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February Short Story Challenge --Stories ---but wait....there is an evil catch!!!
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She is evil, I tell you. You know how many stories I'll have to write to get one that short?? Okay, probably just one. But it won't be easy. Great picture though.
Kaje wrote: "She is evil, I tell you. You know how many stories I'll have to write to get one that short?? Okay, probably just one. But it won't be easy. Great picture though."Fear me Ms Harper!! MWHAHAHAH *cough* HAHAHAHA!
Sammy2006 wrote: "Fear me Ms Harper!! MWHAHAHAH *cough* HAHAHAHA! "*raises eyebrow*
okay, who has the Mod Tranquilisers?? .... we've another one where power has gone to her head....
*snicker*
K wrote: "Sammy2006 wrote: "Fear me Ms Harper!! MWHAHAHAH *cough* HAHAHAHA! "*raises eyebrow*
okay, who has the Mod Tranquilisers?? .... we've another one where power has gone to her head....
*snicker*"
She's going on a full-day plane flight and then going to be tortured by the folks down under, made to ride Puffer-billies and look at emus or something. She'll get her comeuppance.
Margaret wrote: "At last! Brevity celebrated!"Yeah - you would think that ;)
This suits you down to the ground. Actually, I've always thought that doing a great short in limited words is a highly admirable writing skill (Thorny - you hear me?) It's just one I don't happen to have and a certain ex-best-friend of mine knows that.
Kaje wrote: "She's going on a full-day plane flight and then going to be tortured by the folks down under, made to ride Puffer-billies and look at emus or something. She'll get her comeuppance"LOL - nah, she's going to have a great time....... and then come back and demand these 1500 word or less stories!!
I shall have to point Rupert at the picture later and see what he comes up with.....
One minute and I've already got something brewing in my brain. I'm polishing another story (not YA or romance), but I think this will be a good palate cleanser over the weekend.ETA: I'm going to aim for *as short as possible*--maybe I can get it down to 600-800 words.
EATA: I just checked my last contribution for the monthly story challenge and we had a 1000 word limit for that one, so I guess I'll be able to do it under 1500 again at least.
Okay, so my first try went 3500 words. Aargh. version 2 coming up. Eventually.
Tried editing it down - gained 37 words LOL. I'll just have to start over.
Kaje wrote: "Okay, so my first try went 3500 words. Aargh. version 2 coming up. Eventually."only an extra 2000 words ..... that's quite a small amount over the word count for you ;)
(says she who has a brief plot outline but can't get started as the characters won't tell me what they are called)
Good luck with the names. I have a second story in mind, just no time to write it till probably Sunday. And yeah, a "mere" 2000 words over. Am I good or what ;)
*** Future, imperfect ***I loved to watch Julio play ball. The best days were when he was on the Skins team - I could stand and stare at the way his muscles moved under his smooth tan skin. This time he was on Shirts, and my favorite sights were hidden. The sleeveless white cotton clinging to his washboard abs was almost as good though. I stood back from the playground fence in the shadows, and watched him.
They played hard, all of them. Young men, mostly tall, dark-haired and lean, on that playground court in the early summer evening. Shouting, leaping, a game of jostling shoulders and elbows, the echo of shoes slapping on the concrete, and the ring of chains as a shot ripped through the basket. Two points for Julio's team, and Carlos gave him a high five in passing.
Julio was damned good. If he'd stayed in school, he'd have had the college scouts after him. He'd dropped out, though, and gone to work for his second cousin's construction company. Coach had about had a fit, but Julio was helping to support his little sisters. He played just for the joy of it now.
Watching Julio move the ball up-court was like watching a dolphin swim through a herd of seals. The other guys were good, moving with surprising grace for a crowd of lanky teens still growing into their size thirteen shoes and wide gangling shoulders. But Julio was better. He was sleek and swift and agile, his body under perfect control. Watching him made my chest ache.
He saw me before I was ready for it. I'd hoped to lurk unnoticed a little longer, to take just a few more minutes to fill my eyes with the sight of him, and pretend it was still last month, or last year, or any time when the future had felt simple. He spotted me though, as he always did. When play paused he gave his teammates a wave and headed toward me, mopping his face with the hem of his shirt.
