Short Fiction 5: Guest Visit

At last, something new :) The first line (rewritten of course) actually started out as a poem, but I guess I wasn't inspired enough to finish, so it turned into this instead. Not too bad. Almost 900 words in about 20 minutes. Enjoy :)
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He could see three photos on the mantle, garlanded with fake leaves and autumn branches in vibrant orange, far too extravagantly perfect to be real. They glistened vaguely in the dim light, twinkling like a secret in a person’s eyes, when you know they’re lying but aren’t stupid enough to say you noticed. His eyes settled on each frame first rather than each photo, for each frame was the same: leather-bound, aged without aging, a stale sort of earthy color that nearly matched the autumn plastic things around t, but not quite.

In the first photo, a tiny child sat perched on a man’s shoulders, like a tower holding up a smiling balloon in some distant city., except it was only a lawn. An empty lawn that seemed to go on forever, but he knew better; it only went as far as they money went before it turned into someone else’s property. The child was smiling. The man was grinning. Neither of their eyes glistened as they should have in the brightness of summer. Behind the camera, he could almost see the near-emotionless photographer that held the camera perfectly still and demanded silly words from them to force a smile. So someday they’d look back and grin once more and say, “How happy we were then, yes yes.” So someday they think, How horrid she was. It didn’t interest him much.

The second photo was a little smaller and more in the backdrop, as if it were just an afterthought to fill a space. An unnecessary little thing that didn’t matter much, but the frame’s so nice and matches so well. He couldn’t see much in it for how many people stood within the leather boundaries. At least 15 people filled the photo to the brim with pointless sameness, each man, woman, and child clothed in the same monotonous royal blue. It reminded him of the photo they had been forced to take in the navy, with each man sporting the same new baldness and the same blue and white outfits that they would never wear again. None of them smiled then (and wouldn’t have enough if they could have), and most of the faces in the picture didn’t smile now, either. Not really, anyways, and it was hard to tell. Maybe among the sameness was a secret smile, too far off to really notice, but enough to matter all the same. He thought he could almost see one, but it danced away like a pixie and into the dust. Maybe just his eyes going. Probably. Maybe.

A third matched the second, but not quite in content, only in that the two frames were placed symmetrically to each other, facing one another endlessly. This one was a little different, older (truly), and the leather frame couldn’t entirely hide the tiny peak of frayed edge in the left corner. This time the smiles weren’t present at all, not even false ones, making the wedding scene very strange. A funeral in white and gray, more like. A funeral for freedom and happiness, he guessed. He was the same man in the first photo, only younger and strangely sadder. Darker, even. As if the world of that time had been in a constant shade, a mild tint of blackness everywhere you went. He knew of the woman’s sadness; he’d seen it a thousand times over from a thousand photos taken in a hundred different years and times and eras apart from his. The man’s was stranger. He somehow doubted the little gray man that stood stoically beside his mistress himself knew of his own depression. Consciousness, he knew, came with time and calmness and acceptance.

He stood to gaze more closely at the photos, hands clasped behind him in a doctor’s studying clasp as he leaned forward into the mantle, eyes flitting back and forth from frame to glinting frame, leaf to plastic leaf.

A bare little spot where the dust hadn’t quite settled in yet caught his gaze. A line of slight darkness between colored leaves. A void. A place that needed filling but never was, and so was merely covered up.

“Something else used to be here,” he mentioned casually, as any guest in a stranger’s home would be: prying, curious, yet with mild uncaring that seemed to also mention that the answer wouldn‘t be judged too harshly if it was given quietly. She paused, thought about this, then took the deal.

“Oh, nothing’s missing,” an answer from the kitchen echoed off shining white tile, forced nothingness in its ring. “Well, there used to be another one there, but the frame broke so we took it down. It was a while back.”

Ah. So that was it.

It was a missing person, not a missing photo. A void. And place that needed filling, but couldn’t be, so it was covered up. He frowned at the three tiny panes of glass.

“I hope you fix it soon.” Silence from them both a moment. “It would be a shame to leave something so beautiful so empty.”

In all his observations, he didn’t hear the silent mouth form the words in truth behind his back.

