A Year in Prose

I didn’t realize how late we were out until we went...

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

I didn’t realize how late we were out until we went to the 24-hour McDonald’s to get fries and found them closed, in the middle of their half-hour changeover period from lunch/dinner to breakfast. It happens every morning at 4 a.m. Leila giggled. “Well, shit,” she said. “I would say let’s go home, but at this point we might as well just stay up until sunrise.” We sat down on the shallow curb in front of the McDonald’s to wait. Hash browns now instead of fries, I guessed. Leila plucked two cigarettes out of the pack in her purse and handed one to Jonathan, and I watched them smoke, the acrid vapors twisting into the black-blue night above us.

It was four nights after graduation. My parents thought I was at Leila’s, Leila’s parents were in Chicago visiting family, and Jonathan’s parents never investigated his whereabouts too closely. We had used up half a tank of gas this night alone. It was supposed to have been a last grand hurrah, but things had kept going wrong. Our favorite park turned out to be actually guarded by police at night. The pool in Jonathan’s friend’s apartment was too cold to swim in. His friend’s older brother had sold him half a fifth of vodka at an extravagantly inflated price, but I couldn’t drink, it being my car.

Now Jonathan and Leila were lighting their second cigarettes and touching each others’ shoulders. Their knees were resting against one another and they were laughing. Inside the McDonald’s, the workers looked at us, hostile and bored. I supposed we were the worst kinds of customers. Tipsy underage kids secure in our belief that the world was an enormous joke and that nothing could reach us to hurt us in any lasting way.

The parking lot was empty and Leila and Jonathan were kissing each other, their hard and smoky teeth clicking in an uneven rhythm, their cigarettes burning into nothing on the cement. I looked into the place the sunrise would be and picked at my fingernails and hoped for something better.

My brother and I used to play this game we called...

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

My brother and I used to play this game we called Grocery Store. We would go to the pantry, which was one room away from the kitchen and living room area, and open the door. We would take out all the food and bring it to the living room and pile it up on the floor there. Piece by piece, can by can, corn by cereal by flour. Everything went, our small bodies back and forth. The batteries and the rubber bands. The boxed macaroni and the warm liters of diet soda. Everything, even the small bottle of fierce mustard, still unopened, that our mother bought in Germany years before either of us were born.

In the living room, we would sort it into arbitrary categories. They were different each time. By color or container, or by things that were good and things that weren’t. Then we would stand back to look at our handiwork. Next came shopping, which never lasted long. The fun was in the setting up and tearing down. This was the requirement: Mom would only let us play the game if we put everything back. But she lost out anyway in the end, because my memory was fleeting and my brother’s even more so, and the pantry was different after we had taken everything out and put it all back in. Differently ordered.

Grocery Store wasn’t that great by any measure of a game. No one won and the stakes were nonexistent. It was low on my mom’s favorites of ours, lower than board games and higher than Parade (the best game, wherein we walked like statesmen around the house banging together pots and pans with their lids). Looking back, I think it was a reflection of how bowled over I was by the magnitude of my world, how lucky we were. I mean, you laugh, but have you ever really thought about a suburban American grocery store? All that food, most of it cheap, right there, easy. And our pantry was the same. If anything, my game was a way to express my amazement at how remarkable it was, how incredible, the fact of such bounty.

Chapter 6 Part 3

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 21:05:05 -0400

The particular species they were after were called Vawerps. They were not one of the semi-sentient natives of Element, but they tended to cause trouble. They usually tunneled into human subterranean structures by accident, but once they had breached a tunnel, they began raiding at every opportunity. Miles suspected the boss had sent him here to deal with a small raiding party in the subway.

The Vawerps were carnivorous quadrapeds that moved in packs. They seemed to become more fierce when the moon was towards full, and they also had a strange habit of mostly consuming blood from their victims. These similarities to mythical creatures from Earth-lore disturbed many. However, scientists were reasonably sure that the Vawerps were not some crossbreed of vampires and werewolves. Reasonably. Miles never quite trusted the reports, so he carried a custom weapon he called a stakesword, the only weapon he knew could kill Vawerps without a doubt. This was the pencil-like device he had handed to Jonesy. One end could emit a short beam of ultraviolet light hot enough to cut metal (and certainly enough to eliminate a Vawerp) and the other…well, the other was a sharpened silver stake. Miles had no evidence to suggest that the silver made a difference, but it sure didn’t hurt.

