one. (unknowing, uncaring hallelujah) & two. (take you for a ride)
Here's hoping I get the rest done.
~1168 words, wherein the seasons and personified. Summer and Winter argue.
The snow hasn't fallen this year. The rocks and valley are bare and grey, empty. Rivers run freely, and leaves wither to dust on the bough. Winter has not come. The land is dry and dead as ash. The air boils around the trees, down around the earth. Fires spark in tinder forests and animals starve.
In the forest, under the narrow shadows of the ageing trees, the dryads pace. Their cloth-of-leaves is withered and dry, their faces wet with tears. They tear at their hair and wail, crying out for the cold embrace of winter and the biting kiss of frost. Without the cold, their seeds will not germinate, their children will not grow. The trees wither under the unrelieved heat of the sun, branches becoming brittle and frail. The grass crunches under the daylight, stems collapsing under the faintest breath of wind.
High up in the mountains, the great eagles pant and writhe, their beaks wide open as they gasp. Their nests are gone, burned away, their eggs boiled whole in the shells. Even here there is no snow. Here, closer to the sun, the air seems to burn, each breath a blaze. There is no wind.
-
In the far palaces of the high places, the air is full of strife. Spring waits in the garden. Her hair is braided high upon her head, looped tall about a golden coronet and strung with snowdrops. She is seated in a bed of posies, skirts spread out in a pool of cool purples and blues, pale arms crossed over her chest. Autumn moves out towards her. Autumn is more casual, clad in shorts and a rich brown shirt, her auburn hair loose around her shoulders. Both look worried, faces torn between fear and exasperation. Autumn sits down beside Spring, smoothing her shorts down over her thighs. Both are barefoot, and their feet burrow into the grass. They talk, quietly, faces turned to each other. They each seem absolutely at home with the other, relaxing easily into the grass and the flowers. They talk until the garden grows dark, and until they fall asleep, heads pillowed on flowers and stems. Around them the garden falls still.
-
Deep inside the palace, Summer broods. He stalks across the great hall, footsteps ringing out to the rafters. His hair curls around him as he moves, a sleek cloud of white-blonde that hangs to his hips. He cuts a striking figure in the half-light, the gold thread shining on his jacket and down his boots. He paces and paces until he can pace no more, flinging himself down onto a nearby chair in a sprawl of long arms and legs. His eyes, sky blue, close, golden lashes casting shadows across the bridge of his nose. His face is beautiful, arrogant, so sure of himself. He doesn't move from the chair again until the sun has risen.
-
In the light of the sun, Spring and Autumn enter the hall. They both look rested and refreshed, clear-eyed and awake. They move surely, both convinced of the rightness of their actions. Before Summer can protest, they have wrapped a blindfold over his eyes, tying it tightly behind his head. They haul him to his feet and lead him out of the hall, through vaulting corridors and down to the garden.
It is cool outside, a fresh breeze blowing the scents of roses and lavender into their faces. It pulls at their hair, flinging it playfully about. Summer fights against them both, hopelessly, knowing that nothing can stop them when they move together. They drop him unceremoniously onto a bench and leave him, their footsteps soon falling away into the distance. He pushes himself upwards, trying to establish where they have brought him. He can smell roses, old fashioned roses, sweet and heavy on the air. He can hear running water, the sound of a pond, and the calling of the birds in some nearby grove. It's cooler out here than it has been for a long time. He's been angry for a long time, angry at something so small that he's already forgotten what it was. That's always been his failing, his temper, hot as the sun and as unyielding, always refusing to admit that anyone else might be right.
-
In the garden, Summer looks childlike. The garden is old, so old than none can remember who first cultivated it, and that sense of age clings. The great trees, the nymph rising from the fountain, they are all soft with age, and Summer looks like lightning in their midst. Winter watches him, clear-eyed and calm. It is the work of an instant to push open the wicker gate and walk in. His feet sink deep into the mossy grass, still dew-damp from the morning. So much less ostentatious than Summer, he wears simple clothes, trousers and a shirt in shades of cool grey and blue. His hair is choppy and short, standing around his head like feathers. He runs one hand through his hair, slicking it back for the sake of someone who can't see him. Summer has always made him nervous, more so than Spring or even Autumn. Autumn might scream and shout, but at least she made it obvious what you'd done. Summer, you might have done anything. Anything at all to set him off. Grudges could last for days, weeks, months, years, too long. He'd left after the last one, too sick of it all to care about anything anymore. It was only now, when he saw how the land sickened and died, that he'd come back.
