Sparrow in Saturn R̶e̶t̶u̶r̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ Reborn

This is a test

rswndrlst — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 00:37:46 GMT

Test post

LJ Idol 10: Week 21 Home Game: Turn back or forge ahead?

rswndrlst — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 21:41:29 GMT

Musings 6.25.17

One of my favorite things to do is write in invisible ink

I change the font color to match the background

so I can’t read over what I’ve written so far

and have to just keep forging ahead

It’s all I can do to turn off the criticizing voice

Who is always afraid that I’m wasting my time

Writing nonsense

A useless and unsuitable hobby

But it’s all I can do

Keeping all of those way more interesting realities

Shifting around in my brain from constantly distracting me from real life

Especially in the current oppressive heat wave

In the feedback loop I seem to have found myself in

It’s hard not to feel like reality is purgatory

I have changed my hairstyle more times in the past year

than I had in my whole life up to then

Some believe a witch’s power is in her hair

And that to cut it would diminish her spirit

Do you see where this is headed?

Because we should really rethink the standards for bodily autonomy in our metaphors

Self expression and self definition

I could be so much more than my self

Neurotic, witchey, Fey kin,

bard, baker, seamstress,

lover, survivor,

cannabis enthusiast

Boredom is a dangerous past time

A stark reminder that there is a spark inside me

A faintly glowing ember

Burning brighter every day

Desire

The mystical part of me wishes it was easier to live in-between pages

Become powerful enough to conjure a new reality vivid enough

To break through this monotonous damnation

But it is all words

All meaningless

pointless

repetitive words

The ouroboros

The moments between adventures

Between side quests

And discoveries

Unforgettable journeys

Skipping town on a lark and learning the secret name of the element air

A man

is not

a tree

________________
300 words

LJ Idol 10: Week 21: Current Events

rswndrlst — Sat, 17 Jun 2017 18:36:08 GMT

Here Be Horror, graphic descriptions of violence and death

Liminality

Felix Clark was officially the oldest student at Cooper Creek. His fellow students were chanting about how he was such a jolly good fellow. The youngest of them standing on the long benches and clapping along.

This moment would remain his happiest memory for a long time to come and Felix is surprised at the realization. How can he be so sure of such a thing?Felix wonders as the students are dismissed for the day. Watching as they scatter over the boundary into the city of Crossroads Felix heads toward the Teacherage where a dormitory of sorts had been set up for charity cases; orphans who showed a skill in academics and were worth the investment.

As he steps around the long squat building he squints into the afternoon sun. Felix had been attending Cooper Creek long before they built the bat roost that now sat at the eastern end of the property. A triangular shaped building with a cross on the top, as if someone had lopped off a church steeple and stuck it into the ground. He’d only ventured close enough to experience the smell of their droppings once in all the years since it had appeared. Most of the time the students stayed quite away from the regal looking bat house but the rustle and swish of the bats in flight had become as familiar a sound to Felix as chalk whispering across the surface of a slate.

The cemetery had been there long before the school was built, however, he thinks turning to the south. Felix used to climb the low brick masonry wall that separated the Cooper Creek school grounds from the bone-yard to read the names off the weathered headstones. He repeated them to himself quietly as he fell asleep, assuming the boy in the next cot would think he was saying his prayers.

Felix knows who is truly in charge, in this place most of all, knows that he couldn’t pray loud enough, if he had the desire to try, to be heard over the squall of restless spirits.

Professor Salazar is his favorite teacher because he once loaned Felix a book with beautiful, strange symbols along the spine and embossed in gold leaf in concentric rays across the front cover. Alchemy, the professor had said and Felix still practices the word to himself, likes the feel of it on his tongue.

Professor Loconnis favors Felix too; gave him a blue ribbon in Latin recitation. He had even taught Felix a longer piece to perform for just the teachers after class as they’d all smoked cigars and sang songs with melodies that stuck in Felix’s head for days afterward but he could never recall the words.

Three days after his birthday Felix pushes Susie Marie down the old water well and is beaten for it by the headmaster. Susie is rescued; somehow surviving the initial fall but she is crying and coughing and falls ill. Felix is locked into the room and made sit by her bedside while she cries out in odd tongues during fever dreams.

Felix tries to calm her by placing damp cloths on her forehead but she will not be soothed. It is three days before she dies and the headmaster finally returns.

“Have you learned?” He asks placing a hand on Felix’s shoulder and Felix nods, because he has. Staring into her still open eyes he imagines he can hear the bats circling the building.

The doctor arrives the next day.

The same one who had built the bat roost the year of the quarantine, it was a word Felix only understood to mean “away from something else.” He and the other children were kept at the school to be kept away from whatever the bad thing was for months and Felix had never left the grounds again. The first time he had met the doctor he had given Felix a small toy to play with while he asked Felix questions about himself - a spinning top, Felix thinks but isn’t sure, can’t quite remember.

As he approaches the front of the schoolhouse the doctor looks straight at Felix where he is standing lined up with the other 9th grade boys to greet the esteemed guest. Felix wants to tell him that history will forget Dr. Charles A.R. Campbell. They will think him a crackpot searching for a hokey holistic approach to disease, symbiosis among species, bats in the belfry…

Felix is instantly sure that it is so much more than that when the man turns from him and the connection is broken. Felix wasn’t chosen. They had all been expecting him.

Susie’s death is reported and ruled to have been an unfortunate accident.

Felix sneaks out after his curfew and goes back to the well. He sits with his back against the laid stone ring staring up at the shifting shadow of bats swooping to capture the ever present mosquitoes that he slaps at against his own skin even now the wee vampires, blood-sucking, demon spawn…

He stands then and screams for the bats to eradicate every last one of them, it echoes across the wind and fades away. For a single moment there is silence and then doors creaking on their hinges and boot heels on wooden steps, lanterns swinging in the darkness as the teachers come to stand around him.

“Speak to them Felix,” Professor Eustace urges him and so he does. The night is filled with awful screeching that to Felix becomes the cacophony of a symphony; the Victrola played in Susie Marie’s auntie’s parlor in the big city.

Felix becomes aware that he is being held by the elbow. He is trying to run but he is being dragged back from the swooping bats and back toward the well. Susie was so small.

He grabs her by the wrist and drags her, easily, to the well. He can’t stop himself even though she is begging to be set free.

She had to be sacrificed. Surely they knew. Surely the dawn was approaching even now. They were his teachers but he would lead them into the new day.

There is a murmuring all around him; soft words being said in the first language Felix had ever been taught.

Yes, they were saying. You can speak to them. Yes. You are one of us now. We understand. You must be patient. All will be revealed in time.

Felix lets himself be lead away. He sits through classes the next day unable to speak aloud in any language but passes notes with those sitting closest to him; wonders what Betty Ann Warren’s blood might taste like.

That night he becomes an initiate of The Cooper Creek Order of Locus Amoenus. He swears an oath not to reveal the existence of the order to anyone. Afterward he returns to the cemetery. The doctor is there.

“I have been waiting a long time for this day,” he says.

“Do they speak to you as well?” Felix asks.

“The bats?” The doctor chuckles. “Oh dear boy you have so much yet to learn. No. No. The bats are only agents of true power. They do not speak to you because you are you, because, you are not you at all. You are Ainesford Neath—” The doctor reads from a nearby headstone. “You are Evangeline Morehouse,” he reads from another. “And eventually this body will be buried here and you will be whoever you are then remembering Felix Clark.” The doctor tells Felix waving dismissively at his person.

“Do you wish to know your future Dr. Campbell?”

The man smiles in such a way that Felix knows might intimidate a lesser being. “Your teachers have coddled you, you ungrateful wretch.” The doctor declares and begins to walk away. Felix shouts after him.

“Did you make a bargain doctor? Did you crawl to our father? Or did He seek you out as I was? Where you special enough to have been in His presence by His choosing or are you simply in His debt?”

The old man is already gone and Felix stamps his foot feeling every bit the petulant child he was accused of being. The headmaster’s unsaid words echoing within him. His final test. You must look into their eyes as the soul slips away Felix.

Felix turns toward Fishtrap road, his back to the main schoolhouse. He walks until the grassy lawn gives way to packed earth.

In a few years he will return. Perhaps he will take up the post of classical studies from Loconnis. He imagines it as he crosses the road and humming to himself. For he’s a jolly good fellow. For he’s a jolly good fellow, which nobody can deny.

________________

Inspiration:
http://wfla.com/2017/06/13/pasco-county-fire-station-closed-over-50-bats-found-inside/

Additional Sources:
http://www.popsci.com/charles-campbell-smallpox-and-bed-bug

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3c/Bat_Roost_San_Antonio_Texas.jpg

http://soilandhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/0302hsted/030212campbell/campbelltoc.htm

http://apps.dentoncounty.com/website/HistoricalMarkers/PDFs/Cooper-Creek-Historical-Narrative-Final-Sept-26.pdf

http://tiny.cc/JournalOfMedicine1919

All hail the great and powerful Gary! and many thanks to the LJ Idol community for their consideration.

LJ Idol 10: Week 20: Open Topic

rswndrlst — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 20:21:19 GMT

Of All The Topics So Far (500 Words)

I wish for my writing to be fearless if not effortless

I wish to write for the fun of escaping and the perverse joy it brings to me

Never mind fame and fortune when hypergraphia overtakes me in the middle of the night

Too many tales wanting to be told

Universes full of elegant airships

An underground dance club in a retro-futuristic dystopia

A post-apocalyptic romance, a Mary Sue

In search of a brother who found himself on the wrong side of the law in a barren outpost far from their own

Along the way, Mary meets a handsome drifter who is also the “Traveling Judge” presiding over the brother’s trial

Plot twist, heel turn

Archetypes, alignments

Plot bunnies, anon memes

Gratuitously written death scenes

Just keeping the words going

Weaving a yarn or an old wives tale

Something between monologue and poetry

A breaking the 4th wall soliloquy

The little people have hidden my glasses again

My physical body is shaking but I am not there

Because I am here

Where the action is about to happen

20 seconds into the future

Falling in love with the clacking of the keyboard; I give away all of my secrets

Vague details of how, where and when,the places I have been

A road map, mcguffin, chekov’s gun

I suffer the slings and arrows for the sake of art

The cracks of my heart are still visible where it has been broken and healed imperfectly

A thousand voices whispering to me when I lay down to sleep—

Theoretical and hypothetical conversations never had

Introductions made with sorcerers, succubi, computer hackers, shapeshifters,

A faerie princess framed for murder

Political intrigue, an ethical dilemma

~~Pirate treasure lost to the bottom of the sea like so much salt~~

~~Amid shipwrecked notions, barnacle encrusted possibility~~

When that one friend inevitably asks if I have written anything new I’ll plead The 5th

I will say nothing that might incriminate me further

No comment to benefit the audience who have come to see a spectacle

Scandal, betrayal, the tragic deuteragonist is told to leave and never come back

Holding my pen steady despite self doubt- constant psych out

I write

From one blue hour to the next

Twilight, midnight, 3am

The witching hour and I’m humming to the orishas for protection and inspiration to tell a single story to it’s completion

Dawn

I awake from horrors

The skin of a skull being split open to to reveal the pink and blue insides, sleep paralysis visions of a giant arachnid getting closer before my brain screams at my my body to wake up

Gasping to the surface of reality

Dragged from the depths of subconscious fantasy

~~Abandon all hope~~ Fear only fuels passion

A bet around a fire, a thrilling story told by a young woman about a mad doctor who though himself a god

A thunderclap and lighting bringing a genre to life

Once upon a time is an invitation

I remain unable to refuse

LJ Idol 10: Week 19: Invitation

rswndrlst — Fri, 26 May 2017 23:58:11 GMT

The Herald

There is a shadow hovering in the corner.

