(no subject)
I wrote a story because I couldn't sleep and, oh man, am I ever like that. I'm sort of impressed with the amount of writing I've been doing the past few days, but I blame/thank Benadryl more than anything else. Because...Benadryl. *prances, then falls over because she keeps getting dizzy whenever she stands up*
Anyway. I wrote a story. Well, sort of. So, here,
She closed her eyes in an effort to delay the inevitable. You can't see me, she thought giddily, so there.
But she wasn't asleep anymore, and he was there. Eyes of hard, leathered blue; jaw set, lips chapped and held together in a tight scowl; light hair clinging to his forehead from a heavenly mixture of hair gel and sweat, longer than it used to be, desperately in need of a cut but who was he to care? He'd slept in his clothes: wrinkled black tee-shirt that carried the emblem of a band she'd never heard of, faded jeans two sizes too big (not for fashion, she knew; they were hand-me-downs from an older cousin and certainly looked the part). His sneakers were held together by a few thin threads and luck, and they were coated in a thick layer of dirt. Now too they were untied, as though he were in the process of either taking them off or putting them on. She wasn't sure which prospect scared her more.
She was the product of black nail polish and cinnamon incense. She'd grown up on Pop-Tarts and Hot Pockets, and now here she was with a dreamy gaze still coating her features, envisioning what it might be like to abandon everything in favor of adventure.
He stared.
She came from humble beginnings, she often thought. She came from teddy bear pajamas and games of Duck Hunt on Nintendo. She came from a mother who worked two jobs to afford a new car and a father who sent a fifty dollar check every birthday. She came from wide eyes and shredded fantasies of better tomorrows.
And here she lay in a plain green sweatshirt and khakis, bunny slippers on her feet, and she remembered it had been exactly a year ago that she'd given up on hope altogether. She was frustrated, and he was offering her a chance to live the things that people wrote songs about. She sought a fairy tale ending, but her mind remained blank. She was the daughter of unhappily ever afters and the mistress of melting snow. And she was calm.
This time, she thought, perhaps the wolf was real.
Still she pushed away the uncertainty, and with a curt nod, they were gone. It seemed as though her ideals had shifted, and sitting in the passenger side of his rusted '85 Honda Civic, staring out the window at the scenery -- bright city lights giving way to tranquil cattle grazing in the fields of eternal false conviction -- she viewed the world through a haze of stained glass and the Altoids that she was chewing compulsively.
She asked where they were going. It was a mistake. He eyes left the miles of empty highway ahead and fixed on her with a look of absolute contempt. He pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the car. Then he sat.
A feeling of fear overtook her, and she basked in the familiarity. It was perfect, though a storm was clearly trapped in the gray clouds.
He spoke, finally: Never ask that again.
So she never did.
The invitation had been for a getaway, and that it certainly was. Every mile was a victory, and breakfast at Denny's had never been quite so good. The closer they got to nowhere, the more her heart raced. She'd grown up believing in the power of destinations, but this was so much more thrilling. Every night was a new motel, every day a blur of exhilaration. They trashed every room, living like rock stars in a vain attempt to play at his childhood fantasies and her adult exhaustion. They always gave fake names -- sometimes she was Moonshine Grace, or Candy McSugan, or in more conservative bouts when she didn't want to take the part of a stripper, Mary Beth Simon -- and they always paid in cash. She never questioned his endless supply of cash. She knew better than that.
Once he took her to a quaint B&B as opposed to the usual Motel 6 fare. There were muffins there, and flowers, and the whole house had the feeling of being trapped inside a cotton candy bubble. He said never again, and she agreed. A life of grime and cockroaches seemed eternally more fitting.
She never knew where they were, what city or state, just that they were the people parents warned their kids about. And she smiled at that, at the idea that finally she had an identity that didn't begin and end with how well she gave head.
So she surrendered beyond the point of no return, and the smiles she released were real now, and tomorrow kept coming without warning, and they were far too fickle to stand still, and that was the whole point. An existence of chaos was exactly what she'd been craving all these years, and now she could feel it wash through her with a force that ached so good. She bathed in her inadequacy, stopped trying to fight it, and gave a name to every brief yearning that fluttered past. Beauty, in the most skewed sense of the word.
And it was powerful.
She came from jelly shoes and slap bracelets, a black lab puppy named Marvin and movies with morals, a backyard swing set and Super Soakers, a dated diary and a purple bedroom, the death of a parent and the birth of apathy, middle school dances on Valentine's Day and broken hearts that healed within days and broken arms that took just a little longer.
And none of that was enough, but this was almost perfect, because rest stops and gas station gift shops and cups of horrible coffee taken as shots without sugar and glasses of cheap whiskey taken as shots with no chaser and miles that swirled together in creation of a dimly glittered ambiance -- all of it was better than what had come before, so she looked forward to seeing what might come next.
And it made perfect sense, the way everything did these days.
Their journey had begun with a brilliant plan at two a.m. on a Thursday morning, and fate saw to it that it ended the same way.
The plan was troubling at best, even she knew that much, but it had become impossible to deny him any desire.
This building is twenty stories. Let's jump, he said. Let's see if we can fly.
And he was disturbingly sober when this thought occurred to him, so she could only imagine the motive. But it didn't matter. She agreed, and they walked hand-in-hand up to the top floor, up twenty flights of stairs because the sole elevator was broken, and at the top she had to catch her breath for five minutes. She came from sugar and spice and hair in every color of the rainbow, from track victories and menthol cigarettes, from hospital waiting rooms and elementary school stages decorated with papier mâché trees, from aunts who acted like parents and fathers who acted like distant cousins, from caffeine pills and straight As and anything but closure -- and he led her to the edge.
