Zoll Douane (SIGNS: #AtoZChallenge)

It was unbelievable to him, to be able to pass over the border, to be waved through with such freedom. Just a few months had passed, and the changes…a month ago, he just expected every next second would be his last. Now, this!

He had gained some of his weight and strength back, again something he thought would never happen. Proving his worth by being able to speak so many languages, he had worked hard, helping others like himself who had been so lost.

The border far behind him now, he stopped at the crest of the hill.

Home.
Home!

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For the April 2014 A to Z Blog Challenge, you will find a story a day (except Sundays) from me. A to Z: Staring with A on Tuesday, April 1st and ending with Z on Wednesday, April 30th.

Signs is my theme for this year’s outing. Road signs, building signs, warning signs…Signs alert us to a multitude of messages. My plan is to use the alphabet through Signage, but not to stick to what the sign was originally intended to convey. So, the genre of story writing, and styles, of the posts will vary as my mood and interpretation sees fit. Possibly a poem or two. We’ll see.

I’m also trying something more of a challenge: each post will be a Drabble. A Drabble is 100 Words Exactly.

Hope you enjoy the stories.

Yield (SIGNS: #AtoZChallenge)

What they had on their table was the bounty from their small garden. It was just enough for the two of them.

Helen took a red tomato, biting into it. She closed her eyes and smiled as she chewed, letting out a small “mmmmm”, throaty, deep.

Jim watched her, noticing red juice drip out of the corner of her mouth; Helen’s tongue reaching out to lap it up as it started to wander down. He reached for her hand, pulled it close, and took a healthy bite of the fruit as well.

They shared the tomato to the last bite.

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For the April 2014 A to Z Blog Challenge, you will find a story a day (except Sundays) from me. A to Z: Staring with A on Tuesday, April 1st and ending with Z on Wednesday, April 30th.

Signs is my theme for this year’s outing. Road signs, building signs, warning signs…Signs alert us to a multitude of messages. My plan is to use the alphabet through Signage, but not to stick to what the sign was originally intended to convey. So, the genre of story writing, and styles, of the posts will vary as my mood and interpretation sees fit. Possibly a poem or two. We’ll see.

I’m also trying something more of a challenge: each post will be a Drabble. A Drabble is 100 Words Exactly.

Hope you enjoy the stories.

The Brother Spectrum

Night, a dark room,  twin beds on opposite walls.

“William. William. William…when I die, will I still look out for you? William? I know I’ll be in heaven. How far is heaven, William? How far is heaven? William? William?  When I die, will I still look out for you?”

William lay awake on his back in his bed, a baseball cap clenched between his teeth. His open eyes stared into the darkness, his thoughts playing colors and sound, zig-zagging around.

Johnny beat his chest, bit his palm, said “William, when I die, will I still look out for you? William?”

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The above is a Drabble, a 100 word story. It was a prompt for the first day of the StoryADay challenge.

I have not been writing much at all, in fact it has been a chore at times, simply because of personal things I’ve been going through. I will attempt to do this: a story a day for the month of May. We’ll see how it all goes.

Any readers of mine know that I will write in any style that suits me. I hope to stretch a bit and get things moving again. Time will tell.

Chromatic Labyrinth

Carlo, Prince and Count, imagined his wife in bed with another man. Not just any man, but his friend, the Duke of Andria.  Carlo noticed the Duke’s eyes always found the figure of Donna Maria more than pleasing. He noticed this look too often from the Duke, and he felt that the looks were too often returned . While Donna Maria protested her innocence, Carlo knew, in his heart, that she had already betrayed him…and would continue, this most vile of betrayals.

Unless…

These thoughts assailed Carlo as he pushed himself to compose. Music was his life-he knew that-but it, too, betrayed him.  His madrigals were politely received in court but ultimately…they were misunderstood by most and dismissed, mostly behind his back, but oh, how gossip reaches even the most closed off of ears!