Julie cannot turn to her head to look but she knows it is there. Just as she knows her hand is at the end of her arm but she cannot move it. She cannot turn her head; she cannot run.

She can breath though,and she can scream.

She does not want to scream but she opens her mouth anyway and begins to to speak in garbled and odd sentences. She is channeling the speech of the masters of the unseen realms that live in in-between spaces by the cliffs and the valleys that are not valleys but roads and the dessert sands. Among doorways and within the dimensions of time.

The shadow descends and they become one and they begin to rise from the bed. They reach the door and stand on the periphery of all things. They step through into the great unknown, the great beyond, the place where here is not there because it was not the here, but the journey.

Julie gasps awake in the light of the afternoon sun streaming in through the holes in the curtains; the dust swirling in the light. Her head aches and she wants to go back to sleep but feels too restless now.

She moves to sit on the side of the bed and slowly rises to her feet. She slips her robe over her shoulders as she walks toward the washroom.

She stops in the doorway suddenly recalling the feeling in her dream with a vivid clarity when she catches her reflection in the mottled reflecting glass above the sink. Then she remembers with vivid clarity cutting her hair with a pair of sewing shears the night before but then she remembers that there is more hash and moves to the window sill where she left it.

She props herself on the end of the cabinet next to the window breathing in a little hair of the dog and trying to recall more of the visions of the night before.

She reaches into the pocket of her robe and retrieves her notebook but instead of making notes she slides out the small cream colored card she’d stuck in the back.

She’s still feeling impetuous, running her fingertips over her scalp recalling the snip of the scissors as her hair fell away. After she rereads the invitation for the tenth time since she recieved it weeks ago she heads back into the bedroom and begins to pack.

She gets to the end of the pier just in time to watch the last airship lift away from it’s mooring and sail into the clear blue sky. She drops her leather case onto the damp boards beneath her feet and sits on it panting and shading her eyes to watch “The Sailing Junkband” get smaller and smaller.

She's walking back to the boarding house when she sees the tinkerer's cart. She looks back up the street weighing her options. She's heard traveling tinkers will sometimes take on passengers and she did go through all the trouble of packing. She decides it's worth a try before giving up entirely.

He is standing beside the caravan holding a flaming torch and working on some gizmo when she approaches with her hood up to hide her unseemly cropped locks.

"Excuse me, I am looking to ride west,” Julie says loudly, akwardly.

He looks up from his work and turns off the torch.

"What reason have yuou to be heading west?" The tinker asks in a watery voice.

"I'd rather not say."

He nods and turns back to his instrument.

"Someone I love is in trouble," she says. "I need to warn them. I am — it’s not safe for me here."

"It isn’t safe for an unescorted lady most places in the twelve kingdoms, I think you will find."

"I can take care of myself."

"Of that I have no doubt. Do you believe one can find what they are looking for by running away?" He shakes his head in response to his own question. "You girl do not know what you seek and so you will never know when you have found it."

"I can’t stay here," she says, it is the truth at least.

"Can you drive a mech horse?" He asks motioning to the steam powered mechanical next to his cart.

"I can learn," she says.

"The truth suits you young miss."

"You know I am older than I look."

"To be sure, but, when you are as old as I am there is naught that surprises ye much."

"So will you take me along?"

The tinker smiles and waves a beckoning hand to her.

LJ Idol 10: Week 18: Intersection: The Distance Between Us

rswndrlst — Thu, 18 May 2017 04:27:42 GMT

Full Text Below Audio

Distance Means So Little...

You protected me even back then Layla
I can say to you now,
And wonder at the bond that has made us soul sisters
Despite all the odds

I was a queermo in a small town
a bad influence on my peers
Because I was intrinsically different

Afraid to test the theory
There was this ever growing chasm between the things that you knew
and I did not
My very thoughts damming me to eternal hellfire

The color guard captain who mixed a clear bitter liquid into our juice when her parents weren’t home

But I remained the bad influence

Because my mother was scandalous
in the small town
where you protected me without my ever even knowing

There were times I spent nights on my knees sobbing to a deity
Who never answered my prayers

I found love
in the arms of a troubled young man who was born into a female body
We picked the scabs off each others souls until we were raw
because we liked the taste of each other’s blood

Grasping the phone to my ear at 2am
I will never make it through this Layla...

You comforted me, until I shed my skin again

I never tell you how I am welcomed into a coven of witches who danced with the cycles of the moon and was gifted with intuition that I still don't always trust in

Or how for a time I became a unicorn

Couples with abundance invite me into their hearts and their beds
I’ve never really believed in monogamy
Love is a renewable resource, I am told

They were right not to trust me
I am a bad influence

But I dedicate my yoga practices to you
Sister of My Heart
Joyful in knowing you have found true happiness and true love

The universe keeps us walking a perpendicular path
Despite my wonky moral compass

I’m a rebel by nature
Restless philosopher
Compulsive wanderer

I come to believe in a connection to the earth mother
Goddess, Creatrix
Oh no, give me the blue pill
I want to go back into the matrix

Because they called me a heretic
when I gave up on begging on my knees to an absent father

I am blissful in my sinfulness
the scandal doesn’t fall far from the apple, I guess
I just don’t think people change

Then there is you Soul Sister, the eternal optimist
We share laughter and tears
Across the miles, for hours

I never tell you that I light candles with intention
I whisper to myself that hope is a light in the darkness
and try to believe
you can’t see, but I roll my eyes
every time you tell me that miracles are real

I was born below the poverty line
A capitalist plebeian
Cog in the wheel
Who woke up from the American dream
To find myself thumbing rides along the great American Highway
Relying on the kindness of strangers
while writing letters to a Buddhist priestess I met in California

I called you from the last pay phones on earth and you were the only one who never asked 'What I was doing with my life…'

Hey Layla,
I made it back to New Jersey,
not sure I’m gonna stay
but maybe I could come by—

You took me in when my mother couldn’t
Couldn’t face me, couldn’t deal

Felt hat over my dreadlocks and tattered trousers
my outsides finally matched my insides

We sat on your couch and traded stories
For hours
Here together after so much time

I had a dream you were a bird, you said

I almost gave up so many times Layla, I said

And I almost would again

The wings of my soul so often caged by circumstance
I have become an expert escape artist
As destructive as the wind

One hundred bucks and and a greyhound ticket
and I’m on my way again

These days I am afraid Soul Sister

Afraid for my gay tribe who are still being stoned to death for the way that they express love

I am afraid
For my spanglish speaking, olive skinned
Boricua familia

My own fragile multi racial identity
My Caribbean roots that survived in the rhythm of my hips

Afraid to mispronounce the beautiful words
That sit on my uninitiated tongue

Soul sister

I want you to hate this man who calls himself a leader
because of the boy who grabbed your pussy without your permission

For those who are told that their own bodies are less important than their potential reproduction
As the numbers increase exponentially
Poisoning the planet with our progress

My faith in humanity fails

I envy a connection to your God
Who molded his image in clay
And then took out a part of that creation
To create a new form that together would replicate themselves forever after

And eventually convince others to take up arms in the name of their maker

Now, a country founded on freedom from injustice and persecution
Is closing it’s doors

Good Bless America——

I feel the Earth Mother crying out in desperation

I attend marches
Leading chants in support of those that shall inherit the earth

Maybe I’m just jealous I won’t be there to ride with my great great grand nieces like Furiosa across the wasteland

I have the heart of an anarchist Soul Sister
I can’t confess this to you

Xenophobia
Propaganda
Misogyny

These are words I can't say to you

Or when my grandmother tells me that 'the Fifties' were just the best

Better Living Through Chemistry
Plastics Make it Possible

Make America Great Again——

A good slogan always wins

The Mad Men
Are you now or have you ever been?

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean

I am afraid to lose you Soul Sister

For my hands are unclean and my heart is impure

Afraid for a day we may end up on the opposite sides of a divisive war
__________________

This has been Part 1 of my Intersection with lolaslaughter
Here is the link to her entry
Part Two

Here's the link to read all the entries for this round and vote for as many as you like!
LJ Idol Week 18 Poll

LJ Idol 10: Week 14: Topic 4: Nevermind

rswndrlst — Sun, 07 May 2017 23:02:06 GMT

Allusions to sex work, including descriptions of consentual wax play and drug use

They Say Beyond The City Walls There Are No Cameras

I duck into the alley behind The Parsonage, pressing my hand against the bleeding wound and trying to hold back gasping coughs.

“Janie you look like—”

“I gotta see her Tony.”

“She’s in number ten tonight but—”

I don’t wait to hear the rest as I stumble to the door at the end of the alley.

Tony calls after me but I ignore him as the door swings open and I nearly fall into the corridor. I support myself against the wall with one hand, the other still pressed against my side, as I shuffle towards the door marked ten.

The screen on door ten is blank and I tap it between pulling at my clothes trying to find a barter token, tears stinging my eyes. I give up completely, desperately, and bang against the door with all the strength I have left.

“Sweets,” I cry out, “Sweets!”

My vision starts to blur and I’m swaying forward as the door finally opens.

I’m suddenly in her arms and I breath in her scent, holding on to it like a dying man’s last wish. I hear her voice as if it’s underwater and very far away as everything goes dark.

*****

I blink awake in unfamiliar surroundings. I’m in a bed and she is there; sitting in a chair by the corner. She’s saved my life again.

“I prayed for you. I prayed for you all night.” She says softly, angrily.