And it turned out that, while he had wings, she didn't. It was tragedy squared, the sort of the thing that people write songs about, and she smiled as the acceleration of gravity condemned her.
Anyway. I wrote a story. Well, sort of. So, here,
She closed her eyes in an effort to delay the inevitable. You can't see me, she thought giddily, so there.
But she wasn't asleep anymore, and he was there. Eyes of hard, leathered blue; jaw set, lips chapped and held together in a tight scowl; light hair clinging to his forehead from a heavenly mixture of hair gel and sweat, longer than it used to be, desperately in need of a cut but who was he to care? He'd slept in his clothes: wrinkled black tee-shirt that carried the emblem of a band she'd never heard of, faded jeans two sizes too big (not for fashion, she knew; they were hand-me-downs from an older cousin and certainly looked the part). His sneakers were held together by a few thin threads and luck, and they were coated in a thick layer of dirt. Now too they were untied, as though he were in the process of either taking them off or putting them on. She wasn't sure which prospect scared her more.
She was the product of black nail polish and cinnamon incense. She'd grown up on Pop-Tarts and Hot Pockets, and now here she was with a dreamy gaze still coating her features, envisioning what it might be like to abandon everything in favor of adventure.
He stared.
She came from humble beginnings, she often thought. She came from teddy bear pajamas and games of Duck Hunt on Nintendo. She came from a mother who worked two jobs to afford a new car and a father who sent a fifty dollar check every birthday. She came from wide eyes and shredded fantasies of better tomorrows.
And here she lay in a plain green sweatshirt and khakis, bunny slippers on her feet, and she remembered it had been exactly a year ago that she'd given up on hope altogether. She was frustrated, and he was offering her a chance to live the things that people wrote songs about. She sought a fairy tale ending, but her mind remained blank. She was the daughter of unhappily ever afters and the mistress of melting snow. And she was calm.
This time, she thought, perhaps the wolf was real.
Still she pushed away the uncertainty, and with a curt nod, they were gone. It seemed as though her ideals had shifted, and sitting in the passenger side of his rusted '85 Honda Civic, staring out the window at the scenery -- bright city lights giving way to tranquil cattle grazing in the fields of eternal false conviction -- she viewed the world through a haze of stained glass and the Altoids that she was chewing compulsively.
She asked where they were going. It was a mistake. He eyes left the miles of empty highway ahead and fixed on her with a look of absolute contempt. He pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the car. Then he sat.
A feeling of fear overtook her, and she basked in the familiarity. It was perfect, though a storm was clearly trapped in the gray clouds.
He spoke, finally: Never ask that again.
So she never did.
The invitation had been for a getaway, and that it certainly was. Every mile was a victory, and breakfast at Denny's had never been quite so good. The closer they got to nowhere, the more her heart raced. She'd grown up believing in the power of destinations, but this was so much more thrilling. Every night was a new motel, every day a blur of exhilaration. They trashed every room, living like rock stars in a vain attempt to play at his childhood fantasies and her adult exhaustion. They always gave fake names -- sometimes she was Moonshine Grace, or Candy McSugan, or in more conservative bouts when she didn't want to take the part of a stripper, Mary Beth Simon -- and they always paid in cash. She never questioned his endless supply of cash. She knew better than that.
Once he took her to a quaint B&B as opposed to the usual Motel 6 fare. There were muffins there, and flowers, and the whole house had the feeling of being trapped inside a cotton candy bubble. He said never again, and she agreed. A life of grime and cockroaches seemed eternally more fitting.
She never knew where they were, what city or state, just that they were the people parents warned their kids about. And she smiled at that, at the idea that finally she had an identity that didn't begin and end with how well she gave head.
So she surrendered beyond the point of no return, and the smiles she released were real now, and tomorrow kept coming without warning, and they were far too fickle to stand still, and that was the whole point. An existence of chaos was exactly what she'd been craving all these years, and now she could feel it wash through her with a force that ached so good. She bathed in her inadequacy, stopped trying to fight it, and gave a name to every brief yearning that fluttered past. Beauty, in the most skewed sense of the word.
And it was powerful.
She came from jelly shoes and slap bracelets, a black lab puppy named Marvin and movies with morals, a backyard swing set and Super Soakers, a dated diary and a purple bedroom, the death of a parent and the birth of apathy, middle school dances on Valentine's Day and broken hearts that healed within days and broken arms that took just a little longer.
And none of that was enough, but this was almost perfect, because rest stops and gas station gift shops and cups of horrible coffee taken as shots without sugar and glasses of cheap whiskey taken as shots with no chaser and miles that swirled together in creation of a dimly glittered ambiance -- all of it was better than what had come before, so she looked forward to seeing what might come next.
And it made perfect sense, the way everything did these days.
Their journey had begun with a brilliant plan at two a.m. on a Thursday morning, and fate saw to it that it ended the same way.
The plan was troubling at best, even she knew that much, but it had become impossible to deny him any desire.
This building is twenty stories. Let's jump, he said. Let's see if we can fly.
And he was disturbingly sober when this thought occurred to him, so she could only imagine the motive. But it didn't matter. She agreed, and they walked hand-in-hand up to the top floor, up twenty flights of stairs because the sole elevator was broken, and at the top she had to catch her breath for five minutes. She came from sugar and spice and hair in every color of the rainbow, from track victories and menthol cigarettes, from hospital waiting rooms and elementary school stages decorated with papier mâché trees, from aunts who acted like parents and fathers who acted like distant cousins, from caffeine pills and straight As and anything but closure -- and he led her to the edge.
And it turned out that, while he had wings, she didn't. It was tragedy squared, the sort of the thing that people write songs about, and she smiled as the acceleration of gravity condemned her.