If ever it was beautiful to begin with.

Brother to Brother (filler)

This is mainly just to post something up since its been so long sine I wrote anything. I wrote this probably about a year ago before started NaNoWriMo. Originally this was meant to be a part of a section in Tier 1 involving a different main character than in the first chapter I posted a while back. The war they refer to was the war that would eventually lead to the society Marie and Eric live in. Anyways, here ya go. Hopefully I'll have something new soon :)
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I can rarely recall any memory with such vividness with which I used to, when I could remember every detail of every dream and every memory that quivered by on even the most evasive and frail of wings. My brother’s face escapes me often when I try to think of home, but I do hark back to one lucid memory.

He had just returned from the war. His hair was slick with oil and rainwater from the storm raging outside, and when he entered it was impossible to miss, not only because of his normal cinematic entry but for the wind attempting to siege our house as the door banged open with its force. Matthew grinned with a concise little chuckle, mocking sheepishness, as he shoved the door close on the desperate wind, and his muscles, fruits of the many years of hard labor and toil and training and pain, strained in perfect unison. The reality stood clear and harsh as he stepped into the light, revealing an unshaven sharp jaw-line and hardened eyes of steely gray: the little Matty that left all ambitious and excited to do some good and have some fun was no more. In his place stood a man, a bold and brusque man with morals and ideals and a want to change the world in any way he could manage and serve his country properly (even when their intentioned were not always the best). Still that familiar smile shone through his rock of a visage and we crowded around him once the image settled in, eager to embrace him with us once more.

He talked of his many travels, through snow and sand and clouds and mud and rain. He talked of our letters to him and apologized for the ones he never answered. He talked of his sergeant and his officer, men as hardened as he was now no doubt, and of his companions of the war. He talked of wounds and scars, even showed us a few, and of how he lost his finger a year ago (an anomaly overlooked by yours truly, but certainly not by our mother, who always did have a rather compulsory attention to detail). Most of all, however, Matthew talked of the blood. Of it covering his hands, covering his gun and clothes. Of it splattered on the walls of the buildings they infiltrated. Of it on the bullets he shot. Of it flooding his dreams on darker, lonelier nights. And the unspoken: of the blood that filled more pleasant dreams and filled is very waking thoughts without ever provoking disgust, without ever causing a flinch of even minimal surprise.

When the lights were dimmed and the family began to head towards their respected habitats for sleep, I followed Matthew to converse alone with him on the things he hadn’t said. I guessed a few of the simpler ones–about women he had seen and more than that, which we laughed at casually, like the good innocent brothers we once were. But when I questioned his true dreams, his true thoughts, he retreated subtly, those gray-ice eyes shifting away towards the hardwood floor beneath his feet. I provoked him, asked again; I wanted an answer. Finally he gave in, not from weakness but from his ties and unspoken allegiances to me that outranked any general’s allegiance to his country .

“Every day I see them. Their blood just...covers everything. It never goes away once you’ve fired that first shot. You’re always thirsty, always needing more of it. It never goes away.”

I nodded solemnly, trying to understand and empathize as I rested my elbows on my knees to save my energy for thinking. As I looked for the words to break the foreboding silence, I absently noticed he hadn’t taken off his boots yet; in fact, he hadn’t take off anything yet. Perhaps he had grown used to the feeling of a load on his back and on his heart. I commented lightly on the battered and muddy state of his footwear, as we once more began small-talk.

Somehow, though, I think I knew that beneath the caked dirt and silence of his tales that stains of even deeper scarlet threatened to reveal themselves. Perhaps he wanted it that way. Perhaps it was best to just forget.

Short Fiction 4

No idea what the hell this is supposed to be. Some guy getting owned by plants.... sounds like Stephen King to me XD Very very vaguely inspired by "The Fountain" movie.

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I've seen this place before.

It isn't how I remember it. It isn't the way it was supposed to be. Then it was gray and threaded with wide cracks like the calloused palms of a dead god, pale and rotting and worn. Black birds and other more subtle creatures crawled along the barren land with scaly hides to snatch at poor specimens that happened upon the wasteland and were unlucky enough to have lost their minds and wills. There were no mountains, no trees or even skeletons of trees, not a single distinguishable landmark to be saved. Just the everlasting gray light that penetrated the entire body with its ghastly glow.

