MORE NANOWRIMO!is
So Prompt for November 3: genderbend
My first breath was at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes. Eyes, mouth and buttons came later. Living a two dimensional life is hard, only seeing my siblings when the humans took one of us away, knowing each other only by our voices. My brothers and sisters and I lived in immense fear, that one day they would come for us. If one of them took one of us, there was no return, and they took my siblings at all hours of the day.
The saran wrap they covered us in was suffocating. As the days wore on, it ruined my skirt, smearing the icing, taking some off as it dragged across me. They stole my brothers and sisters from beside me, no time to say goodbye. The only constant in my life, was that saran wrap that every day stole more and more of my frosting skirt.
One morning, I guess the young boy was feeling especially cruel, the saran wrap whipped back, pulling with it the rest of my skirt. Almost immediately I felt the change. It wasn't that I was naked, because I'm made of gingerbread, it was more than that. I knew, on some level deep inside, that I was no longer a gingerbread lady. I tried out my voice, sure enough it dropped. My life began anew as a gingerbread man.
My brothers and sisters accepted me for who I now was. Life on the plate didn't have room for petty bigotry. We all faced the same threats and felt the same insidious fear every time one of the humans entered the kitchen. While none of us wanted to be the one to go next, we didn't want our siblings to suffer either. However, we would all face the same fate.
Days continued to pass, and the humans continued to pick my siblings over me. I wish I could say that this angered me, that I wanted to go in their place, to spare them. But I can't say that. I was happy. Anything that happened to prolong my existence was welcome. And then, it happened.
I was the last one left. All of my siblings stolen from me, ripped from our home on the plate covered with saran wrap, I alone was left to ruminate on life's little follies. As I languished, just waiting for my time to come, I pondered back on my life and all it's lessons.
I remember clearly my time as a girl, and how things looked so much rosier back then. I remember the day I became a man, and how it changed me. How life became darker, and I knew that I was a coward, but that it was okay when I was a girl, because that's how the plate works. The men tried to go before the women, to spare them, and now that was left was me. It made me sick.
And then, when the saran wrap moved back, the remnants of my skirt still clinging to the plastic, the hand did not come. I was not taken to where my brothers and sisters went before me. Instead, the plate moved. A door opened, and I fell off of the plate into a large empty plastic bin, and the saran wrap floated down above me, smothering me.
Slowly, the bin filled up with other unwanted refuse, and eventually someone threw away a drink. I could feel the liquid trickle down around me, surrounding me. It seeped into my pores, drowning me. And there I died, alone in the bottom of a trash can, the saran wrap pressed down on me, a joking facsimile of my skirt crushed over my legs.
Prompt for November 5: menage a trois. locket that means nothing. one way plane ticket. bruise palette colors.
It was always just the three of us. Whenever things turned to shit, which was more often than not, we were always there. Nothing was too awkward, nothing was off limits. It wasn't a romantic thing, though we did experiment. We didn't date, we merely lived the way it felt right to. Whispers never meant much, sure we heard them, but they didn't know.
I loved you both, and you both loved me, and you loved each other, an equilateral triangle. Everything was perfect, even the flaws were perfect, because it meant we were human and what we had was real. Julie bought a locket, not realizing it was a locket, just because she loves pretty pendants. We asked if she was going to put our pictures in it, but she said no. She didn't have small enough pictures, and the two sides of the locket didn't tell the whole story. Nothing could ever tell our whole story, we cannot be confined, because nothing in life can be fully recorded, there's simply too much.
Always financially pragmatic, Derek insisted we move into a house together. Barely standing, but refusing to fall, the house was a fixer-upper we didn't have the know how to fix. It was old and drafty, with leaky pipes and a few stairs that could fall through at any minute. We loved that house. It had character, a lot like us. Living with them, in that crotchety old house, I've never felt more at home.
One weekend Julie went home to visit family. She always joked about their conservative ways. Mentioned catholic school and strict curfew. Never mentioned the abuse, though. When she came back, despite the caked on makeup she tried to hide under, we could see the bruises splayed across her cheekbones, like a painters palette. The colors vibrant and angry once she washed the foundation and blush and concealer away.
