scraping.
“We should smoke when we get back,” he said as he exhaled. It smelled like sweet, ripe pomegranates, the kind you couldn’t tear open without the juice spraying onto your white clothes. I loved rolling my fingers over the ridges and bumps until the seeds loosened and unfolded over themselves like snowballs down a hill. But there were no pomegranates, mangos, mint apples or white peaches - just the smoke and people breathing out clouds of it, covering their face.
“All you guys do is smoke,” I muttered, passing the pipe over to Brett.
I slid the tea candle in front of me and let the flame singed between my fingers. As Barry puffed away, I emptied the wax onto the table. Then I started ripping the metal, folding it in halves and over until it was like a cheap knife.
“You should try it,” Brett said. His eyes were bright blue and a bit crazy. They always got like that when he talked about weed. “It would expand your little mind.”
I dropped my hands underneath the table. “My mind is not little.”
James handed the pipe over to Brett, who inhaled sharply. His mouth kept around the end. The base of the hookah pipe was beautiful as the water bubbled as if it were boiling. The steam filled Brett until there was no space left within him. “You know what’s fucking terrible,” Brett said in between breathes, his words filling in the empty spaces, “the way Audrey laughs. You can just tell she’s laughing at you.”
The light metal felt cold and jarred between my fingers. I pressed it on my arm and dragged it. The edges scratched my skin leaving white dry lines like condensed cat’s nails.
Brett shook his head. “And the way she asks questions, you just know she’s trying to get information out of you. Fucking gossip.”
I watched Brett blow rings and snap them into hearts. As he talked in between mouthfuls of smoke, I moved the make-shift knife over my arm wondering how long it would take to break through the skin. Back and forth, back and forth, all the metal did was collect tiny tears of skin.
“The other day she asked what I thought about Sonia,” I looked up just in time to see Brett roll his eyes, “and if we had,” he did a set of air quotes, “a thing.”
I cocked my head. “And what did you say?”
“I said it was none of her business.”
And I went back to it, my wrists did most of the work as I willed my arms to keep still. James rolled his eyes. “I saw that,” Brett chastised, but handed the pipe over anyway.
“Guys, watch this,” James mumbled, his mouth over the opening. As the smoke flowed out like a waterfall from his nose and into his mouth, this liquid like petrol broke through my skin. It all kept going, and James stared at Brett like they were in some weird competition. Except Brett was a long distance runner, he had the lungs of a hot air balloon, and while we all knew that James would never win, my mouth dropped open when he winked. The pain of watery plasma burned my raw skin.
his blue eyes
“I can’t read novels anymore,” she admitted.
“Can’t? You mean you suddenly stopped knowing how to read?”
She rolled her eyes as he laughed. “You know what I mean.” Her hands wrapped around the overly circular circumference of her chipped coffee cup. “I find myself losing track, losing rhythm - dying when it comes to getting through how long an author takes to describe breakfast, or how a fucking room metaphorically represents a wife’s drifting relationship with her husband. Space is metaphorical. Whatever.”
“It’s poetry. You can’t get tired of poetry.”
“I don’t think it’s the writer’s fault. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I don’t believe in love enough to think that green eyes are worth a comparison to a forest at twilight. Let’s be honest. Every pair of green eyes are like a forest in some light.”
She let herself look at Daniel. His eyes were blue. His hair was black, rotten dry chestnut, if the author in her demanded that she describe it - blue as a paled sapphire if the reader needed the words in order to believe he was real. And he was looking at her with a combination of mirth and disappointment - like he felt an angst tear (again, if the reader needed it) in his memory. His lip twitched, a tight kink, but then he shrugged and looked away at the grains of the table. Perhaps deep in thought, or just possibly just digesting her words.
“If you say so,” he muttered. “How is someone ever going to win your heart if you’re not a romantic.”
“I am a romantic,” she defended.
“You said you don’t want poetry.”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t fantasize. I’m a writer. I obviously have an imagination.”
“Alright,” he sat up, interested in winning this argument, “tell me one of your fantasies.”
It didn’t take her long. She’d been writing about her fantasy ever since she started writing. She held up her novel, rather confrontationaly and over aggressively. “A place where all this makes sense.” It was right next to her face, and she felt a bit silly, like she was advertising to her best friend.
He simply raised his eyes. He had read all her books. They sounded like reality.
Mary held her breath, the words congesting at the front of her mouth. “I can write about a world that sounds beautiful, but it’s nothing more than words. Hands don’t care if they are soft or rough, as if friction is really what the girl really cares about when she’s in love. This is completely bullshit… because, because in the end, we’ll just settle for something warm.” She put her book down with a thud. “That’s reality.”
