Freedom

WINTER IS POSTING A STORY! HEEHEE.

Actually, it's only flash fiction. 750 words, -ish. But hey. It's here.

The woman at the top of the mountain had wrinkles pressed so deeply into her face she resembled the crevasses surrounding them. The icy wind whipped her sagging cheeks, but she didn’t move.

“Hey,” Juliet hissed, her chattering teeth turning the word into a clattering mess. “Ma’am.”

No reaction.

“Oh God,” Maria said. “Oh, God, please don’t let her be dead. We’re already all the way up here. Lady, don’t be dead.”

Juliet hoisted her backpack higher on her shoulders. It hadn’t exactly taken ages to get up there – Mount McKinley was only a couple hours’ drive from their college – but time wasted was time wasted. “No. She’s not dead. She can’t be dead. This will work, and I will find out the answer to my question, and everything will be awesome.” She rounded on the old lady. “Everything will be. Super. Awesome.”

No reaction.

Maria reached out and prodded her.

The old lady’s claw of a hand flashed up and grabbed Maria’s wrist, her blind eyes darting open. Juliet let out a cry and staggered back; Maria screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

“Shut up,” the old lady croaked.

Maria shut up.

“Help me stand up,” said the lady. Maria hoisted the limp old body to her feet. The woman was bones draped in loose skin and layer upon layer of fur, unhindered by the bitter cold. And she turned her scarred clouded eyes upon Juliet and said, “You have come this far to ask me a question whose answer has been prophesied.”

The old woman’s hand let go Maria’s wrist, and Juliet hurried forward, her throat choking in anticipation. This sounded real, and for now, that was enough to convince her it was true. Juliet’s cynical side – admittedly diminutive at best – had hidden itself deep in a place that didn’t believe in fortunes and fates and soothsayers, and all that was left was blind hope.

“Prophesied?” she said. “What’s been prophesied?”

“Juliet Elizabeth Turner –” twin gasps from the two girls – “you have many truths to face.”

“Like what?”

“Firstly, you must accept that fault is not always two-sided.”

Juliet stared, slack-jawed. “I … okay.”

“Secondly, if you require my assistance, you must accept that ancient law rules over all.”

Maria cocked one dark eyebrow. “Uh. Ancient law?”

“Don’t interrupt, foolish one,” snapped the old woman.

Juliet stifled a snigger. “Okay, go on.”

“Thirdly, you must accept responsibility for your actions to come.”

“Actions to come?”

“You will understand when the time comes, Juliet Elizabeth Turner.” And with that, the woman drew a bone, long and disturbingly human, from inside her furs. She held it out.

Juliet hesitated.

The woman’s half-smile dug a crag into her cheek. “That’s right, girl. Think carefully.”

From behind the old woman, Maria made an is-she-sane? gesture. Juliet shrugged, but felt uneasy making any motion. The blind lady seemed to have such a good grasp of the events around her. It unnerved at best, disturbed at worst.

“Remember … when you make your choice, it will all be over.”

Juliet took a step forward, lowering her hand. “What will all be over? Will I be able to forget? And what am I going to have to –”

The old woman’s grip on the bone started to shake. “Your time dwindles, Juliet Elizabeth Turner.”

“But I need to know if he –”

“Your time dwindles.”

One breathless second later, Juliet grasped the other end of the femur.

Dark clouds billowed and rolled across the sky. Maria, quivering, sat down in the snow and closed her eyes. Juliet could only stare, but then lightning flashed.

She blinked. And as quick as the flutter of her eyelids, both old lady and storm had vanished.

She stood holding a human bone at the top of a mountain.

The walk back down was long, confused, and filled with stilted conversation. Juliet held the heavy object in her gloved hand. Though it should have grown cold, it never did.

When they reached the ground, Juliet wondered if the old lady meant what she thought she did, giving her this object. Surely this couldn’t be the answer to the problem – surely it would only exacerbate her feelings of guilt about the whole ordeal.

It came to her that night. Fault is not always two-sided.

It was not her fault.

She was free.

Juliet took the bone in her hands and shattered it against the floor. It broke as if made of brittle blown glass.

Elsewhere on campus, her rapist woke up screaming, as he would the rest of his life.

Juliet slept in bliss.

In Retrospect

(Cheating. Backdating this post. Yup.)

“You are imagining this,” said the cockroach.

“You are most definitely not imagining this,” said the housefly.

“One of these things is a lie,” whispered the worm, conspiratorially.

Joshua smiled. “Or both could be a lie. I could be dead. Maybe insects talk in hell.”

“My good fellow, what is that supposed to mean?” said the housefly, somewhat indignantly.

“Just that being surrounded by talking bugs isn’t my ideal situation.”

“Whatever, it’s fine,” the cockroach said. “You’re imagining this whole interaction, anyway. You’re as high as smoke out a chimney. Assuming the smoke’s from a burning heap of marijuana.”

“I disagree,” sniffed the housefly. “I think this fellow is completely sane, and that you, sir, are a twaddling gnarsher.”

“A twaddling gnarsher?” The cockroach’s scratchy voice grew angrier. “If I’m a twaddling gnarsher, you’re a tintinektifying broogle!”

“Now, now,” sighed the worm. “Calm down, everyone. Let’s take five deep breaths.”

They took a deep breath.

They took four more.

“What’s a broogle?” asked Joshua.

The worm shook his pale, flabby head. “I regret to say that I cannot tell you this information. Perhaps other people can.”

“People?” Joshua blinked. People. Of course, there had to be other people in the world besides him. Assuming he was in the world. Where was he? Where was here?

He thought to look around.

The ceiling was very high.

The room was very cramped, in terms of floor space.

A black door waited in the black wall behind him. A white door waited in the white wall before him. The walls on either side of him did not have doors.

The cockroach said, “See, we’re in a room. And it’s a weird room. That means this is a figment of your painfully cramped imagination.”

“Delusional,” sniffed the housefly. “Dreams aren’t the only places with strange rooms.”

The worm did not have eyes. If he had had eyes, he would have rolled them. “If I have to warn you one more time to shut up, I shall rupture.”

The cockroach did not have a nose. But if he had had one, he would have wrinkled it. “Oh, don’t do that.”

The housefly did not have shoulders. If he had had shoulders, he would have shrugged them. “If you’d like to combust, I shall not stop you.”

“No, don’t combust,” said Joshua, and he stood. He hadn’t realized he was sitting until he stood up, and then it registered that the ceiling was not very tall at all; in fact, he could not stand up all the way.

The worm inched its way along his shoulder. “Don’t mind my colleagues. They are silly at the best of times.”

The housefly settled on Joshua’s other shoulder, next to where the cockroach sat. “I resent the word ‘silly.’ I find that it debases my value.”

Joshua turned from the white door to the black door. “What’s behind these doors?”

“Ah, and therein lies the question,” whispered the housefly. “Are you frightened? If you’re frightened, it means it’s real.”

The cockroach said, “That’s bullshit.”

Joshua said, “Yes, I am, a little.”

He adjusted his tie – for, he realized, he was wearing a black jacket, a white tie, a stiff white shirt, long black pants, and shoes made out of glass.

“Are you more afraid of black or white?” asked the worm.

“Fullness or emptiness,” added the housefly, “respectively.”

“Presence or absence,” added the cockroach, “respectively.”

“Is black more real than white?” asked Joshua, glancing over his shoulder at the white.

“Again,” said the cockroach, “they are just as false as each other.”

“Again,” said the housefly, “they are just as real as each other.”

“Those mean the same thing.”

The worm said, “Yet one of them is a lie.”

