Summer Choices, Part the Fourth

Continuing where we left off on our mid-summer Blog Hop story. For those who came in late, this is a writers' game I'm playing with Carrie K Sorensen, Nicole Pyles, Tena Carr, and Heather Musk. Carrie wrote the first bit of a story, and is now passing it along to the rest of us to continue. This one is taking shape oddly. There are points which are compelling enough, but it's moving a bit slowly and everyone seems to be holding back on making a big reveal. Therein, of course, lies the challenge; how would you continue a piece which you'd never have started yourself, and where will it end up after you pass the baton to the next runner?
So, please, catch up on parts one (Nicole Pyles) , two (Carrie Sorensten) , and three (Tena Carr) 

Done? Excellent. Let's continue.

"Kip's Story, Part Four. No Gun, No Arab."

Sand beneath his feet, the roar of the surf harmonizing with something louder and closer, within his ears.

Damn wet jeans and a cold dampness on his shirt, smells of fresh sea air and stale vomit, bile burn and tequila burn did it really happen?

Those stupid cards. Had the sense of danger really faded with the stupid truth or dare type questions, or just faded behind tequila, vodka, tequila again. Never mix your liquors. He shoulda remembered that before. Before the roaring in his ears drowned out the laughing voices of his buddies, before that last damn question. "What summer choice do you most regret?"

What summer choices had he even made? Kip's mind blanked, the bile rose in his throat, his cheeks flushed with shame and alcohol. What choice did he regret? He pushed words, slowly, deliberately, "I regret... I.. I need the can." The race for the bathroom, closing the door, kneeling against cool porcelain.

The window.

 Double-hung, above the toilet, on the ground floor. He barely remembered the thought process. Staggering back drunk would be pathetic. An escape act... would be epic.

The jeep, the roads at night. Safe at night, nobody else around. Safe. AC on high, fan on high, air blasting him awake. And, of course, the beach.

It's different at night. Enough summer had burned away to leave it cool, drifting towards cold. The moonlight and spilledover dregs of she parking lot's yellow sodium lamps colored the sand an unworldly greyblack.
Everything is different at night.

Summer choices. Did he even make any? Or did he just let her make them around him, near him, about him.

She chose to leave him.

Mick chose the stupid party game.

Kip hadn't chosen anything.

He lie back in the dying light of the jeep's headlamps and resolved that the summer wouldn't end without making a choice. Without doing something.

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Blog Hop! Gnat's Story, part the 8th. In which Gnat meets and old friend and learns a secret

Blog hop story time! Another collaborative story, continuing the adventures of "Gnat". Time travel and intrigue in this one.

Part 1 – by Carrie Sorensen

Part 2 – by Nicole Piles

Part 3 – by Yolanda

Part 4 – by Tena Carr

Part 5 – by Leonard Suskin

Part 6 - by Yolanda

Part 7 - by Tena Carr

And now, without further ado, the 8th part by your own pixel and ink-stained wretch.

Enjoy.

Part 8 - The Secret of Time Travel

There was another figure in the darkness, but Gnat couldn't make him out; years on the street had honed her senses, attuned her to danger, and danger was here. Their voices sounded reasonable, calm, but there was something sharp, angry, tightly coiled within them. Beneath reasonable voices asking how much longer until they found the key was anger, barely held in check. Gnat closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had to find someplace safe.

To escape.

Something shifted. Gnat opened her eyes to the most empty room she'd ever seen; blank white walls, an off-white carpet and no doors or windows. The lack of means if ingress or egress, the confusion about where she was and how she got here would have been the most deeply shocking elements of the experience were it not for the room's other occupant. An small, iron-haired woman, some indeterminate age between fifty and a hundred sat half-lotus on the off-white carpet. The face was older, yes, but unmistakable.

It was her.

Decades older, yes, but the eyes which met Gnat's were her own. What more had those eyes seen? What did they think of her younger self?

Younger Gnat closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "It's true. I do learn the secret of time travel."

Her older self nodded. "Soon. You'll learn it soon."