She stands. She reaches into her pocket and then tosses a fistful of barter tokens onto the bed, I lift one with shaking fingers; my thumb running over the imprinted image on the side of one, Amalyen, the patron saint of lost souls. Fitting.

Sweets reaches into her pocket and pulls out more; tossing them onto the bed.

“All of these —”

It’s a year of wages, it’s every token I’ve ever spent on her. She said a petition for me for each one.

She stares at me, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Thank you.” I whisper through cracked lips.

"That's all you have to say?"

"Sweets, I —"

"Nevermind," she says. "I have to get back to work."

She leaves; slamming the door as she goes.

Three Months Earlier

He counts out the change into his palm and then drops the barter tokens into my outstretched one, my gloves are so worn thin the tips of three fingers are visible. I snatch the small box of ancient birthday candles off the counter and slip it into my back pocket. I pull up my hood and step out from under the florescent lit awning over the trading post counter and keep my head down following the crowd until I turn into the alley behind The Parsonage.

“Hey Tony,” I say softly to the man leaning against the brick wall.

“Sweets is in four,” he says. I nod and head deeper into the darkness.

Through a metal door is a hallway with a series of numbered doors. I stop at the fourth one. The screen next to the door tells me that besides Sweets the room is unoccupied. I'm relieved I don't have to wait my turn tonight.

I swipe across the screen and drop a token into the slot. The door opens and She leans out; a tumble of blonde curls over one bare shoulder.

When her eyes meet mine, her smile deepens.

Inside the booth Sweets wraps her arms around me and I drop my pack to the floor. “It's been a while,” she says softly into my shoulder.

I pull the box of candles out of my pocket and hold them out to her.

“Yeah?” She asks with a grin.

I nod.

She moves to the the metal cabinet across the small square both and takes out one of those snap cold packs from a first aide kit. I try not to think about why Sweets would be issued a first aide kit as I lean against the wall next to the door; my hands fisted into the front pockets of my cargos.

She turns back to me and there's that smile again. I close my eyes and let my head fall back against the wall and then she's there, in my space, whispering in my ear. She kisses my neck and coaxes me into taking off my jacket. It lands on the dusty metal floor with a soft thump. I smell her light the match. I open my eyes to watch her light one of the pastel stripped candles. It burns quickly and we both watch the wax drip to the floor. She lights a new one off the stub and drops the stub to the ground.

I pull up the sleeve of my left arm with my right hand. She lets the wax drip onto the exposed skin. I hiss and she presses the cold pack over the spot. I put my right hand over the pack and she lights a fresh candle, the blue wax drips and hardens on my skin again.

Sweets goes down to her knees and raises the hem of my shirt. She lets the wax wax drip over my abdomen. I cry out and she looks up at me, the firelight shining in her eyes.

“Is it really your birthday?” Sweets asks me later blowing refer smoke into the air.

I give a noncommittal shrug as I bend over the edge of the cot to tie my boots.

Her mouth quirks up. “You must have some serious issues with your momma, honey.”

“Don't I pay you so we don't have to talk about my momma?”

Sweets sits up then and I stand retrieving my shirt from the floor.

It's not why and we both know it. My government issued wristband beeps then alerting me that I should eat something soon.

I grab my pack and jacket and press the release button on the door.

“Hey,” She calls after me. “Don't be a stranger Janie.”

****
I sit at the counter looking at the scratches in the metal.

“I will give you five meal cards for that packet.”

I put my hand over the object in question and turn my head away from the female voice.

“Oh c'mon I won't tell. I swear.” The voice continues.

I clear my throat and slid the packet into my vest pocket. “It's uh, it's my last one.”

“Well that's just my luck. If you happen to come across any more...” She slides a plastic calling card into my line of sight.

Her name, Priscilla Damon, is printed in a blocky font over the QR code that I make no move to scan. It's the blue star in the corner that gets my attention and I'm moving to my feet before I even think about it.

She's wearing plain clothes but has a badge on her belt.

“Don't try to run, I just want to ask you a few questions.”

I hold my hands out in front of me as I look around. She slips the calling card into her breast pocket and takes out a small tablet. “I'm looking for information on this woman.” She turns the tablet to me.

It's a picture of Harper. It's slightly dated and I have to remind myself not to grin as I sit back down at the counter and look back up at the detective's face.

“Glenna Flynn Harper. Age fifty-two. She's been under special surveillance for three years. She failed to check in on her monitor yesterday. Known associates include Matthew Fairbanks former CEO of Vine Corp. International. He fulfilled a one year sentence in the Alpha Sigma Farming Quadrant, but his current whereabouts are unknown, and when your were fourteen Glenna Harper was declared your legal guardian.”

She slides her finger on the tablet bringing up another profile with a picture of me off a public train camera in the corner.

“Janine Mason also known as Janie. Age thirty-one. Last assigned residence, number 443 West City Housing Building 6 -”

“Listen, whatever you guys might think, me and Harper -”

“Where would she go Janie? That's all I want to know.”

“Yeah, I'm not telling you anything.”

She considers me for a minute then puts away the tablet. She holds out her calling card again. “In case you change your mind.” I pass my wristband over the card and turn away.

Out of the corner of my eye I watch as she looks around and then pulls out her rations book. She counts out five meal cards and holds them out to me. I tilt my head, “Isn't this like entrapment or something?”

“I'm not going to report you to the vice squad on your birthday,” She says.

I shake my head and look down. I pull the packet out and slide it across the counter as she slides the plastic meal cards toward me.

She rips the packet open and pours it into her coffee. She takes a sip and makes a face I would consider giving the ration cards back just to see again. She holds the cup up in a quasi salute and leaves.

I sigh and turn back to the counter. I pull another packet of sugar out of my pack and pour it into my own cup of coffee.

“Hey Janie is that Pinkerton giving you a hard time?” Seymour asks coming over to put a steaming bowl in front of me.

“Nah.” I glance back over my shoulder.

“'Cause you're if you're in some trouble I know a guy-”

“It's not me.”

He regards me silently. I sip my coffee. I lean forward shoveling some of Seymour's famous stew onto my spoon. “Harper got out of the city,” I say around a mouthful of stew.

Seymour whistles. “No shit?”

I nod, chewing. I swallow. Devour another spoonful. “Hey you got anymore of those magazines?”

“The print editions? Janie I will never understand your priorities.”

I count out three of the ration cards generously provided by Private Eye Priscilla Damon and pass them over the counter.

“Yeah, that's not how it works.”

“Give 'em to the junkies out back.”

“Hey, I don't need that sort in my fine establishment.”

I rub my fingers over the counter and hold up my hand showing the black smudges on my fingers.

Seymour grumbles but puts the vouchers into his apron. “You've got a big heart but you're a real smart ass. Next time those vice cops come asking around, maybe I know where they should look.”

I hold my hands over my heart. “Is that a declaration of love Seymour because well -” I pull a wry face at him.

He points a warning finger at me as he walks away. I drain my coffee as I stand up and take my jacket off the back of the chair.

I take shortcuts back to the West City Housing block. I stop to look up at the pitch black sky. There's too much light pollution to see any stars in the city but I imagine them and play with the star map on my wristband for awhile. I scroll through my contact list. I stop at one labeled “Don't call her.”

It's Harper's direct line. I mentally curse her. Happy fucking birthday to me. Fuck plausible deniablity. She should have told me what she was planning. I delete the number, it's no good to me now.

_________________________

AN: This is part of a larger story set in a technologically advanced society within a heavily guarded police state with strict regulations on resources and behaviour. Barter tokens are often used by the lower classes instead of the official digital currency, although this practice is illegal. The loophole is that Barter Tokens are recognized as Religious Medals stamped with images of saints and are gifted with the expectation that the recipient will include a good word for you in their daily devotionals. Citizens must apply for a travel visa to leave the city for any reason. Sweets is indentured in her service to pay off debts to the government and has been working "under the table" for a wealthy club owner who took on her debts. Wax play with those small multicolored birthday candles is generally not recommended within the kink community for safety reasons, but when you're living in a dystopian authoritarian regime you work with what you got. I encourage research before engaging in such activity.

LJ Idol 10: Week 16: Thunderclap

rswndrlst — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 23:02:38 GMT

Cue Thunder

“I have had a vision mistress that Sir Henry will be lost at sea,” says the young actress crossing to the proscenium.

In the small box on stage left a small towheaded boy watches through a peephole as the drawing room of a town house begins transforming into a scene of the open ocean; a back drop painted to look like a churning sea with white capped waves is lowered and a small replica of a double masted ship is rocked back and forth by unseen stagehands.

A soft but sharp whistle interrupts the boy’s enchantment and he turns to the prompter who is glaring crossly at him.

The call-boy moves away from the peephole and the prompter whispers fiercely at him, “Git to the green room lad and tell the actors there’ll be notes after the rehearsal and to meet in the auditorium.”

The boy takes off on his errand and the prompter whistles into a speaking tube signaling the orchestra leader who begins a dramatic overture. He lowers the gas jet and then pulls a cord labeled THUNDER.

Above the fly rail a bell tinkles to cue the crew men to roll wooden balls down a series of chutes to imitate the sound of rolling thunder above the heads of the would be audience.

“You should really audition for the next season Thomas,” Charles Crowther says to the young man next to him as they load the balls into the narrow wooden trough.

“You think I could do it?” Thomas asks. He'd mentioned to Charles when they first started working together that he deeply admired the craft of acting and could live in the theatre.

“You have to follow your heart Thomas.” Charles says now. "I've seen how you watch the blocking rehersals, mouthin' the words. If you want something, you have to take it."

Thomas pauses with a wooden thunder ball in his hand and is about to say something but instead asks, “Do you ever think of being down there Charlie? On stage?”

“Naw, I have a fear of standing out in front of a crowd, everyone lookin’ at me.”

Thomas laughs softly. “Stage fright, truly?”

Charles raises his eyebrows and nods emphatically.

“But you would be quite the dashing hero though,” Charles says after a minute.

“You think I’m dashing Charlie?”

Charles clears his throat and moves his eyes down. “I think you already know the answer to that,” he says dropping the last ball into the chute.

“You know, I’ve heard, the only way to resist temptation is to yield to it,” Thomas whispers as the artificial thunder echoes in the rafters around them.

“Oh have you now?”

Thomas steps in closer letting their shoulders touch. Both of them wishing they had the courage to make the move; to take the kiss they are both afraid to want.

“Not here Thomas,” Charles warns him in a wistful tone.

Thomas turn and looks into the other man’s eyes.

Charles smiles but steps away. “I have to get down to help raise the olio," he says. "If Finnbar ain’t been shanghaied I’m going to ring his neck for not showing up tonight."

Charles takes a deep breath and turns back to Thomas.