He slowed as he came near. I stepped forward, trying to look casual. We met at the fence, unobtrusively close, restrained by the chain link between us from giving too much away.
Julio hooked his fingers in the wire. “So, are you off then?”
“Soon.” There were a thousand things I wanted to say. They boiled down to just one. “I don't want to go.”
“I know. We have to be adult about this though.”
He was only a year and a half older than me. I hated when he said stuff like that. “Screw you.”
He grinned, with that heat in his eyes that made my dick hard and my knees weak. “You have.” His lips hardly moved, but I heard those words right inside me.
For a moment, all I could see was Julio. I stepped closer, grabbing the fence myself, pretending it was to support my bad leg and not because he made me want to drop to my knees. Our fingers brushed, a bare touch of skin. It was safe enough, two guys, buddies, on either side of seven foot wire. It was dangerous enough to make the whole world stand still. Neither of us moved for a minute.
“You have to go.” Julio's voice was low but urgent. “You know that. Your Mom married this guy to get this chance for you. College, surgery for your foot, everything you need for your future.”
All I need is you. I couldn't say it. I did say, “I've gotten along with the damned club all my life - I walk okay; I don't need to dance.”
“I wouldn't mind if you could dance better than the last time.”
We'd been in my room, safely alone, with Julio moving gracefully to the music from my iPod, opening his arms to me. I'd gone to him. We'd swayed together, found a rhythm for a moment, before I'd tripped over my twisted ankle. He'd caught me. Which had led to other things. “I fell on you on purpose.”
“Riiiight, you keep telling yourself that.”
“Anyway, I don't need to go off to some fancy college. I don't need my step-dad's money to be okay.”
“Maybe I want you to better than okay. Maybe I want you to go to college, 'cause I can't.”
He'd said that before, and it still felt freaking unfair. Do it for me. What about what I wanted? Before Mom met Arnie, I'd figured on going to community college and building a life here, with Julio. We'd been together for two years, and no matter what he said I was nowhere close to getting tired of him. That would never happen. And now everyone in my life was telling me about this great opportunity, about New York surgeons and New York schools and how it would change my life. And all I could see was that it meant leaving Julio behind.
He must have seen the old arguments rising in my eyes, because he moved a little closer to the fence. I could smell his aftershave, and the sharp tang of his sweat. He said, “It's not forever. We'll text and phone. Skype even, if I can find a way. You'll be home for Christmas.” Then he wrecked it by adding, “Just... if you do meet a guy, someone better, tell me. I don't want you to feel guilty. I just want to know.”
“Go to hell,” I snarled. God, I was so mad I could hardly breathe. And yet, that wasn't what I wanted our last words to be. We had maybe ten more minutes before Arne came looking for me, tapping his watch and telling me time was money. Don't be a freaking coward. Lay it on the line.
We'd never done that. We'd been together in every way there was. Tentatively at first, when I was sixteen and he was eighteen, and this thing between us was fresh and new. Secretly, later, when I was seventeen and he was nineteen. It was still technically illegal then, and Arne, in his new position as my stepfather, might have used that against him. Wildly, passionately, and once in a gay bar across town, openly and joyfully, since I turned eighteen. But we'd never said the words.
“I love you.” I said it, just like that. I saw the shock in his eyes, followed by the heat. I added, “I'm not going looking for anyone else, and I'll be counting off the days till Christmas and the years till graduation. You'd better be doing the same.”
Julio moved his hand so his fingers slid against mine through the chain link. “One thousand three hundred and ninety-five days to your graduation. Assuming they do it on the first Saturday after the end of term. And assuming you can keep your ass in gear and graduate in four.”
I could feel the smile that tugged the corners of my mouth, even as my eyes went blurry. “You checked it out.”
“Nah. Never even thought about it.”
“Will you come to my graduation?”
“Sure. And I'll expect you to dance with me. Properly. Without landing in my lap.”
From up the hill behind me I heard Arnie's voice. “Mark? You out here?”
Julio stepped up against the fence. “You have to go.”
“Yeah.” We'd said private goodbyes last night, but I hadn't been able to resist coming down for one last look. And now I was glad.
“Gonna miss you, Mark.”
“You too. All the damned time. No matter where I go.”
“Wish I could kiss you good-bye.” His tone was low and intense.
“Your buddies are looking.”
