Session Two

A storm is coming. What sort of storm, I know exactly. The air is charged, and I can sense that power in it as I fill my young lungs, powerful as I scream just to scream, the sound ripping into the miles and miles of my playground.

The road is abandoned, threatening to be overgrown, and my feet can't keep up with my body or my heart as I leap across it, diving into the trees, hitting that barely discernible path and into the mysterious darkness of my forest.

Silence, one that could be suffocating if I let it, surrounds me, eating up any and every sound as greenery fills every direction. Norvs, that great kind of hulking beast, are a constant threat, but I drive on.

No rules, Sarah. Just go.

I can hear the faint trickling as my foot hits a piece of wood. A tiny foot bridge is in my path, a small stream of water flowing beside it, clear and peaceful.

I take finger fulls of mud and paint it onto my cheeks. This is war, I remind myself. Our war.

That flag is mine.

You could say that I take scouting very seriously.

I see the distinct pink through the trees and shrink to the ground. They have done well, I think, hiding it in a place accessible only by the very road I just crossed. 

So I double back, crouching, barely breathing for fear of being heard. 

The midday heat is beginning to eat at me, my sun-streaked curls are sticking to my forehead as I let branches pull at my clothes, my hair, my skin. 

Just as I'd hoped. I move slowly...and I can sense the eyes on me long before I see my teammate - already launching into a speech...distracting the guard long enough for me to reach over and snatch the bright bit of cloth away and run, not celebrating - not yet - for the fight is not done.

I run hard, my feet pounding against the well-worn, hard-packed path. I can hear the one I snatched it from crashing through the brush behind me, yelling out for others to stop me. 

Darting off onto a less popular path, I slow - knowing that, once more, stealth will be my ally.
I see her before she sees me, our leader - as I reach the edge of the treeline. In hushed gasps, I tell her of my success, offer the feeble scrap to her, grin my joy. 

And we move. Just once more capture...and we win. One by one, we go onto our bellies in the dried up creek bed...and engage.

This is one of my favorites. I wrote it based on - obviously - a game of Capture the Flag that I played while at summer camp. I could have gone so much further, but I felt the end was very fitting.

It has been a while! I'm working on the whole...making-time-for-writing thing. Slowly but surely, I'm getting back to it, but with Christmas...well, we shall see if the next post will, indeed, be in 2013.

I didn't like the exercise for Session Three, and I was running ahead of my posts here, so it made me irritable at the book.

Regardless...if I don't see you and we are still being awesome on December 22nd, don't forget that the Doctor saved us. ;)

-Sarah

Session One

Please note, this is very rough - as noted at the end, it is meant to be!!

I can feel my skin give under the rough bark as I climb, but I don't care - I can't care. Slinging a leg over the branch, I pull myself up. Only a few feet higher than the ground, and already, I can feel the wind tugging at the loose curls, the very tip of my very long braid. The street is nearby, but I allow the sound of the engine, the sound of tires on pavement, to turn into the sound of my ship, crashing and slamming into waves. 

My hands wrap around the trunk of the tree, letting gravity threaten to pull me into the long green waves of grass - of ocean - and away from the nameless ship. 

Higher, higher, I must always climb higher - even toward my greatest fear - what will become my greatest fear. But now - right now, there is no fear. Nothing can touch me. 

The sky opens up, that big bowl of cloudless blue. An exquisite painting that can never be redone. And I climb. Up up up until the tree begins to give way to the nature of itself. The branches grow thinner than my waist, then smaller than my legs, until I finally stop. 

I am in another world. A new world, unexplored.

Green surrounds me. The light that spills across my skin is new light, fresh and fractured. Beauty, unhinged. I breathe in the silence, until another wave comes. This one is somewhat more violent. My branch sails back and forth across my sky, threatening to drop me into that sea once more. 

"No!" I cry out, one toe finding a place to wedge in the rough bark. 

My skin on my palms burns, but I don't care. Bits of it - skin or bark - break off and roll between my fingers, palms sore and raw. 

But my chin raises higher. 

Yonder! - an enemy or ally? What can it be? It wends its way through obstacles unknown. 

But I am distracted. 

"Peter!" 

"You are in my territory, pirate!" 

"Is anyone you don't know a pirate?" I ask, even as I parry a strike. He is good, but my tree - my jolly roger - is my home base, and I am always one swing, spin, or step ahead of Peter Pan.   

He flies, trying to get me down, and it works. 

