Can't Catch a Brake

Can’t Catch a Brake

     “Drive.” She slammed the passenger door like we were getting away from a bank in a hurry.
     I slipped the car in reverse and rolled us down the sloping driveway.
     One problem though: as I pumped the brake it hugged the floor but we were not stopping. I twisted the wheel so our white Dodge Ram didn’t hit the light pole behind us.

Neither Dog Nor Boy

Neither Dog Nor Boy

            Worm carcasses littered the sidewalks. I wondered if there were any worms left in the world.

            “Charlie, no. Charlie!” My puppy was still new to life and wanted to sniff everything. His black nose twitched over a neighbor’s drenched tulips before I tugged back on the leash.

Morning Ritual

Morning Ritual

*Warning: Though a work of fiction, the following may contain triggers for some audiences, such as pregnancy issues, mental health, and gore.

            I told Mitch and he insisted on driving me down to the drugstore that morning to get another few boxes and another test. It took all of my patience to explain to him that, no, he couldn’t watch me take it and he would have to sit outside the bathroom and wait.

            When I came out he snatched the test out of my hand and tried to make sense of the pink lines in the window. “What does it say?” he asked.

Matched

Matched

    Match officials stuck a syringe into my arm and talked among themselves about the waiting box controls for lighting. I didn’t ask them what they were giving me.

         It kind of didn’t matter anymore – I had been selected to go into the arena, take out my opponent, and hopefully avoid being shiskabobbed by a random bone mutation or blasted by some unforeseen energy mass out of someone else’s foot.

Knight in Real Life: Epilogue, Legacy of the Robe

Knight in Real Life:

Epilogue, Legacy of the Robe

         Two days later Bethany summoned Paul to the library.

          “What's this about? Any more orders for bean tea?” Paul shut his mouth when Bethany set an empty gauntlet on the table next to her new laptop.

          “Library Wi-Fi connection, basically.” Bethany pointed at the screen. “Read it.”

          Paul used his finger to speed-read the email. Then his finger fell away as his eyes went over the words a second time. “I don’t get it.”

          “‘Bethany, your hunch excavated more evidence. The genealogy has another section. A cartograph encapsulated in a wall has been discovered in the cottage of the village where the monk dwelt.’” Bethany looked at Paul. “Do you want to see the map Professor Rycliffe sent?”

          “Dude…” Paul opened the attachment without asking. Bethany said nothing, but she made a mental note to teach him some manners.

          They looked over the digitally scanned version of the ancient map.

         “Do you see what I see?”

         “Yeah, a terrible map of the Atlantic. There, what’s that signature, what is that?”

          Bethany beamed. “That, my good sir, is the name of the author of ‘The Dyed Rose’.”

        “Uh, Beth, how certain are you?”

        “I'd stake my bachelors' on it. I would know that handwriting anywhere.”

         “And that?” Paul pointed to the edge of the map, where a small ship decorated the unknown waters. “‘The Sleeping Maiden’.”

        “Oh no.” The figurehead of the tiny ship they saw looked just like –

       “Lisa,” they said together. The picture detailed an angelically curved face hugging a bunch of printed flatsheets.
        "He did a decent job with the shape of them." Paul traced his finger over the pair of antiquated headphones. "Beth? Can you see me?"
         "Yeah." Bethany answered slowly. She stroked the gauntlet, raising a ring that only metal of a thick density can. "It really happened. He was really here. The author. Maybe not drawing the map, but he definitely had his hand on this."
         Paul stared at the parchment face of Lisa. "I'd have to say he did."

⟴⟴⟴ 

Knight in Real Life: Part Five, Such Sweet Sorrow

Knight in Real Life:

Part Five, Such Sweet Sorrow

         Getting the knight was surprisingly easy, Bethany thought, especially considering his sudden fascination with T-shirts.
         Getting the coffee, not so much. She and knight were still waiting thirty minutes later when Paul finally walked in the room.

Knight in Real Life: Part Four, Unraveling

Knight in Real Life:

Part Four, Unraveling

         Bethany arrived out of breath at the elevator. A crowd of Greeks piled into the elevator ahead of her. She cursed herself for not caring to learn the locations of the emergency stairways after two years.

Knight in Real Life: Part Three, Crossings

Knight in Real Life:

Part Three, Crossings

         Right after seminar Bethany opened her email and discovered yes, the professor would meet with her, but only for a couple minutes after twelve. It was twelve-ten now. Bethany shoved what she could into her bag and bolted down the hall to the stairs and the fourth floor.
           The door was cracked slightly open, and a murmuring spilled into the hallway. Bethany paced back and forth as some boy of a man demanded to know why his grade was only a B.

Knight in Real Life: Part Two, Brief Acquainting

Knight in Real Life:

Part Two, A Brief Acquainting

“Are you nuts? Bring him down here?” Paul asked. Throughout their conversation they spoke in hisses, although the clanking metal plates of the anachronistic knight caused enough of an echo to make that practice a waste of effort. “I can see why they want to give you a doctorate.”

Knight in Real Life: Part One, The Prodigal Son

Knight in Real Life:

Part One, Prodigal Son

       Sitting on the edge of Bethany’s desk was a man obscured by a grimy set of full armor. Bethany raised her forehead from her forearms and squinted against the gray light reflected in the dull iron. She must have stayed up later than she thought. When she blinked and the apparition did not leave, but rather opened the hooded visor and bid her a “good day, fair maiden,” Bethany groaned.