He walks across the garden, quiet as a breeze. Summer looks up, head moving towards the sound of his breathing. He sits himself on the bench beside him, close but not touching. He has no idea what they fought over, but he won't be the first one to close the gap and apologise. He spent so much of his time trying to please Summer, crafting the finest weather for him, and Summer never made an effort.
-
When the other person sits down next to him, Summer knows who it is. The smell of ice and water curls around him, mingling with the scent of roses and he wants more than anything for the other man to forgive him. When Winter sits down, not touching him, he thinks his heart might break. It isn't until he realises that Winter is still there, still beside him, that he begins to relax.
-
Gradually, as the sun rises to the height of the sky, the two begin to lean into each other. Still silent, they each find comfort in the other, knowing that they have been forgiven.
-
Somewhere far down, snow begins to fall. The stones and the trees seem to arch upwards into the smooth whiteness, the dryads raising their hands in hallelujah to the final culmination of the year. They rejoice in ignorance, happy that winter has returned to the land but unaware of what has been done.
~1103 words. Self-obssessed twaddle about a woman who's been hiding from herself. Inspired by Slide, by The Dresden Dolls.
The town looks just the same as it did when she left. She was born here, in the dingy hospital on the corner. Five years old in school, and she could hear all of them taunting her again and again about how she had no daddy. Ten years old and they were all laughing, catcalling, shouting how she was a fag and a lezzie, how she was a fat cow. Fifteen years old, walking down corridors where everyone turned their faces away from her, hiding themselves behind books or friends or anything, because she was the crazy girl. Twenty years old and she was hiding money in a box at the bottom of her wardrobe, always hoping that her mother would die and finally let her get out of this little shit town. Twenty-one years old and she got her wish, as a car skidding on the motorway put an end to her mother, and her little sister. Twenty-five and she was working night shifts in a café with three other women, knowing that she was stuck in a dead-end job and even more trapped now than she was when she was ten. Thirty and she had a husband and a good job as a secretary and two kids, a boy and a girl. Married to Jerry and mother to Susan and Jack. Thirty-five and she had an ex-husband and four kids and a nanny and more debts than she knew what to do with, everything piling up on top of her. Thirty-five and still trapped, still trapped just like the little girl cowering in the corner, too afraid to go out into the playground because the big kids didn't like her.
But now she's thrown all that aside again. Just like before, she's been granted a death. Susan's death, her only daughter, killed by another car in another accident, just the same as dozens and dozens of other children like her all around the world. Nothing about her is new, not at all. Everything she is belongs to someone else. Her hair comes from her grandmother, her eyes from her father, her figure from her mother. Her shoes come from one shop, her clothes from another, her hair from the most expensive hairdresser she could find. Her thoughts come from the books that she read and the things that she saw, and they all belonged to somebody else before they were hers. Her opinions come from friends and acquaintances, from newspapers and from people speaking on television, on radio. She's never had an original thought in her life, apart from perhaps the one where she wished that her mother would just die. Her whole life is just a collection of collapsing pieces of someone else's.
She walks across the road in her high heels. She's dressed to kill. Black lace thong and matching bra, thigh-highs in slinky satin and a clinging dress in showstopper red. Skyscraper stilettos and red taloned nails, thick brunette hair and perfectly pouted, perfectly plumped scarlet lips. Tonight she's playing another part. Her purse swings loosely from her wrist as she walks, full of all the things women need. Lipstick, mascara, face powder, condoms, aspirin, mobile. Not that she has anyone to call if this goes wrong. She's in on her own, nobody's help.
The man at the entrance to the club lets her in without a murmur, inviting her inside with one arm and the appraising curve of his eyebrows. She's overdressed compared to the crowd inside, looking more like a doyenne of high society than a clubber, but she looks better. She looks better because she believes that she does, buoyed up on her own self-belief. Her hips swing provocatively from side to side as she walks to the bar, ordering herself a cocktail. Men come and go around her, but she rebuffs them all. She never comes here for men, only for herself.