Joshua took half a step toward the black wall. He curled his fingers around the plastic doorknob. His fingers remembered curling around something else, but he couldn’t place it.

He pushed through the black door, stepped through, and fell upwards.

The door slammed behind him as gravity switched. He was falling upward, flipping and toppling and yanked by the wind, but when he closed his eyes, he knew somehow that he was falling downwards, actually, and then his eyes cracked open a tiny bit and he landed on his feet. The glass shoes did not shatter. In fact, they seemed to absorb the impact of the landing.

Joshua looked around.

The air in the dense forest was warm, moist and runny. “Good choice,” remarked the worm.

“Speak for yourself,” grumbled the cockroach. “I bet you’re not too comfortable, are you, J.?”

“People call me Ash,” said Joshua, instinctively. Then he wondered why they would call him Ash, when his name was Joshua. Then he wondered how he knew his name was Joshua. And how he knew his last name was Bellinger.

He took a few paces forward.

“Freeze,” said the housefly, halting him. “You’ll have to be more careful than that.”

“Why? What?”

“Look down,” said the worm, its almost absentminded voice quite soporific when coupled with the warmth.

Joshua looked down. Two feet from him sat a swirl of quicksand. He circumvented it and went on his way.

But he soon had to stop, because he walked into a wall.

The wall was not painted to look like a continuation of the forest. It was not printed to look like a continuation of the forest. Nonetheless, it looked exactly like a forest stretching into a dim greenness. It had the texture of wood. And it was very annoying.

Joshua trailed his hand down it. “There’s a wall here,” he decided.

“Well done,” said the cockroach.

He walked around and discovered that there were really only one hundred square feet of forest, after all. Ten feet of walls on every side. A square room.

Joshua climbed one of the trees. The gentle breeze at the top mystified him. How was there a breeze? Was it coming from a vent?

What was a vent? How did he know of them?

A vent was inside a wall. Yes. Like veins inside skin, only for a building. A twisting map of them.

But there were no vents on these walls.

Joshua looked high up on the wall. Up in the blue sky was the black door whence he had come. He wondered if the white door would have been any different.

“Maybe you’ll die here,” said the cockroach, helpfully.

“Thank you,” muttered Joshua. He climbed back down from the tree. “Well, what do I do now?”

The three insects remained silent.

“Didn’t you say I was going to meet people here?” Joshua demanded of the worm.

It curled its pink body up and sighed, “Put me in your pocket, please.”

“What?”

“Put me in your pocket. I don’t want to fall off your shoulder when you figure it out,” said the worm, its voice unusually acidic.

Joshua slipped the worm into his pocket. The cockroach scuttled in and the fly buzzed after.

“But what—”

“Assume you have nothing to lose,” said the worm, its voice muffled.

Joshua looked around and came to an understanding. He walked carefully back to where he’d started.

Then he took three steps forward, took a deep breath, and jumped into the quicksand.

It sucked him downward, steadily.

The sand closed over his head.

For two miserable eyes-closed no-oxygen skin-suffocated seconds, Joshua thought he was just going to asphyxiate and die there. Then the sand sucked him down into its stomach, and around, and around again and backward and inside out, that last one being rather painful, and then he was stretching and morphing and suddenly he was still again.

He opened his eyes. He lay on an uneven wooden floor, sand falling from his black hair and dripping in tears from his blue eyes.

The worm wriggled across his face. “Well done,” it said.

“Thank you,” said Joshua, as he got to his feet. The floor was warped. The walls were nowhere in sight. It was a plain of wooden flooring, with a plaster ceiling above, both stretching on and on until eternity without support.

“I think I’d rather this place not exist,” mumbled the housefly. “What a troublesome locale.”

“You see it my way, finally,” said the cockroach.

Joshua began to walk. He walked for many minutes before he decided there was no end to the darkness around him.

So he pulled at the floorboards. He took the sword from the belt around his waist and sliced at the floorboards.

Beneath the floorboards there were more floorboards.

Beneath those there were more.

And so on.

Joshua sat in his shallow hole and scowled. “Look, this is really frustrating,” he said.

“I like your sword,” commented the housefly.

“It’s pretty cool,” said the cockroach. “Too bad it isn’t, you know, real.”

Joshua put his sword back and suddenly discovered that, next to its spot on the belt, a black device had been clipped to the leather. When had that gotten there? In fact, when had the sword arrived? Had it been in place the entire time?

Had he put these things here? Before the cockroach had started talking?

Where had he been before the cockroach had made its claim – this isn’t real?

Joshua took the black device from his belt, aimed it at the ceiling, and pressed a button. A small metal claw on a cord zipped out from the device and plowed into the plaster.

As the claw hit the ceiling, the plaster peeled off it. All of it. It fell in a great torrential snow, all the way down into the distance, and underneath, embedded in the ceiling, lay a thousand, a million doors. All different colors. Horizontal, vertical, large, small. Doors inside other doors. Doors wedged beside other doors.

“I think I’ll try white this time,” said Joshua. He retracted the claw. It ripped out half of a purple door. Then he shot it at a white door and pressed the button once more. The cord retracted, dragging him up toward the claw’s grip.

He opened the circular white door and fell inside.

The door slammed shut on his fingers.

He screamed. He screamed for a long time.

Then he clutched the four mangled fingers to his chest and bled all over his white shirt.

“Oh, stop being such a baby,” the cockroach said.

The worm slapped the cockroach with its fleshy back half. “Don’t be so insensitive. Ash has just undergone his first remembrance of pain.”

“Why can’t I remember anything?” gasped Joshua, in-between his screams. “What am I doing? What’s happened to me?”

The cockroach and the housefly exchanged a glance. “We don’t know, because you don’t know,” said the housefly.

“More evidence that this doesn’t exist,” mumbled the cockroach.

“Why does this hurt so much? Why do I hurt so much, oh God, why don’t I remember anything, who am I and what am I doing in this room—who are you—who am I—”

The worm snuggled against Joshua’s neck as he lay on the sawdust. “Hush, now,” it said. “Maybe you don’t know because deep down you really don’t want to know. Not at all.”

Joshua yanked the sword from his belt and found that it was a gun. An M395.

He scrambled to his feet and held the gun in his quaking hands and shot at the insects again and again. “YOU’RE BUGS!” he screamed. “BUGS DON’T TALK!”

They buried themselves in the sawdust, which flew up in powder and fluff as the gunshots exploded. When he ran out of ammo, when the gun clicked with an empty chamber, they resurfaced.

“That wasn’t very civil,” sniffed the housefly, buzzing up to sit on his shoulder again. “Look, your hand’s better, why did you need to take it out on us?”

Joshua held his hand to his face. His fingers were smooth and aligned and perfectly intact. His shirt was clean and white and crisp and not bloodied in the slightest. “What’s wrong with me?” he moaned. “Where am I?”

How did he even know these things were not supposed to happen? Why were bugs not supposed to talk? Why were broken, bloody hands not supposed to fix themselves? Why were rooms not supposed to be built out of sawdust, from the walls to the floor and ceiling?

He grabbed the door handle and it flaked and molted away in his hand.

He kicked at the walls, and they showered down around him. He slavered and seethed and screamed and tried to kill the bugs again. He turned his head upwards and cried, and his clothes shredded themselves until he was naked.

Then he collapsed and covered himself in sawdust. It was warm and comfortable. “I like this room,” he whispered quietly, as if trying to convince himself.

“There’s no way out,” said the housefly. “There is no way out and you are happy with that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” murmured the cockroach. “None of this exists. He can be happy if he wants. He can be happy here for the rest of his life.”

The worm whispered, “You are uncomfortably close to the way you came in, Ash.”

