Dream, Interrupted

After a few months had gone by and the sharpness of memories had dulled somewhat, I went back to our home. It was still there, of course, and I walked through all the rooms systematically as if giving a tour to my own self. Nothing had changed except in one respect, her leaving had robbed every object of all meaning. For she was the one who had taught me how to suspend disbelief, to want these things to be real, and for that want to give them meaning. I stepped out through the wire-mesh sliding door off our living room and down the few steps to our private beach, just as I had done many a time in the past, only this time I was without her at my side. No more racing her to our hammock suspended between the palm trees. No more catching her clothes laughingly flung as she disrobed ahead of me on her way to diving into the water. No more wrestling her down to the sand naked. No more urgent coupling in the warm wash of the waves. No more whispered conversations that outlasted the moon. No more. Never more.

And yet, as I stood leaning against the wood siding on the wall with eyes closed, listening to the periodic sound of the waves washing ashore, I could hear her laughter. I could see us both entwined in the hammock talking. I smile as I tell her that in my dream we dance on this very beach many decades from now, when we are both old and infirm. I have told her this dream many a time. And like always, she laughs and kisses me, telling me that she has every intention of staying just as young and supple as she is now for all that time. The feeling of her kiss lingers on my lips as I open my eyes to the empty beach. Nothing is real. But then, it never was. She was my reason once to suspend disbelief and manufacture reality out of unhurried words and stilted animations. And all I have to do to have her back with me is to make reality again, only this time out of nothing except for memories. Then she would be mine. For ever more. And I can keep the promise of my dream.

Fall with the stars

(This story appears on Page 58 in Issue 15 of the online SL magazine Innerworld.)

I watched the stars fall. Standing at the very edge of the wind-swept cliff that dropped straight into the water on the Isle of Farias, I looked out west over the ocean. This was the westernmost island created so far and there was nothing but the surf of mildly choppy water to be seen out to the far horizon. Nothing, except for the stars. They fell at random intervals, the trajectory of their descent tracing a brilliant searing arc through the dark nighttime sky. They had different hues, the falling stars, some had more yellow and some had deep purples. I figured the color had something to do with how far away they fell from my vantage point. I stood motionlessly at the edge of the cliff ignoring the faint din of the celebrating throng on the amphitheater somewhere behind me in the distance. It was new year's eve. The third since she left my world, this world that we had shared for what now seems like an eternity. I had walked out very near the beginning of the singing and dancing unable or perhaps unwilling to share in the joy. I had walked up the steep steps and out into the surrounding ruins. I had walked for long without purpose, and yet instinct or perhaps some unknown and stronger force had drawn me to the water's edge.

I stood rooted, my mind slowly emptying of emotion and thought, focusing just on the falling stars that disappeared over the horizon. The wind had died shortly after I had arrived and nothing stirred. The stillness burned at the edges of my consciousness. I gazed westward steadfastly, holding the stillness at bay, keeping it from consuming me. I don't know how long I had stood there when the emptiness left by the receding mind was replaced by the single overpowering flood of emotion created by the sudden knowledge that in her world she was out at the water's edge too, that she was at her cottage by the beach. Improbable as it was, I was consumed with the certainty of knowing that at that very moment she was outside, her feet soaking in the waves, her eyes fixed on the nighttime sky of her world. She was on the other side of the horizon. She was there. She was watching the stars fall. And I knew. I knew just how to get through to her world. How to get through to my love. I had to fall. Fall with the stars, straight into her arms.

(Inspired by the lines "I want to fall from the stars, straight into your arms" in a song by Simply Red.)

Restless

[Setting: The camera pans over a forest and into a clearing on the north-east corner of a small island. At the water's edge is a hammock between two palm trees. In the hammock lays a man who is using his body to swing the hammock back and forth in time with the gently breaking waves. A woman walks out of the forest into the clearing and up to the hammock.]

