Only three stories this week. I hope more people will get into it as we progress, but I’m not going to twist any arms. If people want to write stories, that’s excellent and I’ll enjoy reading them. And if it comes down to just me, putting up one story every week, that will be okay too.
The topic for next week is: Cooking / Food.
As you can tell from this week’s stories, adherence to the topic is lenient, though I think it more fun to challenge yourself and try to write about the subject. Length restriction, it turns out, is fairly optional too.
Without further ado, stories!
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Two Sisters
-Emily Jindra
“I quit smoking,” she told me in passing, and I tried to bury some of my excitement. The fact that she said it nonchalantly meant that she was readying her mind for a relapse and didn’t want to get too excited, lest she fell off the wagon. I was happy, though, and have never been very skilled at hiding my emotions.
“That’s great,” was my reply, probably delivered too quickly and genuinely to mask my eagerness for her to be successful. “When did you decide to do that?”
“Well, I’ve been wanting to for awhile.” She sighed. Paused. Looked at the ground, probably hoping that the words to express what she was thinking would somehow materialize on the earth beneath her. My family has never been very skilled in the art of communication. Dialogue with each other is the dance we all fumble through awkwardly, like pubescent teenagers at their first mixer. She looked at me and I met her gaze.
“Do you ever think about death?”
I scanned my brain for a frame of reference, a precedent by which to make my response, some clue that would explain how and from where this question had come, and where she was taking me with it. My older sister and I don’t often get beyond the weather when it comes to conversation. The brain scan was inconclusive, and in a moment of resolve I decided to stop being so reserved around my own sibling.
“Yes,” I offered. “Sometimes I think that death is the only worthwhile thing there is to think about.”
She paused for another moment, trained a sharp gaze on some far-away object, and began to speak. “I was covering part of someone’s midnight shift last night. It wasn’t a full double because I only had to cover until 3 am, but I was pretty tired when I was driving home.” She stopped and once again searched the ground for the words to accurately build her recollection. “I try to take the back roads when I’m coming home that late, to avoid the drunks. I was on Oberlin Road, about to turn onto Russia when I saw it. I couldn’t make out what it was from the intersection, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and that damn cop instinct we all got from Dad kicked in. I turned left instead of right, my impulses taking the reigns from my logic. First it was just a cracked side view mirror glistening like a beacon in the other lane. Then there was glass, pieces of chrome, and the crimson. God damn, to think about that awful color painting a picture all over the road…”
She shifted her gaze and looked me directly in the eye. “I hope that you never see anything like that. It isn’t at all like what you think it would be. The smell was,” but she stopped to clear her throat, and the far away object called her gaze back. Another moment and her face was emotionless again, but there was a new franticness in her eyes, something akin to desperation, the urgency of sustained hunger.
“Libby…”
“It was an accident scene, and I was the first one there. Discovered the body I guess you would say. He must have been going over 100 to smash the bike up that badly. The trail of scattered motorcycle parts stopped at the telephone pole that served as the object to prove Newton’s first law of motion. The bike was wrapped like a pretzel around the base of the pole, I had to blink several times to convince myself that this was tangible reality I was looking at, and not something from a dream. The high tension wire must have then grabbed hold of the bikeless driver, because it stood sentinel over the bifurcated corpse. It was a cold night, and the wounds were… they were steaming.”
She looked down again, but this time with closed eyes. “Everyone says that life is so short, but it’s not.” A pause. She opened her eyes and that wolf-like desperation was even stronger than before. “We spend eons squandering it away, placating ourselves with the vacuousness of daytime T.V., tax deferred annuity payments, trips to the mall and low interest rates. We hide our true feelings, argue about meaningless bullshit, wait like idiots for greatness to happen to us, wait for meaning to one day magically appear. We spend our entire long ass lives waiting, and then in an instant the wait is over and we’re lying in two pieces on the side of some stretch of abandoned road. I’m going to live, Emily, every second that I draw breath into this body.” She looked at me. “Waiting is a game for a fool.”
She held the gaze a few moments longer, and then returned to her hawk-like surveillance of the distant horizon. I didn’t turn my eyes away from her, for fear that this fragile and tender moment between us would crack like an eggshell if I dared even breathe. She stirred suddenly, got up, and walked back toward the house. My eyes were transfixed and followed her up the familiar steps, and I noticed for the first time how strong my older sister is. She has yet to light another cigarette.
