A Well Kept Secret

I don't tell anyone that I can teleport. Can you imagine how many people would want to study me, pick my brain, or weaponize me? All I want to do is skip the hassle of traffic. I mean, it's not like teleporting is particularly useful. It's fun, sure. But I can't carry extra weight, so practical trips to Costco are right out.

Mostly I just use it to get to and from work. If I crave a midnight snack, sometimes I pop into a late night grocery. No, I don't steal from stores that are closed. I tried it once, and felt too guilty about the shoes to ever do it again. I ended up giving them to some homeless lady just so I didn't have to look at them anymore. "Did you think to put them back?" I hear you asking. Well, yeah, I did think about that, but I figured as long as I'd already stolen them, I might as well do something good with them.

I can teleport to places I've never been to before, but it's risky. Since I have no idea what's gonna be sitting in the way when it happens. If it's just a small thing, like a small box or maybe a rock or something, I experience a really unpleasant numbness all over my body, and I appear shifted a little to the side of the object. Sometimes, I lose things when that happens. I don't know where they go. The biggest thing I've lost on a trip like that is a shoe. I'd hate to think about what would happen if I accidentally teleported into the wall of a building, or a cave, or a tree.

I've been able to do this since I was little. But this isn't a story about my childhood, it's a story about how I get to work. And the answer is; I teleport into the women's bathroom, handicap stall, and I pray no one is in there when I do it. I've been pretty lucky so far, but I'm looking forward to a really awkward day in the near future.

(Mini-serial I wrote on storylane.com.)

Telepathy Bombs

Telepathy bomb causes the near extinction of the human race.

If there had been any journalists left behind (who cared), or news organizations left in tact after the bombs went off, that's what the headline might have read.  But I'm not much of a writer, so that's what you get.  Hell, at this point, we don't need journalists OR the news.  We just listen, and there it is.

Apparently it takes a pretty strong mind to shut out the incessant noise of another person's brain, let alone the rest of the world's collective brains.  Those who slaved away in their hot yoga classes benefited, as did much of the Eastern world.  Various other people escaped the bombs with a terrible head ache and an instinctual ability to stop listening/seeing/whatevering. It took some time, and a lot of advil, but we managed.

I'm no scientist, so even with the vague knowledge I have of what happened that day, I can't explain it very well in writing.  It was a form of chemical warfare; I know that much.  It was intended to be something beneficial for humanity.  No idea who thought it'd be a noble act to bomb the world with a barely-tested formula, but it happened, and I had other things to worry about.  

Bombs were 'dropped' all over the world, and the condition is highly contagious.  There are a few people left who aren't infected, but they've holed themselves away somewhere.  In mountains, underground.  We try not to know, but we have a general idea.  They don't broadcast their thoughts like we do, uncontrollably, but if we listen for them, we hear their silent pleading to be left alone.  So we leave them alone as best we can.

And that's the problem, really.  Most of the population went insane when they couldn't stop hearing thoughts, or seeing images.  The survivors learned how to stop listening, but we're pretty sure we never learned how to stop broadcasting.  

At first, survivors converged to the same locations to be together.  But we quickly discovered that knowing what someone thinks about you, if they know you, is really hard to handle.  The brutal honesty that you weren't used to having someone else hear, that was all out on the table.  Even if you didn't Listen to them... the temptation was always there.  Many people drifted apart, content to seek communication telepathically if they were so inclined.

Sex sure became interesting, though.  There were even a few of us who'd become pregnant since the incident... we wondered, what would happen to the babies?  Would they be Listening in the womb?  Be born full of the knowledge of the world?  How awful.

Language isn't a barrier anymore, either, because if we can't understand the language, we can understand the conjured images pretty well.

Which is how we understood what the Valn were trying to communicate when they showed up.  When we saw their ships in the sky, we all Listened, excitedly chattering at each other about the event.  We tried to send them images of doves, olive branches, other stupid images of peace. It figures that the first time we'd come into contact with an alien race, it'd be because we were the loud, shitty neighbors.  They politely asked us to shut up and stop polluting the universe with our incessant squawking. We hadn't even considered that anyone else could hear us.  Humans really are inconsiderate assholes.