No, this can't be the same place.

But it has to be. It was right here. I know it was.

This was some trick. Some type of sick joke the same gray glow he recalled so well was playing on him after being away for so long.

This is a green land. Not just green; it shines like a bed of emeralds under a bright and full yellow sun that hangs like a fat yellow seed in the sky drooping from some unseen over-fertile tree far above and beyond human perception. The grass grows naturally, yet as if someone has deliberately planted every seed with the utmost care to ensure its growth. All the same length. A monotonous field of green and scentless miles for as far as the eyes can see.

Ironically its the lack of landmarks that help distinguish this festering but well-disguised wound in the world. I can sense the crusting rot beneath me, and I know this is the place. The place for death and deceit, and of course for peace as well.

Yes, I've been here before.

Long ago, this was my home. Long ago I would have welcomed this apparent blessing, but not now. Too many years have gone by. Too many memories that tell me otherwise, and all I can see is black and smoldering ruins and pits of darkness. It isn't illusion; it's torture beyond anything I've ever witness before this moment.

I feel the ground. Deceivingly hard and unyielding under my fingertips, and I can feel the grass give a almost imperceptible hiss as it pulls toward my touch, clinging to it. That's more like it. Always feeding off itself and whatever lands in its clutches. This field hasn't seen a green quite like this in countless decades, far longer than I can remember or care to. It draws in prey so easily, and I can see the dissolving remains of bone not far from me. Only grass without water. A purgatory oasis filled with temptation and starvation and deception. I can't help but smirk.

Its close. I can feel it, even though it isn't anywhere in sight. Its an entity all its own, separate from this hell-hole, and I created it myself.

Perhaps this green is just one more battlefield and every blade is fighting against its newest enemy buried deep within itself. It can sense me, just as I sense it, and it calls me to it. I walk without thought or feeling, letting the memories guide me blindly as they always have.

I can see the wastelands stretching out all around, can see the cloudless sky blur with it into eternity. This is where the heavens meet the land. This is where the Ladder must be placed. The images from nearly fifty years past play on the backs of my eyelids and I ignore my surroundings and the strange touch of clinging grass on my heels as I pull away, ignoring the impossible sighs of disappointment and futility they make as I pass.

I open my eyes. Its here. I don't expect the single white-linen flower that protrudes so helplessly and innocently from the cruelly challenging earth all around it. The blades of grass soldiers war against its presence still, as they have for decades, revealing an unusual pattern in their ranks before me like a sudden but silent wind pressing the emerald army into the ground in a circle. The ring pulsates very slightly under my bare feet and I can feel the ripples of the soldiers and their bristling anger grasp my flesh with tiny futile hands.

Here is the Ladder. Here is the gateway to the kingdom I have waited for since my very existence began its ticking clock. This is where it all began, where it all ends and begins once more. Here I will become whole.

I take the flower in my hands and tug gently. It doesn't give. I try again. Nothing. The pulse of the living field around me grows faster, more intense. I haven't much time. I try a third time, leaning my weight back onto my heels as I pinch the stem and watch it lengthen briefly, then pull itself back into the earth, like tugging a mule from its cart. Then, fear washed through me, cold as icy rain.

No. This is the Ladder, my key to freedom and to bliss. To a second chance. It is mine to take, and no one else's. Its mine.

The treacherous tiny growth continues to descend until I can scarcely see it. The ground is opening, hissing and piercing through itself in a jumbled mess of writhing emerald blades lunging forward to cling at my hands still wrapped around the gentle lily. Now the blades bite and catch, as they always were meant to, but with a new vigor, a new life and enthusiasm that it hasn't experienced in ages. For a moment I make an attempt to pull away, but its far too late now, and I know it. It was too late the day this demon-seed was planted. The day I planted it as my key to the heavens.

This strange and unholy being has fooled me into death. Even as the blades pull and bury me in sand and glass below the grassy surface, I can't help but let this wry chuckle escape me. Fifty years, and I am beat. I have nothing left. There is no heavenly light for me now, only the eternal darkness and broken glass prison of the cracked desert.