“Would you- do you want to go out for a pint after the run?”

Thomas feels himself blushing and manages to keep his voice steady as he says, “If you’re buying.”

Charlie shakes his head as he climbs down to the stage level.

Thomas watches the ropes move through the pulleys and the sandbags rise up in counterweight.

Somewhere down the chute another crew man pulls the board to release the balls for the drop into the next chute and there is an unexpected creak of splintering wood.

A moment later a cry goes up from below and Thomas hears the rapid footsteps of men running. The network of platforms shaking with the reverberations.

“Someone get a doctor!” Thomas hears someone say.

“I’m afraid it’s too late,” another voice says.

Thomas moves quickly then, trying to get down the wooden structure without slipping but the feeling in the pit of his stomach is threating to overtake him.

By the time Thomas reaches him Charles is long gone. A thunder ball had fallen through a crack in the chute and hit him squarely on the head before he would have even known to get out of the way.

Thomas disappears into the trap room below the stage. He wants to scream but holds it in, undoes his linen neckcloth and holds up to his face to muffle his sobs.

A year later Thomas finds himself standing in the wings of the Tyne Theater again.

This time he is waiting for his cue to go on stage in front of an audience for the very first time.

He turns to the actress standing next to him, her thick layer of stage makeup almost grotesque in the semi-darkness. There’s a clap of thunder above their heads and the actress looks over at him. “There’s no storm in this show,” she says looking up. “Are the crew playing a game of nine pins up there?"

Thomas smiles to himself. It’s Charlie, wishing him well on his first performance.

Thomas almost couldn’t bring himself to come back to this place but when he saw the call for auditions in the paper he heard Charlie’s voice in his head. You should follow your heart Thomas.

He had sensed Charlie’s spirit during rehearsals and late night costume fittings.

He missed him so much sometimes he would ache with longing but he knew that Charlie was proud of him; is reminded as another actor steps up behind him and wonders in a whispered tone if it had begun raining again and hoping he had enough coin to take a hackney back to his rooms that night.

Thomas says a silent thank you to the ghost of his first love for the preemptive applause as he steps into the limelight.

_________________
a great article (with a video) about one of the few remaining working thunder runs

Update: Here is the link to the poll for this week http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2067014&mode=enter

LJ Idol 10: Week 15: Patchwork Heart

rswndrlst — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 23:02:40 GMT

Intersubjectivity

She shoulders her laptop bag and steps into the aisle joining the off boarding line.

When she makes it to the side of the bus she retrieves her pack, checking to be sure Mimzy her stuffed traveling companion is secured to the side, before hoisting the large pack up onto her shoulder and following the crowd into the passenger waiting area inside. She scans the inside of the station noting the restroomsand,the closed for the night food counter.

She checks the clock on the wall and the time on her ticket. She’ll have to wait here for an hour before the next bus north.

She sets her pack on the floor up against the one long bench seatand sits back, sprawls out her legsand stretches her arms.

She reaches into the back pocket of her denim cutoffs and pulls out the worn paper folded in fourths; smooths it out on her knee. It looks like one of those trope movie ransom notes, cut and pasted words in different styles and colors and, she supposes, in a way it sort of was. It was a map that would lead to the answer. It was more than a game for her it was the only thing she knew.

___________
He sees her before she gets on the bus.

Looking out the window he watches her drop off her pack to the baggage attendant. He waits for her to board and tries to subtly look over the seats.

She sits across the aisle and one seat up. He has a perfect view when she settles in and opens her laptop. He hadn’t bothered to try the wifi signal on this bus but he had all of his clues already.

He tries to div out what it is about her that makes him know she is another player. He’d become so accustomed to being surrounded by NPCs that he’d started to believe that other players didn’t exist IRL.

He wonders if she’s ever met The Man in the Gabardine Suit as he thumbs on his ereader. He starts highlighting his favorite phrases in blue and synchronicities in green.

__________

They make it to the first rest stop at 4am which she considers lucky so she decides to go inside.

Hi. I’m User51, he says extending his hand. He’s tall and skinny with a backpack over one shoulder and a woolen cap. Please verify that you are human? He smiles at her like it’s an inside joke.

Is this an, I’ll show you mine sort of thing? She asks.

He shrugs.

It’s been awhile since she’s interacted with another player. She had never really considered herself a "team player." Although, she could be irrational in her pleasure of simple efficiency. The ratio of output to input. Balance.

She pulls her map out of the side of her day packand unfolds it carefully holding it up for him with both hands.

He reaches out but she snatches it back before he can touch it.

Okay, okay, he says, still smiling, holding both hands up and then making a show of putting them into the pockets of his hoodie.

She holds it up again slowly. He nods and takes a step forward.

He looks it over it for a minute before looking up into her eyes.

What’s the one that got you started? He asks, stepping back again.

Skynet is watching. You?

The best is yet to come, he says glancing back over his shoulder.

She folds the map back up and returns it to the pocket.

C’mon, he says motioning to the small arcade room. She looks out the window at their bus waiting in the parking lot but he’s already started to walk away when she looks back. She hurries to follow.

We got a quarter? He asks when she falls into step next to him.

She takes one out of the lower pocket of her cargos and places it on his waiting palm. He feeds it into a pinball machine.

We like pinball? She asks dryly.

He tilts his head toward the display where the high scores are scrolling by in orange pixelated letters. User51 in the top three spots.

You’ve passed this way before, she says.

Bent over the machine he pulls his map out with one hand and launches the ball with the other. He holds it out to her. She makes no move to take it and his hand flies back to the paddle button on the side still clutching the paper in his hand.

He’s intent on the game so she reaches her arm under his and slips the paper out careful not to tear it and unfolds; reads while he plays.

__________

The round ends and he turns away from the machine.

Is this the part where you say come with me if you want to live? She asks with a smirk.

This is the part where you tell me your name, he says.

She stares at him for a minute before holding out her hand.

Meta4, she says. He shakes her hand and when she offers his map back to him, he takes it before walking over to the air hockey table.

She drops in the quarters and takes up her striker.

Personally, I think the whole thing; it’s more like chess and less like a virtual scavenger hunt, he says as they pass the puck across the low friction table.

Is that a Hal9000 joke? Really? That’s what your map is telling you? She’s indignant and he likes the way she uses her whole body to express her opinion.

You want it to be real. He realizes; standing and forgetting to protect his zone.

No, I just want it to make sense, she says as the disk clinks into the slot under the rail on his side of the table.

But time travel though? He asks looking at her skeptically.

Absolutely. And just so we’re clear AI took over a long time ago.

He pulls a face at her like he can’t believe she even has to say it before retreving the puck.

__________

What’s the ultimate question? She asks him later when they are back on the bus.

Am I the only one? He answers.

What’s your favorite scary movie?

I can never pick favorites, she says.

They fall into a companionable silence for miles.

He lets her read the passages he’s highlighted in his reader. She shows him how she folds pages into the center of her notebook to organize her stories.

He unfolds a set of pages that’s folded the opposite way under another set of pages.

This here is what we call a subreddit, he says.

She laughs and opens a page to let him read.

__________

We’re here, he says a few nights later motioning for her to close her eyes just before the driver throws on the harsh cabin lights. She turns her head to his shoulder, breathes out, blinking slowly before fully opening her eyes and looking up.

They go inside the station and share an order of dry scrambled eggs and salty french fries.

When he comes out from the bathroom she holds up their maps that she has bonded together with duct tape.

He hugs her and they walk together to the gate.

Later that night he gently wakes her.

I got a new one, he says, his face illuminated by the glow of his laptop screen. She moves to look as he tilts it toward her.

PATCHWORK HEART reads the captcha.

She smiles. He pulls the computer back into his lap and takes a screen shot of the page.

She takes out their map and runs her finger along the places she had stitched it together. Then she leans overand kisses his cheek.

Image is a collection of cutand pasted distorted captcha phrasesand numbers with Patchwork H3art in the middleand "User51 <3 Meta4" under the words "verify that you are not a bot"

_____________

*NPC means non player character. IRL means in real life. AI stands for artificial intelligence.

* Intersubjectivityand Captcha the flagwere two of the intersection week topics in Season 9. I was out by then but had this vague idea.

*I am glad these two finally got together, they’ve been in my head for so long geez.

LJ Idol 10: Week 14 Sudden Death Write Off: Open Topic

rswndrlst — Sun, 16 Apr 2017 00:20:55 GMT

Full text below audio

there's a string of curse words near the end

Sestina: The Main Character (MC)

This is a story about an MC afflicted with passion.
Who, like the restless needle of a compass,
was forever seeking the Horizon.
< spoiler alert > the ending of this story is already foretold
and is the same for every single being in creation.
It’s been said we’re all just players of some unseen narrator.

A nameless, unknowable, spiteful, narrator
who in the throes of passion
might decide to kill his creation.
So, this MC has a heartbeat like a needle of a spiraling compass.
For as is true for all, inevitably, death has been foretold.
Even for this MC who loves a thing known as, horizon.

They’re forever stupidly longing for that ever distant, damned Horizon.
Yes, damned, is the opinion of this narrator,
Who is actually wondering if there is even a point, if it’s all been foretold?
But I digress and the MC curses the will of my passion
as we drop them on the shore with naught but map and compass.
Do you see, that this MC is a stubborn, monstrous creation?

(I do confess I also find this fixed verse form to be a monstrous creation.)
What would happen if the MC ever reached their figurative horizon?
Perhaps an HEA* is greater than my abilities can compass?
But what good is an MC to a narrator
if they do not have passion?
We must all live with knowing that eventual, ending foretold.

From your very first breath, there being a last has been foretold.
It’s a bargain; the uncanny act of creation.
But back to the MC with all that all-consuming passion.
(Wanting so badly to reach that god damned fucking gosh darn horizon.)
The one who would dare defy the narrator
but is just a feckless wanderer lead by a faulty compass.

There are always dropped stitches and pricked fingers within the compass
of the tapestry woven as it is being foretold.
Does every narrator
hate his creation
for seeking beyond the horizon?
Being able, as the other is not, to fulfill their passion?

In the end the MC lets passion become the compass
and each moment a horizon. The last moment cannot be foretold,
the MC learns, for any man, or his creation, or even a humble narrator.

_{*HEA stands for Happily Ever After}

with much thanks as always to lolaslaughter for being the best cheerleader a gal could have

LJ Idol 10: Week 14: Campfire stories

rswndrlst — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 21:43:54 GMT

When I sat down to write this week my Camp NaNoWriMo characters for this session decided to ~~get involved~~ take over.This part is told from the POV of a tiny shape shifting magical being named Sparkie but who has just been referred to as "the imp" by Claudius, his Master's rich (possibly nefarious) benefactor.