The younger woman felt the muscles in her jaw tighten. She realized that ever since Freddy found her in the hotel room she'd been lead by people with agendas, people with secrets, people who knew more than she did. Even herself. She took a deep breath, looking for calm that wasn't there. "Then why the fuck didn't you go back to the fire? Why didn't you save them?"

The older woman shook her head. "That's part of the secret. Accepting what is and what was. Had it not happened that way, I'd not be here today. You'd not be here today."

Gnat was trembling with rage. "Look, I don't know when I learned to talk in riddles, but I don't like it. If you haven't gone back, take me to the damn time machine and send me back so I can fix it. Now."

The older woman - Gnat started to think of her as Naomi - sat silent for a moment. The faintest hint of a smile touched her lip but didn't quite reach her eyes. "That's part of the secret. There is no 'time machine'. Just this." She tapped her temple with two fingers. "Once you understand, you'll understand. And can, sometimes, make the trip."

That was rather a lot for Gnat to process. With so many questions, she keyed on the one most striking word. "Sometimes?"

Naomi nodded. "It's complicated. I was able to get you because, well, you're me. And there are some times and places I can go myself. And some, sometimes... well, it can be dangerous. You'll be using your mind in ways it wasn't meant to. I think that's part of what happened to poor Freddy."

There were still so many questions, but Gnat was afraid to let her older self off the hook. "The fire. I need to."

Naomi's eyes met hers. It might have been Gnat's imagination, but there seemed to be a hint of a tear - remembering? Or guilty about having not gone herself? Without another word, she reached forward and touched Gnat on the brow. The room faded...

...and opened to choking smoke, orange-hot flame, and the screams of dozens of women. "Fire on the eighth floor! Fire" screaming and vague sinister shapes barely seen through the smoke, engines and machines and broken glass and yelling and burning in her lungs and yelling and the shattering of glass and sickening thud of a body on pavement and

Gnat's childhood bedroom and Gnat's own voice - her much younger voice - screaming and still the smell of smoke. Someone yelling for Mr. Blank. And, in the bedroom, from nowhere, flames. The young Gnat sat bolt upright, hair matted with sweat yelling "save them... fire on the eighth floor.. save them" and the flames rose and they spread and young Gnat (still Naomi) got up from the bed and ran and the flames rose and there was nothing but smoke

..and she was back with her older self, in the empty, featureless room. There were certainly tears on Naomi's face now. "So now you know."

"Know what? You were supposed to take e before the damn fire started. You were too late."

Naomi shook her head. "I'd had a lesson at school that week about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a century before.  It gave me nghtmares."

"I hadn't remembered that. I thought the nightmares were from my fire."

Naomi shook her head sadly. "You have it backwards. The fire is from our nightmares. The stress on the word caused by time travel, the power of your mind... That's another part of the secret."

Gnat felt the sane numbness she had right after the fire. It seemed too much to be real, too big for her even to build feelings around. She sat heavilly to the floor. "so.. what now? Freddy will miss me soon, won't he?"

Now Naomi chuckled with real warmth. "This is time travel. Freddy last saw you years ago. Or seconds ago. There's no difference. We have time."

"Time for what?"

Now the older woman's smile was broad, revealing deep laugh-lines around her eyes. "For  me to teach you the secret of time travel, of course. How do you think I learned it?"

"But.. if I learned it from you, and you know becuase you're me.. where did it come from?"

All part of the secret, darling.  And Naomi taught herself, for a long time hidden between ticks of the clock.

All the while, part of Gnat wondered if there was another secret hidden behind this one, one that she was hiding from herself. She was, after all,  good at reading when people were hiding something,

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Collaborative Blog-hop story - Part the Fifth: Message, Hold the Bottle

In my apparent inability to shy away from cool-sounding projects, I've joined the talented Carrie Sorenson, Nicole Pyles, Yolanda Lane, and Tena Carr for a pass-the-story collaborative effort. Part four ended in quite a cliffhanger, as our heroine discoverd... something. There's a tendency on these kinds of stories for people chapters to end right before an answer to some question, with the next participant having the pleasure/responsibility/option of giving the big reveal. With the story only half-over (we'll each get one more turn) I can't reveal too much, but to be fair to the reader we need to give something.