“I am?” he breathed. “How?”

“It’s time to stop being afraid,” said the housefly.

“Being afraid is just your body’s way of keeping you safe,” said the cockroach. “Be as terrified as you want.”

Joshua rubbed his eyes and sank lower in the sawdust.

“You’re an American,” said the worm.

“I am,” said Joshua, as his eyes drifted shut. “I am an American before everything else.”

“Are you American before you’re scared for your life?” demanded the cockroach. “Don’t fall asleep. Don’t fall asleep! There’s no guarantee what your mind will come up with next. This isn’t real; you don’t need to sleep –”

The housefly said, “Ash, keep your eye on the objective.” And its voice wavered and warped into another voice entirely, one that was all too familiar to Joshua. “Keep your eye on the objective.”

The worm’s voice melted into a soothing female tone. “You’re an American. A brave American.”

The cockroach’s voice cracked, turning grizzly and low. “You better break before you say a goddamn word. There’re things more important than you and you better remember it, you little piece of shit greenie.”

“There’s always a way out,” said the worm.

Joshua fell asleep.

He woke up instantly, buried in sawdust. He thrashed. It showered all around him. A fly buzzed near his ear, but it wasn’t talking. A cockroach scuttled over the grimy wooden wall; a worm wriggled through the dirt near the door. A window sat high up on the wall, letting in grainy sunlight, illuminating a room with dark wooden walls.

Joshua looked down at himself. Burns covered his arms. His fingernails were cracked and torn. He wore a ripped white tank top that was no longer white, browning and yellowing with dirt and sweat. He wore camouflage pants.

Hunger gnawed at his stomach, and every inch of him ached.

He turned around and stared up at the back wall. A row of tally marks stretched across the dark wood, gouged in, splintered and rough. Beside every mark were the same words, scraped in by his own nails: this is real this is real this is real this is real this is real this is real this is real this is real

Then, halfway down the line, this is not real I am not real this is not real I am not real

Joshua counted the second half.

Thirty-four tally marks since he had locked his sanity away, somewhere deep.

Thirty-four days since he had lost his mind.

At the side of the wall were small, fresh letters: i havent said a word i havent said a word i havent said a word

Joshua traced them slowly with his mangled fingers.

The door slammed open, and Joshua scrambled back. Pressed himself against the back wall as someone walked inside.

The man was not Viet.

“Joshua Bellinger?” he said. The voice of the housefly, bizarrely transplanted on this man’s tongue.

“Yes.”

“Here to bring you home.”

Hooked Up

((Caution... this is super-weird/speculative stuff. Also, this is my Official Language Warning. F-bombs are dropped.))

“Dude, that’s fuckin’ radical,” Scott laughed.

I nodded. “Yeah, bro, I know. I totally leveled up, right in front of her—it was wicked.” I frowned. “Then again, though, she had that look on her face.”

“What look?” Scott threw himself into my dish chair with a yawn, flicking on his headset. The screen flickered into existence over his eyes.

“The not-impressed look. Yo, turn that off. I’m tryin’ to talk to you.”

Scott rolled his eyes, but he turned the headset off. “Sorry, Mom.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Okay. So like I was saying. I was at the top of the Temple with the Grey Sky, and I saw this Crawler sneaking up the side of the rock to get Iris, so I engaged. And we fought for ages, man. Ages, I’m serious. And turns out the Crawler was some high-point scorer, so I leveled up.”

“Sweet. So, wait, why would she not be impressed by that? Sounds awesome.”

“Yeah, it was awesome,” I muttered, but I felt like I was trying to convince myself. No matter what I did for Iris, she always looked at me like I was something she’d just equalized with her hovermotor.

“You wanna try finding her? Talking to her?” Scott tapped his headset, grinning. “Come on. You know you want to. And she just saw you looking like a total boss. You’ll get Kudos for that at Assembly, no problem.”

I looked out the window at the graying sky. “I know. The honors alone are worth it, probably. And shit, it drained half my life, so it better be worth it.”

“Half? Damn, boy, we better go find you some replenishment.”

“Naw, man, that shit costs so much. My half-full life is probably still better than most people’s full lives.”

Scott leaned back in my dish chair, staring at the slow-moving ceiling fan. It moved sluggishly, like it was slicing through something with every turn. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. “Okay, dude, if you’re just gonna fuckin' sit here and whine, I’m clocking in.”

“No, fuck it, wait, I’ll clock in too.” I reached for the headset on my glass desk and shoved it on. The familiar scarred cushioning lent me a sense of relief, in a strange way. I spent so much time clocked in these days that it almost felt unnatural to be unplugged.

I flicked a switch on the headset. The screen buzzed into place, the frequency crackling. Then I jabbed a fat black button, and two spindly needles slid into my skull just in front of my ears.

My whole body went slack.

When I opened my eyes, I held a serrated hunting knife. Scott stood across from me, black-haired and blue-eyed, a cocky grin on his face as usual.

“Plateau,” I observed, checking our surroundings.

“Yeah. Let’s get to Center.”

“Center? It’ll be crawling with…”

Scott smirked. “Crawlers?”

“That.”

“Chill, Madison.”

“I’m chill. I just don’t think Center’s a good idea this time of day. And Iris isn’t gonna be there. She’s probably in Politick.”

Scott made a face. “Forget that.”

“How about a quest?”

“Assigned by Politick? Fuck, no.”

I sighed. “I just meant any quest. What’ve you got against Politick, anyway?”

He shrugged. “In real life, people couldn’t get away with being as arrogant as they act in Politick.”

I rolled my eyes. That’s why this isn’t real life, Scott. But I didn’t say that.

“Well,” he said, “I guess we can stop by just to see if Iris is there. But you owe me.” He punched me. “Also, I wanna see where you took out the Crawler. Temple with the Grey Sky, right?”

“Yeah.” We hurried over Plateau, the granite lighting up under our feet, veins of minerals twisting and curling in sudden light. The sky was dark—it always was in the Other Plane, but it was especially so since my life bar was half-empty. And my legs were annoyingly sluggish because of it. Made me consider, for a moment, unplugging to purchase more. But I’d sold enough of my stuff for the Other Plane—my brothers said if I started selling my possessions again, they’d take my headset, and that wasn’t going to happen. I had a whole life here.

We came to a compass disk, and as we stepped into it, a lashing wind dissipated our shadow-bodies, reassimilating them in Politick.

Politick was less dreary-looking than Plateau. People never hung around Plateau for long—it was barren, save for rogue quest materials, and you could come across some pretty nasty stuff there.

“Iris,” called Scott into the air.

I elbowed him. “What are you doing?”

“Someone call?” said her voice, and then the mist streamed into a head, torso, and long sleek legs. Iris Parker.

“Sorry. My mistake,” said Scott.

Iris shot him that disgusted look. It almost made me happy that she didn’t keep that look especially for me. As she glanced over and saw me, her eyes filled with recognition. “Good job earlier,” she said. “I’ll congratulate you in person when I see you at Assembly.”

“Really?” I blurted, and then I sort of wanted to die. If these bodies could blush, my face would have been splotchy red right then. As it was, I wished I could dissipate on command, like the Talkers. But no. I needed a compass disk.

Iris was a Talker. Not unsurprising, given…well, given Iris, but it meant my chances with her were slim to none. Talkers and Fliers? Not typically a good match.

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll vote for your Kudos, too.”

I was going to fall over for sure. I’d gotten respect points for sensing the Crawler, apparently. “Thanks,” I managed to say.

Scott wasn’t doing anything dumb, for a change. I seriously appreciated it. My first legitimate conversation with Iris Parker didn’t need ruination.