“So you’re saying that you’d go for whatever will have you.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But so what? In the end, I may be happier with stability than love. I won’t be constantly worrying where the next paycheck will come from.”
When she wrapped her hands around her coffee, she realized it was cold. He had no response for her, so she tried not to look at him.
“Here, let me sign my book for you. You can sell it if you want.”
She grabbed the novel that was between them and signed the title page quickly. Not every author has to believe what they write, she thought furiously. Wasn’t that the point of an imagination? The bitter calamity drove her to write and replace existence. She had always blamed paper words for her warped reality. If beauty be the love from John Keats then words had been used, long buried and gone. Her world was nothing like an oyster, the cave of shadows was more interesting than the source; if dusk’s songbird sang a tune, only a disturbance the chords would be, and if his eyes were like the sky’s then cataracts must describe the clouded appearance.
The Boy Who Owns My Heart
Here’s the link to where I will post the story. The prologue is up. I’m going to make a thread on Soompi now. Yay? Hope this journey will be a nice long year with you guys.
For those who don’t know what Soompi is, it’s a Kpop forum that has a fanfiction unit. That is where I started my writing roots, and for now I am returning there to help myself return not only to long form fiction, but consistent voice fiction. However, this story will probably be more in the tone of mangas than fanfiction perse. Regardless of which, I hope all my followers will enjoy and ignore that fact that I use Korean names (which I’ve picked out from old, unfinished writings of mine. You’ll recognize the names) - because there’ll be a lot of English names anyway.
What’s this story about?
It’s a story about the wild card aspect of romance, but it’s mainly about hearts and what we do with them - literally and metaphorically. The lead character, Naeri, is a young girl who’s been sheltered most of her life, and by chance and luck - she is allowed a year in public school before she’s “locked up” again (basically return to strict lifestyle). And what a year that’ll be for her.
Oh well, hope the prologue intrigues you. I’m working/editing on chapter one now, which will go up at least by Tuesday, I hope.
Thanks insomnia.
tbwomh
After you, there is no one, he said. I don’t think you understand how serious I am. I’ll tell you. It means that before you, I was distracted, and now after you… He broke in small hiccups, somewhat hopeful in his pause. I don’t think I’ll be able to find anyone who will make me feel the same. And even if there is someone who can make me smile, I’ll be interested at most, because when I say, “After you, there is no one.” I mean that after you, there will be no one else. At least not for a very long time.
the hanging tree
In May, Jayme Seuss was left quite newborn on the steps of an abandoned house. They said his mother was a whore, and his father could have been anyone, but not anyone from the village, the villagers concurred as they watched Jayme haul in his quivering net. All peeked at him, when they could – with women fawning over the veining of his arms as he spilled fish eggs. They lusted, his sleeves twisted over his shoulders in a slow reveal. And although the men shook their heads, they felt a deep fascination when Jayme bent over the cutting board, his torso thin and willowy. Engaging contact would disturb the mystery, his old schoolmates teased whenever the elders asked why he made no friends. He was doing fine as a fisherman. He knew the sea’s secrets, like how to coax eels from their caves and how to slit the fish just right so that their intestines, which were often sold to men who knocked in the dark, remained in tact.
before the end of the fucked up tale
They were invited to a riverside barbeque after the Charleston morning service. The bass grilled and charred with grease by Stanley Simms was famous, but Macy Malloy ate only a scoop of coleslaw. She sat under a tree to avoid the scorching heat, her back faced the crowd as they drilled verses in and out of her husband. She listened to the tennis battle of conversations. Macy Malloy crushed the corn bread into a small cliff as she heard her husband laugh. It was thick and special, reserved only for God. She watched the ladies pinch her husband’s cheeks, and went to the river for a drink of water. As she filled her cup, she nearly fell in when Stanley Simms complimented her husband’s tie – to her. He apologized and pulled out a handkerchief with S.S. embroidered on the corner and dried her dress as Macy Malloy admitted that she laid out her husband’s clothes each morning. Stanley Simms confided that he wanted a wife who would tie his ties. Macy Malloy looked at the poor job around his neck and offered to readjust the knot. Her slim fingers fumbled around the base as she undid his tie. She stared the jutting of his Adam’s apple, like a glistening snake in the dark. It throbbed as he spoke, and she found that his sweat to be salty when she gently bit down.
a simple man, scene ii
JOANNA: Okay, so this was a question that got me kicked out of class when I was in high school. Ready?
NICHOLAS: Ready.
JOANNA: Let’s say you’re looking down at the street from a building, and you see that a woman and her child are about to be hit by a car. There’s a man next to you. If you could push the man to save the two, would you do it?
NICHOLAS: Um… well how old is the man?
JOANNA: It doesn’t matter.