See earlier parts the first, second, third, and fourth (and, despite this being a time-travel story, I suggest you read them in that order):



And now, without further ado:

"Message, Hold the Bottle"

She was in a study or an office, dominated by an ornate desk of some kind of dark wood surrounded by stacks of notebooks and papers hapharzardly strewn about. There it was, carelessly thrown under the desk; a cheap, tiny notebook of the sort grade-school kids buy in Septembers and discard in June if their houses aren't burned down under mysterious circumstances. The pages were yellow with age, the binding crumbling, and the cover marred by an uneven crease - the same crease across the cover of the powder-blue notebook tucked into Gnat's pocket. A torn-off corner revealed a pen-and-ink drawing on the page below.

A wave of heat flowed through Gnat's chest and into her throat, Tyler's voice encouraging her to keep looking came from very far away, past ringing ears and a rush of vertigo as the floor seemed to twist under Gnat's feet. She sat heavily on the floor under the desk, and remembered.  Not the flame, but the time after in faux-homey offices with a fatherly looking bearded man with a notebook and a leather chair and questions and a notebook and not the flame but its memory and a notebook.

Gnat's first set of foster parents had believed in therapy, believed in her needing a sympathetic ear after what happened. At least for the first few weeks, until the trauma faded into the past and the forty-dollar-a-week copays started to add up. Dr. Blintain was a nice man, a gentle man, a bit like young Gnat's idea of what a college professor would look like. Or, for that matter, how a headshrinker should look. He listened a lot, asked a lot of questions about what her foster parents were like and what she thought about them and how she felt when she thought about her family and how she felt now. It was the last session - the last forty-dollars that her foster-mother would pay for Naomi's sanity - when Doctor Blintain finally helped her find the words for what was wrong in her life.

"My parents, my room, our house, my brother, they were all mine. They were me. And now, I'm, like, sharing. It's like I'm snatching bits and pieces of other people's lives and they aren't me."
Dr. Blintain handed her a little pocket composition notebook. He didn't slide it across the table, didn't toss it to her. He really handed it to her. His fingers might have even brushed against hers. "Make some space for yourself. Write poems. Draw pictures. However you want to express yourself, just do it. Consider it your therapy homework."

Gnat shook her head. "But I'm no good at any of those things."

"Not the point. Even if nobody else sees it, this can be your private space. Something yours."

That was her last session, and she was rarely without a notebook since. The little memo pad Dr. Blintain had given her, spiral books, marble composition books.   Even on the streets she'd buy one with rare saved-up pennies or, in desperation, shoplift them. The first thing she drew in that first notebook was the flame-imp; a malevolent little sprite that set fire to houses and killed families. It was short and twisted and hateful, with little lightning bolts in its eyes and crooked limbs. Drawing it made her feel less aweful about the fire, helped her forget the truth that there was no imp, but...

That didn't matter now. Now, in the present, she saw this impossible notebook with the half-torn cover. And underneath, in the visible page, was the imp.

As her head cleared, Gnat heard Freddy speaking to Tyler outside the room. "I knew this wouldn't work. It's desperate and crazy. Look at her."

Gnat carefully, surreptitiously palmed the little notebook as she stood up, tucked it into her pants alongside its twin. "I'm OK guys... just a little lightheaded. This is alot for me."

She slowly made her way room to room, her mind racing. What could she point to them that would satisfy them, at least long enough for her to read through that notebook herself. Because once she saw the imp's leering face, she knew she'd not share it. At least not right away.

She made sure to visit four more rooms, carefully looking under furniture and behind curtains for something she knew wasn't there. Finally, she came to a bedroom. Half-hidden under a bed was a snowglobe. Hrm.. complicated enough to hold a message, delicate enough that they might not crack it open right away... yes, this would give her some time to think.

"I found it", she said weakly. "This is it."

Freddy fixed her with a hard stare. "That? What do you think that is?"

Gnat swallowed. She knew he'd see through him; she just knew it. Still, she thought she knew the right answer. "It just feels right. It feels like it's a ... a message."

Freddy gingerly took the snowglobe from her hands, turned and gave it to Tyler.

His fingers did not brush against hers.