She held up a finger. “Okay, well, that was a lie, sorry. I’ll vote for you on one condition.”

“Yeah?” It wasn’t about the vote. It was about her approval.

“Quest for a Silencer.”

I stared. “Why…why do you need a…” It was like asking for a pike, or a cannon, only eight hundred times worse. Silencers could cancel Talkers entirely—or so rumor had it. No one knew what they even were—what they looked like; how they worked.

“Try?”

“I mean, I’ll try,” I said.

I could practically hear Scott’s voice in my mind. Whipped, bro. But he looked sort of worried, to be honest.

Iris smiled, waved, and dissipated.

Me and Scott said, in unison, “Detach.” The Other Plane detached us from the server automatically.

The Quest wasn’t a Quest, really. It was an obsession. Even after I got my Kudos and bought a new hovermotor—even after the entire Assembly thanked me for wiping an experienced Crawler from the system—I wasn’t happy.

I clocked in every day after work. Scott stopped tagging along on my journeys soon enough. I dug down through Plateau; I explored every temple in Ruins; I scoured every tree in Wild; I mined every tunnel in Burrow; I explored every alley in Politick and I searched every house in Center.

“This isn’t healthy,” Scott said.

“Yeah, man, you’re probably right. Wanna come with me?”

And eventually he stopped saying yes.

Eventually I stopped finding any Quest partners at all. And I spent so much time plugged in that I’d skip meals.

One day I was searching a sub-basement of Politick when my life bar beeped. There had to be a mistake, or something—I hadn’t even started a fight since the Crawler. How was my life low?

“Detach,” I tried to say, but it came out as a croak. How long had it been since I’d drunk anything?

“Detach,” I tried again, but my voice snapped and broke.

“Iris?” I whispered. It was enough for the call. She materialized.

“Hello, Madison.”

“Help me.” My voice died completely. Quietness rang in the stone sub-basement.

She smiled a little. “So you found a Silencer.”

“I did?” I mouthed.

Iris’s lips tightened into a grim smile. “You are one.”

She said my name, and I dissipated along with her.

In Which I Am Sucked Into A Vortex

Hope you like the title. Unfortunately, the story's not quite finished. I started it (gulp) tonight, yeah. BUT, I like where it's headed! It'll be finished probably in a matter of 12 hours or so, provided my alarm wakes me up on time. So I'm putting in a portion of it until I'm done with it. Heh... it's not proofread yet. Have fun with raw snippet #1...

Also, 8 million thanks to Jenn for covering my lazy butt while I'm tackling the AP monster.

Here's le preview:

(oh, yeah. language warning, a little.)

“Alex, what do you think happens after we die?”

“Yo. Not the time, Ten,” I grunted, my biceps aching as I yanked the ship to the left. “Just focus.”

“Fine.” My little brother Tennyson pouted. His dark skin was lit blue by the luminous, meteor-sized chunks of ice flying past us. They looked alive with light, beacons in the blackness of deep space, reflecting the planets and stars around us. In the ranks, we called them icerocks, but no one really knew what they were for sure. Just that they were a pain in the ass when you were trying to get from Alister Cluster to Gamma Solar. “Hard to starboard,” my brother muttered.

I gritted my teeth and threw us to the right. We flipped over a few times, our pod coming uncomfortably close to the top of one of the icerocks. “Are we almost out?” I managed, squinting ahead.

An icerock larger than the pod loomed out of the darkness. I took us into a nosedive, my palms sweating almost too bad to keep a hold on the spanner.

My fingers slipped right off the rubber grips on the right, and we spiraled, lurching. My stomach curled up, and I kicked down on the gears, grasped around for the spanner again, to stabilize us. Goddamn goddamn goddamnit

As we righted, Ten stopped hugging the radarscope and peered through it like he was supposed to. “Hey, damn,” he said. “Whatever the hell you just did, looks like it got us out of the field.”

“Thank God.” My senses finally normalizing, I kicked the gear into neutral and wiped my bald head. Its crown was slick all over with sweat.

I started to unlock myself from the apparatus. Flying a pod was a dynamic activity. Because pods were shaped like bullets, turning them required hydraulic action. And that was the pilot’s job. The faster I pulled one of these spring-loaded weights toward myself, the faster we got out the way of lethal flying shit. Thing was, the weights were damn heavy. My weedy little brother had it easy, looking through the radarscope all day while I grunted and sweated myself to pieces in this metal frame.

It would’ve been easier if they’d invented some sort of pulling apparatus to do the job for us, but the inside of the pod wasn’t nearly big enough for that not to be dangerous. The interior was twice my armspan at the most.

As Ten worked on my leg straps, I happened to glance up through the windshield, the foot-thick-glass half of the bullet.

A gleam of light heading for us. “SHIT—” I grabbed Ten’s arm on instinct.

I managed one breath before the baseball-sized icerock smashed through the glass with a noise like the whole world was splintering. Even as the world roared into a vacuum, two halves of a metal sheath snapped shut over the broken windshield.

Well, there went the Space Force’s perfect crash-free record.

The emergency oxygen light glowed red. I heard a hiss of gas and let out my breath. Safe.

Maybe not safe, per se. Without the windshield, we only had the radar to see where we were flying. Technically fine for navigation, but frustrating and scary. Increased risk factor.

“You okay, Ten?”

“Fine.”

I glanced around. The windshield had put up a nice fight. The icerock sat innocently on the floor amidst thick chunks of glass, still looking like it was reflecting the light of—

Okay, that was weird. Was it glowing?

I peered more closely at it. “Uh. Ten, am I imagining this?”

“Whoa.” Tennyson scrambled to get the icerock. As he picked it up, his eyes widened. “Holy shit, Alex!”

“Give it here.”

He tossed it to me, and I was so surprised to feel it I almost dropped it. It definitely wasn’t ice—the name ‘icerock’ was way more appropriate than I’d realized. It felt like a huge polished crystal, and buried right in the heart of it, a tiny light glowed.

Class Act

(Note: This story is definitely not finished. I had/have big plans for it (these plans would have made the story's title actually relevant), but I didn't have time to execute them this week. What we have here is a snippet. Maybe it'll be a multi-parter, like the Caitlin stories... :P

Well, I hope you enjoy what I have, anyway. -Winter)

The only thing Amanda had to say about the room was that it was very gray. She felt like a splotch of color - her skin looked weirdly pink in comparison to the gray walls, the gray ceiling, and the even-grayer carpet.

I wonder if this is what it feels like to be a black person in a sea of white people, she thought, and then she felt bad and mildly racist. The officer who had driven her here, Officer Rogers, was black, and he was nicer than any other Alabama police officer she’d encountered. Not that she’d been in a lot of trouble with police. A couple of speeding tickets; nothing more.

But now? After the events of today?

After today, well…she was still shaking.

It’d been another normal day, walking home from the bakery where she worked.

And then a dead person had fallen on the pavement in front of her with a sickening crunch, blood exploding from the sides of his body.

Amanda had screamed and screamed and screamed and tried to get the horrible crimson goop off her bare legs, her hands, her clothes. Somewhere in there, she’d looked up at the top of the building—no wonder the blood burst out, if he fell from that height, she’d thought with a strange rationality—and seen a figure.

It was a figure with bright gold hair. I should probably make a note of what he looks like, she’d thought with that same odd cool-headedness. The figure looked male, but she couldn’t be sure. He, she, or it wore a red bomber jacket and black jeans. And he was holding a gun roughly the size of Amanda’s whole body.

She’d heard him say, “Shit,” quite audibly—well, that wasn’t very pleasant of him, she’d thought, with no rationality at all—and then he’d vanished from the side of the building.