"Get down from there!" my mother cries. 

Ah! It was an ally after all, I think as I drop from the gangplank, rolling into that green grass sea, squealing at the tongue of my fuzzy white dog.

So, I picked up this little book called The Writer's Portable Therapist. It essentially guides you through the process of identifying why you can't seem to write, which, admittedly, has been a problem for me. It also comes with a bonus of what author Dr. Rachel Ballon calls a Creativity Chronicle. Essentially, you write in her Free Flow Method (straight up, no edit writing) for twenty minutes. The above is the result from my first session. That's right. I'm going to try for a session a day and get them posted as soon as I can. Hopefully, at the end of 25 fun-filled sessions...I will be linking you to my own book. ;)

Doing Something//Best Song

Welp, I've received my very first rejection letter. I checked my email this evening and found this:

Thank you so much for your interest in Paper Lantern Lit! We feel sure that your work has merit and potential, but unfortunately we don’t see a fit for any of our projects at this time.
All the best of luck with your writing future,
The Editorial Staff
Paper Lantern Lit

I'm not quite sure how to process this right now, I've kind of got this weird wiggly cold feeling in my stomach. I was expecting it, I think. I picked a different kind of writing that is not exactly common, especially nowadays with the obsession over Dystopian stories. So, well, as my friend said, it's a rite of passage. *sigh*

What I originally started this post for was to update you on what I'm doing for my writing (so as to distract me from no reply, haha). Right now, I'm editing an old NaNoWriMo story I call New Syra, and tomorrow, I'll be picking up where I left off to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo. :) This is where I'll be disappearing to for the next month or so.

As an apology, I pulled up a very short snippet, something I wrote when I caught one of my favorite songs on the radio (it always seems to be better, even if you have the CD, to catch it on the radio, like fate is smiling).


Best Song

I turn the music up, my favorite song, and feel the bass pulse in my chest like a heartbeat, as if my heart as become too large for myself - as if I have so much more to live for than what I have here with me.

I press my back closer to the beat, trying to meld myself with it, become that intoxicating thrum - if I can join it, I can be so much more, something that stretches across time.

Notes

Well, everyone, life's a-changing. It's so interesting to look back and see just how much has changed in a year. After graduating from University last year, I have found that my writing has taken a hit - as in, no time to do so. I'm finally doing something about that! Money is becoming tight, and the last thing I want is to be forced into becoming a mindless drone who has lost all memory of what I actually want to do and become. So, I'm going over my stories and ideas, fleshing them out, and deciding where to put them, what to do with them. I'm actually sending in a story (a previous entry, "In Defense of Honor") as a sort of audition piece for a publishing company called Paper Lantern Lit. They have put out some amazing pieces of work, a scant few of which I've actually been able to read. Essentially, they give you an outline of a "spark," and you, if chosen, write it. The process is a bit more complicated than that, I'm sure, but this seems to be the gist. In this new time for me, I get to do some new things, for example, coming up with a writer's resume. There are loads of sources out there for freelance writers, however, very few for actual fiction writers. Editorials, I suppose, are more common...you'd think I would have learned this in one of the million and a half writing classes I took in college! Nope. I learned how to write an inquiry letter, a business resume, but not a writing resume. We shall see how this goes. I shall try to get a few new stories up soon, as opposed to the older stuff (sorry, it's just that I've got so much of it!). For now, though, young master Romeo is requiring my attention. Have a simply lovely day! -Sarah

On College Scandal

It was a bitterly cold winter day at the beginning of the semester, a fact that Madison hated admitting. She was very much made for warm weather – the beach, the sand, the shorts and flip-flops – they were all something she missed. Now that Christmas was over and the New Year had started, she was ready to bid good riddance to the snow.

Stepping into the old, over-heated building, Madison pulled her wool cap from her long, red-gold hair, shaking the cold wet flakes from her loosely curled locks. She was always amused that the buildings on her University’s campus were so ancient and regal looking from the outside, but inside, most of them were just a school, nothing more.

With a shiver, Madison made her way down the stairs into the basement of the building, double-checking her hand-written schedule before slipping quietly into a dark, empty classroom.

It being her first class of the day, she always had a tendency of getting to class ridiculously early. For the next half hour, as her fellow students trickled in, she sat back in her chair, reading an overly thick science fiction novel. Her eyes darted across the pages, and she brought her head up to briefly comment on something the others were saying. As she did so, she felt her skin prickle, and her eyes clapped onto the man that stepped into the room.