He locked himself in his music room, the only living space he would occupy until he had finished this composition. Receiving food intermittently from his servant,  barely touching any of it, Carlo would not lie down to sleep, only dozing at his piano.  Nothing came out of his demand on the keys, tinkering, chords splitting into discordance instead of magnificence. Four days, and his mind wandered away from the task he set for himself.

Exhausted and light headed, it was on the latter part of the fourth day (although that was later told to him, as time had lost all meaning to him inside his cell) that the visions came. Donna Maria, nude, appeared to him. He stared across the room where she stood, and all his feelings for her rose to a grand level: lust, hatred, love, agony, pain, ecstasy…and rage. Word-paintings came to him. She sprawled, ever  so close, just beyond his reach. He used the keys of his instrument as knives, slashing down, sliding, pounding down until his fingers nails cracked and broke, leaving droplets of red on the ivory.

During all this, Donna Maria cavorted around the piano. She laughed in his face, touching herself, gliding across the room, behind him, leaping over or crawling under his piano. She would reach out to him, then pull away, her long black hair fanning out over the keyboard where he would try to grab a hold, only to have it whisked away. She twirled, and he played, and lost himself in his fury.

Every path he took drew him in deeper. He would sidle into a melody that would change, taking him in a new direction: most of them ending in a frustrating blockage, where he would only be able to retrace what he did, and go another way. And another. And another. Lost, in a place where meter and structure had no more sense, no meaning, and left him more desperate with each stroke of the keys.

Carlo was later told he unbarred the lock on his room and flung himself into the main foyer. Glassy eyed, he stalked past his ever waiting servant. Down the hall he  went, banging open the door to the armory, coming out with a saber in one hand and a gun in the other. The servant tried to talk to his master but was gutted, as witnessed by one of the maids who had come out to the main hall at the noise being made.

Cowering behind one of the marble columns, the maid heard her master rush up the stairs, a door bang open, and then another series of bangs as the gun went off, and screams from her mistress. She recounted that she heard sharp swishing noises, too many to count, her mistress’s cries loud and piercing, then fading, and then nothing.

Someone had summoned the constables, and the Sargent Major, known to all as a stable and strong man, could not report what he witnessed without feeling ill for quite awhile. Yes, he had seen battlefields, but the frenzy of the Count was like unto a butcher’s den. The Countess Donna Maria, and the Duke of Andria…

Carlo, Prince and Count, would stand trial for what he had done, but, in the end, he was freed. Money and ranking took care of that. He exiled himself from the city, trying to leave blood feuds and vendettas behind him. He withdrew more into his music, more into himself, and while he was lost in a complex labyrinth of creative madness, he composed.

And Donna Maria…she twirled around him for a very, very long time.

Silence, Leading To…

For fear

Aspects of  horror to hear

Words that one refuses oneself

Does not still the malignancy that eats away

eats away

eats

Until what is left is nothing.

For fear

Leading to silence

Leaping from silence

Causes a deepening hole

That can’t be crawled out of.

Silence, Leading To

Leading

To

A hole.

No one else can listen to that silence

They can infer

Observe

Walk away

Brush off

But, the silence widens

engulfs

implodes

Leading to…

Smiling Woman

She could no longer hear no evil

She could no longer see no evil

But speak evil…

Oh, yes…she could.

With her razor sharp tongue

And smug, upturned nose;

With bent spine, clawed hands jagged and rough

Her mouth could still speak the hurtful:

Kindness…not in her vocabulary.

Her taunts, her chides, her demeaning sneering snarls

Oh, they bit, they bite, they take chunks out of you!

There is no chance that she’ll see how she wounds

How it effects those in her path

No chance she’ll hear, or listen to, the “please…no more!”

Hers is a voice without pity, speaking evil…

Her cheeks bloom, rosy, when she finally smiles.

 

 

Disposable Man

Barry ran away from his life when he was 50. It took him that long to get fed up, to finally give up, give in. Barry felt empty, oh so tired: no matter what came his way, he was just not happy. So he ran.