The staircase leveled out, as Miles suspected, into a terminal. It looked like one of the less used ones in New Chicago. Trash littered the benches and piled in eerie drifts against the columns. Both ends of the terminal faded to darkness. A lone security light fought feebly from the end of the staircase they had just descended.

“I’m cutting on my light,” said Miles.

“Already on,” whispered Jonesy.

“Stay close. Keep an eye behind us.”

“Duh.”

Miles slipped the stakesword into a ready position and began walking into the darkness. The eyelight boosted the available visible light, and provided an infrared overlay in the dark. He could see heat signatures ahead. His tracking device blipped softly. Miles glanced at the screen and saw 4 distinct pulses. He made eye contact with Jonesy, or rather, the place where his eyelight said Jonesy was in the dark, and held up four nearly invisible fingers.

The lights that illuminated the garden at night were mounted...

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The lights that illuminated the garden at night were mounted very near to the end of the garden, but not quite. Still ten or twenty yards of gravel path and fountain stretched beyond the place where the lights were mounted. That meant that when someone was walking toward the light, they could see nothing of those ten or twenty yards. They simply squinted and slowed their step, uncertain of what was beyond that blinding wall. If you were on the other side, however, looking out, you could see the whole of the garden, alternately shadowed and bright in the night. Like a two-way mirror. The best hiding place in the world.

One night I was walking in the garden and heard a woman’s voice, clear and low, coming from the shadowed end. Like others, I was not brave enough to walk right into light; I slowed, hesitated, stopped, started again until I had passed the place where the light was mounted and saw a silent audience of thirty listening to a pair of speakers mounted near the fountain. I sat down to listen to the rest of the show. The woman’s voice was quick and elegant, quintessential performance Italian, and I could only pick out a few words.

A few minutes later, David approached with a bag of dry laundry over his shoulder, squinting but not stopping like me. He took a moment to orient himself to see whatever was happening, and then he sat down beside me and folded his clothes while we heard what we could of the story. Undershirts, jeans, socks, l’uomo, la giardinia, la luce.

The History of Element - Part 5

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The Continents Continued

Continent 3 is the largest landmass on Element. It is the northern Pole continent, and not surprisingly contains a great deal of snow and ice. Oddly enough, the continent is almost perfectly divided into 3 areas. The southernmost edge of the continent is a perfectly habitable strip of forest and taiga. Some of Element’s largest trees grow here, and can reach more than 500 feet. There are several coastal cities on Continent 3, but the population grows sparser inland.

After the forest coast finally gives way to the climate, there is a mountain range. It is one of the stranger features on Element. It is so large as to be seen from space, and it runs in an almost perfect circle around Continent 3. It makes up the second distinct area of the third continent. Some of the braver souls of Element have ventured into these mountains, whether for research or adventure, but very few have survived the journey. Even with modern equipment, the Crown of Element (as the range is known) is nearly insurmountable.

Beyond the Crown, only weather drones and unmanned probes have been. We don’t know a great deal, but the temperatures at the northernmost pole of Element are estimated to reach nearly -200º C. The pole is jokingly referred to as “Absolute Zero”, but it isn’t far from the truth.

I’m afraid that I’ll miss this the most when I leave, the...

