Short: ...And After
…And After
303 || PG
we_are_cities prompt: Nov 14 06
Gen, like all my stuff is coming out lately. Everything's fictional but the feeling. Not betad at all.
It's a hazy, European sort of day, shades of grey filling all the pixels of his vision. One of those days when his fingernails are too short, his messenger bag is too big, and the years are never long enough. Continuity counts for shit on days like this, and he can find no comfort in the wrinkled, washed-out men playing chess under the trees, because he knows one day that will be him. Just as he used to be one of the kids running, screaming, by the jungle-gym-sand-pit, every shriek a new neon, Technicolor flash in the possibility of the world.
He should know by now that the saying about how you can't go home again may be true, but somehow doesn't apply to this place. It's a vortex with a sticky timewarp center, and he can't keep coming back. It's too hard, when each step he takes here erases three he made away from this place, and he was never good with choreography to begin with. There's no way to cram a frequently loose-limbed, marginally comfortable, relatively content guy into the mind of a relatively gangly, frequently tense, marginally confused teenage boy without doing some damage.
Coming back here is like a plane crash, making his mind shark-infested waters and his memories the slowly sinking life raft that won't inflate no matter how hard he pulls the cord. After all, the notice-me orange safety of the lifejacket of his youth has been replaced by the anonymous safety of gauged ears, dark hair, and hoodies. And from this vantage point, obscured by the sticky grey fog of the time warp, it's easy to see that once hoodie strings become kite tails, the past can't take off and fly away from you, no matter how fast your footwork.
303 || PG
we_are_cities prompt: Nov 14 06
Gen, like all my stuff is coming out lately. Everything's fictional but the feeling. Not betad at all.
It's a hazy, European sort of day, shades of grey filling all the pixels of his vision. One of those days when his fingernails are too short, his messenger bag is too big, and the years are never long enough. Continuity counts for shit on days like this, and he can find no comfort in the wrinkled, washed-out men playing chess under the trees, because he knows one day that will be him. Just as he used to be one of the kids running, screaming, by the jungle-gym-sand-pit, every shriek a new neon, Technicolor flash in the possibility of the world.
He should know by now that the saying about how you can't go home again may be true, but somehow doesn't apply to this place. It's a vortex with a sticky timewarp center, and he can't keep coming back. It's too hard, when each step he takes here erases three he made away from this place, and he was never good with choreography to begin with. There's no way to cram a frequently loose-limbed, marginally comfortable, relatively content guy into the mind of a relatively gangly, frequently tense, marginally confused teenage boy without doing some damage.
Coming back here is like a plane crash, making his mind shark-infested waters and his memories the slowly sinking life raft that won't inflate no matter how hard he pulls the cord. After all, the notice-me orange safety of the lifejacket of his youth has been replaced by the anonymous safety of gauged ears, dark hair, and hoodies. And from this vantage point, obscured by the sticky grey fog of the time warp, it's easy to see that once hoodie strings become kite tails, the past can't take off and fly away from you, no matter how fast your footwork.