June 5, 2012

From “The Convalescence” by Audain Francisco

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You are convalescing in a small bungalow or summer cottage behind a much larger house and attached to it by an open decked walkway. You’re feeling very under the weather, perhaps from a bad cold or recently healed wound.

You have a visitor: a very attractive someone named Riley that you knew in school years ago. They seem unusually interested in staying and talking (a major change from when you knew them before) and goes on and on about personal topics like political beliefs, the cochlear implants they need to hear, and other facts that you already know (both in waking life and in the dream). You listen politely.

Eventually Riley sits on the bed and becomes rather aggressively forward, beginning with personal conversation before moving to heavy petting. You reciprocate after some hesitation; things don’t go any further. The whole time, though, you are preoccupied with what Jordan (who is away on business) would think if they knew; you try telling yourself that it’s just a harmless dalliance with no sex and no consequences, but the guilt is still there.

You’re interrupted by the sheriff, who is the last person you expected to see, but he has even worse news: he’s just let Jordan into the house after they arrived home early and found it locked. The look of shock and betrayal on Jordan’s face is shattering. Riley runs off, redfaced, and you pursue Jordan to the front door, protesting that the situation isn’t what it seemed. They scream that they’re sorry they ever thought you were different than the others, that you were worthwhile, and leaves with a slam.

You sit down heavily and realize, with horror, that neither Jordan nor Riley will ever want to have anything to do with you again. At that moment, the skies open up with a torrent of rain and thunder.

 

April 30, 2012

From “The Pruning” by Paul Philip Crett

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“That particular branch of the family tree died with Mr. Baines, who would have been…let’s see…your third cousin once removed.”

“How do you mean it died with him? Family tree says he had a daughter.”

“Yes, but mind the dates: she died a full two years before he did: April 1918. There’s something of a salacious story that came down to me regarding that.”

“Really? Tell me.”

“Well, as I remember it, Mr. Baines was the chair of the local draft board. He was a businessman of some means and well-positioned to sway the other members’ opinions, quite the literal first among equals. Then one day he tried to use that power, much to his sorrow.”

“He had someone drafted?”

“It seems his daughter, Isabella, fancied a young man of very modest means. She was all he had after the death of Mrs. Baines in–what’s the chart say?–yes, in 1889, by the Russian flu. He was determined to arrange a suitor for her that matched his aspirations for her future. But, as it always does, love had other plans.”

“He drafted his daughter’s suitor? That’s horrible.”

“He threatened Isabella with that, yes. Story goes that Mr. Baines picked out a young dandy for his daughter and threatened to draft the poor boy she preferred straight into the Ardennes if she didn’t break it off and marry his preferred gent.”

“What happened next?

“Well, that’s the salacious part. Isabella refused, and Mr. Baines, in a fury, followed through on his threat. That young boy–don’t rightly know his name–was shipped off to France. He fell at Château-Thierry in 1918; the very day she got the telegram young Isabella took her own life.”

“That’s…horrible.”

“Yes, and I imagine the horror of what he’d done dawned on poor Mr. Baines as well. He was, after all, the only child of only children and the legacy of his entire line had been bound up in that child. Is it any wonder he died not long after? Our distant side of the family inherited his holdings and sold them off piecemeal. You owe your college education to that sad turn of events, matter of fact.”

 

July 23, 2011

From “Fragments of a Dream” by Curtiss Wentworth Deens

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It’s not that I don’t try to remember my dreams. I really do. I even keep a journal.

Most of the time the forgetfulness is too strong, a tidal wave of colorless oblivion eating away at the edges of every image.

Sometimes, though, I wake early and write some notes intended to help me remember and fully transcribe the dream. Often, it’s simply not enough, and I find these ghostly reminders of something I can’t quite recall endlessly fascinating:

to the ends of the earth / magnolias / a sister’s song / skeletons

we were completely wrong / mysterious city / been through this before / i just can’t

tomatoes / candy cigarettes / heist / milkman / 10 degrees

internet / snatches /done it all before / the real fails me

 

June 13, 2011

From “The Periodic Table of Deerton Middle School Students” by Therese Schmidt

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With 115 seventh-grade kids split between the five class periods that made up an average day at Deerton Middle School, a project based on the 116 elements then known to exist (according to the out-of-date table that had come with the chemistry classroom). But there was reason to suspect that old Mr. Lancaster had influenced the element assignment process among wags.