Sparkie's Story

He doesn’t mind being called Imp. Even though that’s technically not what he is.

He was brought forth from a wisp of smoke and evolved over his journey’s with Tremaine. Though he insists he was made from flame and this led the man to dub him Sparkie. Spark, Sparkle, and sometimes Firestarter.

Names are what you make them, Tremaine tells him.

That was one of his first lessons. They will identify you as what you mean to them.

Good morning sunshine.

Rise and shine super star.

Get some rest now little friend.

Tremaine needed a companion and Sparkie learned that meant growing up quickly; becoming curious about the world around him. Figuring out the important things.

With Tremaine it was easy. He was exuberant in the life he was leading. The great treasure hunter. Notorious.

Their first time aboard an aether ship together made Sparkie understand completely.

________

Sparkie loved Ree from the first. She was the young ward of Tremaine’s benefactor, a man named Claudius, who mostly sent Tremaine to exotic lands searching for rare books.

Ree was the one who taught Sparkie about love and how the heart could ache.

They had tea parties.

He taught her how to play pirates.

She always wanted to wear a cape.

She read out loud to him from great leather bound tomes.

A is for abalone.

B is for bishop.

Their visits were always too short and by the time they returned it was, dancing at balls, curating the library, needlepoint, baking apple pies, card games and chess games.

And then one day during a round of Beggar My Neighbor,

Do you think fairies are real Sparkie?

I am real.

Yes, but you are a dragon.

So dragons exist but not fairies Ree?

Can you truly become fire? Like Trem says.

He wishes to please her. To make her laugh. To be that which she enjoys.

He sighs and feels alight. He com-busts in all directions. Summoning fire hurts, consumes.

He has known he is Wisp. He is soft scents on gentle breezes.

But he had become an actual pirate by then. He had learned to wield.

He was also Weapon.

He was steel and stone. He was pure magic. Born of smoke. Summoned by a lonely man on moonless night in the forest of Everglen.

_____________

Tremaine chooses each piece of wood and lays down incense and herbs. He says words of significance and then tosses a match dipped in sulfur onto the pile.

Nothing happened for a long time,Tremaine would say when telling this story. He went about and made camp. Heated a bit of food and coffee along the edge of the fire. Just as he was about to doze off, a bit of smoke swirled about his shoulder and then hovered before him and dissipated into the air leaving behind the daydream of a cloud of fine particles, an entire life lived in but a single breath.

Sparkie doesn’t call his master by his surname, like most, when they are alone. He is teacher, he is summoner, spell caster…demon catcher.

You are not a demon Sparkie, Tremaine insists but Sparkie is not so sure.

He doesn't mind being called Imp because he secretly wishes it was closer to the truth.

LJ Idol 10: Week 13: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here

rswndrlst — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 00:08:10 GMT

Bye 2

:(

LJ Idol 10: Week 11: The Blue Hour

rswndrlst — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 00:14:12 GMT

Alive and Well in The Sunshine State

The smell of the breeze through the open windows

The fading light being swallowed by the darkness

The the hum of the highway

The susurrus of swaying palms

Brings me outside

It’s still too bright for the street lamps, casting a cozy orange glow on the atmosphere

The honeyed shadows of the golden hour

Fading to blue

And then black

Florida

You are trying to seduce me

With your sunsets

When

Watching the sun sink behind the waves of the pacific ocean
on the beaches of California

Is still so fresh in my memory

Means you don’t stand a chance

You are trying to tell me your secrets

Standing on a knife edge

I am the fireflies of my childhood

in New Jersey

Caught between palms

Innocent

Curious

I am trying to belong

Trying to confide in you

The restlessness in my spirit

The pain in my heart

You have given me a safety net

Florida

You fill me with this

An unexpected stillness

I am captivated

By the white hot glow

Of the crescent moon

Framed by the clouds

The stars that hide in the daylight

A place for sleep

A final rest

Florida

I beg you for another sunrise

Wake me with a gentle caress

Tempt me with mornings full of expectation

Give me anticipation

Make me proud of the sweat on my skin

As winter becomes spring

I want to burst forth

Like the jasmine blossoms

And the avocados

Florida

I’ve been down before

And afraid and alone

In the inbetween spaces

Is where I have made my home

This time

I am ready to fight the darkness

The scars of a life

Having been told

Having made the journey

Finding myself

Florida

This is not the final chapter

This is not the thing that breaks me

________________________________
300 Words
;

LJ Idol 10: Week 10: Take A Hike!

rswndrlst — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 23:14:54 GMT

She Takes To the Road

She zips up the bag and slings it over her shoulder wishing she had some whiskey to wash down the regret. She grabs her felt hat and resists looking over her shoulder as she heads out the door; tying her bandanna around her wrist and tightening the knot with her teeth.

She walks along the side of the road judging the cars that come around the bend; turning to walk
backwards and holding her thumb up in the air when she feels the right vibe.

She keeps moving. Trying to put as much distance between herself and that mess she left behind.

She looks up and sees a hawk circling overhead. She raises her arms and closes her eyes. Imagines for just a minute that she could lift off the ground and fly away.

She takes a deep breath and gives in totally to the fantasy for a moment, tilting her arms as if she where a small child pretending to be an airplane.

She hears another car coming and turns to look. It’s a white minivan. Soccer moms don’t tend to pick up hitchhikers but the woman slows as she approaches.

“Give you a ride someplace?”

_________________

She makes up a story about who she is and how she came to be walking along the side of the road with her whole life in a backpack.

She’s 25 (give or take six years but somehow being under thirty makes her seem more trustworthy and like less of a fuck up). She just graduated college. She just came to the area to visit family.

She smiles. She laughs at jokes; watches the scenery. Calculates the miles in her head against the cash in her pocket.

She hops out at a strip mall. She waves until the car turns onto the highway. Then she crosses the street and goes into the greyhound station.

Thankfully there isn’t a security guard checking tickets at the door so she finds a bench to sit on and leans her head back cradling her back pack on her lap.

_________________

They pull off into a coastal rest area with fire pits and campsites. She says her goodbyes to her traveling companions and she hops out to pitch her tent. Her new neighbors offer her scrambled eggs and rice wrapped in tortillas.

She’s only a few hundred miles from the punk house.

In the early hours of dawn she peeks out of the tent flap to watch a few of the caravans drive on down the highway.

She stays wrapped up her blanket listening to the waves in the distance until the fog burns off and then crawls out of her tent. She breaks down her camp and hikes up to the highway on-ramp. She makes a sign to prop against her bag and then changes it after an hour.

_________________

She sends postcards to the addresses scribbled on the inside cover of her notebook. Dropping them in postboxes like sowing seeds she will never get to see flower. Her boots kicking up dust. Clinging to her like memories, stamping her feet on the dry earth trying to shake it off, trying to forget.

Getting lost in the dirt roads off I-5 into Bakersfield.

It feels like a hedge maze and they consider they made a wrong turn but the GPS is telling them to turn left and she thinks about the satellites circling the planet plotting a trajectory of the car inching along the the bumpy terrain.

It’s the mountains in the distance that she longs for, getting high enough to look down; beyond and further than she’s ever been. Fading into the horizon. Betting the world against her courage.

LJ Idol 10: Week 9: The Trolley Problem

rswndrlst — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 01:02:57 GMT

The Train Test

Sonia Terra grips the ladder and gives in to the temptation to look down at the track rushing away beneath her. She pulls herself up another rung. She has to keep going.

She hears Lynessa’s cries in her head again when she is violently jerked sideways as the train approaches a bend in the track. Sonia is granted an expansive view of the landscape ahead; squinting through the night.

There’s still twenty miles to the bridge she knows is no longer there.

Sonia swings herself onto the roof of the rear car and starts moving along the train as fast as she dares.

A Protector in love with a mortal, how adorable. I mean really, they are just so very fragile.

Elias could have just turned her in to The Authority but instead he had taken Lynessa, had tortured her.

Sonia doesn’t have a plan but if she can warn the operator she might be able to save Lynessa and keep the train from plummeting into the canyon.

A sharp pain shoots through her head and Sonia drops to her knees on the corrugated metal. Her lover’s screams call out to her again and Sonia cries out in harmony gripping her temples.

I’m coming my love, I will save you, don’t give up, she begs silently hoping Lynessa can hear her through their blasphemous psychic bond.

The whistle of the train brings Sonia back to the present and she pushes herself to her feet.

Elias had removed the bridge with a wave of his hand. Said she couldn’t save the train, as she was bound by creed to do, and save the woman she loved. Told her she would have to choose.

Love makes you weak Sonia Terra.

You’re wrong Elias Dorran. I will save them and then, I will come for you. That is a solemn vow.

Sonia walks down a darkened passenger car. Most of the riders are sleeping but she pulls up her hood in an attempt to hide the markings on her face that might give her away.

She’s walked the length of two cars before she sees a patrolman approaching.

She sidesteps into an open seat and sits down waiting for him to pass on to the next car.

“You’re a protector aren’t you?” comes a female voice from across the aisle.

“I am that which you have named. How can I aid you believer?”

“Please, I need healing.”

The woman’s hand is hovering in the air covered in the pockmark scars of the wasting illness that has been turning mortals into something inhuman.

Sonia can’t afford the strength it would take to help this woman, she has to get them to stop the train without exposing herself and hope that she will be allowed to return to her beloved.

Sonia reaches into her pocket and offers the woman a string of beads.

“Take these to the Oracle in Vohpolis, you will find the help you seek there.”

Sonia continues her quest to the engine car. The clock is ticking and she has promises to keep.

_______________________
510 words

Edit: here's the link to the poll for this round - http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2063445

LJ Idol 10: Week 8: No comment

rswndrlst — Sat, 11 Feb 2017 01:08:50 GMT

Test Subject Eight

Dr. L.J. Weeks adjusts his bifocals as he looks over the file one more time. He chances a glance into TS8’s holding cell but the subject still shows no sign of improvement. She’s huddled in a corner with her knees tucked under her chin. Her lips are moving slightly repeating the same phrase over and over again, the only words she’s spoken for days now.

There is a sigh and Weeks looks up into the eyes of his colleague the young Dr. Lydia Idyl.

“I fear her madness is progressing,” Idyl says staring wistfully at TS8.

“She was the perfect candidate for the experiment,” Weeks says removing his glasses to rub at his right eye.

“So were the last seven. How many will we go through before you admit that it can’t be done?”

“We might still be able to isolate the variab-” Weeks is interrupted by a high pitched laugh from TS8’s cell.

Idyl moves to the wall and presses the button to turn on the intercom system. Instantly the lab is filled with the frantic whispering of their young test subject. “No. No. No. No comment. No comment. No comment.”