She didn't talk about it.
This is what hurt me the most. Seeing her injured made me scream for retribution, until I stopped short remembering that she never spoke about it. She took it so well, as an eventuality, something that always happened. But she never spoke of it to Derek and me before she left, or after she came back. Ignoring it, but the evidence stood proud on her cheek. There was something we didn't know about her, and it was mocking us every time we saw her.
I forgave her for it, even though it killed me to know that she kept things from me. Derek and I talked about it, behind her back, something we never did, but only because we were so upset. How could we continue this - whatever it was we had? Everything was based on trust, we always told each other everything, what were we supposed to do now?
We all began to distance ourselves in slow ways. The light touches as we lived and breathed each other, became less and less, to the point where I forgot what their fingertips felt like. Smiles that took forever to leave the eyes, like they didn't want to sever the connection, but knew they had to. Becoming enveloped in our own individual lives, instead of our collective life.
It never entered my mind to run off with Derek. I could never be complete with just him, we needed Julie to make it work. I was left alone, torn away from my only loves with nothing to show for it but tiptoes through a decrepit house at one in the morning, whispering into my separate bedroom, smelling of other people, crawling into my blankets and wishing the world would just go back to how it was before.
Julie left first, said she was needed at home. Something about her mother having an accident, falling down some stairs, or walking into a door. She left a void in the house, and Derek and I just felt wrong about life. He found some buddies to move in with. Began living life as an eligible single guy, instead of the third of a trio. He left our life behind as easily as Julie did.
The house was too big, and too cramped with memories. It smelled of times past, and everything looked like heartache. I threw my furniture into my parents' garage, packed my clothes and books, and took a one way plane ticket to just outside Boston. I got a crappy job, found a crappy apartment, and began living a crappy life.
I didn't live, like before, I existed. I went along with everything, ebbing and flowing, instead of standing tall with those who stood with me. I escaped into stories, began writing some of my own. And I hoped, that with this one, that maybe, just maybe, I could find what it was that must have been inside of me the whole time. I know it was there, because I felt it, and I want it back. I want to be whole again. I need to be whole again.
My first breath was at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes. Eyes, mouth and buttons came later. Living a two dimensional life is hard, only seeing my siblings when the humans took one of us away, knowing each other only by our voices. My brothers and sisters and I lived in immense fear, that one day they would come for us. If one of them took one of us, there was no return, and they took my siblings at all hours of the day.
The saran wrap they covered us in was suffocating. As the days wore on, it ruined my skirt, smearing the icing, taking some off as it dragged across me. They stole my brothers and sisters from beside me, no time to say goodbye. The only constant in my life, was that saran wrap that every day stole more and more of my frosting skirt.
One morning, I guess the young boy was feeling especially cruel, the saran wrap whipped back, pulling with it the rest of my skirt. Almost immediately I felt the change. It wasn't that I was naked, because I'm made of gingerbread, it was more than that. I knew, on some level deep inside, that I was no longer a gingerbread lady. I tried out my voice, sure enough it dropped. My life began anew as a gingerbread man.
My brothers and sisters accepted me for who I now was. Life on the plate didn't have room for petty bigotry. We all faced the same threats and felt the same insidious fear every time one of the humans entered the kitchen. While none of us wanted to be the one to go next, we didn't want our siblings to suffer either. However, we would all face the same fate.
Days continued to pass, and the humans continued to pick my siblings over me. I wish I could say that this angered me, that I wanted to go in their place, to spare them. But I can't say that. I was happy. Anything that happened to prolong my existence was welcome. And then, it happened.
I was the last one left. All of my siblings stolen from me, ripped from our home on the plate covered with saran wrap, I alone was left to ruminate on life's little follies. As I languished, just waiting for my time to come, I pondered back on my life and all it's lessons.
I remember clearly my time as a girl, and how things looked so much rosier back then. I remember the day I became a man, and how it changed me. How life became darker, and I knew that I was a coward, but that it was okay when I was a girl, because that's how the plate works. The men tried to go before the women, to spare them, and now that was left was me. It made me sick.