He met my gaze, and his eyes were dark and wide. “Mark. I will if you want me to. Right here, in front of them, and your stepdad up there, and everyone.”
Holy hell. I'd wanted to come out as soon as I'd turned eighteen. He'd thought it was smarter to wait. He'd been right and it was still smarter, but this felt like a gift. I had to be careful about returning it. “Might dry up the college funds.” When he held still, and silent, I added, “Besides, when we do that, we'll do it together. On a day when we can stay together, and look them in the eyes and hold hands, and not let go. One thousand three hundred and... how many?”
“Ninety five days.”
“Then. We'll stand up in front of everyone and do it then.”
Very slowly he stepped backward, pulling his hands from the fence. His touch left me, and I clung to the chain-link. My foot ached and I shifted my weight off it, keeping my gaze locked on his. Had I said the wrong thing?
When there was a foot of empty space between us, he stopped. “I love you too,” he said softly. “I can wait that long. Or, you know, forever.”
Then he whirled and ran back toward the basketball court. With a leap he intercepted a pass, dodged two bare-chested guys, and threw a perfect three-pointer that never touched the net. He was like quicksilver slipping through them. None of them could hold him. But I could.
From behind me, my step father said, “There you are. Come on, time's wasting. Maybe by the time you come back from New York, you'll be able to play like that friend of yours.”
Without turning, my eyes still on Julio, I said, “Never. The doctors don't expect me to ever heal up that perfect. It's okay though. That's not what I want.”
“What do you want then?” His tone said he was humoring me, only half listening.
Down on the court, Julio jumped for the ball, missed and came down lightly. His body twisted and flexed, perfect motion, already leaping forward. An observer might have thought he was completely caught up in the game. But as a lull came, I saw him glance casually my way, then cross his arms across his chest and take two steps, smooth and gliding, and nothing to do with basketball.
“I want to learn to dance,” I said.
###
And now, because Sammy is off enjoying herself and I have already fulfilled her evil catch, I'm going to post the long one too. Nyah, nyah...
*** in extremis, timebending ***Through the red veil of his closed eyelids, he could hear the voices. Young men, unhurried, talking together as they worked.
“...why they didn't euth him yet. I mean, look at his body, that leg. He has to be in awful pain, even if he's almost too out of it to notice. It's cruel at this point not to let him die.”
“He has a No-Euthanasia certificate. They can't.”
“He's that religious? I thought it said agnostic on his room-conduct sheet.”
“Yeah, it does. I don't know why he'd refuse euth. Some folks just do.”
“Well, if I get to be this age I want someone standing in line with the blue juice. He's ancient. I bet he remembers the nineteen-eighties! And he's falling apart. Look at his leg, the sores. Why would someone want to put themselves through this?”
“Who knows?” There was a gentle touch now on David's side where he could still feel it. Cool impersonal hands, lifting, sliding down his hip. A lot of other men had touched him there, through the years, with far different intent. Some women too. He'd had a long and varied life. But arid.
The touch moved away, or perhaps passed on to where he was numb.
“Maybe he thought he had things to do,” the young man's voice continued. “And then ran out of time to change his mind. Poor bastard. But if he has the money for the room, I guess it's his choice. Keeps us employed anyway. It is sad though. No family. No visitors. I don't know what keeps him hanging on.”
I didn't run out of time, David thought, as his mind floated away from the prison of his body. Wouldn't change my mind. I'm almost there.
He drifted for a while as the nurses tended to him. He was still anchored in his flesh by the touches, the pain, all those reminders of his physicality. But then they turned up the music he'd specified for his dying time, and left him. The sounds of whale song, mingled with chanting, washed over him.
He cleared his mind. He'd studied, long and hard, all the years of his life. Astral projection, mind-body control, spiritualism - he'd tried it all. Nothing had quite worked, not yet, but that last psychic he'd gone to had been closest. With her, he'd gone part way, floating in a tank of warm water, his mind almost free. When he'd failed, she'd eyed him with a shrewd gaze. “You're too close to the body, the flesh, your mind's unwilling to let go. When you find the courage for that, maybe then...”
He'd given that long, long thought. It was true. He loved sensation, loved the scent of coffee, the sound of gulls wheeling in the sky, the touch of a hand on his skin. He'd been a poet, in temperament if not profession. Beauty cut him deeply.