NICHOLAS: What gender is the child?
JOANNA: That doesn’t matter either!
NICHOLAS: Why not? These are all relevant questions.
JOANNA: I mean, the point is that no one will see you do it. Oh, and you don’t know any of them, let me just add that.
NICHOLAS: So I’m going to push this man off -
JOANNA: Oh my god, why is it so complicated for you?
NICHOLAS: All right, all right. Um… I suppose I would.
JOANNA: Kill the man?
NICHOLAS: Yeah. If killing the man will save the mother and child.
JOANNA: Hm. Most people say no. “Just let nature run its course.” Whatever that means.
NICHOLAS: But that’s a bit… uninventive, isn’t it? People let nature run its course everyday. So here’s my chance to alter it. Or if we’re talking on your terms: Two lives for the price of one!
home by the sea
She showed me this picture before we parted, before I remained here and she traveled to Vienna to study nursing. And when she was gone, I stared this photograph of colorful houses, marveling at the collateral appeal of a teetering city. It was like half a rainbow, on steroids, had melted over the roofs and over the bricks. I think she would want to live at that pink house in the corner, the one closest to the sea and the one hardest to see, or the house with the yellow balcony.
She always wanted to live ignored in a city. I guess that’s why she told me she’s wouldn’t be home when I said would visit.
trick master
I discovered how to control the galaxy, stop it from expanding and causing waves of bipolar disorders. The stars and small bursts of energy - the dying nebula that will soon elapse into a black hole - can be contained by freezing time. That is: delaying the moments we meet, and therefore slowing the travel speed in an extension of time so that the emotions have exhausted themselves without inducing collateral combustion. Without the suction of gravity from another universe, Earth and the solar system as we know it can stay as is. Spinning on the safe axis, the continual rotation and repetition that we call a cycle in the same way we insert five quarters to clean our sheets. Only these sheets will run forever with lye. There will never be a chance for them to get dirty again, no stain to dampen the rest of time. You ask me when I crossed the brink of sanity to come to this conclusion. I answer you with a shrug, but the true answer is this: It was when I discovered that the sun, moon and skies were composed of the colors from your eyes.
winter may
It’s February, and the road is clear. The snow is dying, false footprints barely mark the cold existence, and I sit, looking out the window, to make this so very hard decision. I thought winter would be white just like the stories and the songs that talk about angels. The flurries that floated down from the clouds that afternoon was equivalent to a halo, as you said, “Hello, how are you?” And when they kissed your hair, they clung with life, unlike kisses of brief longing; they kissed you for longer than I ever could have.
Even though the snow has gone, the grass is dead. Green barely holds in the blades, the stalks are grey and dull. I thought life would bloom after winter snow, but it appears that the cold has frozen the veins of the earth. I wait for a pulse, a vibration - even from my phone, I think I’ll take that - but there is only silence. It’s as if the missing winter has not even been recognized, and I am the only one here to mourn the loss. I watch the children run across the field with echoing cries, shorts cut above the knee as if the desperately clinging sleet is a soft bed.
I wait for the sign of yellow, pink or violet. Some flower of color that will reawaken this early spring. I wait for the snow, for the bloom, but there’s none of either. I listen to the parents who thank global warming and hold their spouses hand. Their pink grips are the liveliest tints I’ve experienced yet. I’m witnessing this as a waiting place, where winter has failed to come and spring has yet to blossom. I can’t understand this delay, but then I remember again that it’s February, and this is a time to conceive, not a time to birth.
a normal start to a fucked up tale.
In April, Macy Malloy became the potential pastor’s wife. They married before spring ended, and she graduated from college a year early to accompany her husband cross country. The trip began in Deerfield, Illinois with a congratulatory painted Just Married sign that washed off by the time they reached Cincinnati, Ohio. Macy Malloy remembered watching her husband fill in names of universities on a bracket, and when he asked her what team she thought would win it all, she said, “Cincinnati.” She liked the sound of the city, it reminded her of caterpillars made of cinnamon. He laughed at her, shook his head and wrote down Butler instead.
….
As they drove to Memphis, Macy Malloy told her husband about the time she was twelve and convinced that she would marry Justin Timberlake. He burst out laughing, making her squirm in her seat. So she looked out the window, at the fields and isolated houses that zipped by. “Careful, a cow.” Macy Malloy rolled up her windows as her husband tuned in to a Christian talk show. He would shake his finger in the air and smiled at Macy Malloy until her agreement smiled back. But both their lips twisted, and they gagged as they passed a hoard of cows. Her husband switched the car’s ventilation, but it was too late. The stench slipped through every crevice of the car, clung to the air, and Macy Malloy was forced to breathe through her mouth.
