundation, which you’ll find will lead to employment for myself – once I’ve graduated from high school and then business school, of course – while also providing a positive change in our society.

“I think you’ll agree I have it all figured out. So I hope you’ll make the right decision, and choose to emancipate me. Thank you.”

 

The Crypt Boy

His mother used to tell him graveyards were no place for a little boy.

His mother told him many lies.

It has been six years since he came to live between the tall white urns; four years since the urns have been taller than he; two years since he could leapfrog one without scrapping an elbow or a knee; six months since he outgrew leapfrogging altogether; and one week since he discovered that if he sat on the top of one he could stretch his legs all the way to the next, and balance precariously there, throwing a smile to the girl with the blue bow in her hair who brings flowers to her father every Saturday afternoon.

The girl with the blue bow in her hair has become an obsession of his.

She isn’t the first visitor to his graveyard. Lots of people come, and lots of people go, and they have grown used to seeing him; sometimes as a shadow just to the left of their vision, sometimes as a fellow mourner, taking flowers from the overly visited graves and redistributing them to the lonely markers, sometimes even as a graveyard worker, when he borrows Jimmy or Randolph’s tools just for a lark. Some of these visitors have interested him before. The professor who liked to sit on the bench and read poetry, for instance, proved the next best thing to school. The woman who picniced on her husband’s grave and told him all the minutiae of her life was far more entertaining than the latest blockbuster!  Old Mrs. Tavershall, who still comes every second Sunday to trim the grass and leave flowers on her husband’s grave, may he rest in peace, gone these past forty years, what a burden old age is. But there’s something different about the girl in the blue bow.

He dreams of the girl in the blue bow.

She doesn’t always wear a blue bow, of course. People can rarely be defined by such narrow terms. Sometimes she wears a pink bow. Once she wore no bow at all, and it angered him so much he broke the branch off his favourite tree, and spent three weeks making up for it by singing Mozart to it every day. She doesn’t talk to her father when she leaves the flowers, which doesn’t anger him so much as frustrate him; he wants to hear her secret thoughts. He likes peering into the windows of people.

He likes the graveyard for a number of reasons. He likes the way bullies are afraid to go there at night; likes how easy the night guard is to avoid, but how everyone else seems to run afoul of him and get chased out. He likes how some people leave food on the graves, and some people leave stones, even though he can’t eat the stones. He likes how the mausoleums stay dry and cool even in summer storms, and how the little cottage where the grave-tending tools are kept is heated even at night, so he can sleep there in winter as long as he’s awake by five a.m. He likes that he was right, that no one thought to look for him here. But most of all, at least lately, he likes the girl with the blue bow in her hair.

He believes he will spend the rest of his life in the graveyard. He has his thoughts for company, and he can sneak out to the bin of the grocery store two blocks down for supplies; though he hates to leave at all these days. But lately he wonders what life is like beyond the row of white stone urns; how people live with roofs over their heads, without the stars to wink them to sleep every night. He wonders if he learned to play guitar would the girl with the blue bow smile back at him as he watches her walk under the weeping willow; if he asked her out to dinner, would she say yes?

He loves the graveyard. No one screams at him here, or calls him names. There are no monsters in the shadows under closed doors, nothing to be afraid of. But the girl with the blue bow has changed so much. She has changed him, and he is only now starting to realise it. Will the graveyard seem smaller when she’s gone? Will the sky seem pale compared to the memory of her blue bow?

And what – what what what – is he going to do about it?

 

Image courtesy of Hayley Mechelle Bouchard. Her work can be found at Little Cat Photography, with more information about Hayley on Our Contributors page.

That Lonely Road

Loneliness can become a physical thing, a person that sits beside you on the bus when no one else will. It becomes a companion in the way that the absence of something sometimes can; like the empty place at your table that will always be the person who’s missing; or the smell of smoke that summons a phantom limb between your fingers, where the stains are just starting to fade.

My loneliness is a girl. She wears a black knit toque and sits two row in front of me, the only crisp thing in my out-of-focus world. Her hair is that almost-blonde that really ought to be called brown, and if she looked at me I imagine her eyes would be grey, cold and clear and deep.