To say he was gorgeous would have been an understatement. He had dark hair that fell just so across his forehead, dark eyes, and a Mediterranean complexion. He looked around the room a moment, and the way his eyes flitted across made Madison sit up just a little, and she let her things drop to the ground that had been on the seat next to her. She felt childish in her movement, but she hoped he’d sit next to her. He looked like a Super Senior, and, at 24, Madison couldn’t deny that she was one as well.

He tossed her an easy smile before, much to her dismay, he made his way to the front of the classroom.

When she’d read N Strauss as the teacher, she’d picture an old round man, looking something like the Watson she’d pictured when reading Sherlock Holmes, or maybe even a young female grad student. But not this.

Already, Madison’s mind jumped to just how soon she’d end up having to drop the class. It jumped forward a month when he spoke.

“Hello, everyone. My name is Nicolas Strauss. But I’d much prefer you call me Nick.” And he moved on to break down the syllabus he turned to hand out. That was all it took.

It was only words he spoke, simple words – words she herself had spoken, mostly to her mother when she called to see how classes were going. But the way he used those words, the way they slipped off his tongue to spill into the classroom – well, if satin had a sound, Madison was sure it would sound like his voice.

Nick continued to discuss how the grading would work, and Madison couldn’t seem to take anything in. She privately hoped her body had adapted to the osmosis form of learning, because she could not seem to pull herself out of her idiotic stupor.

Class broke off that morning about half an hour early with a simple writing assignment (it was advanced composition, after all), and Madison was sure that whatever she was feeling was nothing more than a high school-type crush. Easily overcome, trivial in meaning.

But her feelings did not wane in the slightest over the next month. In fact, she was ashamed to realize that her poker face was not quite as convincing as she’d once believed.

Then, she also realized that the feelings were not one-sided. He’d hand out papers, and his fingers would linger just a moment longer than they really needed to – or was it her imagination? She couldn’t be sure. But who was she going to ask for advice? Who was she going to tell? It wasn’t something that Madison could tell just any girlfriend – this was a professor. Not even a graduate student as she’d once believed, and hoped.

Once, they were doing an in-class writing exercise, and when Madison had looked up to gather her thoughts, he’d been staring at her. When he realized it, he coughed, and went back to shuffling papers around on his desk.


Conferences. Madison had managed to avoid such a meeting all month long, but she knew that her issues were far from over when she received an email to meet him. But it wasn’t in his office like she expected – he’d asked her to meet him in a café.

As she waited, her nerves grew. This was odd – conferences were normal, but in a café? It felt off. Something wasn’t quite right.

But when Nick stepped through the door, a smile lit her features and she let her worries slip away into the recesses of her mind.

Nick walked with ease, a casual gait that emanated a confidence that many would envy, or so Madison imagined. He waved to her casually before ordering his coffee, and, as she waited, Madison played with her own coffee cup, wiping away the red tinted lip gloss that had been left behind on the white plastic. Her mind was screaming something at her, maybe even many somethings, but none she could decipher properly.

Her nothing musings were interrupted as the chair across from her scraped against the rough-hewn tile.

“Hello, Madi,” Nick said, his voice thick and wonderful.

“Heya, Teach,” she replied, her voice sounding false in her ears.

He shifted, forcing her hazel eyes up to watch him. He looked nervous, she thought, watching as a hand moved up to brush his hair away, only to have it fall right back where it was. She briefly wondered what it would be like to brush her own fingers through his hair, but toyed with her own to get rid of the thought.

“Is something wrong with my writing?” She blurted the question more than asked it. She needed to have something cohesive to talk about, hold onto.

“Hm?” He looked up, his dark eyes pools that spoke in volumes. He was nervous, she could see that. “Oh, no, no. I asked you here because, well, there’s a few…issues I’d like to take care of.”

“You’re kicking me out of the class.”

“What?” He chuckled. “No, why on earth would I?”

Madison could only breathe for a moment. “Uhmmm...I don’t…know.” God, she felt like an idiot.

“I need to put this out there, because I fear that the other students will pick up on it, or I may favor you, or…I’m babbling.”

“No, I like your babbling.” Madison’s eyes widened a moment and she clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry, I can’t talk around you.” She stood up. “I need to go.”

Nick stood, placing a hand on her shoulder as he moved to her side effortlessly. “No, you don’t. I’ve put this off for too long and we need to resolve it now.”