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

I’m afraid that I’ll miss this the most when I leave, the sitting on couches, can never get comfortable, in between sixty six and seventy degrees, which is too hot or too cold depending on the width of the ducts of the house, and the way the carpet lies, and the way the cold steals in through the windows to get at the six fish and the one extra fish we got to take care of the six fish, and the green beans and broccoli and gold and green and red tomatoes from the farmers market nesting in the fridge like dolls, nestling in there like cold vegetable animals, and the baking, the rolls and buttered bread and cookies, and rolling the dough in the cinnamon sugar as I look over and watch New Girl and Modern Family and The Voice and all the shows my friends watch that I never watched and won’t once we leave each other, and some day soon everyone will be separated and far flung to different places, and there will be no more of the dirty counters and who takes the trash out on Wednesdays, because the trash day is different in every city and we are all in separate cities, and the regrets, the never making bran muffins, the not taking the perfect black and white picture on the steps, the things I forgot to do I won’t remember til even the choice of them is far away and gone

Chapter 6 Part 2

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 23:58:05 -0400

They left the ship in a docking station Jonesy had a membership to. Shielded from the wind, Jonesy and Miles stepped into the dark cavern. They were alone; most people stayed in the safety of their apartments during storms. A long row of exit signs marked the route to the next building.

All of the buildings in New Chicago’s downtown were connected underground by pedestrian walkways. Not many people were downtown in the storm, but the few that were would have been swept away by the winds aboveground. During the clear season, New Chicago had thriving aboveground marketplaces and shops, but currently it was quiet.

Miles pulled a small device from his pack. It beeped once, and flashed several figures across a small screen. He grunted, shouldered the pack, and headed off along the glowing path of exit signs.

“Where’re we going?” Jonesy asked.

“Roughly, 85^th and Dawe street.” Miles’ voice echoed in the dark chamber.

“Did he give us any specifics on the mission?”

“No. But we’ll need these.”

Miles slung the pack around his shoulder, still walking, and pulled another device out. It resembled a pencil in length, but it was about three inches thick. One end tapered to a point, and it was a blackish gray color. He handed it to Jonesy.

Jonesy picked it up carefully. He studied both ends and nodded.

“So we’re going to be hunting the-“

“SHUT UP!” Miles clamped a hand over Jonesy’s mouth. “They can probably already hear us!”

His voice dropped to a whisper. “There should be a track we can pick up south of here.”

He pulled a second short staff out of his pack, transferring the tracking device to his left hand. They continued down the path of exit signs. After a few minutes the tracker blipped softly and Miles turned left. Jonesy followed closely behind him, casting wary glances back every few seconds.

The passage narrowed slightly and reached a staircase. Miles stopped at the top and looked down. They had left the exit signs behind, and were losing light. Miles frowned, flipped a few switches on his tracker, and opened his pack again. He produced a tiny case and turned to Jonesy.

“Ever used one of these?” he asked.

“Is that an eyelight?” Jonesy’s frightened eyes momentarily lit up with excitement.

“Yes. You know how to use it?” Miles was all business.

“Yeah. Gonna be dark down there eh?”

“They like the dark.”

Miles put on his eyelight and started down the stairs. The eyelight consisted of a contact lens with a small wire connected to an electrode that attached to Miles’ temple. It provided multi-spectrum imaging for the wearer, controlled by brainwaves picked up by the electrode.

Miles hadn’t lied to Jonesy earlier. The boss hadn’t given him any details. But he knew what they were hunting, and it wasn’t pretty. Humanity wasn’t the only race on Element. The planet had several other sentient or semi-sentient species.

Sixteen years ago my grandmother stopped cooking. It...

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Sixteen years ago my grandmother stopped cooking. It used to be her passion. She worked as a librarian at the elementary school down the street for decades, and they would do different units every week. When they got to the food unit, she would stand up a little straighter, and at home, my mom told me, she’d be cheerful as sunflowers the whole week. She’d take so much time with every meal. From waking up early to make fresh biscuits in the morning to spending her lunch break sneaking out to the farmer’s market for fresh vegetables, food was everything to her.

And sixteen years ago she just stopped. Just like that. She started ordering cheap pizza a lot, stocked her fridge with microwave meals, and ate a lot of cold sandwiches. She started filling her grocery carts with the kinds of foods she used to snatch from the tiny hands of her junk-crazy children. Pop-Tarts, spicy chips, cheap ice cream. She ballooned with useless fat.

Sixteen years and nine months ago she cooked healthier than she had ever cooked before. It was a kind of revenge for her: you did this to herself, so I’m going to make you do it right. She pulled out her old nutrition books and set down two meals a day plus a packed lunch for my mom, crammed full of the vitamins and acids she needed. And even though there’s research saying that post-partum nutrition is also incredibly important to your health, she just stopped. When I happened she stopped.