Exhibit A was Boyd Carruthers, who had been assigned no. 82, lead. Anyone who had witnessed Boyd in class or in the cafeteria had no doubt that in all things he was heavy, malleable, and slow. And flighty little Tina Hedstrom in third period being slapped with no. 2, helium, seemed entirely too pat–to say nothing of bony Theresa DiSanto, on the wrong end of a growth spurt, earning no. 20, calcium.

But the plan (if there was a plan) had its more esoteric aspects as well. Caleb Schmidt was granted no. 43, technetium. There didn’t seem to be any connection b’tween that unstable and roguish element and the normally quiet and staid Caleb, until one took into account his recent behavior. Socializing, speaking up in class, trying out for the track team, even unsuccessfully courting Emily Dinklage for snowcoming…like Technetium he was arriving late to the game but making a splash. Quiet, meek, average students like Cara Joyce, who sat in the back and never spoke or made waves or did anything other than make steady unyielding eye contact, tended to get slapped with transuranic elements in Lancaster’s plan (if it was a plan). Cara got Unununium, an element no one without a degree in particle physics could say much about and one that nobody but perhaps the head of IUPAC could pronounce correctly.

Lancaster thus got Cara Joyce up for a brief presenation with a word that would take as long to spit out as anything she’d be saying afterwards.

 

June 5, 2011

From “Across Worlds Book I: Heden’s Psyche” by Altos Wexan

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This post is part of the June 2011 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is a simple descriptive setting.

It was raining in Heden. This was evident in the way its citizens scuttled to and fro in the few open spaces, avoiding the heavy droplets as best they could.

It always rained in Heden. There was a faint shimmer to the bright, bizarre fabrics worn by the people that indicated waterproofing, and each person shed a wake of droplets that collected near thousands of drainage grates.

It would always rain in Heden. There was no way to be sure of this, but the water-worn and rusted surfaces of the Towers suggested it. Looming up into the ever-dark sky, they seemed resigned to an eternal pelting from the neverending storm.

The original design of Heden had called for six of the great Towers, forming the simple hexagon shape found on many of the great neon billboards and television screens that dotted each Tower much as lichens dotted the occasional real rock. The Towers had grown together, fused into one great shapeless mass by centuries of construction, destruction, rust, and rainwater. The simple glass walkways that had connected them had been long shorn of their panes, and hundreds of homegrown, rickety, winding paths of iron and steel had appeared to supplant them.

A monitor was suspended above one such improvised walkway, placed to ambush passersby with its message. Its bright, flashing image wasn’t an ad. Ad Boards were hard to afford, anymore; people who wanted to advertise just added more crumpled paper or laminate fliers to the mass that coated every surface reachable by human hands. This screen was an Info Board.

Info Boards were there to ‘illuminate possible interpretations of information for the purpose of educating the people’ according to the Boards themselves. This particular Board was playing the ‘History of Heden’, and everyone passing beneath had seen it before.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
juniper
LadyMage
dolores haze
jkellerford
Ralph Pines
TheMindKiller
AuburnAssassin
pezie
WildScribe
Inkstrokes
Irissel
Guardian
Lyra Jean
egoodlett
cwachob

 

May 7, 2011

From “Musings” by John Sullivan

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John looked over at her. The bright, silvery moonlight lit up her face and hair from behind, like a kind of celestial backlight. She was as radiantly beautiful as he had ever seen her. “And there never can be.” he said ruefully. She only nodded, slowly.

“We’ve know each other for a while.” John said at length. “And it occurs to me that we’re not going to see each other much anymore. After tonight, there’s just two weeks of school left, and then summer jobs, and then college. This may well be the last time we can really talk. I’d like to end our friendship on a high note.”

She cocked her head. “What do you mean?” she said.

“Have you ever kissed before?” John asked.

She nodded.

“Well, I haven’t. So, will you do me a favor? For just a moment, pretend that you’ve never kissed anyone before. Pretend that we’re in love, and that we’ll never see each other again.” John gently put his hand on her shoulder, and drew her toward him. She didn’t resist, didn’t cry out. She simply closed her eyes and gave a little half smile

They kissed. Not a short, impersonal peck on the cheek. Not a vulgar, lingering wrestling match between tongues. Not even the passionate culmination of a wedding vow. Just the simple, pure essence of physical contact. They lingered there for what felt like an eternity, locked in a tight, personal embrace–the most perfect, innocent, and pure expression of love that the cosmos had ever seen.
Perhaps because it never really happened at all.