Letting go of the world meant wading out into the grey, empty spaces. And he'd never quite managed it. But he'd thought maybe - maybe if he waited until his flesh was all rotting and pain and ugliness - maybe then. And now surely that time had come. He'd heard the one nurse retch, as the bandages on his legs were changed. He was old and ugly, and dammit, he hurt. Surely it was time to make the leap.
He tried to narrow his focus, shut out his surroundings. No more eerie whistles of leviathans in the deep, no more touch of blankets against his chin. No light in his eyes, red with the blood of his closed lids, no more nausea, no more pain. That was hardest. His body wanted him to take notice of his hurts, to fix this damned problem, now, now, now. He soothed it. Soon.
The world fell away. He was in the grey, moving somewhere, floating. A silver cord appeared and he grabbed it, familiar with the way it bit his palms with electric charge, clinging to him even as he clung to it. It pulled him forward. He followed that cord, the electric pulse of it sustaining him. Then slowly, the grey began lifting. Very gradually, the light grew dimmer behind him and stronger in front.
He'd done this much before. Three times in the past, carried on the arms of meditation, or acid, or sensory deprivation, he'd made his way through the grey to this moment. There ahead was the fence. Cold chain link, harsh metal, and behind it, movements, shapes in the haze, the sounds of young men exercising, cursing desultorily, feet in sneakers on hard-packed earth. He drifted nearer.
A young man stood behind the steel mesh, staring blankly through the wire. His dark hair was shaggy, his skin barely touched by a spring tan, smoothly muscled in a white undershirt and shapeless pants. His expression was still, carved from ivory, but his hazel eyes blazed with a fierce gold light. Like some caged big cat, he stared out at freedom, and held himself to endure.
Reese. It had been so long, so damned long. Thirty years since David had immersed himself in the sense-dep tank, cut off from the world for hours, until his mind had given up reality and for a bare moment brought him here.
Far, far longer since he'd seen Reese in the flesh. Eighty years. I'd almost forgotten how stunning he really was. For long minutes, David hovered in the grey, just drinking in the sight of Reese. But then he felt something tugging at him, trying to suck him back.
No! Hell, no! Not this time. He pushed forward, feeling space and reality give ahead of him like pressing against a sticky, latex bubble. Three times he'd come this far only to watch disaster happen. Three times, prisoned, invisible, incorporeal, a spectator. He'd been forced to watch as Reese heard Orca approaching. Watch as Reese turned, fought and died, bleeding out on the dirty ground with a sharpened plastic handle in his gut. Not again!
David drove against that intangible barrier, forming his gnarled fingers into claws... The barrier thickened, mist swirling between him and his goal. Reese's eyes dimmed across that fence. “No!” No, no, no, no. David panted, shouting, trying to force his way through despite his failing muscles, his battered body... but that felt wrong, was wrong. Back here in 1986 he wasn't old and lame and gnarled. When Reese had stood in Juvenile Detention, caged behind that fence, David had been young and strong and whole. Whole of body, and for at least a few more minutes, whole of heart. Miles away at the time, safe, unknowing, but he'd felt that shadow when it fell.
David stopped and closed his eyes. It was hard to do. It cut off what might be his last sight of Reese. But he closed his lids, took a breath, and let go. Let it all go. Who he was, who he had become in decades of living, what he'd learned in his extended, active, empty life. Let go his body, with its failures and its pains, let go of his self. And stepped forward into the warmth of sunlight.
Reese's voice said, “David!” His tone was so soft it barely reached across that fence, but David could hear the shock in it.
He opened his eyes. There was dirt under his feet. The smell of mown grass and cigarette smoke filled his nose, making him breathe deeply. A light breeze blew a strand of his black hair into his eyes, and when he brushed it away, the hands he moved were young and strong.
On the other side of the fence, Reese took a fast step toward him, grabbing the chain link as if he needed an anchor. “David! What are you doing here? They'll freak out if they see you talking to me. How did you get there?”
David lunged forward too. His chest hit the chain mesh with breathtaking force, pressing a stiff cotton T-shirt against his chest. The wires bit his fingers. His eyes locked with Reese's.
