Signs of Summer

She lay on the carpet right in the middle of one of the science fiction aisles in the bookstore. Not sitting on the floor reading a book as one sometimes finds people doing in bookstore aisles, but laying fully prone on her stomach on the carpet as if beside a fireplace at home. She was dressed in a sleeveless black summer dress, her raven hair off to one side, her bare lower right leg swinging up and down keeping time to some inner music. I stood frozen in pleasant surprise for a few minutes, taking in the contrast between her pale white skin and the black dress, the firmness of her lower leg muscles, the sensible open-toed sandals on her feet, the delicious athletic form of her prone body. Fortunately her feet were towards me and so she could not see me staring at her. Mind made up, I walked the few steps to the next aisle and then across to double back into the science fiction aisle several feet in front of her. I wanted to see her face. She smiled as she read, raising her head up every now and then to drink iced-tea. I pretended to browse the bookshelf whilst looking at her surreptitiously. Her unadorned neck. Her beautiful eyes riveted to her book. The curve of her breasts pressing into the carpet. There was something about her complete abandon that captivated me. She was lost in her book and I became lost in her. I flipped through the random book I had reached for, my attention fixed on her even though my eyes were not.

****************************************

A rush of cold air swept into the bookstore as someone walked in through the front doors. Instinctively, I pressed the front of my down jacket together to stay warm. On looking back down, the aisle was empty. She was gone. Stunned, I sat down in the aisle with my back against the bookshelf. Snow was falling outside. I could see it come down from the sky through the big window at the end of the aisle. How could this be? It had been summer just a few moments ago. I sat there looking out of the window, disbelieving reality.

****************************************

"Found what you are looking for?", she asked. There she was again, laying on the carpet a few feet from me in the aisle. Gorgeous eyes smiling into mine.

"Everything," I whispered. Pausing for a few moments, I searched her face with my eyes before continuing, "I have found everything I am looking for."

Other me

(For a change, not a vignette but a decree).

What use are dreams if I cannot dictate their content? What cruel joke does biology play on us? For when we are most free from the constraints of reality, when we are most free to conjure up any fantasy we wish, we are also most at the mercy of the uncontrollable whims or fancies that seed our dreams. If it isn't me that lives my dreams, then who is this other me? Be he demon or deity, I wish to trade places with him so that he may taste what it is to live within the bounds of reason and society, and I may taste true free will. So that he may walk, and I may fly. So that he may be true, and I may lie. So that he may deal with the world as it is, and I may fashion a world as I want it to be. For if I am to make conversations and have coffee, make love and have fights, if I am to do with others all the things that one does in the realm of daily living, then I want the realm of dreams to be for you and for you alone. If I was the other me then you would be my life.

Does the other me dream? It must be so, for to claim otherwise would make me and my kind special and separate. If nothing else, Occam's razor or in other words the simplicity that science demands of explanations would assume that my other me dreams and then so does his other me, and so on, ad infinitum. I hereby decree that all the other me's inside of me must dream of you and you alone so that I can be with you infinitely.

Fine Line

It's a dangerous game, it's a very fine line
and if one step is wrong, I'll have no cards to play
That's why I have got nothing to say tonight

                  --- Riot on an Empty Street by Kings of Convenience

I no longer know if it can happen, you and I.  It wasn't that I had no choice, it was that all the choices I had involved disregarding the soft lonely voice of reason.

I put a hand on the top of the barricade and leaped over it bracing for impact as I fell the nearly two-story drop onto the concrete pavement below. Despite landing into a crouching stance, the violence of the sudden stop traveled instantly through my bones all the way into my skull jarring my brain loose, or so it felt.  Images, like shards of steel-edged glass, flood into my mind.  Rain. You are dancing in the rain on a springtime hilltop, your wet dress clinging to your curves. Summer rain. You are in my arms on our beach watching the sea swell up from the battering coming down from the sky. Glistening sweat. Your raven hair clinging to the sides of your face as you thrust your hips upwards to meet mine, your swollen nipple filling my mouth. I fall over into a fetal position, clutching my head in a futile attempt to shield it from these image fragments. Fear. You looking back frantically while running hard in desperate stumbling strides alongside a long white fence. Frame after frame of fear and running and the pristine white fence. Low moans. Your hands in my hair as I bury my face between your legs suckling greedily on the moist trough between your lips. Frame after random image frame coursed through my mind. Even in the midst of the pain I can tell that some of these images are not from the past.  I shake my head to drive these images away but the pain only gets sharper. There is a little bit of you in everything.