And then, when the saran wrap moved back, the remnants of my skirt still clinging to the plastic, the hand did not come. I was not taken to where my brothers and sisters went before me. Instead, the plate moved. A door opened, and I fell off of the plate into a large empty plastic bin, and the saran wrap floated down above me, smothering me.
Slowly, the bin filled up with other unwanted refuse, and eventually someone threw away a drink. I could feel the liquid trickle down around me, surrounding me. It seeped into my pores, drowning me. And there I died, alone in the bottom of a trash can, the saran wrap pressed down on me, a joking facsimile of my skirt crushed over my legs.
Prompt for November 5: menage a trois. locket that means nothing. one way plane ticket. bruise palette colors.
It was always just the three of us. Whenever things turned to shit, which was more often than not, we were always there. Nothing was too awkward, nothing was off limits. It wasn't a romantic thing, though we did experiment. We didn't date, we merely lived the way it felt right to. Whispers never meant much, sure we heard them, but they didn't know.
I loved you both, and you both loved me, and you loved each other, an equilateral triangle. Everything was perfect, even the flaws were perfect, because it meant we were human and what we had was real. Julie bought a locket, not realizing it was a locket, just because she loves pretty pendants. We asked if she was going to put our pictures in it, but she said no. She didn't have small enough pictures, and the two sides of the locket didn't tell the whole story. Nothing could ever tell our whole story, we cannot be confined, because nothing in life can be fully recorded, there's simply too much.
Always financially pragmatic, Derek insisted we move into a house together. Barely standing, but refusing to fall, the house was a fixer-upper we didn't have the know how to fix. It was old and drafty, with leaky pipes and a few stairs that could fall through at any minute. We loved that house. It had character, a lot like us. Living with them, in that crotchety old house, I've never felt more at home.
One weekend Julie went home to visit family. She always joked about their conservative ways. Mentioned catholic school and strict curfew. Never mentioned the abuse, though. When she came back, despite the caked on makeup she tried to hide under, we could see the bruises splayed across her cheekbones, like a painters palette. The colors vibrant and angry once she washed the foundation and blush and concealer away.
She didn't talk about it.
This is what hurt me the most. Seeing her injured made me scream for retribution, until I stopped short remembering that she never spoke about it. She took it so well, as an eventuality, something that always happened. But she never spoke of it to Derek and me before she left, or after she came back. Ignoring it, but the evidence stood proud on her cheek. There was something we didn't know about her, and it was mocking us every time we saw her.
I forgave her for it, even though it killed me to know that she kept things from me. Derek and I talked about it, behind her back, something we never did, but only because we were so upset. How could we continue this - whatever it was we had? Everything was based on trust, we always told each other everything, what were we supposed to do now?
We all began to distance ourselves in slow ways. The light touches as we lived and breathed each other, became less and less, to the point where I forgot what their fingertips felt like. Smiles that took forever to leave the eyes, like they didn't want to sever the connection, but knew they had to. Becoming enveloped in our own individual lives, instead of our collective life.
It never entered my mind to run off with Derek. I could never be complete with just him, we needed Julie to make it work. I was left alone, torn away from my only loves with nothing to show for it but tiptoes through a decrepit house at one in the morning, whispering into my separate bedroom, smelling of other people, crawling into my blankets and wishing the world would just go back to how it was before.
Julie left first, said she was needed at home. Something about her mother having an accident, falling down some stairs, or walking into a door. She left a void in the house, and Derek and I just felt wrong about life. He found some buddies to move in with. Began living life as an eligible single guy, instead of the third of a trio. He left our life behind as easily as Julie did.
The house was too big, and too cramped with memories. It smelled of times past, and everything looked like heartache. I threw my furniture into my parents' garage, packed my clothes and books, and took a one way plane ticket to just outside Boston. I got a crappy job, found a crappy apartment, and began living a crappy life.
I didn't live, like before, I existed. I went along with everything, ebbing and flowing, instead of standing tall with those who stood with me. I escaped into stories, began writing some of my own. And I hoped, that with this one, that maybe, just maybe, I could find what it was that must have been inside of me the whole time. I know it was there, because I felt it, and I want it back. I want to be whole again. I need to be whole again.