“There’s a we in this?” Madison asked, cocking her brows.

“Yes. And there needs to not be.”

Somehow, Madison found her chair again, nodding. “I’m bidding school policy wouldn’t be too hot on this subject, huh?”

Nick seemed perplexed a moment before joining her at the table once more. “I…didn’t think you’d understand.”

Leaning forward on her elbows, Madison looked him in the eyes. “I’m guessing a café is not your normal conferencing area.”

“No.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t want to be alone with me.”

His eyes searched for someplace else to look, but flicked right back to meet her gaze. “No.”

Madison nodded. “I thought so.” She sat back casually, but somehow felt as if her heart might break. “There’s nothing we can do other than go on. Ignore it and go on.”

The sound of the steamer screamed in the café, groups chattered over the sound about nothing in particular, and the blender buzzed noisily over that. But between the student and teacher – nothing.


Author's Note:
I wrote this little ditty while I was going through yet another writing class in college. I had a crush on a Teacher's Assistant, and, me being the curious little deviant that I am, I decided to write it out, transferring it into the English department I'm more familiar with. Damn Madi, here, decided to go and be all responsible on me, though, and end it. Nic was sensible, too, so I went with my characters. There is an alternate version which is a lot more flushed out and a great deal more irresponsible/happy ending-ish. Let me know if you want to see it, too. I just love the ending on this one! :D

Fractured Grace

Blue ice stretched to the horizon, fading into the blinding rays of another waning winter sun. She shivered violently as the shifting mass groaned under her feet. She instinctively glanced down, looking for cracks under the transparent sheen. Suddenly, she tensed and dropped to her knees. Desperately clawing at the ice, she screamed...

The ice was unyielding as her cries ripped into the smothering silence. A fire burned beneath the fractured glass, and even as she scraped at it with her raw, numb fingertips, it dimmed into a glowing ember, a vague semblance of warmth, hope – and all too quickly, it died out, leaving no trace that it had ever existed, and she found herself beating her fists at the ice, her already meager strength dwindling.

Sitting back on her heels, she made herself calm her erratic breathing, until something else battled its way through her overwrought mind. Crying. Touching her cheeks, half expecting to find frozen water, there was none. This was not her cry, but the cry of her son. Her son? Pounding her fist against the ice once more, desperate to drive the madness of isolation away, she dove for her child, scooping him against her breast once more from the ice where she, blinded by her sudden hysteria, had nearly abandoned him.

His nose was like ice against her collar bone as she tucked him inside her coat. Standing, her feet barely finding purchase, she struggled along her way...whatever way it was.

Having long ago lost any semblance of time, she wasn’t entirely sure how long it had been when she realized there was no faint puff of warm breath on her skin.

Hugging her son tightly against her, willing his little heart to keep going, she sent him silent promises that they would get home. They felt empty, those promises, as paralyzed as her hands and feet. As if understanding her comatose thoughts, her feet folded beneath her, and she dropped against the frozen sea, anchored by her heightened hopelessness.

Curling her body around her child, pressing them both against the endless frost, she could somehow feel it growing beyond numbness. It bit at her, this strange new feeling, before becoming something akin to warmth, and she swooned as she allowed it to wash through her.

Even her desperation was beginning to disappear as the sun gave way to the clarity of the stars.


Author's Note:
I wrote this one for a recent writing competition (the prompt was the first paragraph, hence being italicized). I lost. LoL, it has numerous drafts, the above being my favorite - you, as a reader, don't really know what happens in the end, leaving that open to interpretation. But, I had some gripes who wanted more. The following picks up just before the final line and simply gives a bit more. Thought I'd give you both. This is the end of the full version I entered. :) Enjoy.


It was ending, then, she realized, as she inspected her unfeeling fingertips, backlit by something brighter than the sun. It seemed to be unconscionable, this thing she knew as death, this light at the end of the tunnel. If she could have gone toward it, she would have. That suddenly seemed rather unnecessary, however, as it seemed to be coming to meet her. It was violent, she thought as it flipped her over, ripping her clothes and beating at her chest. She hadn’t expected it to be so violent.

“He’s fine…he’s alive.”

The silence had long ago flooded her ears with its constant inanity, so it was difficult to fight her way to sense and realize that there was something she must do, something she must listen to.

“Grace!” yelled a voice, familiar through the delirium. “Stay awake, just keep breathing.”

But even her desperation was beginning to disappear as the sun gave way to the clarity of the stars.