He had always been a giver, always looking to help, to please, to organize, cajole, and interact. Barry gave, and others took. And took. And took: everyone wanted from him, they wanted something, when they needed it; the rest of the time, Barry didn’t seem to exist for them. They finally sucked him dry, and in giving nothing back in return, Barry was nothing more than a shell.

What Barry wanted was equal parity. What he got was sitting alone in his bedroom, staring at the TV, or reading, or staring out the window…waiting for the phone to ring, for someone to want to him to be with them. “I want you to want me...” played in his head too often; just as often, it would end with “…you can’t always get what you want!”

There had been children, family, friends: all got older, their lives became complicated, its own swirling chaos that engulfed them day to day. Barry was forgotten, or he felt that way. The reaching out  continued, but from his side, always his side. When someone needed him he was there. He offered, was taken up on it more times than not, but that, too, was fading away. His children barely acknowledged his existence-both married, both far away. His brothers and sister were fleeting connections at best, more so since both parents were now gone. And friends…friends were few and far between, allowing the miles, years and their own family needs make the inevitable changes. He was “between girl friends,” meaning he’d been alone for a very long time.

One morning, Barry packed what he thought he’d need in the way of clothes and threw it into the trunk of his finally paid off car. He emptied his pitiful bank account, came back home to cancel his phone/internet service and electricity, and then sat there. Fear immobilized him at this point, dredging up all the regrets he carried, winding him up in tremors and cold sweats. Tears flowed freely, something he had not allowed to happen in a very long time.  It took some effort, but Barry finally stood up, cleaned his face, and walked out, leaving the door to his apartment unlocked.

Hours later, Barry stopped only to gas up and give himself a short physical break. Cup of coffee in hand, he sat in his car and sipped the steaming beverage. He tried so hard to concentrate on just that one thing: hot coffee, slow sip, let it run down his throat, heat spreading out. Again. His life kept intruding on this action, but he finally got things buried away, as best he could. Barry placed the coffee in the car’s cup holder. It was time to go on.

Barry turned the key, the car’s engine ignited,  and without looking left or right, forward or back, he sped onto the main road.

Thirty Miles

No matter what you want

Where to go

Where to rest

It’s thirty miles

That never ends.

 

The fog lays across

Even the brightest day

Obscuring the sights

All one, in the end,

All one.

Thirty miles still to go

Thirty miles

 

So why not stay where the tension lies?

The shouting barked at your back

Not respected nor needs met

With distressing sharp looks

With no one listening

With only loud, loud, loud

 

Yet you laugh

She laughs

At what is wrought;

Shake your head at some distant thought

The cut off point has come and gone

Thirty miles shouldn’t take so long.

 

Thirty miles to drive you on

Another thirty after that

Driven on, driven on

Thirty miles of fog

Imprint of a Bad Dream

Three a.m., and Rachel woke suddenly, feeling as if an arm had withdrawn, a body, light,  pressed against her. Her heart pounding, Rachel turned away from the wall and searched the darkness. She should be alone, had been alone, for a long time now. No arms draped around her, no heat generating body snuggled in such a familiar way, no touch, no caress, nothing. Laying on her back, the clock light the only illumination in the room, the only sounds the passing of a car, then others…Rachel was aware of being the sole occupant in her bed.

Why, then, did she still feel like she’s still being held?

Tossing and turning, the night crawls by. Her pulse rate takes its time in returning to a relative state of normal, chest finally relaxing where she no longer feels like her rib cage would expand to bursting. Sleep comes, but is interrupted often by a quick wake up, startled, flipping over, wrapping her sheet around her, kicking off the blanket, putting the blanket back on. Three and a half hours pass this way.

Rachel slams the alarm button, and the clattering noise stops and leaves her hearing her own ragged, panting breath. The left eye hurts, the right one not much better. She rubs them with the palms of her hands, and they tear when she blinks them open again. Massaging her temples, Rachel puts her feet in her slippers and gets up off the bed. It takes a second to balance herself.