M smiles at W and reaches for her with his arms as she comes close.
M: How do I tell you, my love, how restless my heart feels without you.
W accepts M's hands to help climb onto the hammock and lays down. M gently pulls W's head onto his shoulder, kissing her hair with his lips. In the ensuing silence, M takes W's hands in his and holds them tenderly. The hammock continues swinging with the waves. It seems peaceful.
W: God, baby. I wish you didn't love me so.
M: laughs gently and asks, And how would you wish me to love you?
W: I don't know.
M plays with W's hair with his fingers, smiling into her eyes.
W: Like all the other guys in this world, I suppose.
M: And how do the other guys love their girls?
W: I don't know. It is a game for them. They are not serious. They play around. You know what I mean.
M smiles, pulling W's hand to his mouth, caressing it with his lips.
M: And do you want me to play around on you?
W: Yes.
W: I mean, No.
W: Oh, I don't know. It is just that you love me too much.
M uses a finger to trace the profile of W's throat down from her chin, down into the valley between her breasts.
M: laughs ... if this is your way of saying that you don't want to make love tonight, you can just say so directly.
W giggles and whispers.. no!
M pulls W roughly under him, his body covering hers, his fingers unbuttoning her shirt. He kisses her down the valley between her breasts, a kiss on the skin exposed under every opened button.
M: Are you feeling suffocated by my love?
W does not answer but pulls M's face into her breasts.
M turns his face to kiss W's breast and reaches for a nipple with his mouth.
M: You know that you are free to be like the others, to treat this as a game, to play around. You don't have to love me as I love you.
W moans loudly as M suckles on her breasts.
W: I know baby, I know.

[The camera moves away from the couple. Perhaps the avatar behind the camera feels shy.]

Eyes

I had arrived fashionably late to the party and as is my wont stood in the far corner from the entrance nursing a drink and observing the crowd and its dynamics. Now whether I am an observer or a voyeur has never been clear in my own mind. Regardless, it is usually a fruitless and solitary pastime. That night however, right around when I had just downed my sixth drink and my mind was considerably numbed and defenseless, she made her entrance. It seemed as though the crowd quietened. Or perhaps it was just that my senses sharpened and focused on her suppressing all that was extraneous. Evolution must have done this, given the hunter and the hunted special abilities. I watched her enter the room, instantly part of the conversations. Sequined, off-shoulder dress flowing with her as she moved. Someone gave her a glass of champagne. Laughter, her head thrown back, her hair lustrous. Her lips parting to swallow. Kisses for a friend. A hug. Feline, her movement. Predator or prey? She moved across the room, pulling in her wake a growing crowd of voices. Someone took the empty glass from her. Her bare arms encircling a friend, pulling him in, whispering in his ear. Laughter. The crowd parting as she moved steadily across the room. She was within earshot now but my senses dulled my hearing so that I could see her better. Her smile infused her face and I could see the green of her eyes, the light touch of makeup on her face, the moistness from the champagne on her lips. She had not looked at me, not once, but she kept on coming in more or less a straight line. She reached for the glass of champagne I offered as she finally came near. "You have been watching me," she said, raising the glass to her lips as she came within kissing distance. "My eyes have not left your face since I first saw you," I whispered, raising my glass to join her in a silent toast.

Something in me

I had walked for long on the hot deserted streets littered with trash, past the shuttered storefronts adorned with graffiti, the dark shadows of the high-rises my sole companions, when as I turned a corner I saw them. I hadn't expected to meet anybody here and so I stepped back quickly, back into the shadows, observing silently. They were talking, he leaning back against a car, a beautiful gleaming old Chevy Impala, his body tall and well-muscled, a little gray visible in his hair below his hat. They were talking, she standing in front of him, animated, pretty young thing in a flowery summer dress, raven hair cascading in waves over her shoulder and back. I couldn't hear what they were saying but I could tell that they were flirting, the kind of flirting when one meets an attractive person for the first time, the kind of giddy flirting that happens when everything works, every joke is funny. He would touch the rim of his hat every once in a while and smile, flexing his muscles as he gestured to emphasize something, leaning forward into her. She would play with her hair as she responded, moving her body from side to side as if she were dancing ever so slightly, eyes focused on his face. God, she was young. Radiant. Happy. I watched her, eyes tracing her profile as she threw her head back laughing loudly. She seemed so innocent. So captivated by him. Something in me wanted to reach out, protect her from this man, from his evil intentions. Something in me wanted to tell her that she was too young for him, that he was obviously practiced at the art of seduction, the proverbial smooth operator. Something in me wanted to seduce her myself. Something in me wanted to captivate her, to subject her to my desires, to let loose the beast within me upon her.

Story: Long Pause

[Setting: A serene small lake surrounded by a thick forest. From the distance the camera moves in closer to two figures near the waters edge, standing a few feet apart and facing the lake. The camera moves close enough that we start to hear their conversation.]