Seconds later, a helicopter had buzzed away. She had only seen its black underbelly.

That had been the entire experience. Decidedly the least pleasant one of her life. And now they were going to intensify it, drag it out of her over and over until they determined she knew nothing more of use. Wonderful.

Amanda twiddled her thumbs until the door opened. Two policemen walked in—one was Officer Rogers, from before. The other was a Mediterranean-looking lady.

“Hello,” said the lady.

“Hi,” said Amanda.

Officer Rogers traded a look with the lady and sat down, scratching his mustache as if contemplating. Upper lip…what a strange place to scratch while thinking, Amanda thought.

“Ma’am,” he said, “I’m sorry to tell you that there’s more to this than we thought. Based on the victim’s history, we’ve linked the murder to a gang—are you familiar with the Mafia?”

There was a long pause.

“Ha,” Amanda said weakly. “Ha ha. Ha.”

“Ma’am, we’re not joking,” said the lady. “I’m Officer Velez. I’m with inter-departmental relations.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” asked Amanda, her broad Southern accent removing the intended venom from her tone.

The lady’s lips thinned. “It means I just got off the phone with the FBI.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So.”

“Yes, I know the Mafia.”

Officer Rogers traded another look with Officer Velez. “You’re going to have to undergo witness relocation, Ms. Hines.”

“But I’ll lose my job.”

Velez let out a sharp laugh, tossing her wavy black hair. “Ma’am, that’s the least of your worries at the moment. We’re talking about the Mafia.”

Amanda considered for a second. She didn’t like the idea of leaving everything she had in the dust, but she wasn’t fond of the idea of death, either. “Okay,” she decided. “What do I have to do?”

“Well.” Officer Rogers shuffled some papers. “Sign this, first.”

She signed it.

He continued, “We’ve found you a home in a middle-sized city in Arkansas—”

“Arkansas?!” Amanda’s shrill voice echoed in the room. Both officers winced. “I don’t want to go to the gol-darn backcountry!”

But it was too late. He had the signed papers, and soon she was heading off to meet Kansas’s less-important younger brother. She wasn’t even allowed to take her cat, but that was okay. He was fat and lazy and she’d never liked him that much.

Amanda hated her new apartment. She hated everything about it except for the fact that the landlord was attractive. He wasn’t attractive enough to compensate for the rest of the place, though.

They’d found her a job. They’d found her a job! They’d had the audacity to choose her profession for her!

Admittedly, it was identical to her previous position. It was even at the same bakery chain. But still. Amanda was feeling resentful, and she had to take it out on some circumstance or another.

So she sat behind the counter with a scowl on her face. The worst part was not being able to talk about any of this. An ‘issue of security,’ supposedly. Amanda thought it was all pretty dumb, like some low-budget B-movie. She played along, though, because she didn’t want to be that character from that movie that does stupid stuff and gets herself in trouble.

“What’s wrong with you, then?” said her co-worker.

“Have we met?”

The girl shook her head, tucking her messy brown hair behind her ear. “Nah. I’m Lexi.”

“Amanda.”

“So. What’s going on?”

Amanda faced her first real challenge. The temptation she was feeling to tell Lexi the whole thing was ridiculous, but she couldn’t just start spouting about the Mafia. Lexi would report her as being insane or something. So Amanda just shook her head, unused to showing such restraint.

“You’re new here, right?” said Lexi. She had a high voice, which Amanda found quite annoying.

“Shiny new,” sighed Amanda. “Just moved here.”

“Wow! Where from? How’d you end up here?”

The itch to spill all intensified. “Just, you know. Financial stuff at my old apartment. I’m from Florida.”

“Ah.” Lexi nodded sagely. “That’s cool, that’s cool.”

Amanda twiddled her thumbs and felt awkward. The secret seemed to take up physical space between her and the rest of the world, a bubble of insulation, a layer that ensured she would never lead a normal life.

Amanda found herself hating the dead guy. She didn’t even know who she was and she hated him for almost falling on her.

She wondered how frequently they did this to people. They seemed to be taking her wellbeing quite seriously, even though the policeman who they’d said would take her to work this morning had never showed. Wouldn’t that just make her location more obvious, though?

Not about to pretend she knew anything about the justice system, Amanda hadn’t called the police or anything that morning.

The rest of the work day passed without consequence.

After Lexi left, Amanda locked up the store, walked outside, and saw about half an inch of red bomber jacket before everything went black.

Spite

Short one this week. Hope you like it. (It doesn't stick to the prompt TOO closely but ah well.)

--------------------------------

Here, how about I tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a young lady named Isadora. She wasn’t quite young, actually—she was in that awkward age between where people call you ‘young lady’ and the years where they treat you like an actual human being. Long story short, she was in high school, and it sucked.

Isadora had black hair and blue eyes, and she was stump short and stick skinny, and nobody liked her.

That’s right, nobody. Her father and mother had tried their best—to like her and to raise her—but as far as they could tell, she’d grown up a brat. Her teachers thought her withdrawn and her comments relatively uninteresting. Her classmates thought she was stuck-up and snobby. Either that or just-plain-weird.

Isadora had grown up with not many people liking her, and as the years went on, that number dwindled down and down until it hit rock-bottom goose-egg zero zip nada. She used to wish that people would like her, but that just added to the massive amounts of self-pity she experienced, so she started pushing away the desire to be liked at all.

After all, after the summer before sophomore year, there was something that she couldn’t tell anyone, and keeping secrets makes people hate you.

Self-hatred is a vicious cycle. You hate yourself so much you start to expect that other people want to hate you right when they meet you, like everyone is out to get you. Social paranoia. You can’t see any good in yourself, so, you suppose, why the hell should they see any? They don’t even know you. So you treat them with an instant defense, because you’re so convinced they already dislike you. And that’s the type of hatred that Isadora had for herself. She’d never been particularly good at anything, so she had decided to be the best at being the worst person she could.

She’d decided this at a very young age. She was nine, and she had realized she didn’t really care about all the things other kids cared about, and she had assumed there was something wrong with her. This assumption didn’t change much over the years.

So, yeah, nobody liked Isadora and that was pretty much that.

It was pretty convenient that she’d done this to herself by the time sophomore year came.

Isadora was sixteen at this point, and when she walked into school, people looked at her a little funny. She was walking stiffly, jerkily. But eventually people stopped giving her second glances, because they pretty much assumed that it was just a slight mannerism they hadn’t noticed before that had developed into a funny walk.

So, the year went on, and if the stiffness worsened, people either didn’t notice or just couldn’t give a shit. Who were they to care about this snotty girl? Seriously, they had more important things to be worrying about.

Isadora was perfectly happy this way, because God knew she didn’t want to tell anyone about this.

Which was why it was so damn inconvenient when Arthur showed up.

He transferred from Indiana halfway through second quarter, and he had wavy brown hair and glasses, and he seemed to enjoy verbal abuse. Isadora was at a loss. For every quip she used to snub him, he had two to retort with. And before long they were friends, and that was a very bad thing.

When you hate yourself, you can’t believe anyone would be friends with you, because you think to yourself that if you weren’t you, and you met you, you wouldn’t want to be friends with you. So you hold people at arm’s distance. But there are just some people where you can’t do that, and Isadora found out that Arthur was one of those people. It was third quarter, and she was missing school—she didn’t want anyone to know why—and he showed up at her house.

“You don’t even look sick,” he said to her, and she averted her eyes, fidgeting, holding back the pain.

“Well,” she told him, “shows how much you know.”

“Oh, Izzy, I know everything,” he sighed.

She shook her head. “If you call me Izzy, I’m calling you Arty, remember?”