That was the evening John preferred to remember, the one he described to his children years later. He never really talked to that girl again, but he heard second-hand of her happy marriage. John knew that his cherished memory was a fantasy, but he clung to it nonetheless; an inner monument to mistakes made, painful lessons learned, and redemption.

 

April 25, 2011

From “Pearlsea In Pieces” by Carolyn Riley

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“We don’t expect you to understand, but it was necessary to perform the test under those conditions. Anything more controlled or closer to your experience would have invalidated the point.”

“So that’s it, then?” Rich snarled. “What would have happened if I wasn’t so lucky?”

“The experiment would have been a failure, and a different subject procured.”

“And Marie? What about her?” Rich demanded. His cheeks were burning and he found it hard to see the form of his accusers through welling tears.

“Ms. Cullen was a necessary incentive. You will find her in her apartment, asleep, though we must stress that she was never more than a template.”

Rich gritted his teeth, thinking of Marie at Pearlsea Fortress, at the Rift, and on that stack of hay in the Endlands. “Bait,” he sighed. “Cheese for the mouse in the maze.”

“An inelegant metaphor, but one not without some primitive merit. Are we done here, Mr. Richmond? Or must we persist in lowering ourselves to your base questions?”

“I just have one more,” Rich said. “Why me?”

The lights of his accusers modulated, with the answer in quizzical, almost mocking tones: “Why not?”

 

April 13, 2011

From “The Black Hole of Humor” by Cale C. Culland

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Even if there’s someone I have a lot in common with, nervousness usually leads me to flub it badly. I make wooden conversation, suddenly unable to seem interested or interesting, before desperately falling back on bad jokes and verbal fireworks to desperately impress how fun and smart I am.

It never works.

Doesn’t help that some of my material is a bit cerebral.

When talking about a mutual acquaintance who was known for being petty and superficial, I once quipped “If Stacie was any shallower, she’d be a hill.” I thought it was a graceful and hilarious metaphor.

I was wrong. “…what?” the girl said.

“You know, we say someone is shallow…like they’re a pool of water,” I said desperately as every last bit of humor drained out of the room. “If a pond gets to zero…shallowability…it’s a field. If it gets negative…shallowability…then it’s a hill…!”

“I don’t get it.”

 

March 10, 2011

From “Gross Optometry” by Chris G. Thomas

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I never understood why Annie Gross set up her practice in town. There was an optometry school at Osborn University just a few miles down the road, so the county was always overrun with eye doctors looking to set up shop. Usually they stuck around because of spouses or children or love of the area–all reasons which, as far as I knew, didn’t apply to Dr. Gross.

Then there was the indelicate subject of her name. I knew, of course, that it was a German name and didn’t mean anything particularly bad when her ancestors had borne it across the pond, but that didn’t make it any less of an issue. Heck, Wanker is a semi-common German surname too, but that doesn’t keep people from discreetly spelling it Vanker when they emigrate. She could at least have spelled it Grosz or something.

Despite that business always seems to be good; I never saw a waiting room that wasn’t full of teens and adults. That may have had something to do with Dr. Gross herself, of course. Me, I was always too shy to make eye contact with her–ironic, I know–and would bury my nose in the waiting room books until called.

That could be a little dangerous, though, because more often than not they were Dr. Gross’s old textbooks, full of lurid color photos of diseased eyeballs leaking pus or escaping their sockets. In that respect, at least, her name was apt.

 

March 1, 2011

From “The Last Email” by Eric Cummings Jr.

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Her note continued:

“I never believed your routine about being a cynic. You believe in things. Not good things or worthy things, but things nonetheless. From my point of view, every position I’ve teased out of you is utterly repugnant, but in taking them you’ve set yourself apart from the others.

Don’t pretend to be something you’re not. It’s a cruel world we live in when somebody has to hide their idealism behind a cynic’s mask, to feign apathy about something they care deeply about rather than confronting it head on. I’ve worn that mask many times in my life, and only recently have I had the courage to remove it for good. I think, in time, you will too.

This isn’t like the end of the book you told me you wanted to write–the one where everyone manages to live happily if not ever after without reeking of sickly-sweet sentiment. I don’t know if even such a qualified happiness can exist in this world of ours without a platform of lies to stand upon, much as we all desperately need to believe it can and does. But it is an ending.

I’ll go my own way–don’t worry. But whatever happens, I want you to be strengthened by it. Go out there and believe repulsive things, but believe them sincerely, just as I sincerely believe that you’ll get your happy ending–whether in real life or in a world of your own making on a manuscript page.”

 

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