An unheralded urgency somehow brings forth the strength from inside me and I get up on my feet. I have to find you tonight. Unsteady, I see both the images my eyes are seeing and what my untethered mind is creating for me. I would have fallen but for my groping hands finding a fence to steady me. An idyllic white fence that seems to stretch endlessly into the future. I stagger back in disbelief. Drawing my dagger from underneath my shirt I run wildly alongside the fence, bumping into it every few steps both to make sure that it is really there and to keep from falling. Suddenly I see you  running in front of me, red gashes on your arms. I can see the terror in your face as you look back. This can't be happening for real. I stop and shake my head to be able to see properly again. There is only the fence stretching in front of me. I keep running, dagger gripped firmly in my right hand. I can hear you calling out my name.

A laughing man and the sea

How do I tell the sea that I am not the author of the storm? That this is not my dream, but hers. That swallowing me would give it no respite from her fury. How do I tell it that I am but a laughing man and it is the sea?

I pulled down on the hem of my coat and turned up its collar before I stepped out resolutely into the severe storm.  I had waited far too many days already for the downpour to end or for it to at least slow down enough that the sea would stop its furious lashing of the little island of sand that was home, our home. My sleep deprived mind could feel the realm beyond the sea gradually slipping away. I have to find a way to cross over to the other side before it disappeared.

Time became the drumbeat of shards of rain. Time became the pulsing tiredness of muscles. Time became the crest and trough of waves. Over and over.

The sea had gone mad.

Futures Past (part I)

I could see her waiting for me on the curbside as I drove down the street towards her. Tonight she had chosen a smaller and more athletic body than most other times, a skin that knows only the night, raven hair loose on her shoulders, the twin tops of high pale breasts visible above her strapless off-shoulder mini-dress, her bare legs ending in high-heels. Pulling up to her, I stopped the car and leaped smoothly out of the open top to land close beside her in my tuxedo.  I smiled broadly and opened the car door for her with a flourish.

"My destiny!" I said, offering her a hand while gesturing elaborately to the passenger seat with the other.

"My love," she said, smiling in return and held on to my hand as she daintily lowered her body into the seat. I danced around the car whistling happiness and got back in. She leaned towards me and our lips met in a kiss. A kiss full of memories and predictions. A kiss to make this night more real. Before the kiss could make the desperation in our hearts well up and sour the evening, I broke our embrace gently.

"Did I tell you?," I whispered in her ear as I pulled back.

"Tell me what?," she asked. I held her gaze for a few long seconds, each of us fighting separate demons that we could not see clearly.

I turned to pump the accelerator while pressing down on the brakes to show off the low guttural growl of my muscle car. Grinning, I eased on the brakes to set off up the road with tires and brakes squealing. "Did I tell you," I shouted above the roar of the engine, "that you look gorgeous. That you set my pulse racing every time I look at you." Pulse and car raced up the road.

She leaned back in her seat, her body and mind visibly relaxing, her hair catching the wind and billowing about the headrest. We drove in silence through the city in the light of the setting sun. There was no traffic anywhere. There never is. All the lights in the windows of the beautiful skyscrapers shine for no one. We held hands and watched the silent, lovely, uninhabited, and foreboding city go by as we followed the single road to its conclusion.

"You made a beautiful world for us tonight," she said, squeezing my hand.

"Love, I thought it was you that made this for us?"

She was silent for a while. "I don't know. It has gotten so hard to tell." With a visible effort she cheered up and asked, "where will you take me tonight?"

I laughed. "I have no idea where this road is taking us, but from the clothes we have on I would guess dinner and dancing."

"Mmmm, my favourite," she said happily.

Don't respond

"Don't respond to this -- I miss you and I love you, but you left me with no choice. It's lonely here without you."

I lay in the hammock on our beach with the folded note on my chest. The sea churned, the ebb and flow of its recurring waves keeping pace with the swinging of the hammock. The pale light of the setting sun flickered off the waves. The outer peace quieted the inner turmoil.

A gust of wind blew the note off my chest and into the sea, where it skipped a few waves like a stone cast by a playful child before it got caught in the water. I had tried to catch the note as it flew off and had failed. It now lay in the water, soaked and floating. From afar I imagined the words slowly dissolving, their ink leaching out into the water. I imagined the ink-on-water words getting diffuse and bigger but keeping their rough shape as they floated and got pushed and pulled by the waves. Will they reach our beach and mark those words on it for ever or will they float away into the vastness of the sea? The hammock swung back and forth and with it our world, undecided. I lay back against you, our bodies together shaped the movement of the hammock, my hand played with your hair.