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Blog Hop: the penultimate installment of Riley's Story

For those who just joined, this is my last contribution to a collaborative pass-the-story game with Carrie Sorenstein and Nicole Pyles. Carrie stared it off a month ago now, and we're now up to the fifth and final installment.

If you need a reminder, we started here:

Riley's Story, Part one at Chasing Revery (Carrie K Sorensen)
Part 2 - Fate Calls at World of My Imagination (Nicole Pyles)
Part 3 - The Hands of Fate. Right here, by me!
Part 4 - Unexpected Fate at Chasing Revery



"Abandoned Fate"

Saturday morning and I needed a break. From Fate and Kate and all this. It had started off as a lark, but what if it was real? Like I told Kate, I knew some of their stories. Not much of it, but enough to know one thing. You can't cheat fate. The storybooks - and maybe the history books - are littered with the broken fragments of people who thought they could. The problem is I didn't know what Fate wanted. Or what I wanted. For the fifteenth or twentieth or hundredth time I shuffled through the stack instructions torn off Fate's notebook. For the fifteenth or twentieth or hundredth time they made no damn sense to me. What does Fate even need an assistant for? I was jolted from my study by the sudden and unexpected ringing of the doorbell.

It was Caleb, and he  had that look. The one where the muscles on his face tighten up just a bit, like he's about to cry or hit someone. The first time I'd seen that look I'd asked what was wrong, got nothing but an angry glare and a defiantly muttered "nothing". So, I learned. The look means he doesn't want to talk. Not about anything real. Not that he ever does.

"Hey Riley. I was around. Thought I'd join you, maybe play X-box, maybe a beer?" The last hopefully, almost a question.

I stepped back to let him in. "uh...sure. My folks're out and..." he brushed past me, up the stairs.
  
It went the way I'd expect. Caleb sitting next to me at the edge of the bed, leaning toward the TV, the game controller tightly clenched between to fists, grimly slaughtering virtual legions of space marines, soldiers, aliens. He'd leave a half-finished beer sitting on the side-table half forgotten, then suddenly grab it and take a deep pull.

Something else was wrong. He smelled. Caleb's never been the most impeccably groomed kid, but this was something different than usual - a faint but definite body odor, as if he'd gone a day or more without showering. I glanced sidelong at him, saw the tightness in his jaw and neck, then turned back to the TV,  content with the companionable silence of gunfire and explosions for the time being. I was sure he'd open up eventually. It's fate, right?

The buzz of my phone jolted me out of the game-trance. Caleb flinched away from me as he felt the phone buzz, dropped his game controller to the floor. I didn't have to look. I knew who it was.

Caleb knew too. He dropped the controller to the floor, stood up with a quick, jerky movement. "That job again." He looked me in the eye for about a half second, then looked out the door. " I guess I'll go."

I got up, took the phone out of my pocket. The same no-number number as always. I took a deep breath, silenced the phone and tossed it back onto the bed. "No. I ... I deserve a day off." I grabbed his empty beer bottle. "Lemme get you a another."

Caleb nodded, sank back down to the bed. He muttered something under his breath that might have been "thanks". I trekked down to the kitchen, grabbed a couple of beers, carried them back slowly, willing the muscles in my gut to unclench. I'd just abandoned Fate, but if felt like the right thing to do. I hoped it wouldn't end badly.

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This has been an interesting experience. The story didn't take the shape I expected from the beginning, nor did any succeeding chapter follow the previous in the way I expected - and that includes mine! My favorite part thus far was Carrie's opening chapter, and I clearly circled back there in an attempt to draw Caleb back into the story. None of this is what I would have written on my own, but I think we got something interesting out of the endeavor and am very glad to have taken part.  Next week Nicole Pyles will close it out. Stay tuned!

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Blog Hop time! Riley's Story - Part the Third

Time to shake off the pixels and dig back into the virtual ink-bottle for some collaborative writing. I'm a couple of days late on this one; life was too busy to do a credible job with it last week, and this past weekend was a "digital vacation" for me.

• Part the First at Carrie K Sorensen's Chasing Revery
• Part the Second from Nicole Pyles at The World of My Imagination

Now, let's rejoin our hero Riley, and see what Fate has in store for him.