L: "I am not one to betray a love. "

R: "Then why?"

[Long pause]

L: "I just couldn't stay true to you."

R: "I don't understand. Why do this to me?"

[Long pause]

L: "I think I lost the ability to distinguish what is true and what is false in our love."

R: "What do you mean?"

L: "We lived betwixt fact and fiction for so long. It just got hard to keep things straight."

[Long pause with anguish apparent in the stillness of the figures.]

R: "You always had my heart. You knew that."

[Long pause]

R: "Didn't You?"

[Very long pause. Both figures stare resolutely at different fixed points in the lake.]

R: "Is this about our open relationship? Because you agreed to that. You even argued for it yourself. And you know that all the others are just toys to play with and discard."

[Long pause]

R: "You know you are the only one with whom every kiss is real... every feeling is fact... with the others it is just roleplay."

R: "Our love was different. It was real. I know we never met. You don't even know my real name. But it was real. Different. The feelings were so fucking real."

R: "You knew that, didn't you?"

[The camera gets distracted by movement at the other end of the lake and shifts its focus to it. We can no longer hear the conversation.]

Story: Dance

She danced for me. I had arrived into the middle of the crowded club floor a little while ago and had carefully walked my way backwards through the grayed gyrating bodies to an unpopulated corner. I stood there, listening to the banter of the singer and to his music, waiting for my computer to resolve the textures on the crowdful of strangers one by one. She had materialized just a few feet away from me, her sinuous body clad in the latest skin, the kind that glows and provides a softer focus than that attainable using the latest cosmetics in real life. I adjusted my view so that only she was visible to me and so that I could ignore the madding crowds. She had picked a lovely dance, sensuous but not erotic, and her body flowed with the music as if she were mostly liquid. Her dance periodically brought her right up to me and then moved her farther away. At the closest point in her dance, I could look right into her eyes, her head thrown back, so close that the merest incline of my head would allow me to kiss her. I fought the urge to do just that and instead let her long limbs envelope me before her dance would take her back away from me. Mesmerized, my eyes tracked her movements, following the curve of her lissome leg as it extended out of the slit in her soft black lace skirt. Her shoulders bare, descending to show just the start of the swell of her breasts. I watched the curls of her dark lustrous hair move in unison with her body, alternately hiding and exposing her collarbone. The contour of her shoulder leading to the long throat and then her face. I focused in yet closer on her and imagined my breath follow my focus caressing her as I studied her face. We were alone in my world, she and I, and the music. I studied her. And wordlessly, she danced for me.

Story: Until my days are done

This story is inspired by a beautiful sim (specifically by the incongruous part captured in the included photograph) by AM Radio. Here is the slurl if you are interested in exploring it.

It was just when I was beginning to anticipate the triumph of erasing my life that they first appeared, the five violinists. By then it had been several months into my coming back to the desolate island of my forefathers to die. I had dragged the small boat that brought me there from the beach to the only man-made structure on the island, a spare but functional cabin; the very structure where long ago the wailing of a newborn had heralded my arrival. This was the place I meant to erase, the whole island, and not just from memory but from existence. Each day I would get up and wander about systematically willing my exhausted body to focus its remaining energy to my final task. I made it snow incessantly, the white of the snow leaching all the color from the land, obliterating every feature, slowly fading the mass of the island blurring it into the white snowy background, as in an ancient and fading black and white photograph. The living things, mostly trees and grasses, were harder to deal with. I would tend to each tree and clump of grass in turn, using whatever magic remained in me of my forefathers, to bleed the color of life from them. I had worked feverishly each day for months in the bitter cold until the color was gone from the trees, leaving faded bony branches, more skeletons than trees, and the air was thick with the space between these trees. Each night I would try to sleep, my body racked in pain but caring nothing for it because I could taste success. And then they came, they came at night, the five violinists. I did not have to drag myself out of bed to know this. Even in my delirium, I could feel the terror every note from their violins lashed on my mind. I could hear the five strands of music, rivers of color and warmth, extending outwards from where they stood. I writhed and cursed all night consumed by the knowledge that every note from their violins breathed color back into the island. They were my nemesis, whether angels or demons I cared not, for they were there to thwart me in death as they did in life. At daybreak, when the terror had finally subsided I staggered out of the cabin and saw that the heat of their music had melted the snow where they had stood in the night, and in turn the bitter cold of the morning had frozen the melt into a glassy pond of ice. There, right under the glassy ice were their violins. I raged against the gods, wailing, throwing my fevered naked body against the ice in the pond wanting to smash the violins to pieces so that they could never be played again. At long last when there were no tears left in me, and the cold had turned despair into resolve, I turned to the new green leaves that had sprung up in the night on the bush growing on the boat nearby. I knelt, cradling the new leaves, turning my mind to their color, coaxing it out of them as I had done for so many months. I knew then, that the battle was joined, they will play their infernal music among these trees every night, and every day I would grow the space between these trees, at least until my days are done.