“Turn it off,” Weeks says tiredly.

Idyl complies and turns her back to the cell.

TS8 laughs, hysterical, and begins rocking slowly, running her hands through her hair and yelling loudly enough now to be heard through the Plexiglas walls of the cell. “No comment! No comment! No comment! No comment!”

“It’s time. Give her the sleep serum Lydia, if you would?” Weeks says rising to his feet.

Idyl nods and begins filling a syringe.

Weeks steps up to place a hand on the Plexiglas. TS8 looks straight at him.

“You were by far my favorite TS8.”

She smiles broadly and mouths the words no comment.

________________________

Exactly 300 words (not including title)

[For Lola, my favorite mad scientist, thanks for never giving up on me]

Update: Here is the link to the Poll for Week 8: http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2062850

We made it to the top 100, so go show some love to the ~~Idyl~~ Idol community!

LJ Idol 10: Week 7: Where I'm From

rswndrlst — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 21:01:40 GMT

Stories About the Jersey Devil

You're three thousand miles away from where you want to be so you decide to get drunk.

You wander through the back-streets and back-alleys of San Francisco with the bottle in one hand and the stub of a joint clutched between thumb and forefinger of the other.

You circle the blocks not really paying attention to your turns but it would be pretty hard for you to get lost in this city anymore. You know the neighborhoods by the architecture and can navigate by the weather. The sidewalk never ends here.

You're trying to find a story, chasing an idea:

An old woman passes peacefully in her sleep. At the gates of heaven she's greeted by her husband who had gone ahead of her eight years earlier.

“What took you so long?” he asks, leaning against a chrome and black motorcycle.

She's too awestruck to answer but when he calls out to her again using a nickname she always claimed she hated in life she feels herself laugh and is surprised when it doesn’t become a shuddering, rattling, rasping through her chest.

She leans on her tip toes to kiss him on the cheek, inhales the scent of pomade slicked through his hair.

“One of these for me?” she asks tapping on the pack of cigarettes rolled up into the sleeve of his white t-shirt.

He tucks his aviators into his pocket and pulls out an engraved silver Zippo holding the flame out cupped between hands.

She blows out the smoke asking, “So where's this boat I've been hearin' about for so many goddamn years?”

His grin lights up his eyes and he swings a leg over the motorcycle kick-starting it to life with a growl.

“This road trip's just getting started. It's still miles until we reach the ocean.”

The sound of the engine fades and you find yourself with your forehead against red brick; fist clutching bottle pressed into the wall.

You push yourself up and start walking again, fishing for the Bic in your pocket.

You decide you can't remain objective when recounting the tales of your grandparents who raised you on National Park Stamps and Highway Atlases, gave you a nickname to use over the CB radio, a taste for greasy spoon breakfasts and retro roadside attractions, and the bittersweet curse of wanderlust, that would one day give you the courage to live on your thumb and a prayer.

She was only fourteen when they met in a boarding house and he used to knock on the floor to signal he was home and they should sneak out together. Eventually, there was a shotgun wedding and four more children.

He had a heart attack when he was thirty-six and lived on disability for the rest of his days. He became the neighborhood handyman and an avid fisherman.

They liked to scare you with stories about a woman who gave birth to a monster that still lurked in the Pine Barrens and an eccentric heiress who was so convinced she was haunted that she never stopped adding rooms to her mysterious house in an effort to confuse the spirits.

To you all they ever seemed to do was fight but after he died suddenly and unexpectedly, while patching a hole in their roof, at the ripe old age of seventy-three she was never the same; and you learned that for them “leave me be,” meant you're mine forever my darlingand “why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier,” was I still love you so much my heart might burst from the saying of it.

Three thousand miles away from New Jersey you mourn her death in your own way and hope she knows all the stories you never got to share and stumble drunkenly through through the city of San Francisco thinking that maybe, just maybe, when your grandparents threatened to leave you on the side of the road for the Jersey Devil they were saying: be brave kid, we love you.

_____________________________________
675 Words
Dedicated with love to Robert and Mary (who is not a horse)
*You can take the girl out of Jersey but you can never take the Jersey out of the girl*

Edit: Here's the link to the poll and other entries for this round: http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2062272

LJ Idol 10: Week 6: Heel-Turn

rswndrlst — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 20:54:09 GMT

The Few Will Become Many

To save the people of Earth, The Few must join as one.
The Final City will rise from the ashes of the old world.
All among the few who have survived The Final War and swear allegiance to The Final City will be become a part of the whole and reside in adherence to the Law of Conformity.
This is the Final Great Act of Humanity.

Before, when the world was easier to understand, I used to sit on the back porch and watch the man I loved walking the milk cows out of the barn. The smell of coffee drifting from the house, the rising sun catching the dew on the grass making the whole field sparkle.

It still takes my breath away how fast it all changed.

In my dreams those days on the farm are always dappled in sunlight, the two of us immersed in green and gold.

Now my world is concrete and iron. Mornings are the hardest. Waking up into the cold and grey and for just a single moment thinking maybe this is the dream.

I can’t help scratching at the implant right under the skin near my left wrist as I’m marched down the hallway with the other inmates.

I used to believe He was still in there somewhere, the boy who held my hand while the world transformed around us. Before they were stained with so much blood. Before He turned his back on all that we once believed in.

He always made a handsome soldier, even after I realized we weren’t fighting the same war, and when he steps into the corridor the florescent light catches on the brass buttons of his uniform.

He walks right past me just as he has the last three times he inspected the Sector 7 Secure Compound. I’m not surprised he hasn’t recognized me. I hardly recognize myself anymore; flinching whenever I catch the reflection of my shorn hair and sallow skin.

Since I’d been charged with treason against the Final City and locked up here six months ago I’ve only glimpsed the sun through windows eighteen feet above the cell-block level.

He’s five paces down the row when I finally find my voice.

“Mikey,” I say it out loud for the first time in so long and my heart skips a beat.

His head turns sharply to me but I’m on the ground curling into the pain in my side; the guard who’d knocked me down is apologizing for my behavior. I really hate when people apologize for me when I’m not in the least sorry.

He’s kneeling into my field of vision squinting back at me and I hear my own true name whispered in his voice.

We’re sixteen again. He’s whispering it to me, passing a note underhand beneath the desk as I look back over my shoulder. The words ‘Will you marry me?’ written in pencil.

“Still alive then?” He’s asking me quietly. His hair is streaked with white at his temples now; a sneer distorting his features.

“I live only to serve The Final City, Lord Chancellor,” I say.

“Stand her up,” he commands rising to his feet and motioning to the guards.

“Sate the Law of Conformity,” he says to me.

“There is no self but the whole. The whole will have one purpose. The whole will have no gods or idols. The Whole will be gratified by adherence to the Final Act,” I recite.

“Do you abide by the Final Act of Humanity?” he asks.

“Do you still play the guitar Mikey?” I ask in return.

In an instant he pulls a taser-stick from the holster of the guard to my left and holds it under my chin. My breath catches but I recover quickly.

“Address me again so informally and I will not show mercy,” he says. “Do you abide by the Final Act of Humanity?” he asks again.

I find I have enough saliva to spit in his face. He presses the button on the stick and it hums to life with a sickening crackle that echoes along my spine. I cry out but the guards keep me on my feet.

When the pain stops I am shaking and trying not to panic. My nerves are still singing and he’s wiping his face with the back of his hand.

“Why don't you come back to my cell, for old times sake?” I say with all the audacity I can summon.

“I would never lie with a heretic like you,” he responds.

And oh, but he had, just the thought of it still quickens my blood; makes me tense my arm before I remember I am restrained. I am struck by the desire to reach out and stroke his cheek. I still want to taste those lips that have spoken so many beautiful, detestable, words against humanity. The great orator that brought The Few to their knees with his rhetoric and charm.

I begin to speak again, telling him it’s not too late, begging him to remember what was good about the old world and that hope is a light in the darkness because I can’t bring myself to say the word love.

He raises the baton and I brace myself for the blow when an alarm sounds and a guard steps forward pressing a button on his ear piece.

“Sir, there's been an incident at meal assembly and we need to put this block on lock-down. We'll have Peace Officer Riley escort you to the Warden's office while we ready your aircraft for transport.”

He stares at me as he lowers the weapon then hands it back to the guard with a nod and spins away from me to follow PO Riley. I consider calling out to him; to warn him. But I don’t. Instead, I fall in line and shuffle back toward my place in the world.

As we turn a corner the guard named Simon directs me down a different hallway. I put up a good fight demanding to know where I'm being taken.

“You’ve dishonored Sector 7 and will serve thirty days in the tank Prisoner 226,” the guard says firmly.

I pretend to struggle but my limbs feel like they are made of shifting sand. I am afraid for a moment I won't have the strength and our plan has failed; that I've gone too far by antagonizing the Chancellor and getting myself shocked but then Simon has me by the elbow and is pushing me up against the wall whispering in my ear.

“He won't make it to the helipad two two six, Operation Phoenix has succeeded. The Few Will Become Many.”

I curse loudly at him, continuing to play my part and he grabs my wrist pressing a cold metal object into my palm before I’m pushed roughly down the hallway. I tighten my fist letting the teeth of the key bite into my flesh, grounding myself.

Today the old world will be reborn from the ashes of the Final City and The Few will become many.

Update: Here's the link to the poll for this round: http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2061865

LJ Idol 10: Week 5: Fear is the heart of love

rswndrlst — Sun, 15 Jan 2017 20:11:08 GMT

TW: Self Harm, Suicide, Childhood trauma, Panic Attacks and Anxiety, If you gave birth to the author you should definitely not read this, you have been warned

Life Is Pain

The feeling of the carpet scratching your face

Wakes you up in the middle of the night

You’re gasping for air

trying

not

to remember

You don’t want to remember

the feeling of begging for your dignity

Your clothes being pulled off

You try to convince yourself

it wasn’t really like that

You’re just a drama queen

Looking for attention

But you’re irrationally afraid

for the children in paper towel commercials

You can’t accept your own truth

can’t bring yourself to believe

It was even real

Can’t bring yourself

To cause her pain

Even now (Especially now)

Separated by miles

And chasms full of skeletons

stuffed into closets, hidden under the bed

You’re told she is sick

And you’re sorry

You’re so fucking sorry

You want to tell her you forgave her years ago

She was so young

When she carried you inside of her

You try to think good thoughts for her

You try to look at her pictures

The endless stream of cyber scrapbooks

But you can’t shake the feeling

You’ve forgotten something

You’re body knows what your mind is hiding

the world suddenly stops making sense

and you think maybe

you need to get far away

Punching walls so hard

your knuckles bleed

Redirecting energy

You’re Bruce Banner about to become a sobbing incoherent Hulk

born of an anger that sounds like your mother

slamming every cabinet door

and breaking the dishes in the sink

when she gets home from work

because you really should have washed them

They tell you

your mother is sick

and you have to make amends

You’re standing in the kitchen peeling an orange

when you realize you can’t remember

when you decided to eat an orange

You need to pull yourself together

pull yourself back to the moment

that is right the fuck now

You believed you’d already exorcised this demon

the night before your 28th birthday

fading into the bathroom floor (the high was a bonus)

Slurring your words as you sipped wine with your roommates

You’d swallowed three more DXM pills

than you had the day before

Trying to work up the courage

to take the whole bottle

Your heart crying out

Is this

finally

good enough?