Her morning rituals go without a hitch. Rachel is on auto-pilot, showering, dressing and completing all her needs in the correct order, as she’s done for so many years, and while this stabilizes her, at the back of her mind she can not get over the feeling of the arm, the hand, the fingers splayed upon her back. “A dream” she says to herself. “A nightmare.” Shrugging it off, Rachel leaves to, as she sees it, truly begin her day.

It is one disaster after another. Stress piled on top of anxiety on top of belittlement, with a dash of confusion, worry and angst blended in to the mix. The car that cuts her off; the boss reaming her out; the phone call not returned; the splatter of grease from her lunch on her suit; the call that interrupts; her mother; the co-worker; the bill that she thought she paid; the smile not returned; the feeling that she still has not shaken off the nightmare grope, what it meant, why it still is touching her.

She feels as if she carries around an imprint of the appendage from the night, that it is affecting her day by rippling out to those around her. Rachel sees a grasping, a clutching that cuts off anything from running smoothly, the same old same old to the unexpected. It tightens and pulls, runs strangle holds over thought processes, thumps speeds bumps into her path. She was physically exhausted from lack of sleep already; Rachel felt, by end of her work day, completely beaten up, drained of energy, worn out, worthless.

Her briefcase, shoes, stained suit, shirt, stockings, bra and panties are scattered from the front door of her apartment to the bathroom. That was not like the normal Rachel, the put together Rachel, the almost OCD Rachel, the orderly, neat and clean obsessed Rachel. That Rachel had a phantom arm around her throat, constricting her every movement.

The shower head pumps out steaming hot water, the mirror fogs up in seconds. Soon her white skin is pink, turning to red, and it gets to the point where she almost screams that she feels the limb dissolve, melting away in the heat, running down the drain with the too hot water. Rachel presses herself against the tiles, cold on her back, fiery blast assaulting her front. Closing her eyes, she stands there until the pain finally reaches her, and she stumbles to turn off the left faucet, letting icy water race down her torso, genitalia  and legs.

Eleven p.m., and Rachel has finally made her way to her bed. Before this it was  mindless TV watching on the couch, huddled in her pj’s and terry cloth robe, nursing a beer along the way while she downed a few shots of Tequila. Her normal to bed time went by an hour ago, and she knew she could not put it off any longer. Two days of little to no sleep would do her no good, nor would two days in a row of being batted around by others, and herself.

Lying on her back, eyes wide open, Rachel checked the darkness, looking for any sign of movement. Nothing. She closed her eyes, re-shifted, opened her eyes, tried to focus, closed them, shifted again, and again, pulled the top sheet and cover up to her neck, swaddled her feet, curved into a semi fetal position, and finally…finally….finally…

Three a.m., and it was more careful this time, not wanting to wake her, to distress her, to cause her any pain. It floated its caress around her,  a diaphanous embrace of the night.

Connect The Dots

Her little index finger went from point to point, moving along the surface as she went. Eyes wide, laying still, her tongue slightly pushed out as she worked at the image.

“A butterfly!” Amy said, retracing the pattern she saw.

“Um huh,” her mother murmured, smiling as she stroked her daughter’s hair.

Amy continued to explore, finding another pattern, and then another. Shifting positions only when asked to, Amy found images as she went along.

“A star!”

“Pony!”

“Fish.”

“A dragon!”

“Dragon?” her mother asked?

“Yup. Dragon. Big, scary dragon. Roooooaaaaarrrrrrrr!”

Katie laughed as she hugged her Amy. She got a hug back.

Amy went on tracing  what she saw in the dots, naming them at will, giggling at the made up things. The late afternoon sun streamed through the bedroom window, lighting and warming up the bed they were laying on. Amy drifted off to nap time, finger still on one lone spot.

Katie held her daughter, feeling Amy’s breathing change. She was nappish herself, closing her eyes as they nestled together.

Just before she, too, drifted away, Katie smiled, thinking: “Why did I ever hate my freckles?”