Not our Fate

"But you and I, we've been through that  
and this is not our fate.
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."
                --- All Along the WatchTower by Bob Dylan
 
Disoriented, I stand in what I think is the middle of a room, but I am unsure for my eyes have not yet adjusted to the darkness. I don't know how or whence I came to be here. I try turning cautiously around seeking outside light from under a door or from the edges of a window but there is complete darkness. With no reference point for the eyes and nothing within reach but the floor I was standing on, all I had were the sensations from my body and it made my distrustful mind unsteady.  So I stopped moving and just waited.

The flesh of your high breasts flashes brilliantly as you arch your back. I blink and it is dark again.

I follow with my eyes your up-stretched arms to the scarves tying your wrists above your head to the posts on either side of the bed. Our bed. Your arched back and the urgency of your thrusts meeting his tell me that you are close to release. Darkness again. Fuck.

Is this my room? It ought to be for you were on my bed. Yet it cannot be because nothing else is right. I lurch forward gingerly but the ground is unsteady and alive under my feet. As I struggle for balance I see you again.

You are kneeling on the floor, nadu, before a standing man. Your white naked flesh against his dark trousers. Your knees pressed against his dirt-streaked boots, your breasts pressing into his knees. Even though I see you from the side I can tell what your upturned face is begging him for. My body responds, blood rushing into my barometer of desire that knows your pretty mouth so well.

I hear you moan close behind me and swirl around, almost falling in the dark. Your hair clings to and covers your tears-streaked face as you lean forward straining the ropes that tie your hands on the bar above your head. I cannot tell if you are trying to escape from or grind into the dark-haired face pressed between your legs. My eyes are drawn to the leather whip lying near your feet on the floor and then to the raw marks on your breasts and stomach. I search your face and wish I could look into your eyes. I wish I could ask you why you are crying. I wish I could ask you why you are moaning with pleasure. I wish I could ask you if this darkness is within you or within me.

I wish it would just rain down on you and I and wash all this darkness away.

You are close, so close, and I lean forward to whisper into your ears, "You belong to me." But you don't hear me.

The dark covers me.

Hide me

At the edge of a steep cliff with the sea a hundred or so feet directly below, waves extending as far as the eye could see, there was a single wooden bench to which I returned each evening and sat alone to watch the setting sun paint its silent death throes all over the sky in shades of deep purple and red. Starting a few feet behind the bench and stretching back far into the horizon was a meadow of motionless flowers in riotous colors atop tall unyielding stalks. A solitary bonsai cherry blossom tree adorned the edge of the cliff to the left of the bench, a carpet of lilac petals surrounding its base. Nothing stirred on land, the only sound a faint din of the waves reaching up the face of the cliff from the sea below. There was a quiet madness in the air that captivated me; it was as if everything stood still with bated breath awaiting something or perhaps someone.

It was the most incongruously beautiful place you could imagine and since discovering it I had had it all to myself. This evening was no exception and I sat at my usual spot at one end of the bench playing with shadows. She must have come out of the meadow and sat down wordlessly at the other end of the bench. I don't know when she came and I didn't look at her, unsure what her arrival meant both for this place and for the madness in my heart. In my thoughts she sat cross-legged, her bare feet and ankles visible below the long silk skirt that embraced her legs. I thought that her neck was unadorned, that the swell of her breasts arose and fell with each breath in steady harmony. I thought that in her downcast eyes was an image of me. I thought that I knew that she must be humming my name over and over in her mind and that I was the cause of the smile at the corner of her mouth. I thought that her hands ached to be in mine and that her heart was calling out for me. In that strangest of evenings I thought that she must have sat with me for every sunset.

"Will you hide me within you?," she asked. I turned towards her.

Break your heart

Skye always drew large crowds to his shows and tonight was no exception. In the dark of a moonless night, the open-air amphitheater lit by torches all along the periphery was full of beautiful young bodies, most dancing either as couples or in groups as friends, a few dancing alone or milling about seeking dance partners. I stood alone at my customary back corner near the inexhaustible supply of cheap wine, nursing a glass and listened to Skye sing, eyes flitting from one sashaying skirt to another.