She Speaks of Drowning

    Inside her Corolla, the young lovers waited out the downpour. Each drop made a circular impact announcing their high-born alien names; each drop blended into the next. Soon the windows showed a world in watercolor, a mere portrait melting around them.
     "I've been after you since I saw you reading," the young man said.
     "I wasn't reading. Well, sometimes. I was mostly writing what I was thinking and reading them back to myself." The girl replied almost automatically, as her true attention flickered far away in that watercolor portrait of reality. He stayed in her periphery whenever he sat with her, and something when he did not.
     He chuckled, a pleasant throaty sound, one of the rough layers she liked to rising to the surface. "Okay, writing then. But you were reading and alone, and you looked so sweet and quiet. Hardly anyone paid attention to you."
     "Alone?" she said. Her alto voice rose to a shrill. "My friends were there. Our friends. I was drowning in people. I had to get away - I needed to think."
     "About us?" His lips fired the light nerves in her right ear.
     She inhaled the deep scent of his lye-washed hair, the radiating heat he gave off without knowledge or volition. "Sometimes," she admitted, breathing a cloud into the cabin space of her Corolla.
     Conscious of the scent of her breath mingling with his warmth and available to him, whatever defense posted within her tightened. He usually made that impression on her when he asked her questions like no one else had in her life. Balled up inside her, she carried a hunk of shields and walls and treasures as vices and vices masquerading as crowns.
     He had been smiling at her and she barely noticed. Her only clue was his eyes gleaming in the cold blue shade cast by pounding rain. "Ah, sweet." His smile spread slowly. "Come here, love."
     She did as he bid her, and soon his kisses entered her consciousness, next to the rain melting every fabric it touched, and the hollow pounding of her heart between the ill-fitting walls.

Craft Wednesday #29 Compass

This blog needed a place for talking about writing. "Craft Wednesday" will be me talking about all things writing: how to write, why to write, and my own craft journey. I hope to learn and to share experiences with you. 

Compass

                One word is good enough. 

                Early this New Year I was challenged to think of one word that would be a sort of anchor, a magnetic north for this new year.

A "Chicken or the Egg" Question

     Which came first: light or darkness? The question is a philosophical question.

      Did darkness exist before One said, "Let there be light?" In order for there to be light, wouldn't there have to be something before? What existed before?

     Or with light, did existence begin? Did the invention of light become a dividing word to distinguish two parts of a mottled whole? Where the whole come from?

     Light is a metaphor. We also know light to be both a particle and a wave, affecting the lots of other particles it bounces off. Light makes work, or is work, and creates more work; light is a catalyst for change.

    Then what is darkness? The definition of darkness is an absence of light.

    That's right - an absence.

    Darkness is a negation. We define it by the absence of something. It is nothing. Darkness does not exist.

     We have our answer: Light is something, Darkness is nothing. Light had to come first because it is the only thing that exists. Darkness is nothing at all, so it never arrived. Therefore, neither came first because only one exists: Light is and Darkness is not.

A Mantis Death

    In winter we forget about bugs, which is why I was doubly surprised to see such an exotic insect clinging to the window screen of the living room.
     Pale green and purple, the praying mantis was a larger than I had ever seen before. I thought he was dead until I blew on him and his antennae twitched.

An Absence

Grandma Lillian sat in the peeling white wicker chair. She had not wanted one that rocked.
"Every day," she repeated. "Everyday."
"What's everyday?" I asked her. I stopped laying the long pieces of grass in floor plans on the porch steps. I hoped to eventually build a house.
"Light is in every day, Kareem."
"Yeah, I guess Grandma. They call it daylight."
She chuckled at my youth. "Do you know what darkness is, dear?"
"You're going to tell me." In one motion I swept the grass off the step.
"Darkness is nothing. Darkness is an absence."
"Of day."
"Of light," she said.
"Oh," I said. I went back to my picking.
She sat for a while. I was too busy making improvements to see when she left.

Then It Rained

     There was a man. He planted a tree in his yard.
     The man watered the tree every day there was no rain. There had been no rain for four hundred years.

The Far Ocean

I dwell far from the ocean,
locked in by sprawling tracts
without the slightest motion
and only stagnant facts.

I dream of sea salt sprays
in acrid prairie lanes,
lifted by September haze
never bringing fragrant rains.

I hope to hear gulls shriek
as they tumble overhead
and search out when they leak-
it sinks as fast as lead.

I watch for other ships
where blue ends at the white
and day dips into night

Wrecked

Used to be a rising star.
Found I am a dinosaur.
About to get wrecked.

Used to be a rising star;
how am I a dinosaur
staring at the asteroid?

Used to be a rising star -
now I am a dinosaur
getting smashed by asteroids.

Used to be a rising star,
then I was a dinosaur
only good at getting wrecked.

Evenings Are My Jewelry Box

A salmon shredded by cosmic claws
fell to pieces along dry scales,
spilling carnelian clouds across the wasted sun.

Buoyant and lovely in alien purity,
a pearl quit the depths of the East
for the height of an inked purple mass.

Later,
Congealed rose-gold flakes of mutable fish
outshone the Luminosity
until the West plummeted –

And a velvet cover appeared,
lining the lid of the world,
hinged upon encroaching hours
in which I fixated upon a dream.

Writer (of the Multiverse)

Down inside my insect eyes
a thousand private worlds collide;

a million minute observations
nurture hungry new creations.

Clenching fingers write for ages,
vaulting thoughts from mind to pages.

Portals leaking from my hand
transport you to another land.

Never doubt these pools of ink
ripple further than you think.