Bloodlust

Though the vibrations emanating from the speakers made the ground rumble beneath his feet, he felt none of it. His eyes were on the woman walking toward him, hips undulating to a silent beat that spoke of nights that went unslept, wives that were unknown.

With eyes that were soft, it was somewhat shocking that they sent out an extremely blatant sense of sensuality. Her hair was pulled just away from her face, tight curls tumbling away from the knot on top of her head, brushing her neck, and merely gazing at those curls, it gave him the sensation of his fingertips brushing that soft, sensitive flesh.

Only a few moments later, a red satin strap slid down her shoulder as her back pressed against the cold brick of the alleyway. Heated kisses pressed to swollen lips allowed no spare moment for words, let alone an introduction.

His fingers pushed the strap further down her smooth, pale skin. Her lips danced lower to his neck, where she felt the familiar beat and flow of the blood just beneath. Unable to control her façade any longer, she felt her teeth grow, alluring to her, in a way, piercing the skin there with practiced ease and precision.

He didn’t struggle, only a gurgled cry of surprise before he went limp in her arms, allowing her to feast openly.


It was only a week later when Eva found herself on the hunt once more. She was beginning to grow restless with the utter lack of blood in the city – at least blood that was worth drinking. The blood of a virgin was pure, delicious and satiating in a number of ways. Normally, in the city, she grew desperate and took the blood of men that were anything but virginal, as she had the week before. The men in this city only wanted one thing – sex, and they figured that any woman who looked as she did, with her seductive curves, passionate eyes, and an obvious sense of lust about her, wanted the same thing. More and more were gaining the surprise of dying in a fit of passion – howsoever brief that surprise lasted.

Eva remembered when she had been turned, in a time when those who were promiscuous were burned at the stake as if they were witches. It made finding sweet, virginal blood much easier. But times had obviously changed, and Eva was one of the few left of those ancient, mystical creatures who retained so much respect from believers.

The stories anymore were what made a massive difference for those like Eva – being murdered by stakes and silver bullets? Yes, the stakes were true – and painful enough to make any vampire pause. Eva pondered the thought as she walked confidently past a poster for the latest horror movie that most likely parodied her very existence. Silver bullets she knew were a far worse fate for vampires.

Silver, if injected under the skin of a vampire in any way whatsoever, would take away their immortality – “cure” them, for lack of a better term. However, it would take away their resistance to the toxic combination of the various blood types in their system. A mere three days before what had once been their only life support would render their bodies useless husks. They would die a long, agonizing death.

Shuddering at the thought, Eva turned into an alley, her leather boots making a satisfying sound on the damp cobblestones of the old city. The view in front of her made her halt, her eyes widening considerably. Not from fear – there was no reason to be fearful, for she herself had caused such instances as the scene that lay before her – but mostly from shock. The vampire that fed on the blood of a young woman, not even out of her teens, was none other than Julen.

Years ago, before Eva had been turned, she’d had a husband, the love of her life, and she had thought him dead after the vampire’s attack. And yet here he stood before her, his eyes just as wide as her own, both stunned from seeing the other.

Fueled by her sudden bout of anger, Eva punched at the brick to the side of her, sending pieces spinning across the slick ground beneath them, and the building shuddered from her fury. Blood flowed from her fresh wound, covering her hand like a cocoon, healing, rebuilding, before she stood there as she had, unhurt, but pissed as hell.

Dropping his victim unceremoniously, Julen wiped the blood coursing down his chin away with a quick swipe, his anger just as evident. She had been alive these five hundred years and not attempted to contact him? The fear that had been ravaging him for so long was useless, pointless, and now quickly turning into rage.

“I wish you truly had been dead,” Eva said, her voice filled with a great deal of emotion, more than she intended to share.

“Sorry to say, I’m standing before you.” Julen’s voice ripped at her with a sense of urgency.

“Are you in a hurry, Julen?” Eva asked him, crossing her arms, a smirk toying at the corners of her mouth, painted as red as the blood she fed on. “Because four hundred years ought to allow you to be in a much better mood.”

Julen scowled as he stepped toward her. “The same old Eva, tempting fate and courting disaster.” Distaste dripped on his every word. “Don’t you know it’s rude to cheat on one for the other?”

“I always thought that was your game, Julen, or do you think I never knew?”

Julen laughed, a great fury sounding off the walls around them. “Woman! Tossing up old grudges is never healthy for a vampire’s appetite. Or am I wrong…lycan?”