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The Dance
-Don Ferrari
“You’re a very special person.”
“Take’s one to know one.”
There was a pause as their eyes held, – similar to the two or three times before in the last hour – only this time it wasn’t from across the room – wondering if they were together or if you were reading it right – this time you were close, as it felt it should be.
“You make me want to touch you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
The eyes remained one, both open and vulnerable. A hand moved up of its own accord and laid itself gently on a cheek, remaining motionless while 2 sets of I’s sang songs that children sing.
“Phew.”
“Bawaack – I got the little ones,” a voice called forth and they both suddenly regained note of where they were. The tavern was crowded this Sunday night, yet no gaze was upon this meeting and faces once more turned to find hand still upon cheek, – then hand held cheek moved down and met a hand in hand and the tavern had two less people.
A silent journey thru the night – pine tree crest met starlit sky and air of breath for both to see. Soon they were making fire in the cabin on the rim of the mountain, the wood smoke sweetening the fragrance of this life.
A hand held cheek once more reached out and gently took a coat from form – Fingers weaving – dancing thru a land of button – Thru this hole to the other side, and you – and you, and then a turn.
Plop on the floor and flesh met touch and eye.
This hand of mine, on myself it seems
Then both, a dance of flickering flames,
Two foreheads touched
And eyes
And nose
And tongue traced patterns new unfolding,
Then hands moved down and pulled the final bit of name to none,
And both wide-eyed souls met dancing.
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Dimmer Switch
-Ahniwa Ferrari
Cal leaned against the wall and made an effort not to squint as light danced across the room and fake smoke drifted past his eyes. He’d heard that the parties senior year were bigger and better, but he’d never imagined they included light shows and smoke machines. Still, he knew that to the people who threw these parties image was everything, and the expense was the equivalent of pennies. In any case, he hadn’t come to see fancy special effects. He had a purpose.
Liza was the kind of girl every boy in school had dreams about. She was head cheerleader and valedictorian, and had already spent a year studying in France. She’d come back with a certain savoir faire that made her seem mysterious and unattainable, and an accent that over time had faded until you could only ever hear it when she got very emotional. It was fate’s cruel joke that her locker was right next to Cal’s, but he doubted that she had ever really noticed him.
If you asked someone at school what they thought of Cal, most people would sum his character up in a single, concise word: “Who?” . He wore clothes, ate food, walked about and talked, laughed, smiled and joked with his friends; all in such a way that no-one but his friends were ever inclined to pay him any notice. How he’d ever gotten friends in this state is a mystery, though could most likely be attributed to the fact that they’d been his friends since the third grade, before he’d realized that he was destined to a life of inexorable obscurity. He went about his business like a shadow, was never called on in class, got straight ‘B’s, and avoided school activities or doing anything in which he might stand out like the plague. Even his senior picture in the yearbook had turned out fuzzy, as if he were blurred around the edges; a ghost.
Tonight was different. The dimmer switch of Cal’s personality, halfway down his entire life, was now in the full “On” position. Dressed in a suit, he had a distinct outline, a physical presence that dominated a particular space. His hair, usually a bland brown and neatly parted, seemed to change in the light, one moment wild and the next, keenly sophisticated. His eyes, usually brown, were now hazel and chestnut and cedar, mahogany and driftwood, and they sparkled as they set upon Liza Anne Hartley and never strayed.
Liza had noticed him, too. Noticed, but not recognized, despite having the same lockers for the past four years. She laughed as a friend told a joke, excused herself, and let her feet follow Cal’s gaze across the floor. As she reached him, the music changed from a loud beat to something slow and intimate. She wasn’t used to being shy, but her breath caught in her throat and she was held transfixed by Cal’s presence. It was years of natural social instinct that allowed her to ask, “Would you like to dance?”
Cal smiled, his teeth flashed pearls. His brown eyes engulfed hers, blue, and the music flooded out the world.
As he left the party, all he could think was that if he hurried, then he and his friends could have a good long party themselves before the night was over. He ripped off his tie, threw it out into the night breeze, and grinned as he remembered his response:
“Sorry, I don’t dance with cheerleaders.”