The History of Element

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 23:54:51 -0400

((writer’s note: I am impossibly impossibly behind in this project. In an effort to catch up and resume normal weekly posting, I am repurposing and continuing a serial fiction I had started in the previous Year in Prose project. This story will begin with my June 1st post, and will consist of both re-posted material and new material. If you want to catch up on the entire story, click the “Ben Azevedo” link and scroll down to June 1.))

The History of Element Part 2

The Continents of Element

The geography of Element is fairly simple. 7 major landmasses, two in the northern hemisphere, two southern, one spanning a range of the equator, and two pole continents. The oceans were salty, much like Earth’s, and each continent contained a number of inland freshwater sources. Most of Element’s ecosystems were comparable to those of Earth, with the obvious exception of being nearly 300 times more violent in terms of weather and natural disasters.

Where a tornado on Earth could level a midwest town and leave a path of broken buildings behind, a tornado on Element could actually level small hills, and leave scars in the earth visible from near space. The “plains” southwest of New Chicago were a constantly evolving maze of troughs and ridges created by cyclones reaching over 2 miles into the sky.

Luckily for its inhabitants, the size of the natural events on Element made them somewhat easier to predict. With modern technology and resources poured into surviving the climate, Element’s elements cause surprisingly few casualties. And from the orchestral architecture of New Chicago to the stubborn survival of Pompeii II, Element brought out some of the best in human ingenuity and persistence.

Continent 1 can most nearly be compared to Earth’s North America. It possessed two major mountain ranges, both near the coasts, east and west. To the north it stretches until it became a frozen plain, then open ocean dotted with ice and icebergs. The south of Continent 1 is not as arid as one might think, instead giving way to an almost jungle area of marshland and swamp.

Continent 2 is the equator continent on Element. Nicknamed “Paradise” for its palm trees and beaches, it also features Element’s largest desert. The sandstorms in this desert have been known to strip flesh from bone. Other than that, the land is a paradise, full of oasis and the stone used to craft the domes. Because of the sandstorms, every city on Paradise lies beneath a massive stone dome. The dome of Cai-Rome, the largest city, reaches in a perfect half sphere almost a quarter of a mile into the sky. No one lives on the beaches.

We went to the beach in November to get away from...

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

We went to the beach in November to get away from Rachel’s ex and the crippling grey rain that had been a constant and unusual presence for the past two weeks. “We used to love just lying in bed and listening to the rain together,” she sighed to me more than once when we got to work in the morning. Her shoulders slumped in her sweaters and there were blue-brown circles under her eyes all the time. I wasn’t feeling so well either, tired and lonely with the scent of damp wool seeming to follow me everywhere. So we left.

The beach house belongs to my cousin George and his wife, and truth be told, even though he’d always told me I was welcome to stay in the off-season, I felt a little uncomfortable as I groped for the spare key under the empty flowerpot on the porch. We weren’t close, George and I, never had been. I’d been to the beach house a few times before, but had never considered renting it from him during the summer, even at the discounted rate he offered our family. I have no one with whom I’d want to share one bed and one bath for a steamy summer week.

Except, now, Rachel, I supposed. We stepped into the house. A few brightly colored cups lounged in the dishdrainer and the bed was made with less-than-perfect hospital corners, but otherwise it was just like walking into a rental home, albeit a tiny one.

“Let’s look around,” Rachel said. I let her do so. There really wasn’t much to explore.

Or so I thought until she came back with a battered, bursting shoebox. “Are these your old family photos?” Rachel asked, a trace of a smile on her face.

“Huh?” I peered into the box. It was crammed with pictures, none of which I recognized. “I guess they must be.”

“We should look at them,” she said. “There could be some really cool stuff in here.”

I glanced at the clock. It wasn’t even midnight yet, and I wasn’t tired, so, “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

We spread them out on the coffee table, and when that wasn’t big enough, we continued onto the floor. Old-fashioned women looked out at us from barbeques and Christmas dinners; once-young men smiled in school portraits; kids played in my great-grandmother’s backyard. Rachel asked me if I recognized anyone.