"Riley's Story, Part Three. The Hands of Fate"

At least the job was interesting in my mind. I'd once read a book about spycraft, and this felt exactly what like that. Not  the James Bond car chase and gunfight kind of spycraft. Not even the Jack Ryan NSA analyst genius behind the action kind of spycraft. No, this was the invisible kind. A puzzle made up of a million tiny random acts, painting some big picture seen only by Fate.


Like my first assignment on that very first day, when he'd spoken my name and that damn lie about Caleb. I was still leaning towards the door, wishing I'd left before he nailed me into the room like some kind of taxidermied butterfly with his cheap "I know your name" parlor trick. Was it a trick? Knowing our names was one thing, but that other stuff he said... well, I  just wasn't quite ready yet for some secrets to be out. So I stayed. Besides, it would be an adventure. He turned back to his notebook - one of those marble composition things they make you buy for first grade - and ripped out a page. The tearing paper sounded like thunder in the small office, and it felt shocking. If this was Fate's own notebook, should it be torn?

The paper was just ordinary, torn a bit unevenly with the corner missing. It was filled with numbers and letters written in a spidery, cramped hand,  what looked like astrological symbols and, in the middle, a few recognizable words,

"Bob Linton. 3PM, Hicksville Station, east end of platform. Brown sportcoat, black loafers. Say hello."

I looked from the paper to the strange man - I still wasn't ready to call him Fate - and back again, "Is this some kind of joke? Say "hello"? What kind of job is this?"

He turned back to his notebook, started scribbling something as he answered. It's the same way a teacher will kind of sort of answer your questions while starting to grade papers or something. The message was clear: he was done with me. "You're my assistant. Some people need a nudge. Just a tiny one. Maybe hearing his name when he isn't expecting it will change his mind about something he was going to do today." He looked up at me for just a moment. "It changed your mind, didn't it?" He broke eye contact, looked back down at his papers. I stared at the slightly uneven part in his sandy hair as he talked to the desk, not to me. "And Riley, this is the last time you get an explanation." he glanced up, his lips curled into the barest hint of a smile. "You'll have to put yourself in my hands."


The assignments were all like that, more or less. Packages delivered at odd hours or simply left on a bench in the park.  "Accidentally" bumping into someone on their way off of a bus and apologizing to them by name.  Knock over someone's trashcan. Ride my bike across their lawn, tearing up the grass a bit. Dropping off a letter or spilling water on one,  dissolving words of love or sorrow or anger into a blur of ink and pulp. Whenever I had a letter to destroy, I'd always hope it was words of anger. It must have been. How could it be Fate to erase words of true love?

The trip to Fate's office grew familiar, but each little job added to the mystery. How did he know where so many people would be, what they'd need to see? What, really, were these little nudges accomplishing? Even the pay was weird. He'd give me an envelope containing eighty-seven dollars and forty-one cents cash every other week; one twenty dollar bill, one ten, one five, a single, all the way down to one penny. There was even one of those dollar coins in there. I saved the fifties and spent the rest, except the dollar coins. Those seemed special enough that I tucked them into a drawer along with his notes. Yes, I kept every note. Eventually I'd be glad I did.


Fate never mentioned a deadline, or even a rush, but it just felt wrong to keep Fate waiting. So I'd push, standing on the pedals, sucking the kind of dry sharp air that cuts up the inside of your throat and makes you want to puke It was worth hurrying. This is, after all, Fate.  Finally, I'd lean my bike against the wall of the office complex, force myself to walk not run to his door, willing my heart to slow down just enough for him to not see me sweating. "It's just a job", I'd tell myself. "He's just your boss. Not even that cute."

It never worked.

Today's assignment started like any other. The paper this time was from a spiral notebook, cheap and wide-ruled. He didn't look up, didn't acknowledge that anything about this one was different. I read the note twice before folding it twice and slipping it into my pocket, not realizing how the arrangement - and my life - was about to change.


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Nicole will pick this one up from where I left it. I have definite ideas to some of the unanswered questions (including the one Carrie asked about whether Riley is a boy or a girl) and gave some hints leaning in the direction I see, and am quite curious to see where my two collaborators take it.

Next time I get a turn I'll write it more quickly; this was, again, a special week.

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