sometimes I think I'm bigger than the sound
And this would be the promised merry_fates contest post. Written for this prompt:
I
The first time was at a bonfire, at the end of sophomore year. There was music, tinny and loud and very faraway. The fire was burning too bright, too tall, baking my face while the back of my neck froze and I narrowed my eyes against the light.
When I blinked, my eyes blurred-or refocused, like a camera lens, to the point I was surprised not to hear them whirr and buzz-leaving everything slightly to the left.
The music sounded even less real after that.
The first time it was subtle, a filter over what I was seeing, like a second layer to reality. Across the circle, I saw my best friend Ericka kissing Darren sitting beside her, overlaid over them talking and laughing in the present. I saw handcuffs around Max Fegan’s wrist, and Kirsten’s hair shortened and spiked and grew out again.
The fire died down and restarted over and over again.
A guy sat down next to me, tattoos flickering over his arms, shifting and scampering. He had a can of soda in his hand, and as he popped it open, the visions fizzed away with the hiss of carbonation.
“You okay?” he asked. I didn’t know his name-friend of a friend.
“Yeah,” I said.
II
The second time was after a show. It was late at night, the air cool, sometime in October.
The show was over and the sky was dark blue and I was sitting balanced on something silver that was either a fence or a crowd shield or a repurposed bike rack or maybe all three. It was rickety, and I held the bar to either side to keep my balance, bracing my feet against the vertical bars while it rocked.
I lost sight of the occasional cars whizzing by as my vision blurred.
This was one vision, the band, in fast motion. Vanstadiumcrowdphotographsfilmawardshows.
I was regaining my ability to focus on the neon sign of the Chinese restaurant across the street when Reed sat beside me. The bike rack rocked under his weight.
He wasn’t a friend of a friend anymore. He was my best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend, which sounded even more tangential but wasn’t, actually. We were partners in exclusion.
He’d gotten two of the tattoos, so far. The barbed wire around his right wrist, and the heart on his shoulder-the anatomical kind of heart, not the romantic. Sometimes I wondered how long it’d be before he go the one on his left wrist, or the sparrows on his other shoulder.
At the point of that show, Ericka and Darren had been dating for six months, and two weeks before Max had gotten busted drinking at a football game. Kirsten had cut her hair a month after the bonfire.
“Those guys are going to be famous,” I told Reed with a thumb back at the club.
III
The third time, it was at the lake. Ericka’s family had a cabin there and everyone had driven down for a big weekend party.
It happened when the party was pretty well underway, when I gone outside for an escape. The pressure had been about to kill me: people pressing in from all sides, hot air pressing down my lungs, loud music pressing into my ears.
The forest around the cabin was dark, a fairy-tale forest with slender birch trees and shadows and tentacle roots. The noise from the cabin was almost comforting, the low-level bass and too-loud laughter and golden light.
The music spilling out from inside is the new album from the same band we saw back in October. It hit number one in its first week, and stayed there for its next seven.
I took a walk, a dozen and a half steps through the woods, and ended up on the edge of the lake. The lakewater looked kind of unhealthy. Thick and dark and with absolutely zero visibility, flat and reflective as glass.
I knelt by the water and played with the urge to break the perfect surface.
When the reflection first started blurring I thought it was a wave, but it was just me.
“Hey,” Reed said from somewhere behind me.
“We sure spend a lot of time on the edge of parties, don’t we?” I said, words feeling thick as I said them, and what I really meant to say was you’re always here when I see the future, aren’t you?
He laughed as he stepped into my blurred field of vision, midway through taking a sip from the bottle in his hand-water, I think, but everything’s shifting, the tattoos running across his arms making me nauseous.
There aren’t as many blank spots for the visions to be filling, but everything seems to be compensating by running triple-speed. He got the outline for the first of the sparrows a week ago, maybe two.
“You spend a lot of time on the edge of parties,” he corrected. “I’m just here to make sure you don’t fall into the lake.”
Watching the tattoos made my vision swim too much, so I turned back to the flat mirror of a lake and watched. Watching the future reminded me of the things I used to see when I pressed my fists into closed eyes, all dizziness and rolling layers of blackness with polygons around the edges.