“Not really,” I said. An aunt here, my grandparents in a few places, and in a few places I thought I saw my parents. In one picture I was pretty sure my brother is there, as a baby. “I don’t know any of these people.”

“What if these two were married?” Rachel said, pushing together two images of a soldier and a prom queen.

“Mm, no, I don’t think so,” I said, grabbing another picture from the corner. “Here’s that same woman with another man.”

“Maybe it was an affair,” Rachel said. “Or maybe not.” She pulls the two pictures apart again. “Hey, what if this person was this person’s daughter?”

We stay up late like that, making up and breaking up love between strangers on the floor.

Chapter 6 - A Seed in the Wind

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Chapter 6 - A Seed in the Wind

The storm roared, and the tiny ship bounced wildly through the sky. The wind was deafening, yet through the terrible howling a voice could almost be heard.

“…aaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

Miles’ scream was certainly audible from inside the ship, the unfortunate place that Jonesy now found himself.

“Miles! Shut the fuck up, man! I’ve gotta focus on this shit if you want to live!”

“You mean I’m not dead yet?! I thought I was already in Hell!”

Jonesy wasn’t going to argue Miles’ point. This was one of the worst storms he had ever flown. Of course, he usually tried to avoid going out in storms.

The ship rocked and vibrated as the Geo Grounder did its best to remind them that the ground was down. Occasionally it would fail, and Jonesy could watch as Miles’ hair pointed up towards the ceiling. Jonesy still loved the feeling of riding the wind currents, but he also knew they could smash into an obstacle at any moment. With no windows or visuals in the thick rain of the storm, death would come without warning.

A green sensor blinked and chimed suddenly.

“What does that mean!” yelled Miles over the alarm.

“Calm down. We just absorbed a lightning strike.” Jonesy was flipping switches wildly.

“Why are you flipping all those?! Did something go wrong?” Miles’ eyes were wide, and his head was swimming as he tried to resist the sudden gravitational changes.

“Miles, listen to me. Relax. The seat will keep you from any whiplash; the more you resist it, the worse you’ll feel later. The lightning helps us, remember? It’s adding power to the ship, so we can afford to divert more to the Geo Grounder.”

“That means we won’t be upside down right?”

Jonesy nodded as he returned to the switchboard. There were no visual monitors, but Tracy had a digital map display that charted the approximate position of the ship in relation to downtown. They were nearly there.

“Assuming no more major current changes, and no disastrous accidents, we should be there in about ten minutes.” Jonesy announced.

A few weekends ago we went to the Hendersonville...

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

A few weekends ago we went to the Hendersonville Apple Festival, the largest apple festival in the state of North Carolina. The mountains rose blue and smooth in the distance, and I would later find a sunburn on my chest, creating two thin strips of pale skin under the lines of my tank top. Various community organizations collected five dollars’ parking fare in the blocks around the festival. We gave our money to Hendersonville Junior Basketball League, at the far end, where all the festival food was.

We went into the general store that Ben had loved when he was a little kid and browsed antique store displays from the sidewalk. I bought a chocolate cream-filled doughnut for eighty-five cents, and it was the best doughnut I had ever had. Ben had his camera out, snapping pictures in the perfect light, while I walked and exclaimed at every booth. I tried every apple product I could bear. Apple butter, fried apple pie, the most delicious pretzel with apple cinnamon bits embedded amidst the salt, and a quarter peck of fresh apples to take back to the tiny mountain cabin where we were staying.

Ben got a caramel apple as his only apple product of the day, a restraint that neither I nor my stomach could fathom. He’d walked past two caramel apple salesmen before he settled on one he felt looked right and cost an acceptable amount, three dollars.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully as we ambled, “I’ve never actually had a caramel apple.”

“What?” I laughed. “Why were you so insistent, then?”

“Dunno,” he said, gnawing at the caramel. “Just seemed right. Apple festival, I feel like you should get a caramel apple.”