Real Life Slenderman

For the love of God, 13-year-old-me, don't take that fucking book you found in the woods. Just because it's dirty and appears abandoned doesn't mean it doesn't belong to someone.

So I have a bunch of superpowers. No big deal. I hate calling them that even; they're not super. They have unfortunate side effects or consequences, and although I can do some cool shit, it doesn't always end well for me or for other people. Like the teleporting thing. Really, it's just like when you watch a video of some professional gymnast doing something insane, and you think, "how can that be a real thing he/she is doing?". It's like that, only I haven't run into anyone else yet who can do what I can. And what I can do is cooler than pole vaulting. And seriously, what the shit is the point of a pommel horse?

My abilities don't work on whatever's been following me around since I was 13. Time to get serious, folks. I don't take much seriously, but this guy... he's no laughing matter. He hasn't gotten close to me yet, or spoken to me, but I figure it's only a matter of time. He gets a little closer every year.

The book's cover was nondescript. Black with some silver script on it. Well, the silver was pretty dirty, so it was more like grey script. I didn't recognize the words, and I couldn't see the picture that used to be on the front. I cracked the book open, and there was nothing inside it. I thought hey, maybe this would make a cool gift for Amanda. She was some gothy chick I had a thing for when I was 13; no idea why I thought black lipstick was hot. That's another thing, 13-year-old-me; goth girls aren't any more interesting or deep than girls who don't pretend to worship Satan.

So I took the book with me. That night, I saw him. In the distance. I looked outside my window into the woods outside my kitchen. About as far on the horizon as I could see, there was this guy in a suit. I couldn't see his face. I would say his face was blurry, but he was just too far away for me to make out any details. There was absolutely nothing normal about a guy standing in the woods wearing a suit, since there was nothing in that direction for miles. Since I had a giant pair of balls when I was 13 (I'm not going to lie; they've since shrunk down to a more normal level), I stormed out of the house, thinking I could confront him. He was gone.

I've only seen him a few times per year, but like I said, he appears a little closer every year I see him. I've tried teleporting to him; no dice. When I appear where he stood, he appears just as far away as he had been before I moved. I've tried reading his mind; it's as effective as reading the mind of someone's bowl of cereal. And a lot less delicious than cereal, I'd bet. When I was 15, I put the book back where I found it. When I was 16, I tried to find it again to light it on fire, or rip the pages out, or... whatever. Get rid of the fucking thing. Apologize to the guy. But the book was gone.

I'm not sure what'll happen when we finally meet. But I'm willing to bet it won't be a cool fight scene like in the movies. More likely, I'll shit my pants and die in a heap of shame. My mom always told me to wear clean underwear in case I got into an accident, but I bet she didn't consider the scenario in which a real life slenderman was going to scare me to death.

[From Storylane.com]

A New Storylet...

This will be brief!

I was emailed by the CEO of Storylane.com, and it was suggested that I start posting over there.  So, I have! The site is set up to be pretty... vain.  But only if you let it.  So I'm choosing instead to use all of the prompts as small writing exercises.  I was going to tackle it with many types of stories and many voices, but I'm finding myself fall into one voice.  

http://www.storylane.com/fancylala

This is where I've started writing.  I will probably post some stories from this blog, and cross post back to here with random things I write over there.  If you're interested in reading it, or just making your own, you should definitely check it out!

And Then I Waited

The love of my life reincarnated a few days short of our fifth anniversary.  We hadn't gotten around to the wedding part yet, because we weren't in a hurry.  It was nearing his 31st birthday, and had just passed my 30th.

I say reincarnated.  He died; but I think his spirit, his soul, his whatever, immediately returned.  If you're sitting in a room with just one other person, and they get up and walk out of the room, it's obvious to you, right?  That's exactly how it felt when Grayson passed away.  It was as though a part of him got up and left the room, left the serene half-smile on his old body's face as his grip on my hand slackened.  

He'd been in the hospital for over a week with some sort of fever he couldn't shake.  He hadn't even felt out of sorts until he'd collapsed upon our kitchen floor, in the middle of making dinner with me.  Just the day before he died, my best friend Alice was admitted to the hospital to give birth to her first child.  It's almost too much for a person to take, moving back and forth between happy expectancy to fear and a rapidly diminishing hope.