I make no sound as the blades pull my eyes away from the last view of the world. The yellow sun still hangs far away, and I wonder briefly if perhaps the Ladder and the key had always been within my grasp. The land hisses once more and closes in all around me, and all that is left is the black decay of hell that had always been waiting for me.

And I can't help but smirk.

Short Fiction 3

I kinda like this one :) Sorry its a little longer than usual--just over 1000 words.  Inspired vaguely by The Gunsliger. 

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A new red sun crested on the horizon as the morning’s breeze brought with it a scent of honeysuckle and lavender and rotting flesh. The combination awakened the murderer from a sound sleep, the putrid mixture filling his nostrils with funeral smells. Only briefly. The light of the crimson glow made him grunt in protest and shield his eyes from its power as he rolled onto his side.

Not a murderer by choice, he thought. Not the murdering stalker who creeps in the night to make the kill and steel away in darkness, like in al the books. A murderer by chance. That’s what he was. 

The night had come heavily and suddenly, pulling the blanket of stars above him with hardly a warning from the dying sun to the west, barely shielded by the faintly glowing mountains in the far distance that disappeared into faint black peaks. It was blindness he hadn’t known in years, if the caves from long past were of any comparison to this brutal and scarce lighting. Then he had held the lantern confidently in hand, stepped surely over rock and past the streams, brandishing the hefty knife of his father in the other hand. Now, he was scared, alone, and without weapon; not even his mind could aid him with its increasing insanity. He had traversed the deserts for three weeks without seeing another human being, and scarcely a single animal. Water had run short even before food, and for an entire week he didn’t eat. Heat, exhaustion, starvation…he’d felt it all before, but not like this. Not this evil that accompanied it, not this curse.

He could sense the evil, could even smell it on the wind that scourged his face and arms with burning sand. It was all around him, all around the dying lands through which he had so mistakenly traveled. The occasional drifting scent of flowering plants caught him, but he was unsure now if it was his imagination turning against him now. 

He was sure of his mind’s treachery, and it was all he was certain of. It was a strange thought, both comforting and distressing, to be sure and to be unsure of the same thing. His mind was whirling, spinning, and leaping to the stars as he laughed weakly and wildly, blindly stumbling along some unknown invisible pathway. The whole thing was really quite funny, he thought. Very funny, actually. He couldn’t see his hands. He was invisible, and he loved and loathed it, feared it and revered it. An invisible man, like the movies. A secret agent, sent by the agency to take down their enemy. A hero even. That’s what he was here: a hero.

That was when he saw him.

It was dark, of course. Too dark to tell who or what it was, but his mind was not quite so far gone as to let a living being go entirely unnoticed. He had stopped and stared at the man, also stumbling and groping and groaning with loss. 

A secret agent. Double agent. The enemy. Take down the enemy. 

He grinned. A malicious grin that almost glowed in the nighttime, reflecting the stars and the world and his own insanity within them. 

The other man stopped, feeling his presence. “H…Hello?” he ventured. A feeble voice, trying to make him surrender, to pity him. Well, not this time, my friend. No, not this time, he thought. 

The cry was more a scream, a banshee’s scream that echoed for miles in the desert and the darkness, that filled the Enemy’s ears like piercing spiked notes. The Enemy cried out feebly, mumbled to himself, and fell back with surrendering sobs that shook him. He didn’t see this though. He knew what he really was. He was the Enemy. They’ll reward me at home, he thought. They’ll march me through the gates of the city and pin medals on my chest and we’ll feast and dance for weeks for my work. The Enemy must die. 

“TRICKERY!” he wailed, but the word was indiscernible. A madman’s calling. “INSOLENT BASTARD! STUMBLING GHOST! ENEMY!”

The scuffle was a brutal and bloody one, a one-sided fight between a hungry carnivore and his thin and perishing prey. He clawed the eyes, ripped at limbs, screaming all the while. The Enemy hardly fought back, hardly made a sound. Perhaps he had died long ago and this was only a ghost of that threat. Perhaps he wasn’t there at all. But nonetheless the blood flew and the dull sound and pelting fists in blood-soaked bone and flesh continued for near an hour. The rest was blurred in darkness.