The crowd swirls and heaves around her, arms held high and faces contorted as they throw themselves into the dance. She's so busy watching them that she never sees the woman approaching her. The woman in the black jeans and green shirt, long red hair sliding over her shoulders. She's too late to run, when she begins to talk, and the woman in the red dress fakes conversation, pretending to be interested. Before the woman in the red dress can help it, they're leaving the club together, arm in arm. From the street, it's a moment's jump back to the woman in the green shirt's flat, to bed together. She revels in the brief contact of skin-on-skin, running her tongue over curves and down sleek skin, trying to touch everything she can. She tangles her fingers in Titian hair and urges her downward, pulls her back upward, wants.
It isn't until afterwards that she comes back to herself, remembers. This is what her mother had been, what had caused her all of those problems when she was young. This woman, in the green shirt, is just the same as her mother, trying to make her into something she can love, lust, like, want. There isn't enough of her to keep to herself any more, not enough of her own mind to think her own thoughts.
She escapes to the old park. It's still the same, the same orange slide with the dented steps that she remembers. She climbs up those steps and sits at the top, looking out over the park. The landscape has changed, grown older. There is more graffiti on the walls, more beer bottles and more condoms, more signs that everyone has grown up. She swings her hair, side to side, suddenly wishing that she hadn't dyed it. She wants to see it, blonde and thin, the way it was when she was young. The night is cold around her. She can hear the woman in the green shirt calling, calling for her. She's wearing her dress, half-fastened, the skirt riding up around her legs. She looks back across the park. The houses she can see in the distance are lit by the rising sun, turned to red and yellow fire in the dawn blush.
She pushes herself down the slide, feeling herself grow old. She feels the years fly past, teens, twenties, knows everything that she has done. She comes to a halt at the bottom, suddenly thirty-seven, mother of three live children and one dead one, and knows who she is. She lifts her head up and calls out, “I'm fine. I'm only over here.” She doesn't add “in the same place I've always been.”
~1168 words, wherein the seasons and personified. Summer and Winter argue.
The snow hasn't fallen this year. The rocks and valley are bare and grey, empty. Rivers run freely, and leaves wither to dust on the bough. Winter has not come. The land is dry and dead as ash. The air boils around the trees, down around the earth. Fires spark in tinder forests and animals starve.
In the forest, under the narrow shadows of the ageing trees, the dryads pace. Their cloth-of-leaves is withered and dry, their faces wet with tears. They tear at their hair and wail, crying out for the cold embrace of winter and the biting kiss of frost. Without the cold, their seeds will not germinate, their children will not grow. The trees wither under the unrelieved heat of the sun, branches becoming brittle and frail. The grass crunches under the daylight, stems collapsing under the faintest breath of wind.
High up in the mountains, the great eagles pant and writhe, their beaks wide open as they gasp. Their nests are gone, burned away, their eggs boiled whole in the shells. Even here there is no snow. Here, closer to the sun, the air seems to burn, each breath a blaze. There is no wind.
-
In the far palaces of the high places, the air is full of strife. Spring waits in the garden. Her hair is braided high upon her head, looped tall about a golden coronet and strung with snowdrops. She is seated in a bed of posies, skirts spread out in a pool of cool purples and blues, pale arms crossed over her chest. Autumn moves out towards her. Autumn is more casual, clad in shorts and a rich brown shirt, her auburn hair loose around her shoulders. Both look worried, faces torn between fear and exasperation. Autumn sits down beside Spring, smoothing her shorts down over her thighs. Both are barefoot, and their feet burrow into the grass. They talk, quietly, faces turned to each other. They each seem absolutely at home with the other, relaxing easily into the grass and the flowers. They talk until the garden grows dark, and until they fall asleep, heads pillowed on flowers and stems. Around them the garden falls still.