"Come dance with me," she said extending her arm to me with a shy smile on her upturned face and the flicker of hope burning in the flames reflected in her bright eyes.

I hesitated, smiling sadly into her eyes as I struggled to find the right words. Before she could withdraw her arm, I caught her hand in mine and bringing it to my mouth kissed it gently before letting it go. "Please don't be upset Laura. After all these months at Skye's shows, you know well that I don't dance."

"Damn," she said turning away from me with a bitter laugh. "I saw how much wine you had tonight and was hoping that you were drunk enough to break down and finally say yes." I stepped forward close behind her wanting to hug her from the back but resisted the urge for it would just make matters worse. "I hate how pathetic I am to ask you again and again," she whispered, her voice catching and I could sense the unseen shimmer of tears in her eyes.

After a few minutes of desperately trying to figure out how to help my friend, I leaned forward and whispered playfully into her ear, "You know how it is. We will dance. You will fall for me. We will fuck. And I will break your heart!"

She burst out laughing, her body shaking with a mixture of hurt and absurd merriment. "You are one cocky bastard!"

I could sense the tension flow out of her and stepped back a half step.

She turned around to face me with a wicked smile on her face, "And what if I want to take that chance? What if I want the dancing and the fucking even if it means getting my heart broken?"

I tried hard to smile back but instead after an anguished pause whispered, "Perhaps you want that, but this isn't about you, it is about me. I don't want to break another heart."

She stood still and watched the struggle of emotions on my face before reaching up with her hand to caress my face, "She hurt you very badly, didn't she?"

I unsuccessfully tried to suppress a short manic chuckle and shook my head, "No. No. She didn't hurt me at all. There may not even be a she at all."

She smiled sadly into my eyes, coming closer still. "She broke your heart, didn't she?"

"I am not hurt, Laura. Really. Not lovesick, and not heart broken."

I took another small step back and laughed, "And not married and not gay either."

"I just don't dance."

Unsay

If I inhaled so deeply and for so long
 
that I took back all the words I ever exhaled,
 
would that then unsay all your memories of us
 
and let me keep mine?

Why baby?

(A vignette I started about a year ago and then set it aside because I wasn't happy with it. Now it is out of place with where the blog's writing is currently, but here it is anyways.)

Setting: The camera swoops down from on high onto the flat open roof of a sprawling castle that has clearly seen better days. Its dark moss-covered outer walls have regularly spaced fire-torches and their flickering glow adds ghostly shadows to the dying light of the sun. Two figures stand several feet apart, the man facing the woman who has at her back the long shimmering golden dagger cast by the last rays of the setting sun on the expanse of water surrounding the castle. Our viewpoint descends low enough for us to be in eavesdropping range but not close enough to see the emotions flickering on their faces in the low light.

The couple stands motionless staring into the distance. The silence is broken only by the shrill cries of a large falcon circling the castle, riding an unseen current of air. The predatory bird swoops down into the water with a desperate cry of triumph. The man and woman turn together to watch the bird grappling with a large fish in its beak as it struggles to break free of the water.

Woman: Why baby?
   
The man does not answer but stands in place, fidgeting.
The bird approaches the roof, its wings flapping noisily, and deposits the fish still convulsing in its death throes at the edge of the roof and stands near it eyeing the couple with open hostility and challenge.

Woman: Why?

The man shakes his head, quickly suppressing a desperate laugh.
The bird breaks the fish apart and swallows large pieces all the while emitting sharp bugle-like calls as if to warn them against approaching closer.

After a few more minutes of the couple watching the bird demolish its prize the woman teleports away startling the bird. It flies away, leaving the carcass of the fish on the roof, voicing its protests in a cacophony of anguished cries. 

The man stands motionless for a long while, watching the sun die. The fires burn through the night.

You and I

There are only so many stories in the world. And the truth is that none of them are true. I am not who I am. I never was. There probably is a real you. But the you that lived and laughed was the you that I created. The you in the story. The you in the story that met the I in the story. The you and I that fall in love over and over in so many words, few of them true. The you and I that go our separate ways in so few words, many of them true. Of course those words, they don't write themselves. Or do they? Does the I in the story have free will? Does the you? Perhaps the I in the story is a puppet, soulless and thus guileless, pulled by the strings of good story writing, a slave to dramatic flourishes. You and I wouldn't write an inelegant story, now would we?