I didn't grieve the way maybe I should have, since that "he just got up and left" feeling persisted.  As the nurses rushed into the room, I followed the feeling out of it.  I immediately lost whatever trail I'd been on, and burst into tears in the hallway. More nurses rushed in the general direction of Alice's room, so I followed them for a distraction.  I couldn't bring myself to be happy about the new baby, but at least I could pretend for a few minutes.

When I passed the threshold of Alice's room, I was overwhelmed with the sense that Grayson was standing near me.  I looked down to see the wailing baby in her arms, who had abruptly ceased crying as soon as I showed up.  My friend looked so exhausted, so happy, and a little out of it.  She'd opted for a drug-free birth until the contractions started, then quickly changed her mind.

"What's his name?"  I asked her.  She looked down at her new son.
"We're going to call him Alex."  Alex and Alice.  Well, that would never be confusing.

Grayson's funeral, every day leading up to it, and a few days after it, felt like a dream to me.  I cried until I couldn't cry anymore, and then I manged to find a new reserve of tears and kept going.  I found myself drawn to visiting Alice, her husband Nathan, and their new baby.  She returned home, both mother and son with a clean bill of health.  The nursery was painted with the browns and greens of a forest.  I knew Alex would grow up well-loved, and I was both hesitant and delighted when Alice asked me to be his godmother.   I didn't know what implications that would hold for later, but it at least allowed me to stay close to the family and watch him grow up.

I babysat him when both Alice and Nate had to work to support their house payments, car, and baby.  I lived only a few blocks away, so it was never an inconvenience for me.  I picked him up from school for a few years, listening to his incessant and excited babble about stars, oceans, other kids, and bugs.  He loved playing with bugs. 

I listened to his awkward and clumsy stories about girls he had crushes on at school, and strangely enough, had to resist the feelings of jealousy that crept up inside me.  I was a middle aged woman, for god's sake!  I couldn't think of a more inappropriate feeling to have.  

I alternated between deep depression, and joy that Alex-Grayson was growing up in such a blessed home.  Alice started getting worried.  It's been 10 years; isn't that long enough to grieve and move on?  Shouldn't I be finding someone else to be with?  I told her I was happy, and she let it go.  I don't think she ever believed me when I said it. 

When her son turned 16, he started becoming moody.  He'd lash out at his parents, especially his mother, and occasionally me.  I had a hard time scolding him like an obnoxious teenager instead of treating him like an adult I'd fallen in love with just over two decades previous.  As he grew older, I found he was more and more like the Grayson I remembered.  

I never told anyone about the situation.  Who'd believe me? It would sound like the death of my boyfriend had broken some tenuous hold I had on reality.  Sometimes, I even doubted myself.  Deep in the night, with one half of my bed remaining cold, I wondered if I'd just talked myself into believing in reincarnation to comfort myself.  Surely Grayson hadn't just disappeared into the ether.  Surely, the only reason I found myself impatiently waiting for some sort of milestone in Alex's life was because he was actually someone I'd known before he was born.  I rejected the advances of other men, I craved contact with someone and had nothing.  I was waiting and suffering for something that was pathetic at best, and insane at worst.    

Alex kept growing.  Went to college, where I could no longer really keep an eye on him without actually stalking him.  Alice found me in his room once while he was away, looking through his things to see if he kept a journal.  She joked with me about it, but was uncomfortable with me after that.  She was a little more wary when I was around.  Nate hadn't changed.   Alex wrote me letters as if I were his best friend, telling me he missed my advice, and my cooking.  He talked to me about women he was having trouble with, and said he felt like he was missing something.  I couldn't tell him that he was missing me.  

I went to his college graduation, him 22 and me a ripe old age of 52.  The age he should have been, had he not been taken away from me.  What if he never remembered who he'd been?  What if he never remembered me the way he should have?  I tried to fill my life with new hobbies and my work, but even more so now that Alex was grown up, I found myself distracted. Impatient.  Was I waiting for nothing?