-
Deep inside the palace, Summer broods. He stalks across the great hall, footsteps ringing out to the rafters. His hair curls around him as he moves, a sleek cloud of white-blonde that hangs to his hips. He cuts a striking figure in the half-light, the gold thread shining on his jacket and down his boots. He paces and paces until he can pace no more, flinging himself down onto a nearby chair in a sprawl of long arms and legs. His eyes, sky blue, close, golden lashes casting shadows across the bridge of his nose. His face is beautiful, arrogant, so sure of himself. He doesn't move from the chair again until the sun has risen.
-
In the light of the sun, Spring and Autumn enter the hall. They both look rested and refreshed, clear-eyed and awake. They move surely, both convinced of the rightness of their actions. Before Summer can protest, they have wrapped a blindfold over his eyes, tying it tightly behind his head. They haul him to his feet and lead him out of the hall, through vaulting corridors and down to the garden.
It is cool outside, a fresh breeze blowing the scents of roses and lavender into their faces. It pulls at their hair, flinging it playfully about. Summer fights against them both, hopelessly, knowing that nothing can stop them when they move together. They drop him unceremoniously onto a bench and leave him, their footsteps soon falling away into the distance. He pushes himself upwards, trying to establish where they have brought him. He can smell roses, old fashioned roses, sweet and heavy on the air. He can hear running water, the sound of a pond, and the calling of the birds in some nearby grove. It's cooler out here than it has been for a long time. He's been angry for a long time, angry at something so small that he's already forgotten what it was. That's always been his failing, his temper, hot as the sun and as unyielding, always refusing to admit that anyone else might be right.
-
In the garden, Summer looks childlike. The garden is old, so old than none can remember who first cultivated it, and that sense of age clings. The great trees, the nymph rising from the fountain, they are all soft with age, and Summer looks like lightning in their midst. Winter watches him, clear-eyed and calm. It is the work of an instant to push open the wicker gate and walk in. His feet sink deep into the mossy grass, still dew-damp from the morning. So much less ostentatious than Summer, he wears simple clothes, trousers and a shirt in shades of cool grey and blue. His hair is choppy and short, standing around his head like feathers. He runs one hand through his hair, slicking it back for the sake of someone who can't see him. Summer has always made him nervous, more so than Spring or even Autumn. Autumn might scream and shout, but at least she made it obvious what you'd done. Summer, you might have done anything. Anything at all to set him off. Grudges could last for days, weeks, months, years, too long. He'd left after the last one, too sick of it all to care about anything anymore. It was only now, when he saw how the land sickened and died, that he'd come back.
He walks across the garden, quiet as a breeze. Summer looks up, head moving towards the sound of his breathing. He sits himself on the bench beside him, close but not touching. He has no idea what they fought over, but he won't be the first one to close the gap and apologise. He spent so much of his time trying to please Summer, crafting the finest weather for him, and Summer never made an effort.
-
When the other person sits down next to him, Summer knows who it is. The smell of ice and water curls around him, mingling with the scent of roses and he wants more than anything for the other man to forgive him. When Winter sits down, not touching him, he thinks his heart might break. It isn't until he realises that Winter is still there, still beside him, that he begins to relax.
-
Gradually, as the sun rises to the height of the sky, the two begin to lean into each other. Still silent, they each find comfort in the other, knowing that they have been forgiven.
-
Somewhere far down, snow begins to fall. The stones and the trees seem to arch upwards into the smooth whiteness, the dryads raising their hands in hallelujah to the final culmination of the year. They rejoice in ignorance, happy that winter has returned to the land but unaware of what has been done.
~1103 words. Self-obssessed twaddle about a woman who's been hiding from herself. Inspired by Slide, by The Dresden Dolls.
The town looks just the same as it did when she left. She was born here, in the dingy hospital on the corner. Five years old in school, and she could hear all of them taunting her again and again about how she had no daddy. Ten years old and they were all laughing, catcalling, shouting how she was a fag and a lezzie, how she was a fat cow. Fifteen years old, walking down corridors where everyone turned their faces away from her, hiding themselves behind books or friends or anything, because she was the crazy girl. Twenty years old and she was hiding money in a box at the bottom of her wardrobe, always hoping that her mother would die and finally let her get out of this little shit town. Twenty-one years old and she got her wish, as a car skidding on the motorway put an end to her mother, and her little sister. Twenty-five and she was working night shifts in a café with three other women, knowing that she was stuck in a dead-end job and even more trapped now than she was when she was ten. Thirty and she had a husband and a good job as a secretary and two kids, a boy and a girl. Married to Jerry and mother to Susan and Jack. Thirty-five and she had an ex-husband and four kids and a nanny and more debts than she knew what to do with, everything piling up on top of her. Thirty-five and still trapped, still trapped just like the little girl cowering in the corner, too afraid to go out into the playground because the big kids didn't like her.
