Posts tagged "short story"
  1. 10
    25
    Jun

    Angel

    NSFW under the cut. 

    You’re walking down a deserted, pumpkin-orange-streetlamp lit street when you meet an angel.

    You’re twenty-one and you’ve had two beers and you are bored, and she claims the last flashing months of appearing nineteen when you talk to her, really talk to her, because you’re twenty-one and bored and her wings are askew and she’s really very pretty in the dimly twining light around the both of you.

    Her voice is high and light, effervescent in the way you and your friends used to pretend when you were imitating obnoxious girls in your high school class. But there’s something mystical about hers, something in the tone that enchants you instead of makes you think she’s a ditzy blonde, though she is in fact blonde. Her hair tumbles in flaxen, abstract waves and kinks around thin shoulders. It could use a brushing, but you can tell it was beautiful once. She smiles at you sweetly as you please, though the image is made somewhat more disturbing by the dirt on her thin, knobby knees and the wings on her back, the elastic kind that go over your shoulder, falling to the side. She tells you she’s an angel with a slight giggle you don’t know what do to with in your mind, and you ask her if she has a place to stay for the night. Not because you’re turned on by her (though if you really admit to yourself, you are), but because there’s something in her eye that looks hopeless, like the end of something.

    She hesitates answering by saying simply “oh” and then “wow,” and then she takes your hand in hers, like a little girl might hold on to a mother. “I don’t think I do,” she says, and feeling that this is the strangest night of your life, you lead her cautiously to your apartment.

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  2. 1
    24
    Jun

    preview

    You’re walking down a deserted, pumpkin-orange-streetlamp lit street when you meet an angel.

    You’re twenty-one and you’ve had two beers and you are bored, and she claims the last flashing months of appearing nineteen when you talk to her, really talk to her, because you’re twenty-one and bored and her wings are askew and she’s really very pretty in the dimly twining light around the both of you.

    Her voice is high and light, effervescent in the way you and your friends used to pretend when you were imitating obnoxious girls in your high school class. But there’s something mystical about hers, something in the tone that enchants you instead of makes you think she’s a ditzy blonde, though she is in fact blonde. Her hair tumbles in flaxen, abstract waves and kinks around thin shoulders. It could use a brushing, but you can tell it was beautiful once. She smiles at you sweetly as you please, though the image is made somewhat more disturbing by the dirt on her thin, knobby knees and the wings on her back, the elastic kind that go over your shoulder, falling to the side. She tells you she’s an angel with a slight giggle you don’t know what do to with in your mind, and you ask her if she has a place to stay for the night. Not because you’re turned on by her (though if you really admit to yourself, you are), but because there’s something in her eye that looks hopeless, like the end of something.

    She hesitates answering by saying simply “oh” and then “wow,” and then she takes your hand in hers, like a little girl might hold on to a mother. “I don’t think I do,” she says, and feeling that this is the strangest night of your life, you lead her cautiously to your apartment.

    When you key open the door and usher her in, she looks around almost warily, like she doesn’t know what to do with an actual place with four walls and a ceiling.

    You tell her she can use the shower to clean up a bit, since she looks like she could use a hot shower and a little bit of food. It’s past two in the morning at this point and you don’t really even remember why you thought it was a good idea to be out this late, but now you’re tired and hurting a little and you’re listening to the sounds of her running the water in the bathroom, and when you walk by the door on the way to take out your contacts for the night and put on your glasses, you can hear her humming a half-familiar tune, dipping into singing every few notes. Her voice isn’t fantastic, but it’s not bad like yours either.

    You open the door just briefly, to toss in an old t-shirt for her that goes down to your mid-thighs. She’s shorter than you, so when she comes out you think it will probably come to her knees. And when you catch just that glimpse of the bathroom floor, the sad, dirt-streaked angel wings are carefully laid over the sink. 

  3. 4
    11
    Feb

    A woman walks carefully, placing each foot methodically and completely in front of the other before shifting her weight. Tufts of green-yellow grass pitch like pubic hair from the corners where building meets sidewalk. A few homeless men tilt their heads back and blow out rings of smoke from their Marlboros, yellowed eyes flicking towards the woman, covered in a pale grey trenchcoat that was the height of fashion…last year.