We lost touch for a few years, then.  I could no longer have children, and I was opening myself up to the idea of attempting to find someone.  He no longer sought my advice, and had been with someone for at least three years.  I was lonely.  Terribly lonely.  The pain of losing Grayson the first time around really hit me then, because I'd finally let go of the hope that I'd meet with him again in my lifetime.  I sobbed myself to sleep on a nightly basis.  Alice and I no longer spoke, and Nate and I were barely more than casually friendly with each other.  Other friends of mine suggested I get an animal, that it would cheer me up.  So I did; a cat and a dog who managed to get along well enough to share my couch with me.  

At 61, I couldn't get out and do as many of the things I used to love.  I could still work in the garden, but I couldn't go hiking nearly as often.  I did a little bit of traveling, but was mostly content to do old lady things.  Knitting, reading, baking.  I knew that I could have done more with my life, I could have let Grayson go and moved on.  Anyone who reads this story might call me foolish.  I waited for love... for nothing.  But I had no regrets; I'd never desperately wanted kids, and the pets were handfuls enough.  I'd learned bits and pieces of other languages to utilize when I'd gone traveling.  And ultimately, I liked to think I helped raise Alex to be a good man.  

My doorbell rang.  It was just a few days into autumn, and the light coming through the windows was golden and low in the sky.  My house smelled like apple cider and hopefully not like old ladies.  I'd always made a point to make sure I never smelled like an 'old person'.  When I opened the door, I nearly dropped the mug I'd been holding.  Instead, I just splashed drops of hot cider all over my shirt.  

"Alex!"  He regarded me seriously, and didn't smile even after I reached out to hug him.  "What's wrong?  Is everything okay?"  I asked, concerned.  I hadn't heard from him in years.  He looked at me, into me, and through me.  

"Natalie.  I know who you are, and I'm so, so sorry."  Without hesitating, he leaned down and pressed his lips against mine.  31 years of waiting disappeared in that instant.  I'd lost valuable time, but he'd found me again.  The wait was over.  

The 36

Mid-July sun warmed my face as I waited for the 36. The bakery behind the bus stop, Cup These Cakes, caused a lot of drama with the conservative women in town, but filled the air with the delicious scent of fresh-baked bread. It's hard to complain about the name of the place when the gals behind the counter produce some of the best lemon glazed pastries I've ever had the fortune of sinking my teeth into.

I didn't move quickly anymore. I didn't care to hurry, even if I had still been able. I walked with a cane, and I found myself accosted at nearly every street corner by well-meaning girls and boys looking to earn their 'Help A Geezer' badge from whichever group they belonged to.

The bus pulled up, bringing along with it the usual scent of gasoline fumes. Dust coated my tongue when I inhaled, and I coughed violently. The kind of cough that shakes your frame and makes you wonder if you're about to pass out. Or throw up. A woman behind me put her hand on my shoulder. "Are you okay? Would you like some water?"

"No," I said, once I stopped coughing, "I'll be fine. My lungs just don't agree with all the fresh air the bus brings with it."

She laughed. With the aid of my cane, I carefully navigated up the steps of the bus. Swiping my card, I heard the familiar "beep" that meant I was allowed to sit for a few blocks. I moved slowly down the aisle, careful not to trip over anyone's extended foot or poorly-placed backpack.

I sat near the back, asking first to make sure an empty seat wasn't taken. It wasn't. It felt great to be off my feet, even for just a few minutes of a bus ride. My knees felt creaky. I sometimes wished I was a robot so all it would take was a can of oil to fix me up. My granddaughter Leslie would love to be related to a real Tin Man. I chuckled to myself at the image.

The bus began moving once the new passengers all seated themselves. The seats vibrated as the engine worked to bring the bus up to speed. A mother a few seats behind me worked to keep her children from running all over the aisle and other passengers. A man in front of me struggled to keep his music device working; his curses and the broken pieces of a woman's heartfelt lyrics alternated to create a new song entirely.

Before anyone could figure out what had happened, we found ourselves in the middle of a bus crash. Horns blared outside, and the bus jerked sharply to the right. Strangers fell against me, against everyone on my side of the bus. The squeal of metal on metal would have bothered me more, were it not for the fact I was busy trying to breathe. Everything went into slow motion, like it does in the movies.