But now she's thrown all that aside again. Just like before, she's been granted a death. Susan's death, her only daughter, killed by another car in another accident, just the same as dozens and dozens of other children like her all around the world. Nothing about her is new, not at all. Everything she is belongs to someone else. Her hair comes from her grandmother, her eyes from her father, her figure from her mother. Her shoes come from one shop, her clothes from another, her hair from the most expensive hairdresser she could find. Her thoughts come from the books that she read and the things that she saw, and they all belonged to somebody else before they were hers. Her opinions come from friends and acquaintances, from newspapers and from people speaking on television, on radio. She's never had an original thought in her life, apart from perhaps the one where she wished that her mother would just die. Her whole life is just a collection of collapsing pieces of someone else's.
She walks across the road in her high heels. She's dressed to kill. Black lace thong and matching bra, thigh-highs in slinky satin and a clinging dress in showstopper red. Skyscraper stilettos and red taloned nails, thick brunette hair and perfectly pouted, perfectly plumped scarlet lips. Tonight she's playing another part. Her purse swings loosely from her wrist as she walks, full of all the things women need. Lipstick, mascara, face powder, condoms, aspirin, mobile. Not that she has anyone to call if this goes wrong. She's in on her own, nobody's help.
The man at the entrance to the club lets her in without a murmur, inviting her inside with one arm and the appraising curve of his eyebrows. She's overdressed compared to the crowd inside, looking more like a doyenne of high society than a clubber, but she looks better. She looks better because she believes that she does, buoyed up on her own self-belief. Her hips swing provocatively from side to side as she walks to the bar, ordering herself a cocktail. Men come and go around her, but she rebuffs them all. She never comes here for men, only for herself.
The crowd swirls and heaves around her, arms held high and faces contorted as they throw themselves into the dance. She's so busy watching them that she never sees the woman approaching her. The woman in the black jeans and green shirt, long red hair sliding over her shoulders. She's too late to run, when she begins to talk, and the woman in the red dress fakes conversation, pretending to be interested. Before the woman in the red dress can help it, they're leaving the club together, arm in arm. From the street, it's a moment's jump back to the woman in the green shirt's flat, to bed together. She revels in the brief contact of skin-on-skin, running her tongue over curves and down sleek skin, trying to touch everything she can. She tangles her fingers in Titian hair and urges her downward, pulls her back upward, wants.
It isn't until afterwards that she comes back to herself, remembers. This is what her mother had been, what had caused her all of those problems when she was young. This woman, in the green shirt, is just the same as her mother, trying to make her into something she can love, lust, like, want. There isn't enough of her to keep to herself any more, not enough of her own mind to think her own thoughts.
She escapes to the old park. It's still the same, the same orange slide with the dented steps that she remembers. She climbs up those steps and sits at the top, looking out over the park. The landscape has changed, grown older. There is more graffiti on the walls, more beer bottles and more condoms, more signs that everyone has grown up. She swings her hair, side to side, suddenly wishing that she hadn't dyed it. She wants to see it, blonde and thin, the way it was when she was young. The night is cold around her. She can hear the woman in the green shirt calling, calling for her. She's wearing her dress, half-fastened, the skirt riding up around her legs. She looks back across the park. The houses she can see in the distance are lit by the rising sun, turned to red and yellow fire in the dawn blush.
She pushes herself down the slide, feeling herself grow old. She feels the years fly past, teens, twenties, knows everything that she has done. She comes to a halt at the bottom, suddenly thirty-seven, mother of three live children and one dead one, and knows who she is. She lifts her head up and calls out, “I'm fine. I'm only over here.” She doesn't add “in the same place I've always been.”