“God, spare me. Okay.” And Arthur sat down at the end of her bed, and she looked at him with eyes that were filled with suspicion. Then Arthur asked, “Hey, why don’t you ever relax?”

“It’s just not something I do.” Before she could stop herself— “Especially not this year.”

Arthur stared at her, because that was the closest thing to personal information he’d ever gotten out of her. “Okay, wait, back up. Why don’t you, and why it is it especially this year?”

“It’s just…a problem,” said Isadora. “Look, I’m…I’m sick. I have to sleep. Sorry, Arthur, but I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“We’re talking about this later,” he said, and she hesitated as long as she could before nodding.

When Isadora got back to school, it almost looked like she was hobbling, bent over a little, her legs swinging along straight and stiff and unnatural. But people still ignored her. Still didn’t care.

Except Arthur. “What’s wrong with your legs?” he asked. Over and over. She didn’t want to relent, but she did, after two full months of him badgering her.

And that was the day Fate decided to act.

They stood in the courtyard, and Isadora rolled up the legs of her pants and showed Arthur. And he was shocked.

Arthur let out a yell and stumbled back, for the legs that she had showed him were kneeless, skinless, emaciated ostrich legs. Long and skinny and frail and breakable. and as the sunlight gleamed off them, Isadora felt the rest of her changing, too.

She had always been skinny. Now her back buckled in and her shoulder blades erupted from her back. And now the rest of her was breaking and folding, the skin looping itself up, and her shoulder blades were tearing out and out and blossoming into a pair of magnificent dappled wings.

Not ostrich wings. Isadora’s nose burst out from its cartilage and curved into a wicked hard black point, and as her body twisted downward and inward, those long ostrich legs shrank down and down, and she became a tremendous glossy eagle.

She took flight, soaring into the air without goodbye, thanking God that Arthur didn’t have to waste any more of his time with her, thanking God that he got to be free of her. Her eagle’s eyes cried no tears. This was best. She was finally alone.

So yeah, that’s the end.

Did you like the story? I hope you did.

But see, this isn’t how the world really works. People won’t wait for you forever—I managed to push Arthur away by refusing to tell him about my legs. I succeeded without having to turn into an eagle, and then I felt weirdly satisfied. I was alone, like I should be.

And my legs?

I’m sitting in a hospital bed. Alone with the beep of a regulator that’s making sure I’m still alive.

Last summer, I contracted something called transverse myelitis. As far as I understand, it’s where swelling occurs around your spine and stops the right signals from getting to where they’re supposed to, basically.

I wonder if turning into a bird would be more or less painful than this.

The pain’s going to go, though. It’s not long until my legs are totally paralyzed. Maybe, if I’m lucky, there’ll be complications and I’ll die. Life without aimless walks by myself isn’t a life for me. Life without going unnoticed isn’t for me. My parents visit too often, and I don’t want to see them. I got get-well cards from my classes, and I know they don’t even like me. They probably feel guilty for never asking about my legs, but that doesn’t mean they like me.

And Arthur…he visits. Every other day.

I just want him to stop—can’t he get it? I don’t want him to be here. And, most of all, I don’t understand why he wants to be here.

A brisk knock on the door. Arthur comes in before I can tell him to get out.

He settles down on the chair next to me and pulls out a book and starts reading.

Confused, I stay quiet.

After a while, I drop off to sleep. When I wake up, he’s gone.

This happens two more days in a row.

Then, he talks.

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay, I guess. Why are you—”

“That’s good, Isadora.” His eyes are so earnest that I can’t find it in me to question him.

I look down at my hands and shift. A bolt of pain sears down my legs, and I wince. That’s worse than it’s ever been.

My heart speeds up—I can hear the beeping on the regulator—and my mouth gets dry.

He’s on his feet instantly. “Should I get the nurse?”

“Siddown, Arthur,” I say, exhaustion filling my voice. So he sits down slowly. “Thank you,” I murmur. My heartbeat slows down—way down.

“Hey, don’t be sad about this,” his voice says. “You’re still great, and you’ll be great even when you can’t walk. You know, that, right?”

Lie, that’s a lie, I think. But I give Arthur a sleepy drugged-up smile for affirmation, the first smile I’ve given in a long time.

I close my eyes to go to sleep.

Galatea's Eyes

I had some fun with this one.


-----------------

She is the eighth. She appears in a swirl of dust, and he scrutinizes the lace around her neck. It flowers out from her prominent collarbones, clinging to her frail neck, wrapping around her bony shoulders. The rest of the dress clings tight to her anorexic angles, and her weary left eye—the only one visible past a curtain of dark hair—stares as if he were her savior. Not into his eyes, though. They never do.

Yes, he thinks. Beautiful. How he has wished for someone this glorious!

He raises his hand and brushes back the thin hair from her cheek. As the shadow lifts from her face, he recoils and realizes the blemish. The disfiguration is hideous to behold. That eye socket is healed over, puckered and concave, as if the eye were removed and the lid sewn shut.

He shakes his head, and the eighth vanishes. Something inside him laments his inability to create perfection—but he knows it is not his place to create perfection. That would be His place. All he wishes is someone good enough.

So he tries again, taking a seat on the ground, his bare chest glistening with perspiration. He closes his eyes and imagines.

It is not long before another the ninth springs into existence, this one even more waiflike than the last. She is small, corpse-thin, her knees jutting out in thick knobs from her meatless thighs. This girl is clad in white shorts and a black t-shirt that swallows her torso.

She observes him. His beautiful eyes intimidate her, electric blue and piercing to the bone. There is hardly any distance from her skin to the bone, but his eyes pierce nonetheless.

"Yes," he mutters, rising gracefully to his feet. She cringes back from his tall body, her lips parting slightly as she stares him in the eye. He is taken by surprise.

This one is different. She looks at him as though they were equals, making eye contact and holding it. No matter that she looks afraid—the creation is always afraid of its creator. But it is to be noted that she dares to meet his gaze.

He lifts his hand to her cheek. The soft contact makes her stiffen, her jaw setting in stubbornness. She has green eyes, wild untamable green eyes, and he smiles.

Against her will, she is taken by his beauty. Awe strikes her, but she does not let it show.

He traces his fingers down her side, over the jutting bone of her hip. Her size fills him with satisfaction—the most beautiful size, purged of all evil, purged of all humanity, leaving only the soul. This one’s soul glares out from her face in sharp relief. This is the one. This is the one he was born to build.

He leans down to kiss her, but she smacks her bony hands onto his chest and shoves him back.

His eyes snap open and he glares, open-mouthed and shocked by her insolence.

She glares back, venom pervading her expression. There is a minute of ringing silence between them.

Perhaps he was wrong.

He comes closer again, more aggressively this time, but she catches his face in her hands and says, "No."

He is rooted in place by the word. She should not speak. He did not create her to speak.

But he fears cancelling her. She is physical glory like he has never managed.

So he stares, and waits, and debates, his chin wrapped in her cold, strong fingers, his eyes mystified.

Eventually her joints uncurl from his face, and he takes a small step back. Far enough that she lowers her hand. Still close enough that he could lean in and taste her breath. "You speak," he says.

"I do." Her voice is high, clear, and strong. It is a voice that could go for miles.

"What do you wish?"

She lowers her eyelids once, slowly, before answering. Her spindly eyelashes stretch shadows across her hollow face. "I wish that you may perceive not your thoughts but your needs."

His cheeks redden. His skin seems to glow gold with fervor as he replies. "You presume much."

"And what, pray, do I presume, Alion?"