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In the unending rain, morning blurs into midday and so I wasn't sure what part of day it was when I stepped out of the house. Turned up collar and a hat provide meager shelter against the downpour, as I crunch my way in boots on the graveled walkway past the bed of flowers that you had planted and onto the path leading into the forest on the hill behind our house. Today I am going to meet you for the first time, again. I don't know why for our chance encounter, for this first of impressions, I cannot seem to make it bright and sunny and flowery and have butterflies and singing birds. Instead, for all our first meetings all I have is rain, never ending rain. I walk up the soggy sloping path into the forest, rivulets cross the path to disappear into the thick undergrowth, the canopy of weather-bent trees blot out the diffuse sunlight so that it feels like it could be late evening. Blinded by the rain and a potent mixture of desire and apprehension about what was to come, I blunder along the path seeking you.

A flash of color, incongruous in the rain, and yet anticipated makes me quickly step off the path and into the shadows of the trees. There you are, in gorgeous if soaked colors, standing in the midst of the path as if looking for something or perhaps someone. Streams of raven hair cling to the side of your face, rivulets of rain trail off down your throat and onto your bare shoulders to disappear into the embrace of your warmth under your gown. Your eyes sweep back down the path towards and then past me.  There you are, the one who will envelop my words with hers, intertwine my desire with hers, and plant the seeds of perennial flowers in our garden. I stand completely still, eyes riveted to your face, suddenly the rain not blinding and blurring but instead washing everything down to its purest essence.

We stand again at the threshold of a first encounter, you and I.

I know where my story goes. I wonder what happens in yours?

More than before

Today, more than before, I feel like writing you into my life.

You blush when I reach for your pretty face. Words, fragments of program code compiled into long sequences of ones and zeros and interpreted by scores of feverish machines in far away data centers: how does the heartless certainty of machine logic reflect the hopeful flutter of human emotions on your face as I pull you in for a kiss? Will the next few words write a kiss consummated or a shy demurral?

In my words, there are only you and I.

In my words, all dreams are about you.

In my words, I give up everything
for the world inside of me.

And yet,
in my words, is love unrequited.

Perhaps,
my words, they can't say enough. 

Cold

(This is the third in a series of very short stories inspired by an AM Radio build in SL; some pictures are included here. If you haven't seen his work, you should!)

Huddled inside an oversized thick jacket and yet cold to the bone, I watched warily from afar the smoke-filled fire burning in the field of grass. The incongruous fire burned in separate straight line strands several feet apart as if some fiery demon had raked the earth with three giant finger nails. Eventually, despite my unease, I walked up close to the flames hoping that they would yield some of their warmth to my shivering body, but to no avail. The flames hissed and crackled and lapped at unseen ethereal enemies that somehow held the fire at bay robbing it of its warmth and preventing it from spreading through the field. I couldn't make sense of what I was seeing or of the relentless cold that seemed buried deep inside me and just stood in place rocking slowly on my heels. What added to the sense of strangeness and foreboding was that the odd scene before me seemed deeply familiar even though I was sure I hadn't set foot on this immaculately desolate place before.

After several minutes of indecision, the desire to walk eastwards broke free of the hold the cold had on my mind and I ambled off in that direction expecting to find a fence separating the field from railroad tracks even though I could not see either from where I stood. I made my way past a small unoccupied house and further eastwards to what surely would be a very odd sight to anyone, a table and a chair in the middle of the field far from the house and just a few feet from the wire fence. Just past the fence were the railroad tracks I had been expecting. It all felt quite natural and right to me and without thought I went and sat on the chair to look about me. The fire, the house, the fence, the railroad tracks, and now this table and chair in the middle of the field; what was this place? It felt like I had never been here, and at the same time like I had forever been here.

The wind picked up a little and the rustle of the pages of the notebook on the table finally got me to pick it up. It was more than half-way filled with what seemed like diary entries. The last entry read

You are not here. This is not real. Don't come back. Don't you come back.

There were pages and pages of such drivel. Some of the earliest entries from years ago were longer with rambling text about her being gone and never coming back, about the trains not running, and about being cold. Whoever this madman was, I was glad he wasn't here anymore. I got up to leave this crazy forsaken place and only then noticed the flapping scraps of white silk caught in the wire mesh of the fence. A flood of images came rushing into my mind. She in her wedding dress, the sound of the approaching train, the look in her eyes as she turned and ran away from me, the skirt of her dress catching and tearing as she jumped over the wire fence, the open freight car of the train that carried her away. She was gone, and I was here forever without her.

Defeated, I collapsed back into the chair and picked up the pen.