    The falling darkness obscures her face, throwing sharp shadows onto her cheeks and jawline. It doesn’t help that she keeps her head down, lustrous black hair beginning to escape from its captive ponytail and fall over her forehead.

    The street swallows the air behind her, rife with an unidentifiable perfume, something rich and bold and slightly overpowering, as though it were laced with something addictive. Something that could draw you in before you even noticed you’d been hooked.

    Nothing watches but the bricks of the alley as she turns down it, walking in the same strange, careful way, finding the entrance to a set of concrete stairs that go down, down, down, cracked and blackened with hundreds of cigarettes that have been ground out on them. Someone’s written in Sharpie on the stone nearest to her left ear, and she turns to read it, as she has so many times before. Down the fucking rabbit hole, it says, and she nods though no one can see her, a slack, queer movement that recalls more of the motions of a puppet than a human. 

  4. 25
    11
    Jan

    Crocus

    A bright smile, a blank smile, a smile that nigh-on breaks your heart every time you see it.  

    “Pretty,” a woman mumbles, feeling the needles of the tree, tousling a few between her fingers. “Beautiful.” 

    “Yes,” you say, swallowing the lump that has come into your throat. “Beautiful.”

    The leaves are changing color. A few drift down as you watch, and the woman steps on one, delighted by the crunching noise it makes when her boot descends on it. Her musical laugh rings through the air, unheard by anyone except you. And you are trying your hardest not to cry. You must not show weakness. You must not give in to your own body; you haven’t in a long time. You might not ever again.

    “Look,” you say, trying to distract yourself. “That crocus; it’s the last alive.”

    The woman looks at the purple flower, its deep throat shining with a few drops of moisture remaining from the morning’s dew. “What’s a crocus?”

    “A flower,” you say, hating he hitch in your voice, hoping it will go unnoticed. If it does not, the woman shows no sign.

    A few moments of silence. The woman kneels on the leaves and touches the flower’s petals, stroking them as she would a lover’s flushed skin. Feeling the stem, running down it to the earthy soil below, as if she is trying to memorize every detail of the flower.

    “What’s a flower?” she finally asks, looking up, her eyes pleading, panicked.

    And that is almost it for you; you almost break down right then and there, and throw your arms around the woman and you sob into her shoulder until there are no more tears left in her. And as if you are a phoenix, she would heal.

    “I still love you,” you choke.

    “I’m sorry,” the woman whispers, ashamed, and you can’t take her lowered eyes, her careful glances away. “I’m sorry,” she repeats, and you lean up and kiss her.

    You are not the passive you. You do not ask questions with your kisses, and you are rarely careful. But you smile into it, and you are relieved to feel the woman’s arms wrap around your back. Being the shorter of the two, your neck is craned upward, and it will probably hurt in the morning.

    You do not care. You kiss her, and the woman kisses you back, and for just a moment, it’s like you could seal off the world and separate it from you. The two of you, just floating in some unknown world, forgetting earthly complications and things that don’t make sense.

    Just the two of you, touching stars.

  5. 6
    6
    Jan

    Preview of short story I’m working on.

    You’re climbing a tree. You’re feeling at home in your own skin for the first time in months; years, really. You mother isn’t looking for you; she’s up to her elbows in bread dough because she’s hosting a party tonight. Raisins and a few good intentions fall to the floor occasionally. You leave when she drops a mixing bowl, and it cracks with the most awful sound.

    And then you climb.

    There is a tree in your backyard; a tree that is the epitome of tree-climbing trees. Any tree-climber in the world would die with jealousy if they saw the tree that is in your very own backyard.

    You are momentarily proud, because you are climbing this masterpiece of a tree, and the annoying boy next door has not been allowed over the fence since he hit you. You were only play-fighting, boy-to-boy,  but your mother grabbed you up, scolded the neighbor boy for hitting girls, and tossed him back to his own house.

    You have not seen this annoying neighbor boy since. You wish that you could fight with him again; that was mostly what he was good for. But one thing was better than none.

    You climb and you climb and you climb and then you shout because this is so much fun!

    But then you realize what you have done, and you realize that your mother is no longer visible through the window to the kitchen. She has gone to investigate.

    So you jump. You fall the ten feet and your feet sting as you hit the ground; but you are a boy and you know the tricks of the trade. You will not die today.  

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Savannah. I like books, writing, blogging, and girls.
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