It was a bargain

when you continued to live

raised from perdition

You really want to forget

the times you volunteered as tribute

when her wrath was turned on your sister

You still get itchy in your skin

when your roommates are noisy in the kitchen

You flinch when your lover shouts

You protect your boundaries like The Commander Of The Wall
like John Snow hurling yourself into battle

without thinking about the aftermath because

you already came back from the dead once anyway

There are only ten contacts in your address book

and your mother still isn’t one of them

You burn and slice through your skin

trying to div out what you did wrong this time

Standing at the bathroom sink trying to work up the courage

Until she holds your nose

Pouring the bitter liquid down your throat

You never did like the taste of cough syrup

You catch yourself stepping over cracks ——

Step. Step. Step.

Hop. Skip. Blink.

You blink every time you pass a dotted yellow line

Imagining the car is between two lines

You’re 8, 10, 12, 15, 21

and you play this game whenever she is driving

Her words hurting more than the bruises when she swings

and your head hits the passenger window

You lied to ~~yourself~~ your teachers

and learned to fight back

It was always your fault anyway

Locked in the bathroom confused and alone

the burning pain of her hand

still on your cheek

You were just a bad kid

Spoiled rotten

Pain in the ass

Get out of my sight

I’ll give you something to cry about

Slamming the door repeatedly

to distract yourself from fear

until it’s removed from it’s hinges

Humiliation used as a tool

to chip away at your adolescent psyche

Someone is telling you it’s going to be okay

but you’re confused

You’re too busy trying to survive

without hurting anyone

Your hands look like her hands now

You have to remind yourself to breath

You feel like you’re drowning anyway

It’s muscle memory

A survival instinct

to protect your vital organs

Hiding in closets

At the top of the stairs

Refusing to come closer

Pain becomes your totem

This is awake

This is what’s real

She’s sick

And you’re sorry

And nothing ever really changes

_________________________
750 words (technically +1 that's crossed out)

LJ Idol 10: Week 4: “I don't skate to where the puck is. I skate to where the puck is going to be."

rswndrlst — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 19:13:34 GMT

This Is Only A Test

San Francisco, CA

Outer Richmond District

Tuesday, August 2nd

11:24 AM

The bell above the entrance jingles and Mackenzie looks up from where she is slicing tomatoes. Her coworker Gina straightens up from where she had been leaning over the register and surreptitiously slips her cell phone into the pocket of her apron.

The customer looks around and approaches the counter already pulling her wallet out of a small backpack.

“I’m so glad you’re open,” she says. She explains that she’s just visiting from Canada and asks for directions back downtown. Gina suggests using lyft. Mackenzie points her to the right bus stop.

The woman orders a latte and Mackenzie listens as Gina goes through what they’ve come to call “the script” as she rings up the woman’s order: “We bake them in house actually. Best scones in the city.”

Mac can’t remember how many times she’s had to explain what a blondie bar is and they took the London Fog off the menu because they got tired of explaining what it was* and hardly anyone ever actually ordering one. Now they all get excited whenever anyone asks if they make them because it’s like a secret menu like at In&Out.

Mac watches JC who is sweeping around the three small cafe tables but really stealth texting his friend Joe about their fantasy football teams so Mac volunteers to make the latte; washing her hands after putting the tomatoes into the refrigerator.

As she sets up the espresso shot Mac continues the conversation with the customer/tourist. They chat about San Francisco and how the woman had gotten up early to take a Muni bus out to the beach.

The klaxon begins as Mac is placing a pitcher of milk under the steam wand and she smiles to herself. She finds the sound oddly comforting and looks forward to hearing it wherever she happens to be in the city on any given Tuesday.

She glances at the clock then. It’s early this week she realizes with vague concern and tries to listen for the deep male voice that usually follows the whining alarm but it’s drowned out by the sound of the old semiautomatic espresso machine.

This is a test. This is only a test. She mimics the voice in her head.

The woman, Beth, Mac reads off the paper cup Gina had handed to her, stops in the middle of biting into her scone. “What on earth?”

“It’s the Tuesday noon alarm,” JC explains leaning on the broom. “It’s to alert the city in case of earth quakes and like tsunamis and stuff.”

“Oh. Well.” Beth, looks slightly distressed but she smiles politely when Mac hands her latte across the counter.

As Beth heads out the door another woman enters wearing dark sunglasses, her hair up in a ponytail and the sleeves of her blue uniform shirt rolled up to her elbows. She pulls her bluetooth ear buds out and lets them dangle around her neck at the same time she slides the sunglasses onto her head.

“How’s it going guys?” Lola asks rhetorically and entirely too enthusiastically.

Lola is the manager and lives three blocks away instead of across town like Mackenzie. Mac suspects it’s why Lola always shows up looking like she just stepped off the cover of a women’s fitness magazine.

“Can I leave? It’s been the slowest day on record.” Gina says.

Lola tells Gina to “load the fridge” and Gina sighs as she heads to the stock room.

JC starts sweeping a balled up napkin around Lola using the broom as if it was a hockey stick and supplying his own commentary “He fakes left, he fakes right…”

“Yeah, yeah, get back to work Gretzky.” Lola teases back.

“Aww c’mon Lola, we’ve had like four customers all day.” JC says.

“Really?” Lola asks as she stows her stuff behind the counter.

“It’s true,” Mac confirms.

Lola gets a a strange look on her face but then shrugs.

Mackenzie asks Lola about Sherman, her fiance who everyone calls by his last name.

“He said he wasn’t feeling well and decided to stay home from work today.” Lola explains. “I might walk over and bring him some soup on my break.”

Gina comes back then stepping around the counter with a case of Hansen’s root beer in her arms. As she sets it down on a table one of the cans slips out, falls and rolls across the floor.

JC stops it with the broom and picks it up. Thankfully it didn’t explode but it’s dented so they can’t put in the fridge. He hands the can to Mackenzie who opens it slowly over the sink and then pours it over ice and takes a sip. JC takes back the empty can, squashing it in his hand as he turns to Lola who had begun rearranging the mini bags of Kettle chips on the rack near the register.

“I bet you can’t get it under the back table,” he dares her smiling and wiggling the can in one hand and holding the broom out in the other.

Lola only hesitates for a minute before grabbing the broom. She makes the shot and everyone cheers. Mac sets down her root beer and goes into the supply closet. She comes back with a second broom. She tries to steal the can-cum-puck away.

“Oh, you are so on,” Lola declares.

JC retrieves the can and Lola and Mac face-off tapping the brooms together before JC drops the makeshift puck between them. Mac turns quickly and nearly trips bringing the broom up into the air.

“High sticking,” Gina calls out and Mac laughs; tries to regain her footing. Lola sweeps the can past her and Mac pushes her shoulder into Lola’s back.

Lola drops the broom and pretends to pull off a pair of gloves. “Oh you wanna go?” She brings up her fists and Mac grins and drops her broom pretending to step up to the fight.

JC whistles through his fingers and tells Mac to “cool off” in the “penalty box.”

Mac picks up her broom and hands it to JC. JC and Lola take a turn at playing keep away with the can while Mac sits on the counter to watch.

JC turns his broom flat to the ground and practically scoops up the can. It flies through the air and loudly bounces off the window right over the letter A of the word Cafe.

“Oh shit,” JC says but his laughter dies quickly.

There is silence then as everyone stares at the window for a minute.

”Do you see that?” JC asks. Across the street a small group of people are standing on the curb just staring at them.

At that moment the klaxon sounds again and then stops. None of the people on the curb move or even acknowledge they heard the sound.

“Hey guys,” Mac looks over at Gina who is looking at her phone, her face white.

It’s the sound of helicopters that makes Mac slide off the counter and step toward the window.

“Guys,” Gina says again a little more urgently.

“What is it Gina?” Mac asks quietly still staring at the street beyond the window.

“Twitter. San Francisco is under an Emergency quarantine? Like the whole city? Can they even do that? It’s gotta be a hoax right? I mean, right?”

Mac steps up to the door Lola following close behind. The group on the curb across the street all tilt their heads just looking at them.

“We should all leave, out the back. Now. C’mon.” Lola says barely above a whisper reaching for Mackenzie’s elbow.

Almost as if they had been waiting for a signal the odd group steps off the curb and begins shuffling slowly in unison toward the cafe. JC curses again in disbelief.

Mackenzie unties her apron and dumps it onto a table as the entire staff of the cafe collectively turns to run.

_______________________
*A London Fog is an Earl Grey tea in steamed milk and a shot of vanilla

This entry is dedicated to the staff of the Lookout Cafe #noregrets #nevergiveupneversurrender
and to Laura and Rusty who are my go to beta readers and personal cheerleaders, thank you!!

Edit: Here's the link to poll for this round http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2060841

LJ Idol 10: Break Week Home Game**

rswndrlst — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 02:06:35 GMT

My grandmother is standing next to me, looking down at her own grave.

She is pointing to the filigreed bronze lawn marker embedded into the ground. Her birth date on the left, under her own name in block letters, across from the blank space to be filled in; the words Beloved Mother beneath it all.

It doesn’t say Beloved Mother and Grandmother because she’d had it made up ten years ago before the oldest of her beloved stepsons had his children. Six years before she and I were reunited.

I read the stone again and start to slip through time and space as I have done before, existing at all times, feeling all things at once; a vaguely psychic awareness, or maybe just a symptom of a melancholy disposition.

We are here to visit my great grandmother who is interred two spots over. I miss her so much, my grandmother says and I touch her arm gently.

The warm southern winter breeze blows through the low hanging palms.

Some unknowable but surely inevitable future is reaching back to me from a day when I will be standing here and missing both of them.

My grandmother motions again, this time to the grave above her final resting place to tell me that this man never has flowers. They grow up, move away, never make the trip out, she explains.