All I knew was that we'd hit at least one car, and from the sound of it, one had run into the back of the bus as well, probably causing more issues behind them. We came to a stop, and most of the passengers had stopped screaming. One woman in the back continued to wail, in fear as well as in pain. Warm, thick liquid dripped down my forehead, and for a moment, I hoped it wasn't mine.

A sharp pain in my chest warned me that someone's misplaced elbow might have broken a rib. People struggled away from the right side of the bus, and a child began to cry near the front. The smell of rubber and hot metal filled the interior of the bus, and I began to cough again. Sirens filled the air as police cars and ambulances showed up to help the injured from the vehicles involved in the wreck. Hopefully to arrest the asshole who caused it all, too.

My heart beat painfully in my chest. How terrible would that be to die in a bus crash, not because of the actual crashing, but because of a heart attack only minutes later? EMTs helped people out of the bus and checked everyone. No fatalities, thank the Lord, and only a few injuries serious enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. One medic sat me down on the back of his ambulance. My heart still worked overtime in my chest, and I gripped my cane firmly.

"Are you okay, mister? How many fingers am I holding up?"

"I can't see how many fingers you've got up, son. I'm blind." I said. I smiled, perhaps a little sardonically. "Been blind my whole life."



Writing Exercise: Write a story about a bus crash from the point of view of a blind man. Don't let on that he's blind until the end of the story.

The Many Paths

I'm a drifter, a squatter. I have no life of my own. I hear it happens sometimes; a soul gets displaced, and is able to wander about between realities to see every possible life he or she could have had. If it sounds glamorous, I can tell you that it's most certainly not. You never feel... comfortable, in a life. Or maybe it's just me, because I found love and searched through so many lives to find my happy ending. I'm still searching.

I met him for the first time when I was 24. We met through work in the life I'd chosen to settle in. I'd known since I was little that no life was truly my own, but by my mid-twenties, I'd decided I had enough skipping about alternate lives.

When we met, it was a taste of destiny. I can't say that there was an angelic chorus, but it was close enough. An immediate connection, the way he looked at me, everything was perfect. If you could overlook the ring on his finger. I wanted to, and maybe on some level he did as well, but that's not the way things work out. It only took a few weeks before I decided to look for a life in which things could have been different with him.

I found him again when I was 14 years old. I was out shopping with my mom, and saw him at the food court with his friends. I stopped by his table, my mom went ahead to order us some food. We made eye contact, and a subtle bell tone played at the edge of my hearing. Deja vu, soul memory, whatever you want to call it. We stared at each other, he smiled slightly, and I turned my head and walked away. 14 was too young for what I wanted from him, and you can't really explain to a man that you've loved him in other lives.

I found him in a life where he wasn't so perfect for me. We were together for a few years before alcohol convinced him it was okay to be verbally abusive... physically abusive. With tears, I left to search for another time in which we could be together.

I found him in lives where I died young. I found him in lives where tragic accidents took him away only years after we'd met. We remained faithful to each other, that was a constant. There was passion, always. I'd never met anyone like him, and didn't care to look further than him. I skipped past lives where we'd never met at all. I wondered, how long can I keep this up? How long will I be allowed to jump between lives until whatever higher power there was decided I'd had enough fun?

There's no real passage of time, for me. I don't know when I'll be satisfied. Maybe when I come to a life where we get at least fifty, sixty years to love each other. Maybe then I'll let my soul move on, die happy as an old woman with spoiled grand children.

I met him again today. I'm in my mid twenties again. His eyes are the same, intense brown that the have been every other time we've met. The sky is a little bluer in this life, not sure why. The sun burns with a warmth that seems more fierce. Maybe some catastrophe will strike us in a few years, and I'll move on again. But he introduced himself in the coffee shop, a script of his spread out before him on the table. His hand was warm, and familiar in a way he'd come to recognize, and a way I'd known from life times spent holding it.

He told me he felt like he'd met me somewhere before, and asked if he could see me again. I smiled, wrote down my phone number, and kissed him on the cheek. He was surprised, pleased, by my confidence. We were meant to be, and I'll look until I find our life together.