For a moment they froze. They were close enough to share breath, but touching only where the fingers of David's left hand met Reese's right. Like an electric current, that slight contact of skin on skin sent warmth and life coursing through him. David cleared his throat, and the sound grated on his ears, real and loud and present. “Reese.”
“I never figured you'd come.” Reese took a shallow breath. This close, David could see the pulse pounding in the strong column of his neck, and smell the sweat on his skin. “I'd heard...”
David wanted to go slow. More than he'd wanted anything in his life, he ached to take his time here, inches from Reese Carpenter again, after eighty years alone. But somewhere inside him, he felt a pull - back there an old man in an air-cushioned bed draw anguished breath, and his time was short.
“I love you,” he said simply. “No one else, no other guy or girl, ever. I came to tell you. And to warn you...”
From behind Reese came a jeering shout, “Hey, fag boy! Looking for your prince?”
Reese whirled, because you learned fast in that place not to let anyone come up behind you. David caught one last shudder through his fingers, as the chain link bounced from Reese's movement. Then the metal under his fingers thinned, faded, as his hard won moment ended.
“Dammit!” His cry must have been silent, because neither Reese nor Orca so much as glanced his way.
Then Hell on Earth was playing out again. The scene he'd lived, in silence, in nightmares, over and over. Orca had two of his followers shadowing him. He was pathetic in a way, a big hulking ugly teenager who named himself for a killer whale, and always moved with his pack of remora fish around him. Stupid and obvious, but no less dangerous for all that.
Reese kept his back to the fence and didn't answer Orca's taunt
“I didn't hear you, fag? Are you waiting for your ass-buddy?” Orca grinned, showing a mouth of crooked teeth. David and Reese had sometimes wondered if he'd have been less vicious if someone had bothered to care for him as a child, fixed his teeth, straightened his broken nose. They'd concluded that his problems went deeper than that.
“Yeah,'cause he's not waiting for you,” his buddy Troy said, hovering at Orca's elbow. “Ya know, my sister's dating Davey now. She says he's real glad to be out of here, back where there's actual women. Your ass can't have been worth shit.” He laughed. “Worth shit. Get it?”
Orca glanced at Troy. “You should tell her not to bother with that douche. Get her a real man.”
“Na, Davey was okay. This one's the fag. Davey was just doing what a man's gotta do in here.”
Orca frowned. “You sure?”
“Sharon says he's already gonna be her baby daddy. Dumb twat's havin' his kid. But at least that means he's not a fag.”
Watching, David gritted his teeth, silenced and impotent. It's a lie. She knows what Troy would do to her real boyfriend. David strained forward, but the bubble was back. No matter how he pushed, the fence ahead of him lay out of reach. He drew all of his breath to shout, No! Orca didn't react at all. For a moment, Reese did turn; he glanced over his shoulder through the fence. But although he looked toward David, his gaze moved over him and past him, blindly, unseeing.
Orca reached forward and slapped at Reese's hip. “Maybe I should find out what Davey saw in you, huh? See what you're good for? Now that no one gives a damn what happens to you?”
David felt his blood turn to ice. Now Reese's eyes would go blank with pain and without a word he would hit back at Orca, and then that meaty hand would come out from behind Orca's back and... He almost closed his eyes. The last time he watched this, it nearly stopped his heart. But he would witness it again, stay with Reese again. He wished he could just die first, though. This is my fault. I'm a stupid idiot, had one minute, finally I HAD one minute, and wasted it on “I love you” instead of “Orca has a shiv.” Stupid, moronic, fatal mistake. This time it'll be my fault when he dies.
Reese said, “You're a lying mother...” The shiv was in motion as he spoke, Orca's hand flashing toward him faster than a kid that big should have been able to move. Reese dodged away, falling, a hand clamped to his side with blood already tingeing his fingers.
**Different, and yet the same. Reese fell sideways, rolling this time, instead of sliding helplessly down along the chain link. But the shock in his eyes, the blood on his hand, were the same. The grey nothingness closed fast around David, and Reese was still bleeding, and David had failed. Failed again, like he had all his life. Over and over, that moment had haunted him. From the day he'd heard that Reese was dead, he'd been unable to accept it. He'd fought against it, tooth and nail, and pure bone-deep disbelief. But now there was no time and no choice left.