Alion clenches his jaw. He does not know how she knows his name. "You presume that I care to be advised by your ilk. You presume that I take stock in that which I have already, and with reason, suppressed."

"And you have suppressed me?" Her deep green eyes sparkle with impish daring, and she slides her fingers down his sweaty chest. She can feel his heart beating faster under her touch. Stepping closer, she wraps an arm around his back, leaning her cheek against his torso. "Why have you suppressed me?" He can feel her throat vibrating against him, can feel the whisper of her lips against his slick skin.

"I have."

"Why, Alion?" There is a dark smile in her voice, a filthy smile.

"Siren!" Flustered, he forces her away. "I must not admit to my attraction. Suppression is the natural consequence."

She reads his pause. "…and yet…"

"And yet," he says, looking her up and down, "there is always some flaw, Galatea."

"And mine?"

Alion shakes his head, his dark hair sticking to his forehead. He is too aware of the shape of her, too aware of the knowledge in her eyes, too aware that he wants her—"Your voice."

"Fatal?"

"Perhaps." He swallows, forcing his eyes away. This one is too much trouble. This one cannot be stood. This one questions where she should not.

"Consider the challenge," Galatea says, licking her dry lips. "Appreciate how I compensate for all that you take from my body." She looks down at her bonelike calves, at her skeletal arms. "Appreciate how I compensate for your weakness."

He meets her eyes, and there is some understanding between them. He knows she is right. She knows she is right. Most of all, she knows he is too cowardly to care.

She closes her eyes as he cancels her.

Alion sits down and tries again. Number ten is missing an arm. Number eleven is missing a leg. Number twelve is missing a nose.

Number thirteen is a carbon copy of Galatea. And she does not speak.

Alion rejoices and moves to kiss her.

But he has hardly touched his lips to hers before he recoils. She is cold, hard stone. She is soulless, voiceless, and as he stares into her eyes he cannot call her Galatea. And neither can she.

-----------------------------

(Author's note: I kept the name Galatea because it's beautiful, but I shortened Pygmalion of legend (who fell in love with his own creation) to simply 'Alion'. I thought it lent an appropriate sort of bizarro feel to the work.)

Fearless

I'm on time, just barely! YESSS.

By the way, when I copied this, it deleted all my tabbing. So I tried inserting spaces in place of every single tab, but it deleted that after I'd already done all of them. Then I tried putting in line breaks for every new paragraph, but it deleted those post-hoc as well. So (after twenty minutes of trying to fix it... DX) this will still look like one giant, very daunting block of text. My sincerest apologies.

There was once a girl named Cinnamon Lynn Sanders. She had incredibly long red hair. It was her favorite thing about herself—Mama had always told her she had magic hair.

She had a best friend, a boy whose name was Brian McAlister. They were both eight, but she was a month older than he was, so she told him with all the surety of an eight-year-old that she would keep him safe since he was so young.

It was October twenty-fourth, a warm, welcoming day in Atlanta. Cinnamon and Brian were climbing trees in Cinnamon’s back yard, Cinnamon’s red hair the color of a ripe tomato in the loud sunlight. Brian’s smile was wider than the soft-banked creek out in the woods, because they were dangling upside-down from the boughs of one of the trees, now, and Brian thought Cinnamon looked goofy with her face all red like that.

“You look silly,” he laughed. “Really silly, Cinn.”

Repression

Warning: Casual swearing ahead.

When I was younger—way younger, maybe ten or eleven—my dad thought it’d be a fun idea to nickname me ‘And.’

See, my name’s Andrew, and I liked being called Andy, or even Drew (Drew was for girls to call me, ‘cause I thought ‘Drew’ was way more studly at this point in my life). But, wouldn’t you know it, ‘And’ stuck. Out of all the damned rotten luck.

Anyway, so here I am, a lonely conjunction trapped in a place I certainly don’t belong: A church. Shit if I belong in a church. I’d declared myself atheist by the time I was thirteen. But, God, I had to come to this wedding, even if it means I’m going to see the one I love—my best friend, the only one who keeps me from quitting my job, my long-time confidant—getting married to someone else.

I’m so very tempted to jump up during the ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ segment of the service, but I don’t. The right to do that is solely reserved for dramatic scenes in movies, scenes with overuse of violins and perfect couples—usually a petite blonde girl and a tall, masculine, dark-haired guy with artfully-unshaved stubble. I am neither tall nor particularly masculine, to be honest. I’m a skinny blond dude, five foot eight.

So that speak-now moment passes, and the rest of the service goes without a hitch. The only thing I’m thinking is, damn, my ass hurts, because these pews must have been made for people to bring their own cushions or something. I look up at that massive crucifix on the wall and feel a bit bad for thinking curse words in a church, but hey, let’s be honest. I don’t believe in God, so do I really think anything bad is gonna happen? Negative.

I hold back a yawn. I’ve spent so much effort trying to tune out, trying to keep myself from staring with shameless agony, that I’m about to make myself fall asleep. And that’s bad, because this does mean a lot to both of them, and I wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings. Especially not Taylor’s—and God, does Taylor look great up there. Tall, blonde, gorgeous. So much personality behind those blue eyes.

I grit my teeth. I know I shouldn’t be thinking about this stuff while—oh, Lord, and now they’re kissing. Isn’t that just the cherry on top?

I knew I should’ve stayed home with my dog, Ampersand. Why the hell not, I’d figured, when naming him. He was doomed to be a failure at being a dog, anyway. I still don’t know how he grew up so stupid, given that he’s half St. Bernard. What the other half might be remains a mystery, but there’s no questioning Ampersand is one of a kind.

The first time I saw him at the shelter, four years back, I laughed my ass off. What a goofy-looking dog, I thought to myself. Medium size, shaggy, and all sorts of weird colors in that coat of his. Then the guy working at the shelter told me, “This one’s still a puppy,” and I stopped laughing.

“Nah. You’re joking.” I peered closer at him. He was definitely the size of a full-grown dog. “You’re joking, right?”

“Nope. He’s going to be huge. He’s just about six months old right now.”

“Could I see him?”

The volunteer guy opened the cage, and this dog leapt out at me. Must’ve been a three-foot-high jump, I swear to God. I fell back on that hard-ass concrete floor, and to add insult to injury, damn dog started humping me. I felt myself going red in the face. “Get—off,” I grunted, and shoved the dog off my chest.

“Sorry about that. Dogs are such gaywads sometimes,” laughed the volunteer guy, grabbing the dog’s collar.

I pulled myself to my feet, brushing off my disgraced jeans, giving the dog another look. Sure, he was an obnoxious son-of-a-bitch—literally—but I’d never seen a dog look so friendly in my life. So I took him home, cut his hair really damn short, called him Ampersand. We make a pretty good pair. And and Ampersand—try saying that five times fast.

Should’ve stayed home.

I sigh. The organ’s playing, and it’s time for the reception. Good thing, too, because my stomach is empty. There’s nothing in the fridge at home—admittedly, it’s been a bit of a task forcing myself to leave my house these days, between the depression and the just-plain-fear.

See, I got mugged a couple weeks ago. I was walking home, holding my groceries, and this pair of guys kicked me into a side alley and started beating me up. It hurt a whole hell of a lot, not that I wasn’t used to getting beat up. Being scrawny and quiet, among other things, isn’t good for your health when you’re a middle-schooler.

Anyway, though. The muggers—huge, stupid guys; must’ve been twice my size—shoved me up against the wall.

“Got any money?” said the first one.

“Yeah,” I gasped through the blood pouring out of my mouth, reaching for my pocket. “Just hold on—”

“Well, you better hurry up, faggot!” hissed the second.

I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and tossed it to the first guy. “There. That’s all I have.”