Hissing at the insult, Eva shoved at his chest with her palm, making the stones he was standing on groan and snap for the effort he put into staying in his place – he never moved.

“Don’t lie to me, Eva,” he said, his voice becoming soft and husky. “You cannot tell me that you don’t wish to bite me with those pretty little teeth right now. As much as I want to your neck – smooth as porcelain, as fine as silk.” His fingertips grazed the flesh there as Eva’s blue eyes burned dark with a fury she didn’t quite understand.

“How dare you touch me,” she said, though she did not turn away, did not flinch, her eyes never leaving his own.

“But it is what you desire, Eva.” Julen’s hand grazed lower, to her collarbone, following the curve of her body to her waist, though, somehow, never crossing the line that would make her attack.

Eva, on the other hand, said nothing. Her body rejoiced in the renewal of a man’s touch – a man who knew how to touch, or maybe it was just that he knew how to touch her, specifically.

Regardless, it was only a few moments before her hands were pressed against his chest, his mouth ravaging her own, sharp teeth nipping here and there, allowing blood to flow between them, intensifying the sudden bout of passion that consumed them.

It was stunning that, after half a century, they could become reunited so wholly. Eva’s body shuddered in pleasure as Julen’s hands explored her scantily clad body, her heartbeat pulsing under his expert mouth and fingers.

In the darkness of the alleyway, Eva suddenly pushed herself away from him, her arm coming up sharply to meet with the bottom of his ear. The attack caught him off guard, making him fall to the ground from the blow, and it was only a few moments more before she stood over him, one leather boot pressing him into the grunge of the alley street with surprising force.

“Did you think I was dead?” Eva asked him, allowing blood to flow from the cuts he had opened on her lips. “That I haven’t tried to find you?”

“Yes,” he spat, out of breath and still unable to move. “How are you any different from me, wench?”

Pressing her sharp heel deeper into the flesh of his chest, Eva frowned, almost pained to admit her frailty. “I did look for you. I stayed in that damned place for three years searching for any trace of you. You were still – ”

A shot rang in the air around them, causing a horrifying stillness as blood blossomed from Evas’ chest and coursed down her front. Eva fell, allowing Julen to jump to his feet with surprising speed as the Slayer, the gun in one hand, a wooden stake in the other, ran toward him.

Eva landed hard, knowing what would kill her, and it wasn’t the silver bullet lodged in her heart, slowly ridding her body of immortality. She watched the fight as her eyes blurred with unshed tears, time moving too slowly.

It was quick – Julen was still obviously shaken from the attack, his movements sluggish, his punches hitting more air than human flesh. The wooden stake penetrated his chest with such fluidity that a wave of dust caught the wind, disappearing on down the alley.

The Slayer didn’t bother to check if her other victim was dead, but disappeared into the bright lights of the street that lay beyond Eva’s vision.

The combination of blood in Eva’s body was only beginning its toxic transformation that, in three days, would leave her dead. Shocks of pain bit at her stomach, though the blood was beginning to mat over her wound.

Wincing, Eva pulled herself up. She cast a dark look in the direction the Slayer had walked before turning the opposite way, forcing herself to walk past the small pile of dust that remained, and disappeared into the night, to wait for that infinite darkness to wholly consume her.


Author's Note:
This is an old one, as most of these are, but this one's REALLY old. I wrote it in about 2006, I think. I was pretty naive to the vampire/werewolf bit, but I still think it's a pretty original take. (I kinda have a thing about werewolves lately, so one of my upcoming stories might be along those lines :p )

In Defense of Honor

This story I pulled because - guess what! - I'm self publishing it! Look for my adverts soon. It's just a shorty. :p

Author's Note:
I wrote this for a final, almost exactly a year ago, based on my response to an allegory prompt from Fred White's The Daily Writer. I recently put it up on Writing.Com and received a rave review for it. It made me feel good about my writing again, so I thought I'd share it with you. :)

Shatter

The house was silent, wrapping around Elena like a shawl - a brief moment of respite from the darkness, the depression that breathed in the walls around her. Hugging her knees to her chest, as if wanting to become concave, she watched springtime glow outside the window.

Waiting for the danger to return, Elena watched the butterfly flutter about aimlessly. There was a joy there, she noted, a peace that was ethereal in comparison to the ghost-filled house. The peace wanted her, reached up and beckoned on the tips of the wings of that butterfly.