Maybe you truly couldn't change history. Maybe nothing he ever did would have been enough, no time or study or willingness to sacrifice body and mind for a chance at a do-over would have made a difference.
As the scene faded, as David watched, Reese turned his head, cheek against the bare dirt behind the fence. For the first time in the endless loop of repeats, he looked back David's way, and a tiny smile touched his lips. And then there was nothing but formless grey, clinging and yet empty, all around David. And Reese was gone.
David drifted, uncaring. He'd used his last chance. He was sure of that. Whatever life force he'd expended, holding his decaying body together to make this last attempt, it had failed. And there would be no more. All that was left was enduring, going back to the dying he'd set in motion and could no longer change. He was in no hurry to return to that. His future was the cancer eating him alive, and no respite, no drugs, no merciful easy death. Although, maybe he'd finally meet Reese on the other side.
Maybe he'd bought that much. Maybe Reese had died knowing he was loved, knowing he mattered. Maybe even after all this time, he'd be waiting.
Somewhere the grey held a tinge of red. David moved that way, incurious, unhurried, more drifting along unseen currents than by any desire of his own. But as he neared the red he heard a voice, a young man, sounding familiar.
“...that was close. I thought he was finally going to go this time. But his heart is stronger again.”
A quiet male voice said, “He was always strong. He's holding on for something.”
“I'm surprised he didn't give you the right to sign off on his pain-ease. Surely he trusted you.”
“I'd have thought so. He had that power for me. But David always said he wanted to do nothing that would ease him out before his time. He was adamant. It was the one thing he denied me and wouldn't explain.”
David drifted forward into the red. It surrounded him now, touched with sparkles of faint light, pulsing slightly.
The young voice said, “Seems selfish, making you watch this.”
The quiet voice said, “We're from a different time. Compassionate euth was considered murder back then. Maybe that was why. Anyway, I just have to watch, he has to do the slow dying.”
A damp cloth passed over David's eyelids, darkening the red as it passed. In its wake, in the cool and shadow, he opened his eyes. An old man's face bent over his. When their gaze met, the man smiled. “Hey, sleepyhead. Waking up enough to say hello?” In that wrinkled, grey-haired visage, a pair of hazel eyes glowed warm and gold.
He knew those eyes. Knew them heart-deep. Oh, God. David wanted to say that aloud. Wanted to say something, anything out loud, to ask if this was heaven or a dream, or some new reality. Or maybe just to say, I love you, Reese. One more time. But he'd pushed his body beyond the point of speech.
He stared up at the old man above him, as a soft, damp cloth held in gnarled fingers passed across his mouth, soothing it.
Behind the old man, a young blond came into view. “Does he ever answer back?”
“Not for a week now. It's getting close. I can feel it. I'm sure he hears me though.” Reese, surely it was Reese, leaned closer to David. “Hey, you dork. You can stop now, you hear me? Any time. Just let go.”
David took a breath, eyes locked on Reese's, feeling the air fill his chest with an odd rattle.
“He does seem to be looking at you this time.”
Reese's finger stroked over David's cheek. “He always had the most amazing eyes. Sometimes I'd think I saw them, even when there was no one around, that blue, looking at me like I hung the moon. Stupid man.” He bent and pressed a soft kiss on David's mouth, the faintest brush of lips. David drew another rattling, unsatisfactory breath when he meant to kiss back.
Reese smiled down at him, sad and sweet and patient. “Let go, David. I know you're not leaving me on purpose. You never did. Not when you got out of Juvie first, not through all our years, not ever. You're just going on ahead. I trust you to wait, you trust me to follow.”
The young man said, “How long were you together?”
“Eighty years.” Reese sobered. “We met when we were seventeen. We got drunk, stole a car together, got caught, went to jail. Not adult prison, but bad enough. I got a longer term because I was the one driving. After David got out, I almost got killed in there over something stupid. But I lived, and when I recovered, David was still waiting. Eighty years we've had. A lot of living, a lot of changes. I always figured we'd go together, but I guess some things doctors still can't fix.”
David gasped again, breath getting shorter. Somewhere an alarm beeped and was silenced. Reese cupped his cheek in one palm.
The blond said, “How'd you almost get killed in jail? Weren't there monitors and vis screens and pufferdrugs?”