Again time and space contracts around me. I make a promise to myself to make the journey back to this place when the time comes wherever my tumbleweed life leads.

I take a final look at the stone before we turn to walk back toward the car.

I feel her then, the specter of days yet to be, a thought form who will be born on the day that the blank space is filled in but for a moment I see her clearly, she is holding the hand of a lover; they are just passing through town.

This future incarnation looks younger that I would wish for her to be keeping our vow but then I’m constantly told I look nearly ten years younger then my actual age. I take after my grandmother. She never admits her age but her birth year is engraved in my memory now. I look over at her, dyed red spiky hair and meticulously applied makeup. The woman whose example has saved my life more than she knows.

The car pulls onto the paved road and the early afternoon sun spills over the dashboard. When I catch my own reflection in the passenger side-view mirror I close my eyes until we are back on the highway.

__________________
Inspired by the therealljidol break week topic: A possum ran over my grave.
Based on a roadtrip I went on with my grandmother yesterday,
I couldn't resist posting it even though I had decided not to enter the break week challenge.

**reposted becasue I totally acidentally deleted the orginal!

LJ Idol 10: Week 3: Brushback pitch

rswndrlst — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 14:48:53 GMT

The Begining of The End,
or It's All Just a Matter of Time

1am

The words trip over her tongue.

They wash out into the space between them

Hitting her target slightly left of the center.

She’s smiling;

Blowing hot air over her fingernails

and buffing them on her lapel.

It’s a brush-back pitch,

A challenge,

A dare,

A psych out,

She’s redefining their boundaries.

2am

She’s bored and he’s —

Well, not defenseless after all apparently,

but they’ve kept their hands to themselves.

The pain lies (so many lies) in the dust particles

floating on the sound waves

contextualized between them.

She was drawn to him because of this.

A shared history of idle threats.

Because he kindled the fire of her passion,

Because he liked her purple prose;

And kept his own quill sharpened.

3am

He is the black knight

riding across the desert.

She is the sorceress; no, not yet the dragon.

She is not breathing fire but blowing smoke

against the limits of his conviction.

She's still waiting to see
if he’ll sit this one out,

Take a bye,

Call it a draw.

Or, step up to the plate,

Pick up the dropped glove,

Take ten paces and turn.

4am

They both know all the right

buttons to push,

strings to pull,

words to hurl; loaded into slingshots

Constructed out of circular arguments.

Their vows spoken backwards;

A spell,

A trick,

A promise.

Abracadabra!

Alakazam!

The sound of a needle skipped on a vinyl record.

The words trip over her tongue.

She is still smiling when he finally swings.

__________________________

AN: I guess I have a thing for even numbers so this one is 250 words

LJ Idol 10: Week 2: That one friend

rswndrlst — Sun, 04 Dec 2016 15:39:03 GMT

Down The Road And Back Again

I’m 12 or maybe 14: The screen door slams behind me a second before there is the sound of something shattering inside the house. I run at full speed out of the back door nearly tripping on the wooden steps, so much of me wishing, even then, that I could grow wings and lift off the ground and fly as far away as I could. I settle for climbing a tree.

“Hey jerkface you didn’t come to Girl Scouts,” She calls up to me.

“I didn’t feel like going,” I lie at the top of my lungs.

“Are you going to come down? Or do I have to go up there?”

When I don’t answer She ties her blue and green flannel shirt around her waist and climbs up settling into the V of a branch next to me. She pulls out the pen that was poking out of her messy bun of dark hair and takes my arm; starts drawing on the back of my hand.

“Did you’re mother get the tip I left on her nightstand?” She asks.

“Shut up,” I mumble and try to pull my hand away.

“I’m just saying, it rocked my world.”

“Stop.” I try to interrupt her but She keeps going and I am really tying to pull my hand back now but also laughing and I gasp out. “You’re going to make me fall.”

She looks up then, directly into my lopsided gaze. “I would never let you fall.” She says with a sudden hysterical deadpan and then drops the pen, letting it slip from her fingers to land on the ground.

“Oops,” She laughs and swings down after it.

I’m 16 or maybe 18: I’m hiding in the park this time. She finds me and joins me on the rusted swing-set. She pumps her feet, propelling herself into the air and leaping off the swing before hitting the sand below and then running around and jumping through the chains to land on the black rubber seat.

“You should try it,” She says.

“No.” I say shaking my head. She doesn’t pressure me. Never pressures me, never gets angry that I don’t always make eye contact and that I am afraid all of the time, and somehow makes me feel like I am cool anyway. We hide our secrets under Lisa Frank stickers and She always convinces me to go home.

I’m 15 or maybe 17: I pinky-promise her, sitting on the bathroom floor of the roller rink, that I will wear green to her funeral but tell her She has to promise She will visit me if I make it to California.

“You can’t leave yet, you got a part in the school play…you can’t miss my birthday…the science fair…the battle of the bands,” She says.

Don’t leave…not yet. We beg each other.

She doesn’t come to school for a week and I drive my bike over to her house. We watch South Park and pet her dog. Her mother makes us bagel bites or maybe spaghetti-ohs.

She’s battling her own demons, hiding behind black lipstick, exorcising them in the desecrated dolls hung from the ceiling of her bedroom; spinning on their brightly colored nooses and staring blankly at me with their lifeless shiny eyes through the flickering candlelight as we listen to the new Marilyn Manson album while I write all the words that I like on the toes of my low top converse knockoffs with her red Sharpie. I pretend that if I don’t name the monsters out loud, they aren’t real.

I’m 18 and then 23: I get out of New Jersey for good and never look back but she always tracks me down and when she tells me she is getting married I save all of my pennies to be there before running away again.

I’m 32 when my demons come back to haunt me. She contacts me everyday for a month and we confess our sins to each other through the screen and laugh about how when we were young video phones were science fiction.

I hope she forgives me for writing this because despite being born with flawless comedic timing I know how much she really hates being in the spotlight. She’s the Hilary to my C.C. and if push came to shove I’d be the Louise to her Thelma but it’s the Golden Girls theme song that really tells our story; thank you for being a friend.

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Another flash fiction, this one is exactly 750 words (not including title)

Edit: Here's the link to the polls for this week http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/956559.html

LJ Idol 10: Week 1: I need the struggle to feel alive

rswndrlst — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 16:03:05 GMT

A Pirate's Life for Me

I have this awful habit of jumping on sinking ships.

I end up as an eternal castaway. A diaspora of one; a nomadic lone wolf moving through life with all of my material wealth compacted into the space of a single steamer trunk that I grasp onto for dear life while trying to keep my head above water.

Marking the years by the beds/couches/corners I have slept in.

It’s a curse, I realized eventually, but the thing about this curse is I never know until it’s too late; until it’s time to plot a course through the storm.

I wear out my welcome and I mosey on down the road. Riding out on the very bridges they’d built to bring me in on, letting the fires burn infinitely in my wake.

I keep my eyes on the horizon and never look over my shoulder.

I learn I thrive under pressure and find the most peace in the days it comes down to my basic needs for survival. I keep a bug out bag and carry a water bottle wherever I go. Semper paratus*.

It’s all the same story and I live it over and over again until I am running out of money and vices.

I send out a distress signal.

I wake to 5am alarm clocks for eight hundred days; commuter busses and packed lunches. It begins to wear me down, like sea glass, dulling the senses. I’m squandering time and my own fullest potential.

I’m homesick for moments spent around campfires with guitars and complete strangers and for a time I burned through notebooks like forest fires; pouring whiskey on the ground. My heart beats a bluegrass ballad for the wind under the wheels and miles of Americana passing me by.

I cry out for mutiny.

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* Latin phrase, meaning "Always ready". It is used as the official motto of some organizations, such as the US Coast Guard.

AN: This was my attempt at trying to write "flash fiction" and is exactly 300 words. (Not including the title)

Edit: Here is the link to read all of the entries and vote for your favorites: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/953518.html

LJ Idol 10: Week 0: Introduction

rswndrlst — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 22:32:52 GMT

Just breathe

She whispers it to herself. It’s a worry stone, a call to mindfulness.

She flicks ash off her fingertips; blows smoke into the air.

She needs a place to hide; thinks the pain in her shoulder is a pinched nerve.

She is given permission to seek refuge in the beat up beige and blue, faded but still mostly functional, Ford Conquest parked along the side of the sprawling corner lot community where she currently hangs her pointed hat.

She tries to remember to introduce herself by the right alias, making sense of her tumbleweed life: The place where she is Sparrow; the place where she is Rebecca, Becca, Bird, Faerie Ann, Wanderlust.

She flips through her latest notebook searching for inspiration.

She feels unoriginal. She is the metallic creak of the step up into the wood paneled and brown carpeted interior of the decrepit caravan.

She catches her reflection beyond the herons etched into a decorative mirror, runs her fingers through the bright purple spikes that took thirty two years to grow in.

She wishes she took more chances when she was younger.

She’s jaded and armed with sharply edged rhetoric but still afraid of the mundane nothingness to which her path could lead.

Who knew it would be the pound sign and not bar codes that would brand us, she speculates as she opens the windows against the oppressive mid day heat.

She’s trying not to forget she has wings and not so secretly wishing for rain; resisting the impulse to run away again.

She is the most at peace when she is in motion.

She reminisces about highs and bad trips. The most expensive thing she owns is her pair of hiking boots. She writes tawdry romance novels that she never lets anyone read. Has let countless cups of coffee grow cold at her elbow. Would almost always rather be reading.

She longs for wild Oregon forests, dusty Arizona truck stops, San Francisco rooftops, her best friend's front porch.

She reaches out across the wires and they trade favorite iconic cinematic introductions:

“Thank you Max, for that marvelous introduction.”
“How do you do? I / See you’ve met my / faithful handyman…”
“When I introduce you, and tell them who you are, I don’t think anyone will stay for dinner.”

She can feel Saturn moving forward again. She has been reborn in the cosmos. She lives in a perpetual state of forgiving and forgetting and not actually giving a fuck.

Surrounded by blood this time she is trapped among palm trees and plastic pink flamingos.

She watches her grandmother conjure bubbling pots of the most delicious food to feed the tribe of lost souls the woman has taken in, and who fill the rooms of the way-station community that have currently sent her into hiding.

There is nowhere for her to write here.

She contemplates the park a few streets over but instead lays down on the flower print pull out couch. The sun slants across her face and she recalls that sensation of waking up covered in sweat as she tries to find a comfortable position for her shoulder.

Just breathe, just breathe, just breath… She whispers to herself.

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go read other entries for this week:
rookies:http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/947581.html
Vets: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/947738.html

signups are still open (join in the ~~madness~~ ~~fun~~ madness ): http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/945807.html