Category: Uncategorized (Page 34 of 44)

Phaedra smiled as she heard the low staccato of jet sounds coming through her headset as she tweaked the manouvering thrusters. Logically she knew that the thrusters made no sound – they were firing in the vacuum – there was no medium to carry the sound. She smiled because she loved the fact that the engineers behind her scout vessel and countless other ships had decided to add aural feedback to the manouvering system anyway. She could imagine the scene in which a bunch of geeks would argue back and forth and eventually a marketing guy or gal would pipe up ‘but people like to hear the thrusters’.

The clang of hull on docking collar was real enough. That sound was transported to her ears through the recycled, precisely controlled atmosphere of Elixir, her home for the last six weeks and during that time her little island in the void. They had seen great sights together, and the contents of the cargo hold was going to raise an eyebrow or two. Still, homecoming was no fun if there were no surprises to hand out.

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I awoke to find myself alone in the tent; Jane was not in bed with me and not in the other part of the tent. I threw a robe on and stepped out into the cold desert night to look for her.

It is a strange thing, but during the daytime the sand is so hot that one cannot ever walk upon it with bare feet, but in the dead of night it has cooled to the point where it almost feels wet against the skin. I love the feeling of sand wrapped around my feet, so as I padded from palm to palm looking for Jane, unwilling to call out lest I woke anyone, I enjoyed the freedom to walk on the sand.

She was by the water, just sitting with her back against a palm and her knees drawn up under her chin. She did not immediately sense my presence and I could see that she had been crying, a single tear gleaming in the moonlight on her cheek. I knew that she was missing England and I had wondered from time to time if she was really happy with me, but I had not seen any indication from her as clear as stealing out into the night to cry.
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This Ficlet was inspired by the suggestions of Immewahr in my regular poll for an Item, a Location and an Activity for my Wednesday Ficlet.

“Is that?”

“Where?”

“Over there. It looks like him.”

“Oh my God! It is him! I’m going over to talk to him; I mean I have to. You know?”

“What are you going to say?”

“I don’t know. I’ll probably say something about how much I love his lyrics, how impressed I have always been by their depth and wit. Either that or I will just stand there with my mouth slightly open and mumble ‘hi’ and ‘I love you’. We’ll just have to see.”

As I watched Nicola wander across the street to say ‘hello’ to her idol; her favourite band member from her favourite band, I could not help but smile. It was right that I stayed in the pub and watched from afar. Sure I like their music but she is a real fan; tagging along would have been tacky. As I looked around the bar I could see other small groups being left by one or two people, fingers being pointed out of the window. By the time Nicola came back, the object of her admiration was surrounded by fans; credit to him he was smiling and chatting, not running from them.

“He’s lovely.”

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This Ficlet has been directly inspired by the real world meeting between my friend Cathy and (one of) her idols Neil Fallon, lead singer from the most excellent Clutch. She met him outside the Tesco on the Cowley Road in Oxford, yesterday evening, before we went into the Zodiac (I refuse to call it the Oxford Carling Academy) to see the might Clutch play – they REALLY rocked, by the way.

Kay would not stop talking about Roanoke once she realised that we were going to be close enough to take a side trip there. In the run up to our vacation I became bemused by my daughter’s obsession with the story of the Lost Colony. She poured over books and internet sites, loading as much content as she could onto her laptop for the trip. I could hardly complain; sometimes it had been hard to get her to crack a book at all. Even so, her interest was bordering obsession and I found that odd. Sure it is an interesting story. The complete disappearance of all the colonists with just one gnomic clue – CROATOAN carved on a fence post from the fort is a unique mystery, but there were too many unknowns for me to be as drawn in by it as she was, at least on paper.

That all changed when I stood there and took the place in. I do not like to admit that there was something dead, almost hostile about the place. I don’t believe that it was my imagination; not after what happened during our second night on the island…
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This Ficlet was inspired (as many of my Monday Ficlets) by an item from the English front page of wikipedia.org today the 18th of August, because on this day in 1590, John White, Govenor of the Colony of Roanoake returned to the island from England to discover the Colony abandoned and partially dismantled, with the word CROATOAN carved on one of the fence posts from the fort. It is still considered to be a mystery to this day…

“Cigarette?”

He was standing next to her at the bar, and she had not even noticed. Now he was gesturing towards her with a soft cigarette packet, a single smoke poking up out of the packet, like a little tower protruding from the foundation of its brothers and sisters, not yet freed from their packaging.

“Er, thankyou, no. I don’t smoke.”

She hoped that he would go away; she was in no mood to be hit upon.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, it just looked like you could use a pick-me-up.”