“How ‘bout a cell phone, faggot?” the second guy said. Probably his favorite word, ‘faggot,’ but his lack of intelligence wasn’t really an issue to me at that point. I couldn’t breathe. My face resembled some sort of vegetable—broccoli, cauliflower; one of the puffy ones. And my brain wasn’t too far from vegetable status, either, given the number of times they’d slammed my head into the wall. So I took out my phone, handed it to moron number two, and he called me a faggot one more time—ooh, tantalizing—before taking off with moron number one.

I find it sort of weird, now, how little I was scared at that point. I think if they’d had guns, I would’ve been taking a piss in my pants, but as it was, they were just two big idiots calling me names and taking my money. Nothing new.

I stand up and slide out of the pew, my ass crying in relief. My knees are doing that awkward half-bent thing so I can shuffle sideways out into the aisle without just turning ninety degrees and walking like a regular person. I flow with the crowd to the reception area.

A guy named Kyle is walking on my left. He works in the cubicle next to me. He’s also a douchebag, infamous for his douchebaggery. Jesus, I hope I’m not just another douchebag Taylor decided to invite just for the hell of it. There should be two types of invitations: the I-really-wanted-you-to-be-here invitations and the you’ll-hear-about-it-even-if-I-don’t-invite-you-and-that-conversation-will-be-awkward-as-hell-so-I’m-inviting-you invitations.

Kyle turns to me a little and feigns surprise. “Oh, hey, And.” Oh, the subtext is so clear. Why, hello, And! I, uh, ‘didn’t see you there’!

“’Sup, man?” I... uh, I ‘didn’t see you’ either! Wouldn’t it have been better if we had just gone on ‘not noticing’ each other?

“Not much, not much. Nice wedding.” It sure would’ve been better to just continue ignoring you! I’m going to make vapid conversation!

“Yeah.” I’m going to agree, and not contribute anything to this interaction, so that it might fizzle out before it gets too painful and/or personal!

“They look really great together, huh? Took them way too long to go ahead and tie the knot, in my opinion.” I’ve just destroyed all chance you have at exiting the conversation without contributing an opinion! Ha-HA!

“Yeah, it’s been a while.” You thought you had me there, but I’m going to make more vagaries and pray you just go away! Ha-HA, yourself!

“Alright, man. I’ll see you Monday, huh?” Touché.

“Cool.” As I stop translating the subtext, which I generally find far more interesting than actual conversations, I find myself stopping in front of a huge-ass wedding cake. Why did they need this much cake? Oh, right - to satisfy the appetites of hundreds of people they probably didn’t even want to invite. I know Taylor hates Kyle, so i know there’s at least one of 'em.

Should’ve stayed home, should’ve stayed home, should’ve stayed—

“And!”

Oh, that voice. Musical, almost. Husky, sort of low, beautiful. Taylor’s there, standing right in front of me, and I’m so lost for words I don’t know what to say.

“Hey, Taylor,” I manage eventually. “This... it’s great. It’s all great.” I wave around at the reception hall.

“Glad you like it.” Two twinkling blue eyes can be so goddamn cruel.

I smile wide, the lie in my lips hurting worse than anything.

Still remember the first time I met Taylor. We were twenty-three—I was just out of Tufts at this point, the new kid on the proverbial block. And there are a hell of a lot of blocks in Philly.

I’ve never been much of an advocate of love at first sight. Back when I was twelve, I convinced myself I was in love-at-first-sight with this chick called Melanie. She was the so-called hot one in our grade, and I’d never spoken to her, and I’ve still never spoken to her. I guess at that point I was just latching onto some girl, any girl, to be in love-at-first-sight with, ‘cause all the other guys did it, so I thought I’d fit in better.

That aside, though—I’m pretty damn sure it was love at first sight with Taylor. Third day at work, I turned the corner, looked up from the stapler I was reloading, and—bam! Hit full-force by those eyes. Oh, and I stapled myself in the thumb. It was pretty painful, and I made myself look like a dumbass, but we both started laughing, so it turned out okay. Once the bleeding stopped.

I’ve never really had a best friend before, and definitely not one as cool, funny, and downright gorgeous as Taylor. Before moving to Philly, I never even had a reason to leave my dorm, I was so closed-up. That was probably just my nervousness that someone might get to know me too well, because all during high school and college I hated myself to the point of contemplating suicide - so I didn’t have friends, not really. Sure, I talked with a few girls in a few of my classes—I remember Ashley and Mimi really vividly—and a few guys, though I always felt sort of awkward around guys. They didn’t think my name was funny or cute like girls did, shockingly. Just weird. Not a great conversation starter.

Now, after moving here to Philly, I have a reason to pick up the phone and call someone out of the blue to come over and hang out. I’ve got a reason to worry about what Christmas present to buy, ‘cause Taylor’s presents are always the best. Hysterical, and cute, too. Worst, though—I finally have a reason to stay awake at night, staring at my ceiling, wondering, Is it me? Is it the same? Is it mutual, for the first time in my life?

Should’ve known better, I guess. After I heard the news about the engagement, I completely snapped. I—Jesus, why had I ever thought I could find love? I can’t even find lust, for Christ’s sake. I’m twenty-nine and I’m a virgin. And everyone gets laid in college. Shit, it takes talent not to get laid in college. And I’m not even unattractive, not really. At least, I don’t think so most of the time. I don’t waste time thinking about my appearance, though, ‘cause it’s not what I think that matters. It’s what Tay thinks.

I guess it was pretty doomed, though, from the beginning. From the second that eleven-year-old kid ruined everything by calling me a fag. I guess names just stick to me. They become me, define me, and from that point on, since that dumbass kid called me a fag, I was the school fag. All through middle and high school. Shit, even all through that so-called ‘new start’ college was supposed to bring. I’ve only managed to escape it here, in Philly, and now I’m finding it’s even worse when people aren’t calling me a fag—cause, Jesus, what can I say?

Taylor grins, his teeth white and straight and his blond hair toppling in chaos over his forehead. Cass comes up to him, looking gorgeous in her white dress, and Tay puts his arm around her waist so casually. I try not to stare. I try to hold back my envy.

“You look great, Cass,” I say, glancing her up and down with that dumbass fake smile still plastered all over my face. “I—” I was just about to say I loved her dress. What the hell? Come on, Andrew. Andy. Drew. And. Keep it together. Don’t mind how handsome Taylor looks in his tuxedo, that pressed black tuxedo, perfect on his tall body.

“Thanks! How’s it going, And?” asks Cass, smiling. She’s pretty. Five foot two, brunette, got a nice smile. Maybe if I just looked like her—

I raise my eyebrows. “It’s... it’s going pretty good,” I say. “The wedding was... ah, lovely, I guess?” I laugh. “Isn’t that what people usually say about weddings?”

“Yeah, man,” laughs Taylor. “You shouldn’t say it, though. Makes you sound like a queer.”

It feels like a punch in the stomach. Feels like my heart’s beating too fast, feels like I can’t get any air. “All right, you two,” I say, keeping my smile together, because it’s all I’ve got left. “I gotta get going. Have fun on your honeymoon. Panama, right?”

“Damn straight,” says Taylor, flicking his hair back.

“Okay. Well, have a great time.” I lift a hand in goodbye, trying to grin wider. I don’t care that I’m still starving. I’ll pick up something on the way home, I guess.

As I leave, I check back over my shoulder. I only let myself do it once.

Taylor’s still looking at me. His blue eyes are so lazily confident, I feel like he can see right through my smile. But maybe I’m giving him too much credit. I’m a pretty good actor. I even fool myself sometimes.