We walked like that in the mountain sunlight and it was a brilliant, beautiful day.

Chapter 5 Part 2

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

With a deft flick of his wrist, Vito tossed the bag of coins in the air. At the same time, he flicked the knife on his wrist into his hand and underhanded it at the guard captain. Brakus ducked in time, but the guard behind him wasn’t so lucky. The coins slammed into the second guard, distracting him. Vito whipped around and dove towards the kitchen.

“DAMMIT!” Brakus roared. He raced towards the kitchen after Vito.

The two guards recovered and followed suit. Unfortunately, the guard who had taken the knife underestimated the poison Vito used. He became slightly less recovered.

Vito vaulted a cart and slid past a row of chefs. He nearly lost his footing in a puddle, rolled, and recovered. Finally he found what he was looking for; a small grate in the corner of the kitchen. He kicked aside an empty crate, pulled the grate up, and dove feet first into the black.

Brakus burst into the kitchen and barreled through the cart. He slid around the corner just in time to see Vito’s cloak slip through the black hole in the floor.

Brakus cursed and punched a cabinet hard enough to leave a sizeable dent.

“You and Tiron follow him and…” Brakus turned to finish his statement. The single guard stared back. He sighed. “I guess it’s just you and I then, Veriticus.”

“Sir…should we tend to Tiron?”

“No…Vito’s no fool. Tiron is long gone.” Brakus sighed again, then pulled a battered transmitter out of his cloak.

“Sir, we lost him again. Got another drain to mark on the map.” Brakus waited.

The crackling voice that returned over the transmitter was deep and commanding.

“Mark it Brakus. Then return to the hunt. Remember, I need Vito as a hostage. I don’t care what it takes. Bring him to me.” The transmitter fell silent.

Brakus shook his head.

“That fool’s going to waste the entire security force on this. And for what? A scrawny street punk who runs cash for the gangs?”

Veriticus looked around the devastated kitchen, and noticed the now empty bar. “Maybe there is more to this than we know, sir. I think we should get out of here and find more men.”

“Let’s take care of Tiron,” Brakus replied.

Already Drunk

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 23:05:50 -0400

I am already drunk when I am dropped off at the party. My roommate has benevolently agreed to deliver me to the spot. Presumably he knows I have been drinking, at the very least by scent, but I imagine he has underestimated the volume I have consumed. Many hours earlier, through my bedroom door I hear him return from work, plodding in his thick-soled boots past my door, pausing just long enough to alter the familiar consistent rhythm of his gait. It is unusual that I am home before him. It is unusual that my door is shut, and it is unusual that I do not greet him with an onslaught of questions about his day. These questions come from a place of deep care for this roommate and the great trials of his life and also as preemptive atonement for the many answers I will give him in response to questions he will not ask me about my day. This is an arrangement I think we both understand and accept. At any rate, this time I do not emerge from my room to ask or tell about anything. These are clues which suggest perhaps tangentially but undoubtedly that my equation includes alcohol as a variable, an exponent hanging around on the corner of some great bracketed sum of bad things. I realize what I am doing in sending these notable but otherwise mysterious signals, and if I drink a little more as a result, I do not recall. In kind response, roommate refrains from approaching me until well into the evening when I request without preface that he drive me to the home of someone who he does not know and I know only barely, and to this request he nods curtly, asks for a moment, and within ten minutes I am on my way. In the car, I exchange my attention for a steady, conditioned breeze with the vent with the broken horizontal slat, second from the top, an element of this car I notice most often in lieu of speaking. This occupied me until I find myself standing on the edge of the grass, looking strangely at these glowing windows and knowing well I have made the wrong choice in sound between the low murmur before me and the receding rumble of my roommate as he moves down the road. And yet, there, as the sound of the car is reflected infinitely between the parked cars alongside the back street and the trees and the modestly reverberant ranch-style homes and finally into the dense shapeless expanse of city sky, its absence takes its place. From there I move toward the party.

Katherine looked around the station. The trains...