It occurred to her that this was an odd choice of words considering that he was trying to pick her up. She could not resist having a little fun with him.

“And what is supposed to be the pick-me-up, the smoke or what would come later in your motel room?”

His face reddened and he picked up his drink and beat a hasty retreat to the other end of the bar. Why were men so sure that they were what she needed?

It never crossed her mind that his motives were most likely less motivated by her needs. She raised a finger;

“Another please.”

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I smiled, and nodded, which was completely unecessary considering that I was on the phone. She was right, there was no point to this call, and I was not quite drunk enough to admit that I had just wanted to hear her voice.

“I’m sorry, Sara. I’ve had a few drinks… I should not have called.”

I heard her sigh; I could see the look on her face in my mind’s eye.

“It’s ok, Ethan, but I thought that we went over all of this the other week? I’m with Jason now, and while it’s true that what we had was very special, you have to let me go. I can’t keep getting these phonecalls at one in the morning, ok?”

“Sure, I’m sorry. Goodnight”

I hung up before she could say anything and then, of course, I threw the phone at the couch, not because I was angry with her per se, but because I was angry with the world, the situation, everything. I had pushed her away with my guilt so she pushed me away to protect herself from the poison I was feeding her instead of the love I should have given her. If only I could change things.

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There is nothing left here now… My parents are dead. There is no inheritance, I have no other family or people. As I stare down the valley from the ruin of the humble home that my father built over thirty years ago I am struck by one abiding thought; I can be anyone that I want to be now.

While my parents were alive there was a requirement for me to settle down, live a sensible life. I did not manage to do this while they were alive, but I have no intention of memorialising their lives with my own. While they were alive I could not be honest about my real goals, now I can actually embrace my desire to remain unmarried and free. I can work only as much as I need, in order to travel and experience the world. There is no danger in openly choosing men as partners as often as women, no longer do I need to fear the recrimination of failing to be the person that they wanted. I am sorry that they are gone, but the possibilities available to me now are so wide and varied that I am consoled and freed from my grief.

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The cold of the blade resting against his leg snapped him back from his reverie. He could hear the blood slowly dripping from the point and pooling by his foot. As he checked his surroundings he started to count the bodies that were strewn around the lobby. Twelve; that was good. He remembered twelve, so he had not become lost in the killing. Just in the aftermath. He padded across the floor, avoiding the larger pools of blood, and checked that each body was indeed a body and not merely a casualty.

Satisfied that all of them were indeed dead he looked around for where he had stashed his clothes. If you are going to get bloody you may as well cover the blood up with your clean clothes afterwards; he had always thought that this had been the best piece of advice that Dellner had ever given to him. There they were, sealed in a double wrap of plastic sheeting and duct-tape behind the last pillar on the right, clear of all the blood spatter, so that he could dress without marking them. It was going to work out…

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“Six! That means we turn right, right?”

“Yeah, and walk three blocks. Come on”

It was starting to get really exciting; three moves in and we were already exploring. Of course that was the point. When Jane had suggested that we play Discordian Monopoly for our first night out on Manhattan I had initially been a little unimpressed. I warmed up to the idea when she had offered to pose for me at every other move, regardless of where we ended up; suddenly this was a mini art project and I could no longer resist.

As we walked down Waverly Place, along the northern edge of Washington Square Park I was getting excited. Jane was fearless about it, but I could tell that there were a lot of people around even though it was late. We were going to have to be really quick to not draw a lot of attention. I wanted to shoot her leaning on a lamp post with the arch behind her. I metred and framed my shot and then she dropped her coat and darted into the frame; we were rolling the dice again inside thirty seconds.

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This Ficlet was inspired by the collaboration of Romney (From Livejournal) who contributed Dice, a street corner and ‘finding the way’ in response to my weekly request for a thing, place and activity on my LJ.

“What do you mean, you were in my dream?”

Sue shook her head gently as she spoke and ran her fingers through her hair; her eyes told a tale of disbelief.

I tried to think of a way to explain what I had experienced without sounding insane, but there was nothing to tell her.

“Look, I know it sounds crazy as sunscreen in a rainstorm, but when you woke up and described that room to me, and what you were doing in your dream – you know counting the shells – I knew before you finished explaining, because I had been there watching you. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be there, but I was.”

She looked at me, the redness in her eyes showed me that she was starting to cry;

“It doesn’t make sense, you can’t know; you can’t have seen my dream, it’s just not possible. I don’t want to think about the alternative… I like being able to explain my world. Maybe I was talking in my sleep and you heard me in yours; is that possible?”

I nodded. I knew what I believed, but I could see that she did not.

“Yeah, that must be it.”

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