The morning came just as suddenly as the night had, revealing the land and truth and lifting the veil of evil a little above the dead and the living. 

He sat in a daze, wondering at the blood. So much of it. It stank, not just the fresh liquid but also the darkness that seemed to still surround it. Slowly, he forced his new eyes to peer at the body, or at least at what was once its face. Not an Enemy, he thought vaguely. A being. A human. A man. Just as I am. 

The cheek of the face was flipped open to cover one eye, and the entirety of it lay still and red on the ground, bringing the occasional fly to feast. Even in this heat. The body lay apart from the face mostly, just as battered. He thought  he could see the remnants of a rib or two, or perhaps an arm, but it was impossible to tell. 

He felt numbness and nothing else. He held the knife in his hand, wondering how he had caused such damage, as if it were the fault of the blade, but the blade was completely clean. He had killed with only his hands, with only coldness and insanity. 

The knife turned in his hands and lightly scraped the pulsing flesh of his neck.

A murderer. Not by choice. By chance.  Please…

Please forgive me. 

He felt nothing as the blade cut through flesh. He fell and slept, watching the sun rise until it fell into blackness.

In the distance, the honeysuckle grew without consequence and the caravans began to move, wondering at the brutal beast they had heard in the night.

Short Fiction 2

My second piece of short fiction, a little late but here nonetheless. Not like anyone cares but me heh. Again, I started with a single line and just let it roll from there to stop wherever it wanted to :)

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The room had a view, but it really wasn't much of one by his standards. Just the stale wall of some building maybe five hundred feet across an equally stale and uninteresting street far below. There were no windows in the wall. Just bricks, and even those were hard to discern, they were chipped so badly from age and whether. The streets didn't fare much better either; shattered concrete and the occasional floating newspaper that came barreling down the avenue as if it were late for some very important date.

Great, he thought. Now we're getting poetical. 

He sniffed at the air and recognized the vague scent of oil and gas and pollution that he hadn't known he knew in the first place, let alone remembered. It was an odd contrast to the flat white and cleanliness of his new surroundings. A white table draped with a white cloth and encircled by three white chairs, overlooked by white walls on four sides (all the same size; he had checked), and upholding a strangely shining white telephone. He watched the telephone for a long few minutes, as if waiting patiently for it to ring and his "people" to call him up and tell him to come down for some supper. 

Maybe the food is white too. Bastards just keep it all to themselves, whatever it is...

Maybe he was being just a little selfish, he admitted dryly to himself. I mean, he did have a view of something, even if it wasn't much of a something, and there was a place to sit unlike some of the other rooms he had previously visited. Cautiously he approached the open window that let the pure white drapes drift to and fro only slightly to the sides. He could almost imagine people walking and children playing far below, just bigger than ants in the cracks of concrete he remembered stomping on as a kid with such careless glee. Feeling a little braver, or perhaps a little more curious, he stretched his neck out into the open and twisted to peer on either side of the window, wondering if the building, too, was white. To his surprise, it was not; rather it was a sort of pukish brown, more stale even than the wall it ran parallel to beyond. 

"Hmmph," he grumbled. "Least its more interesting than all this other crap."

Staring out into nothingness was somehow enthralling enough as to distract him completely for hours. He thought about the imaginary people on the ground and imaginary windows filled with offices and scurrying workers across from him, ignoring him. He thought about the family he left behind so easily in their two-bedroom apartment on the far west of town--his two little girls and darling wife. He didn't miss them, but it was interesting to think about them from time to time and wonder. 

When the phone did ring, he had fallen asleep on the window sill and jumped at the sudden trill of the internal bell in the phone. Straightening himself out and playing it cool for some imaginary guest in the room, he took in a breath and answered.

"Yeah?"

"They're ready for you. Are you?"

"Who's 'they'?"

Faint static. Bad connection maybe, and he shook his head, knowing better.

"Well, I'm ready to meet 'them' or whatever. I haven't eaten."

"You know who they are. You know."