Story: Come Walk With Me (v1)

This vignette takes place in a real place (see included photograph). A beautiful build by AM Radio. Here is the slurl if you would like to visit.)

"Come walk with me" I said, and extended my hand to her as she arrived through the portal door. She looked at my outstretched hand, hesitating long enough that I thought she would refuse. We walked slowly, hand in hand, down the shiny tar road in the middle of the desert. The land around us was barren, the recent persistent lack of rain leading to cracks big enough that little furtive creatures darted in and out. Perhaps there was some moisture to be had deep inside the parched earth. Nothing grew though on either side of the road as far as the eye could see. No man made structures broke the vast expanse, other than the road itself, straight as an arrow. We walked down the middle of the road for a while, the painted yellow center lines between us, dividing, stretching with no end in time. I looked back for a moment, and perhaps because of the haze under the baleful sun, it looked to me like the yellow lines weren't there at the beginning of the road, that nothing had divided us back where we had started. We walked towards what seemed like a small tornado on the road, open big black beautiful umbrellas whirling about in the whooshing air. There was nothing else in the little dust storm, just the umbrellas. We each tried to catch the umbrellas several times but with no success. There was to be no respite from the sun. She laughed sadly, tugged on my hand, and we continued on down the road. In the outstretched silence we could see the ragged shadow of a great big tree in the distance. As we approached it, the tree itself seemed more like a spaceship floating above the road with only its shadow on the ground. We paused briefly at this wonder and then walked on under the floating tree to the car. An old car, beautifully maintained, its grill gleaming, its headlights bright, its engine growling steadily. An empty car at the end of the road. Perhaps it could take us back to the beginning, back to where we had started.

Story: It is what I need in here

She was my new neighbor, the one with the futuristic house in the deep sky, and I had been showing her my land for the past hour. The beach, the house on the hill, the waterfall I had built and the dungeon-cave that hid behind. She had been fascinated by the toys in the cave, particularly the especially perverse ones. We had laughingly experimented with them, hopping on and off some quickly, lingering for a few minutes on others. It is amazing how quickly the illusion of easy familiarity can build up on the charge of sexual energy. I held her hand and led her to the beach. She changed from her goth clothes to a gown whose blue shimmered in the moonlit night against my dark tuxedo. I nuzzled her face with my lips, caressing it with my breath, kissing it softly, feeling the quickening of her heartbeat against my chest as we slow danced on my beach just out of the reach of the periodic white spray generated by the crashing waves. "It is not this romance that I want", she whispered into my ear. I smiled and asked, "tell me your fantasy then"? "French maid", she whispered again, "to serve and to be used". I swayed with her silently for a while, bodies intertwined, engulfed in the closeness engendered by her revelation. "You know it is amazing to me how many strong and successful women I have met in here who wish to be slaves", I said eventually. She nodded quietly. "I spend my day making decisions for burly sweaty men who depend on me for their livelihood; every day I make all the decisions for the business I own. And then when I come in here at night, I need to lose myself in someone strong, to serve, to be told what to do, to be owned". She smiled as I gripped her hair gently, pulling on it to tilt her head back and kissed her throat. "It is what I need in here".