She never looks at me, of course.

I can’t remember the exact moment the world slipped away from me. I suppose these things don’t happen suddenly, by their very nature. For the world to forget you it has to be a gradual slip, incremental shifts sideways. You stop raising your eyes, until only your own feet are in focus. You go for days without hearing a single word in the voices raised around you. You sit at the back of a string of buses, trying to find one that can take you away; but they all take you with them. And then one day…

You realise the driver forgot to punch your ticket; but when you go to give it to you, he doesn’t look your way. You stop for directors in a little bodega by a scrap of concrete they call a park, and the man behind the counter doesn’t look up. You blink sleep from your eyes but nothing comes clear. You wonder how many days it’s been since you were hungry, or thirsty.

You wonder when you died.

The silence isn’t so bad. Sounds are muted, like children playing in a park across a busy street, but you can still hear music if you strain. The emptiness in your chest doesn’t feel like anything, and you only notice it when you stop and think about your heartbeat. It’s the loneliness that gets to you – the endless melancholy of a quiet three a.m. that never ends. You want to touch her, run your fingers through the wildness of her hair, but of course loneliness can never quite be caught. She stands when you do, walks when you go, lets her hand fall so it almost touches yours… but never quite does.

Is every ghost someone like me? You don’t die so much as drift away, just a missing face that no one is looking for, an emptiness in already empty space. And is my loneliness just like me, another set of footprints on a dusty road, walking one step away from her loneliness and wondering why I never lift my hand to touch hers? Maybe if I did, if I had the courage, had the strength. Maybe, if I just…

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Image courtesy of Stuart Thursby. Stuart is an art director and photographer, currently adventuring in the wilds of Germany, where this photo was taken. To see more of his work, or to check out his portfolio, please visit StuartThursby.com.

Pick a Pumpkin – Pick the Biggest One!

It’s a special day.

You’ve dressed me up in my very best coat, a sweater, one long sleeved shirt, one white knit cap, one red woven glove (there were two when we left the house, but I forgot one on the bus). My boots are shiny and pink, the pride of my collection. Last show-and-tell I brought them to show, but Maddison brought her turtle and no one liked my boots more than the turtle, except for Patrick but I think he only told me that to make me feel better, and even though I think so, it still did. Patrick is like that.

Today we’re picking the very biggest pumpkin.

I’m sitting here beside it, waiting for you. I’m too small to carry it, and I know someday I’ll be big and strong, and I’ll sling this pumpkin into the back of my pickup truck (I’ll have my own car, no more buses that are late so the teachers yell like it’s my fault) and my daughter (or my son) will yell “Mommy, you can do ANYTHING!” like I used to before I found out you couldn’t. This pumpkin is orange, and squashed a little bit on the top and bottom so it isn’t quite round, and it’s so big I can’t even fit my arms around it. You told me to find the perfect one.

Now I’m waiting for you to come.

I saw you, just a little while ago. You were watching me, across the big wide open field. You’re wearing a brown jacket and your hands were held in front of your face. I know you saw me, I could almost feel our eyes meet except you were too far away for me to see your eyes. But then you turned away, so maybe it wasn’t you, or maybe you saw how big the pumpkin was, even from that far away, and you went to get someone to help us.

The people who work here wear big puffy blue jackets so you can see them from a really long way away. One of them keeps asking me when you’ll be back. She offers me her jacket, or a hot chocolate, but I’m waiting for you here. I’m sitting on the pumpkin now, because my legs are tired, and I want to save my energy so I can help you with the pumpkin. We’ll carry it home and I’ll draw pictures on its face, and you’ll cut them out exactly like I said even if that makes it lopsided, because I wanted it that way. You’re the best Mom, even if sometimes you’re late, and my hands are cold from waiting, and the sun is starting to go away.

The people in the blue jackets want me to go with them, but I won’t, Mom, don’t worry. Today is a special day, we’re picking the very biggest pumpkin, and we’re taking it home together, and when we carve a face on it together, it’ll be the happiest day of my life.

 

Image courtesy of Hayley Mechelle Bouchard. Her work can be found at Little Cat Photography, with more information about Hayley on Our Contributors page.