"Hey, hey listen. Listen, a'ight? I need food, 'kay? I don't even know why I'm here. I just need food."

"They will provide your meal."

"Yeah? And how the hell am I supposed to get out of here, man? The door's locked in case you forgot."

"You know--"

"Answer the goddamned question!"

A dial tone.

"Son of a bitch. The hell's he want me to do, jump out the window?" Again, he swore under his breath. He didn't even hear the door open, nor notice the two "men" enter, until he turned around to face them barely a foot before him.

"Mister Johansen."

"The hell do you want now?" He feigns ignorance and carelessness, but watches them with sharp eyes.

"Just a little of your time. Are you ready?"

"Not until I eat."

"Soon. First you must meet them."

"Who? Tell me who! Why am I here?"

The tallest of the men smirks, a smirk that makes his chest clench and his eyes flicker briefly around the room for an escape, but he doesn't know why. 

"You know, sir. And you'll know soon enough."

Short Fiction 1

First of many short little story things. Dunno exactly what it's about, but something sinister to be sure. Enjoy :)
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It used to be called a “five-and-dime” when his grandmother was still around, or so she said. Now though it was called Two Bucks Two. He could still recall the first time he had been inside it, when it was first renamed some distant and short-lived title, and his mother had bought him a tiny bag of gummy pink candy he had never seen before. The same building, the same stagnant smell throughout like burning peanuts and rusting metal, but the name seemed to still change it somehow when he walked by it now. Illogical, perhaps, but it made sense to him at the time.

Usually he passed right by it on his way to the large gray building he spent twenty hours a day in, sometimes stopping by to grab a bag of some oddity to carry along with him in its brown paper sack. Often he’d inspect what he’d bought later and wonder at its usage. So much for two dollars, he would think. Today though was different. Today was a Wednesday, and Wednesdays were always different.

It was a sort of unplanned ritual. Every Wednesday he would awaken the same as any other day–0500 hours on the spot, slip on the same blue suit and the same black polished shoes, the same leather gloves and the same gold-plated watch–but every Wednesday he would walk a different route, and not generally of his own will. He ignored the phenomenon entirely, except perhaps in his sleep when the mind wandered and wondered alike; he never questioned why or how, but simply accepted its happening. Logically, today, being a Wednesday, was no different.

Today he started on the same route, taking the first left at 5th, then the short-cut alley over to Figs Street, where the Two Bucks Two stood. His mind was blank, and he walked with little (if anything) on his mind, hands swaying regularly at his sides as he kept a brisk formal pace. It was rare that he actually paid much attention to his footing or where he was going, just trusting the schema built within himself to find the way for him. That is, except on Wednesdays.

It was still a good half hour before he was due at work when he saw the little torn photo and the bold-print type beneath, attached neatly in the center of a lamp post:

LOST CAT
Have you seen me?
My name is Jimmy-boy, and they've been looking for me.
I have a torn ear, and my paw is broken.
I live on Winchester, and a little girl misses me much.
Find me? Call Maslow
234-9696

It was the one thing that could make his feet stop. Although is eyes roved without seeing, for whatever reasons the unknown had they were drawn to such abnormalities. That's how he found the store in the first place--such an oddity could not have gone unnoticed. Pausing, he peered up slightly to reread the words printed there in old browning ink.The rain spots were clear in the clean daylight. This poster's been moved, he concluded. It hasn't rained in over a week. Jimmy-boy, it says....odd name for a cat. With a single quiet sigh, very unlike him, he slipped a cigarette from out of his pocket and squeezed his lips around it, unlit. Again his feet moved and he wiped the poster from memory. Glancing at the Two Bucks Two with a brief and strange longing, he took a sharp right into an alley of back houses. A familiar old face greeted him, but he barely looked or stopped.

"New road today, Jim? Looking to be hot. Better be quick about getting home, yeah?"

"You know how it is," he replied, pulling the cigarette from his mouth and flicking it into the old man's hands. "New Wednesday, new road. Long way's home tonight. Hear they're looking for cats."

The man peered at him with twinkling eyes and a sage's nod.

"Then it's a bad night for us all."