Story: Paired Violins

She would tell me things, lots of things. Beautiful things. How her parents had this great floor-to-ceiling library in their stone-built rambling castle of a house. How she spent much of her childhood curled up on the sofa near the big window with a view of the meadow reading books from all over the world. As I would caress her hand, cuddling her under the great big tree at the corner of my land she would tell me of the times she danced and skipped her way to school with her best friend on cobblestone streets in the early mornings. As I would press into her softly and kiss her iridescent hair she would tell me of her love of horses and the many summers she spent riding the gentle creatures on her family's estate. We would spend hours on my crescent shaped beach standing a couple of feet apart and facing each other playing our paired violins. She had become very fond of them from the moment I had first showed them to her. Their strands of intertwined synchronized music would appear magical to us as they wove disparate simple innocent individual strands of notes into complex stormy turbulent music. During high tide the waves would sweep up the beach and kiss our feet as we played and she would tear up and tell me how being able to play music with me filled the one void she had in her life. As I pressed her body against the wet sand my weight forcing her to yield, she would look into my eyes and tell me about how her best girlfriend had betrayed her trust and seduced her boyfriend while they were vacationing together way down south where the American continent's dagger pierces the frozen heart of the southern world. When I would fling her to the floor of my dungeon pinning her arms to the ground as I ripped her clothes off to take her for my pleasure, she would tell me of how she was afraid her older brother was going to rape her, that he had increasingly been brazen about it and of how she did not know how to tell her mother about her fears. As I would tie her hands and legs apart and slip the ring into her mouth to hold it open so that all her pleasures were available to me and before I would use her throat as my cock's embrace, she would tell me about how she had often seen her father violate his mistress, and of how she would hear her mother sobbing for hours afterwards. She told me things, lots of things. Dark things.

Story: Pixel by Pixel

She shimmered into being, taking form pixel by pixel less than a stone's throw away from where I stood absorbed in the beauty of the waterfall before me. Distracted, I looked surreptitiously at her, eyes lingering over her form, slowly coaxing the textures that made her to focus on my screen. Something about her appearance, something about her appearing at this moment in time when I had for long stood soaking in the absurd lonely loveliness of this place with its haunting music, something about her appeared to be designed to penetrate the shell of my isolation. A shell I had clung to for a very long time. Wordlessly, I swiveled towards her as if to invite her more fully into my world. I smiled inside, for I knew just what I had to say to her, I knew just what words would bind her to me and keep her in my world. She knelt, as if in anticipation, her knees apart, her eyes looking up pleasingly, her skin glowing under the diaphanous clothes she wore. "Greetings, my Master", she said as he shimmered into being, taking form pixel by pixel.

Story: Toys or Men? (by JJ)

The toys held my attention at first. So many to try, so many shapes and sizes.

Then he caught my eye. Tall, dark and handsome, not unusual for this place. But he stood there, quietly pondering, a calm, self assured island in this sea of iniquity.

When he spoke, I felt myself respond, as if a current flowed from him to me, drawing me in. His presence surrounded me as we talked and laughed that brief while. When he said he had to be going, I didn't want him to leave. But it was silly; we'd known each other only minutes.

Yet, I was aware of him, even when alone again.

Story: Keeping Count

"One hundred and thirty eight"; the thought came unbidden, flooding his mind, riding in on the surge of power feeding into his body as he came alive again. He knew what it meant. It was the number of times he had died and been reborn, at least since the time he figured out a way to keep score. He surveyed the scene materializing before him striving in vain to recall anything else from his past. It never worked, nothing but the last thought passed through death to the next life. *Get naked bitch* he heard himself say and did what he always did to keep from going insane, he shut down his mind's senses from what was happening to him, to what he was doing to others. Only his internal clock kept track of the passage of time. He was ready when the inevitable jolt of power rushing out of his body came. His senses awoke and in one brief instant of clarity he could see his victim. Bending forward he kissed softly the tears on her face, whispering, "One hundred and thirty nine".

Story: Sentience?

She knew the sun shone only for her. That all the beautiful naked writhing bodies around her, pelvises thrusting mindlessly, were enshrined in darkness. And yet, whatever little hope she had left in her unending quest had brought her to this newly formed island. She swiveled impatiently, waiting for the horizon to deepen, for the textures in the far grayness to come alive. And then as she turned she saw him, at first a white amorphous blob and then resolving slowly, piece by piece, into skin and clothes and hair. Something about him drew her eyes to his face, to his glance upon her, and she knew instantly. The sun shone for him too. She had found another sentient.

How to Begin?

The aim of this blog is to write about experiences in SL in the form of short (less than 500 words) stories. Ideally stories in a single paragraph.

In a sense all non-singular experiences in SL are the work of collaborative fiction, since there is a (varying) degree of artifice, pretense, and suspension of disbelief in all SL encounters; hence the name of the blog.

Of course, is it a blog if no one but the writer reads it? Time will tell.