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Katherine looked around the station. The trains arrived and left in slow, loud movements, pulling and pushing like tides in the sea of chatter and potential pickpockets carpeting the building. Destinations flickered and disappeared on the screen. She felt dizzy, ill with excitement. The faces around her turned their eyes downward. Haggard shoulders, tired waists, legs lagging with cramping and age. She felt the red in her cheeks and the strength in her wrists more acutely than others.

It could be today. It could be this day, this day of sunlight and sharp cold and the lingering scent of flowers, day of worn flannel and bruises, morning sickness and unmade bed, crisp apple and wound-up nerves, day of low music. It could be today that the train would arrive and, prophetic, the screen would display, in yellow blocked letters, instead of an arrival or departure, a name.

People moved like pinballs around her, every man and woman and lost-eyed child bouncing from train to pillar to the wide bright outside world. And out of nowhere, with no pronouncement or warning, Katharine caught sight of him stepping off the train. His shoulders were alive and alert, his head turned looking for her. He had shaved and cut his hair. She couldn’t tell from this distance whether or how his hands, ears, calves, hips had changed – after this long, wasn’t that a possibility? Couldn’t it have happened, so easily, a shift of something vital in her absence?

He pulled his luggage off. She felt sick and shaky with joy, too shaky to move. She walked forward anyway.

The History of Element - Part 2

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Part of the reason rumors were so abundant was that no one had come back from Element. Even in most modern deep space qualified ships, the travel time to Element was slightly over one year. Dimensional jumping had been refined to a safe point, but the only coordinates near enough to Earth and Element that had been officially cleared for a jump were about 6 months space travel from each planet. Signal transmission was also difficult. Earth received bi-annual updates from the Primacy of Element, a governing body that consisted of representatives from each of Elements 7 continents. Unfortunately these messages were restricted in length and quality. The IECHE had received exactly 48 transmissions from Element to date, and sent 48 confirmations back. They had decided against sending more colonists.

So in 24 years of habitation, no one had come back from Element. They were, of course, busy fighting the planet’s unstable nature, but the Primacy’s updates couldn’t include all of the details. All Earth truly knew was that there were people living on Element, and for the time being, they were stuck there.

She sat in her armchair, wringing the letter she’d written years...

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 06:42:18 -0400

She sat in her armchair, wringing the letter she’d written years ago into tight spirals, then loose round globes, then flat again. It was a letter she never gave him, because she knew it was dark and would hurt. But she’d kept it, hidden amongst her journals, for a reason she didn’t understand then but knew now.

His things were in the car, and he was grabbing one last box of clothes and towels. He’d wanted the good towels, and she gave them to him, because why did she need those towels anyway. They smelled like him. She had a lot of things she’d need to replace soon; why not a few towels. She wasn’t picky; she’d use the smaller, scratchier towels for a while that had been his anyway, but no one really wanted them now. She couldn’t decide if she’d donate them or burn them.

He looked at her expectantly, holding a large cardboard box with no markings, and she found herself irritated that he wasn’t using the handles. That’s what they were there for, to hold the box. Instead, he had it gripped from the base. What a waste. They both remained silent. She thought she should be crying, but her heart had already started to shrink. It would swell and burst soon enough; she’d accept the peace of the moment.

So, after five years, this is what it all came down to. Boxes of fabric and pages, some electronics to be divided and a house meant for two occupied by one. Their whole life together, put inside separate cardboard and shuffled between two strangers.

He started to speak, but words wouldn’t come. She was familiar enough with the pause to know that he had something to say, but it would take a few attempts, the world suspended around his lips, waiting for the success of his sentence. She decided not to wait for it. She stood up and placed the now-neatly-folded letter on the top of the box. She looked him square in the eye, and whispered something with the darkest menace her voice could muster. She turned her back on him and sat down in the armchair again, staring out the window, feeling her heart expand and swell into her throat, but she clamped down and refused to shed a tear in his presence.

He shut and locked the door, pushing the key through the mail slot as he left. She watched his car drive away before she got up and lit the fire. She’d made up her mind.

Across from my boyfriend’s apartment complex there...

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Across from my boyfriend’s apartment complex there is an old folks’ home. From the front it’s mostly parking lot, a perfectly flat and empty expanse of white lines on grey, an unnaturally calm ocean with islands of pine needles and single trees. The home – the living community – is one story and made of brick. The largest island, flat and sad and low.