“Human guards, fences, it was a different time. There was another guy who hated me, tried to stab me. I was lucky to survive. Funny. I was missing David so badly that day. I was imagining him moving on without me, to where I almost didn't care what happened. Then, right before the fight, there was this moment...” His voice dropped, and he spoke to David directly. “I imagined you were there, crazy man. Outside the fence. You said you loved me; you looked at me and I knew it was true. And I knew when I saw Orca coming that whatever happened, I had a reason to get through it. I never told you about that hallucination, it sounded too insane. But even back then, just the hope of you saved my life.”
David struggled to raise a hand, to say a word. His body was a prison, locked in combat with the very air he breathed, each gasp shallower and less satisfactory. There were burning bands around his chest, squeezing in his lungs. Fire ran up the nerves of his leg, pulsing lava that stole breath and thought. His mouth worked between gasps, trying for speech.
“David. It's okay. Whatever you want to say, you've said a thousand times already. Go on, sweetheart, I'll be close behind you. You'll never lose me.”
Now I know I'm dying if you're using a real pet name. He wanted to call Reese a jerk, but that too was beyond him. His eyelids were drooping again. Reese's face was being veiled by thin silver lashes. The world grew dim and grey. With a last effort he hoarded air and breath, and pushed it out in one puff. “...love...” It hovered on his lips. And then the world was gone. He was lost in the haze.
Off to his left, the uniform shapeless fog grew brighter. There was sunshine there, and he smelled burning autumn leaves, and the scent of pine trees. It pulled at him, but he resisted, trying to turn back. Something tugged on his hand. He looked down. Extending out from his right palm was a silver tether, slick and electric, pulsing with life and love as it ran back behind him into the grey. He pulled, lightly, and on the other end there was a tug in return.
“You'll never lose me.”
Laughing, David whirled, and dove toward the brightness. Behind him, the tether unfurled, stretching, longer and longer but forever unbroken.
###
Fade to BlackVisions of you,
your long body
beneath mine,
the scrape
of your beard
against my cheek,
your tongue
tangled with mine.
I ride a Lionel train
past morning meadows
bright with spring sunshine,
daisies, dandelions,
Queen Anne's lace,
while you linger
behind barbed wire
beyond my reach.
Every evening
I lay my head
on my pillow,
await your visit,
your bright smile
hangs above me,
but when I reach for you,
you. turn to smoke.
I open my eyes
and you're gone,
beyond, behind,
into a mirror world
where phantasms
whisper in your ear
and you are a stranger
I never knew.
Margaret wrote: "Fade to Black..."
Wow, I love that! Such powerful images.
Now Kaje, see? You can write a short story!!!
:DAnd also a long story :D :D
Vladimir wrote: "Kaje wrote: " *** Future, imperfect ***I loved to watch Julio play ball. The best days were when he was on the Skins team - I could stand and stare at the way his muscles moved under his smooth t..."
Cute - imported like button. Thank you :)
Kaje - thank you for the stories, particularly liked the first oneMargaret - that's a really powerful short, thank you
Margaret wrote: "Fade to BlackVisions of you,
your long body
beneath mine,
the scrape
of your beard
against my cheek,
your tongue
tangled with mine.
Splendid, Margaret. Vivid imagery. Thanks
Only read Kaje's first one so far - tears won't permit me to read others yet. Beautiful.
Kaje, both of yours were just beautiful. Thank you.
Thank you :) I loved the picture (and yeah, it still took me two tries to go short.)
I looked around the other discussion topics and couldn't find this answer -- forgive me, if it's there and I just missed it. Can we post stories in past months' threads, or should we consider them closed to new stories after the months' ends? I was working on a piece for this picture but couldn't finish it in time, and I've thought about poking through month threads from before I joined the group as well.
Kim wrote: "I looked around the other discussion topics and couldn't find this answer -- forgive me, if it's there and I just missed it. Can we post stories in past months' threads, or should we consider them..."You can post on any of them - they should pop up to the top of the thread when you do. If not, let me know. We have had some great pictures, and some of us will surely read anything that gets written. But the current month is a bit more likely to get a bunch of readers.
1500 words
That's right no more than 1500 words---Kaje do you hear that??? And I will be counting!!!
SO--use the picture below and dust off those computer keyboards and get to posting people!!
and remember in all things..we are YA--WOOT!!