.story.short.now.
25 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in Creative, Poetry etc.
Three original short stories.
***
Unspoken
He shuffles his feet and she wants to scream, yell at him, tear his damn pretty face apart.
The ashes of their last cigarettes linger on the ground and on his black leather shoes and she lingers on the taste in her mouth, thinking his lips would taste just like this now.
Unbelievable how much time passes, how much mud life throws at you, how many words spoken, whispered, talked behind backs and closed doors and yet nothing ever changes at all.
She tries to keep it together and, if she can manage, casual, careful to not let one glance, not so much as one sigh, slip. She’s moving on difficult terrain, like a minefield.
Because she loved him once and because he knew.
And because it ruined everything.
Now she feels a lot like a ship, manoeuvring through a conversational Bermuda triangle and if she wasn’t the one standing in the cold, she’d surely be amused by their pathetic tries to make it look like they are just two people talking about books.
Like nothing ever connected them, nothing more than polite indifference, like she hasn’t cried a seventy-what nights over him, over what she had made him in her little head, like he hadn’t been completely in over his head when they started drifting apart, like he could have waited five minutes before shaking the annoying appendage that was her off, because it was the easiest way out.
Like he didn’t walk away from their friendship when she needed it the most.
It’s not like she’s angry. She’s not, she can’t be. She tried, it never lasts long, She can’t be angry with him, he’s just a kid after all.
And she should be wiser.
She is. She is completely unattached.
She’s so unattached, she lights another cigarette just to have a reason to stay outside with him a little longer.
He his carved into her heart, like one of these hearts on wooden benches, she can’t recall if she did the carving or he or both of them. Some time when they were still friends.
The kind of friends balancing on a rooftop, safe concrete, comfortable and easy on the one side and terrifying, consuming, complicated and thrilling free fall on the other side.
It was just that she fell and he didn’t. He retreated soon enough, walking the other way, untying the bond and letting her hit rock bottom for something that had started as a dance for two.
He speaks again, she listens, she replies, feeling a sense of things past, a quiet ring of how it felt like when she was a sponge to his words, trying to decipher him.
Eventually she did, decipher him, he didn’t like it much.
But everything is not at all the same. Every word now is a substitute for all the things that they will never say.
They leave it unspoken because, all aside, this moment is special, this illusion of having an actual chance to go back to how it was before the lines started to blur. Saying it all, every thought they think in this very second, it would crash the play pretend that is working so well.
And the playing pretend means so much to her because the in between of this moment and that last awkward tilt of his head, when she knew it was over, she’d been incomplete.
Maybe he feels remotely the same…or something vaguely similar, she has no idea.
But he stays for another cigarette, just like her, and he says that he likes eloquent people.
She was always eloquent.
But that probably just wasn’t enough.
***
Diamond
The air around them is moist, humid and the love they made still lingers on the curtains. It’s still dark outside and he rolls over to stare at her, he often does that, he thinks that he has to.
After all, she is so beautiful, her sight is an image that must not be forgotten, something that has to be copied, inch by inch, into the database of his brain.
After all, she is going to leave him in time, she always does. He is a quick fix and he knows it.
He doesn’t mind. Much.
If this is all he can get, a glimpse of paradise, not a foot in the door, he takes it and takes it gladly.
After all she is so beautiful.
She smiles that porcelain smile and her eyes are full of devotion, he knows that she loves him just as much as he loves her now. It only never lasts.
But he’s given her what she wanted, he did all those things to her, touched all the right spots of hot flesh, felt her tremble underneath him and made her feel beautiful, more than she ever would if he could get himself to tell her just how beautiful she was to him.
She is the kind of girl that mistakes physical attention for heartfelt adoration and it’s the only thing that satisfies her.
That’s why he never tells her that she is the one good thing in his life, as messed up as it is, that he would cross the world a million times to be with her, that everything else blurs when she comes into the picture…
It’s not what she wants to hear, it’s not even something she’d believe.
No one ever loved her for anything but her body, no one ever appreciated anything other than the good fuck she gives.
Except he does.
“It’s getting late”, she says and he realizes that the few precious moments are already over.
Half a heartbeat later, she’s already gone, leaving her earthy scent behind, flooding his room, the corridor, the kitchen, the bathroom and he lies with her invisible presence.
He is always thinking so hard, trying so hard to figure out how the man to fit her right would have to be, how he’d have to be to collect the pieces.
But he doesn’t see it, she always gives herself, her poor damaged self, to men that see nothing in her, nothing but a piece of tits and ass and she believes that they love her because the degrading patronization of narcissistic pricks looking down at her is the only kind of notion she knows.
She can’t feel his love for her because it doesn’t fall into that same category, she doesn’t even notice that she’s exploiting him, every other night, sucking him dry, because she never notices when it’s being done to her.
And underneath the leather and the lace and the luscious lips, she is so innocent that he sometimes feels ashamed to invade her, to penetrate the softness, to stain the vulnerable shell of that hurt soul with his blind lust.
She deserves so much better. So much better than the men she’s seeing and so much better than him. But she doesn’t see it, she only ever sees red lights and her own insignificance.
Diamond is a goddess, a vixen, a seductress at night but the dark eyes that they all take to be lustrous, he always knows to be of devastating sadness.
And so, unlike the other girls, she is good at her job not because it pays the bills, but because it’s holding her upright.
Time and time again, when he stares at her to capture that delicate, wry smile, she says that he doesn’t have to pay. That she likes him enough to give it to him for free.
It always feels like she is driving a knife into his guts.
He would give her all the money he owns but not so that she feels gratitude because she worked good on him, but because he would give her anything at all he owned.
It just doesn’t work like that with her. She comes and she goes, a quick fix, a glimpse of paradise.
And then it’s already over.
He’s fine with it, it’s better than not having her at all.
***
Both Ends Of The Scale
The grass tickles. And the sunshine reflects her golden hair as she runs through the field, yelling and singing and it feels like this day will never end. Everything that is good and true is with her, everything that matters, she can grab with one hand. And she does and he takes it.
It still feels a bit like magic, like it’s something very divine that only the two of them can produce.
The Midas touch.
The debris she brushes cuts deep into the flesh of her bare legs. And the moon doesn’t light this night as she runs and screams for help and it feels like this night will never end. Everything that was good and true was taken from her, everything that matters is lost and gone. And his hand is out of reach.
It still feels a bit like a curse, like the way they’ve taken him away from her was just doable with dark and wicked powers.
They fall to the ground, he holds her tightly and they are both so sure that they’ll never let go of one another and her laugh is so joyous, even the wind sings its chime. He kisses her forehead and the breeze cools the wet spot, giving her goosebumps all over her body.
She slips to the ground, he falls and tightly presses his hands on the wound and they are both so sure that they’ve been robbed of a proper good-bye and her tears are so full of pain, even the clouds cry with her. He kisses the cross around his neck and the wind can’t cool the hot blood running all over his body.
He gently pushes her down, she likes his weight on top of her, she knows he’s her future, all she ever wants. He can’t believe he should ever be so lucky. And the little life she carries underneath her heart will bless their eternity together. Everything is just how it’s supposed to be.
In peace.
They gently let him down, put him to rest, she cracks under the weight of losing him, she knows she can never bring back the past, all she ever wants. She can’t believe she should ever be so alone. And the little hand that’s entwined in hers is the only reason she doesn’t let herself fall into the tomb to lay next to him. Everything is just a shadow of what it was before.
In war.