I drive to work from my boyfriend’s apartment complex. As I wait to turn right the pine needle islands in the parking lot are speckled with people in wheelchairs. Black, white, male, female. All ancient and watching. They never look at me or the other cars, or each other. They don’t talk. They could be dead but for the tiny tremblings of their hands – sitting there like bewildered stranded birds.

I think of this short story I read once, or maybe it was the beginning of a novel – that was it – about a guy who drove a van for an old folks’ home. He would pile them all into the back, like you see criminals in sci-fi movies, and take them to the beach or the park. I imagine these figures transposed onto the places from the excursions, looking exactly the same, hunched in their wheelchairs, squinting into the sun. Paper dolls you move from place to place.

The whole thing makes me afraid of growing old. But then again I have no idea what the world will be like when I’m seventy, eighty, ninety. Maybe old people will be farmed out to a separate world. Maybe gravity will be lighter there, and instead of being trapped in seats under skinny new trees, our frail bones will bounce and we will fly.

Chapter 5 - Dangerous Situations

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Chapter 5 - Dangerous Situations

Vito twirled with the rough hand and slid to the opposite end of his corner bench, his hands raised. He smiled his most winning grin.

“Brakus, so nice to see you,” he drawled, “I really thought we were past all this…” Vito made a pouch of gold materialize and dangled it enticingly at the guards. He stood.

Brakus scowled deeper and advanced towards Vito, moving his hand to his sword. Vito was displeased. This was becoming a dangerous situation.

“You think that little sack can make up for all the times you’ve caused me TROUBLE?!”

Vito shrugged, “I hope so.”

I have this snapshot in my mind of us, from a long time ago. Not that long ago in time, really, but...

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

I have this snapshot in my mind of us, from a long time ago. Not that long ago in time, really, but in us. We’ve grown into new lives, completely new people from those sitting in that snapshot. And it’s not like it’s dear to me; it’s not something I miss. It’s just a summary, a single image of exactly what was wrong with us.

We were at a party, well, we called it a party. It wasn’t like a stereotypical party that filled and trashed the house with cheap disgusting beer and make outs in every corner. It was a party, by all accounts, you shouldn’t have actually attended. It was…lame. Anyway, we were at this party, on Amanda’s porch, all of us talking and some of us singing quietly to ourselves because we thought it made the moment matter. Then you and I sat on the bench while everyone else went upstairs or inside to play the piano, do something they hoped to be emotionally substantial and bonding.

We were so close we could have touched, but didn’t. I made sure there was space, so you could close it. We talked a little, were silent a lot. We stared into the night in front of us. And see, with any other person in the seat next to me, the space would have closed, the night been abandoned for my gaze, and something would have happened. Maybe not the something that I wanted at the time, but something. The moment would have meant something. It would have mattered.

But you didn’t move, so I didn’t move. I believed that you should have gone first, so I was open, receptive, waiting. I was ashamed, not as strong then as I am now. I had not learned the value of just saying what wasn’t being said; I still believed that keeping it unsaid made us mature and intellectual. I sat there, clutching this pillow like my life, tension stretched between you and me over that stupid space, while I sat screaming at you in my mind, please do something please do something please close the space please come close. You were frozen, a statue. You did nothing. And so I took that nothing as a something, as we both always did back then.

And looking at that snapshot, I know now that you knew then. You knew, you always knew. You fucking bastard, you knew, and still you waited for me to act, to see if I would, to watch me like an experiment unfolding before you. You let me cling to my life on the edge of a seat that you refused to share with me.

I have another snapshot, not of you and me, but me and him. It looks the same on the surface, on a porch, on a bench, with a space, staring into the night. The difference is, where you were a statue, he moved. He immediately placed his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him. No bullshit, no games, just honesty. Openness. Saying what was unsaid but shouldn’t be.

I haven’t heard from you in six months. But now I don’t care. You can keep doing nothing, and I won’t give a shit. Nothing doesn’t have to mean something anymore.