And then, Elena stopped waiting.

She watched as the window shattered.


Author's Note:
As a writer, I inherently enjoy the "place your ending here" schtiks. Most flash fiction is as such. That said, take from this story what you will.
Okay, you really think I can't stop there? The illusion or reality of being trapped are so similar in both fantasy worlds and real life. They are part of every life. This is more of a preamble: she's trapped, and now she's decided to escape. So the end of my story is the beginning of something far greater. I just let you decide what it is. :p

Conference

The beginning of the semester was normal, and she laughed and giggled with her friends. Come December, when the wind was beginning to blow and Jack Frost cold on his icicle heels was beginning to show his careful artistry, she was lost in his eyes. His eyes that were so careful when they watched her, worried that if he looked too hard, she might shatter under his gaze.

She, however, lived carefree and careless.

And by January, she left with an A, and he left with his pink slip.


Author's Note:
I kinda had a crush on my history TA in college, and went into this 'what if?' lapse in my writing. There's this, a short story, and I think something else that came out of this. It was a tester for a flash fiction assignment.

This Moment

I never waved. I never told him goodbye.

Life is not made up of seconds, minutes and hours. It is not even made up of days, weeks, or years.

Life is a series of moments, sewn together with threads of the monotony of everyday life. Sometimes, people forget that the pieces between the moments are not what we live for - we live for the moments. Moments are what we strive for, work to make. Without them, we are lost.

I fear I have become lost.

The laughter in me faded long ago. Even familial expectations for my smile had become scant. I stayed in a corner and became forgotten, forever dooming myself to playing solitaire, staring numbly at the cards, alone.

“Have you heard about the new corduroy pillows? They’re making headlines!”

The radio blared in the kitchen with the inane laughter at the imagined brilliancy of the joke. My father was making toast, not noticing me.

Where did this hopelessness come from? I make my way outside, not willing to vocalize my thoughts, drop them into the silence for judgment. The air is cool, a sign of summer edging its way back into the world. Summer was once my favorite season. I don’t know anymore.

The grass tickles my bare feet as I approach the tree - tall and looming, casting ominous shadows over the bright green expanse of the yard of my parents’ home. It hasn’t been my home for a long time. I try not to think as I climb it, letting air escape between my clenched teeth as the bark bites into my skin. Crouching among the branches, I look toward the sun, raising my hand to save my eyes from the brightness.

I want the horizon to look like it did once before - covered in water, sparkling in the sun, as I strain to see the way the edges of the earth dipped away, just as I was now. If it looked that way, I’d be with him. I’d be home.

Tears prick at my eyes, blur my vision, and I blame it on the sun. But I know the real reason. And he’s not here.

“Promise you won’t give up, Love. Giving up is too easy…” He’d said that to me, the night before he left.

It was only a month after I received word of his disappearance that I did give up. Maybe it was shame that made me run home, or fear of the knowledge that the string that held those beautiful moments together was gone.

I was a coward, and I knew it. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks. I squeezed my eyes shut trying to recall his voice just once.

“Love.”

There it was. The tone, that blissful joy of seeing me not hidden as well as he’d like to imagine. It was vivid, accompanied by a deep rumble in his chest as he spoke. I tried to draw out the memory, but it was gone too quick.

“Love.” There it was again. But this was not a memory I had called up. I frowned, peeking my eyes open.

Brown eyes looked at me with a broad smile in a tired, unshaven face.

I reached out to touch him, just to be sure he was really, truly there, I jumped at the contact, and then felt myself slowly deteriorate into tears. He was here…really here.

Life is not made up of seconds, minutes and hours. It is not even made up of days, weeks, or years.

Life is a series of moments. This is one of them.


Author's Note: This is not a recent writing - it was written January of 2011. I was missing Florida and searching for a place, which translated into this desperate need illustrated here. I'm not proud of the writing as a whole, but the gems of sentences in there make it a worthwhile read, I believe. :)

Welcoming

Welcome, welcome! Flashy Fiction is kind of a side project for me. I'm Sarah, a writer from Nebraska. I graduated last year and, as of yet, have no projects that may or may not be published in the future. But I have ideas, many ideas, and many stories that just quite aren't up to being wheedled out into full-length novels. Instead, I've got numerous short stories, "Flashy Fiction" as I like to call them. They're not all flash fiction length, but they're there, these side projects or tidbits from my mind. So this is my place to put them out into the universe.