FF: Rustling in the Dark
Title: Rustling in the Dark
Author: Ellie
Rating: PG
Summary: “The white world as I felt my heart stop was just as disorienting…”
House 1st Person POV, an exercise in stream-of-consciousness
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“The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.” -Longfellow, “The Fire of Driftwood”
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As a boy, I stood in the Sahara at noon. The light was so bright that the world was white and featureless, hills of sand and the horizon burnt away like an overexposed photograph. Directly overhead, the hot rays beat down, eliminating shadows. There was nothing to guide you in the desert at noon.
The white world as I felt my heart stop was just as disorienting, pure and featureless, but without the warmth of the desert. That moment there was the chilly white of the arctic, blank and cold and featureless. But like a developing photograph, warmth and awareness gradually suffused the brightness.
I was back in the desert, waving down from twenty feet up Khufu’s great pyramid at Mom, shaded by a straw hat and pointing an old Leica camera at me. Dad’s off to the side, looking uncomfortable in civilian clothes, scanning the hoards of tourists and paying no mind to me or the ruins. Only when I descend too quickly, sending sand and pebbles scattering and skinning my knee, does he look my way, frowning.
The same frown is on his face staring down at me over the rustic wood table we had in Oahu. A small mountain of college admissions paperwork is in front of me, thick paper and primary colored crests and Latin mottos promising enlightenment in their halls.
“I’ll pay for you to go anywhere that will take you. With your records, that’ll be a pretty short list. You know, if you go into the service, they’ll train you to be a doctor, if that’s really what you want.” He crosses his arms and taps his foot in precise counterpoint to the banging of my feet against the table leg.
“It is what I want, but I don’t want it that way.” I defiantly tugged out a handful of admissions forms, Harvard Penn UVA American Hopkins UCLA Columbia Georgetown Princeton Cornell spilling across the table. I’d go somewhere, wouldn’t stay in this nomadic life.
I’m still a nomad, crossing deserts of place and time to wear in my gown at Michigan, running up and throwing an arm around Mom’s shoulders as Dad points the camera.
“I can’t believe you actually did it,” he says, and I frown as the shutter clicks.
There’s a click as the lock turns over and I swing the door wide, expecting more for my monthly rent than the tiny apartment that greets me. Sure, there’s a decent view of the polluted river from the window, but that’s hardly worth the cost. I fling my single bag down on the lumpy, stained sofa, and lean against the window frame, the sharp, low casement cutting into my shin, listening to the traffic below.
She’s under me, clawing at my back, with tacky acrylic nails that almost made me want to ignore her. But she’d looked so cute in the little skirt that barely made it past the hem of her labcoat, something tight and pink and ridiculously attractive, revealing perfectly sculpted legs. She’d bummed a cigarette from me on break and I’d asked her for a drink, and it had only taken two.
Two splatters of green splashed the leg of my pants, orange like bad tie-dye across my ass. I frowned and looked up at the perpetrator, a brunette who looked far too comfortable with a weapon resting against her thigh. There was devilry in her eyes, too, and I couldn’t help but get lost in their depths.
Something deep inside me sparks, white like flame overwhelming my senses again for ever, until it’s not. Then I’m just in the dark, cold and shocky, aware they’re working on me. My only reassurance is in knowing I’m alive.
Knowing that I’ll go on living, long after this.
****
End
****
Author: Ellie
Rating: PG
Summary: “The white world as I felt my heart stop was just as disorienting…”
House 1st Person POV, an exercise in stream-of-consciousness
****
“The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.” -Longfellow, “The Fire of Driftwood”
****
As a boy, I stood in the Sahara at noon. The light was so bright that the world was white and featureless, hills of sand and the horizon burnt away like an overexposed photograph. Directly overhead, the hot rays beat down, eliminating shadows. There was nothing to guide you in the desert at noon.
The white world as I felt my heart stop was just as disorienting, pure and featureless, but without the warmth of the desert. That moment there was the chilly white of the arctic, blank and cold and featureless. But like a developing photograph, warmth and awareness gradually suffused the brightness.
I was back in the desert, waving down from twenty feet up Khufu’s great pyramid at Mom, shaded by a straw hat and pointing an old Leica camera at me. Dad’s off to the side, looking uncomfortable in civilian clothes, scanning the hoards of tourists and paying no mind to me or the ruins. Only when I descend too quickly, sending sand and pebbles scattering and skinning my knee, does he look my way, frowning.
The same frown is on his face staring down at me over the rustic wood table we had in Oahu. A small mountain of college admissions paperwork is in front of me, thick paper and primary colored crests and Latin mottos promising enlightenment in their halls.
“I’ll pay for you to go anywhere that will take you. With your records, that’ll be a pretty short list. You know, if you go into the service, they’ll train you to be a doctor, if that’s really what you want.” He crosses his arms and taps his foot in precise counterpoint to the banging of my feet against the table leg.
“It is what I want, but I don’t want it that way.” I defiantly tugged out a handful of admissions forms, Harvard Penn UVA American Hopkins UCLA Columbia Georgetown Princeton Cornell spilling across the table. I’d go somewhere, wouldn’t stay in this nomadic life.
I’m still a nomad, crossing deserts of place and time to wear in my gown at Michigan, running up and throwing an arm around Mom’s shoulders as Dad points the camera.
“I can’t believe you actually did it,” he says, and I frown as the shutter clicks.
There’s a click as the lock turns over and I swing the door wide, expecting more for my monthly rent than the tiny apartment that greets me. Sure, there’s a decent view of the polluted river from the window, but that’s hardly worth the cost. I fling my single bag down on the lumpy, stained sofa, and lean against the window frame, the sharp, low casement cutting into my shin, listening to the traffic below.
She’s under me, clawing at my back, with tacky acrylic nails that almost made me want to ignore her. But she’d looked so cute in the little skirt that barely made it past the hem of her labcoat, something tight and pink and ridiculously attractive, revealing perfectly sculpted legs. She’d bummed a cigarette from me on break and I’d asked her for a drink, and it had only taken two.
Two splatters of green splashed the leg of my pants, orange like bad tie-dye across my ass. I frowned and looked up at the perpetrator, a brunette who looked far too comfortable with a weapon resting against her thigh. There was devilry in her eyes, too, and I couldn’t help but get lost in their depths.
Something deep inside me sparks, white like flame overwhelming my senses again for ever, until it’s not. Then I’m just in the dark, cold and shocky, aware they’re working on me. My only reassurance is in knowing I’m alive.
Knowing that I’ll go on living, long after this.
****
End
****