“You too?” I asked, knowing without seeing that Reed has sat down next to me, sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees. He’s all tattoos, and I always thought he should be larger, shouldn’t have been able to fold up so neatly, but he did.
He didn’t ask what I meant, just unfolds one arm and sweeps through the round pebbles on the beach before tossing a handful into the air.
They stay there. They stay there, and then, slowly, shakily, they fall-no, fly-towards the water, and they each skip four times before sinking into the water.
I could never skip rocks. They always slipped straight under the water. In this water, I feel like they might just sink forever, all the way down to the end of the world.
“You too?” he said.
“Not like that,” I said, and then I reached out without turning completely around, brushing the spot on the inside of his left wrist that I know by heart. “You’re going to get a tattoo of an moth there. One day.” It’ll have tattered wings with black spots on them, and it’s going to be my favorite of his tattoos.
He doesn’t say anything to that, and we sat there for a moment watching the ripples spread across the pond.
“Something weird is going to happen now, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Probably,” he said, and I slowly fell back onto the beach, letting my hair fan out while rocks dig into my shoulder blades.
On a branch to the left of our heads two birds sat together, a couple inches apart at the edge of the party.
.....
I've been having this weird thing lately where I write short stories and really like them afterward. Weird. I like it.
Fun fact: the word doc of this story is called "Swine Flu." Even I don't know why.
I
The first time was at a bonfire, at the end of sophomore year. There was music, tinny and loud and very faraway. The fire was burning too bright, too tall, baking my face while the back of my neck froze and I narrowed my eyes against the light.
When I blinked, my eyes blurred-or refocused, like a camera lens, to the point I was surprised not to hear them whirr and buzz-leaving everything slightly to the left.
The music sounded even less real after that.
The first time it was subtle, a filter over what I was seeing, like a second layer to reality. Across the circle, I saw my best friend Ericka kissing Darren sitting beside her, overlaid over them talking and laughing in the present. I saw handcuffs around Max Fegan’s wrist, and Kirsten’s hair shortened and spiked and grew out again.
The fire died down and restarted over and over again.
A guy sat down next to me, tattoos flickering over his arms, shifting and scampering. He had a can of soda in his hand, and as he popped it open, the visions fizzed away with the hiss of carbonation.
“You okay?” he asked. I didn’t know his name-friend of a friend.
“Yeah,” I said.
II
The second time was after a show. It was late at night, the air cool, sometime in October.
The show was over and the sky was dark blue and I was sitting balanced on something silver that was either a fence or a crowd shield or a repurposed bike rack or maybe all three. It was rickety, and I held the bar to either side to keep my balance, bracing my feet against the vertical bars while it rocked.
I lost sight of the occasional cars whizzing by as my vision blurred.
This was one vision, the band, in fast motion. Vanstadiumcrowdphotographsfilmawardshows.
I was regaining my ability to focus on the neon sign of the Chinese restaurant across the street when Reed sat beside me. The bike rack rocked under his weight.
He wasn’t a friend of a friend anymore. He was my best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend, which sounded even more tangential but wasn’t, actually. We were partners in exclusion.
He’d gotten two of the tattoos, so far. The barbed wire around his right wrist, and the heart on his shoulder-the anatomical kind of heart, not the romantic. Sometimes I wondered how long it’d be before he go the one on his left wrist, or the sparrows on his other shoulder.
At the point of that show, Ericka and Darren had been dating for six months, and two weeks before Max had gotten busted drinking at a football game. Kirsten had cut her hair a month after the bonfire.
“Those guys are going to be famous,” I told Reed with a thumb back at the club.
III
The third time, it was at the lake. Ericka’s family had a cabin there and everyone had driven down for a big weekend party.
It happened when the party was pretty well underway, when I gone outside for an escape. The pressure had been about to kill me: people pressing in from all sides, hot air pressing down my lungs, loud music pressing into my ears.
The forest around the cabin was dark, a fairy-tale forest with slender birch trees and shadows and tentacle roots. The noise from the cabin was almost comforting, the low-level bass and too-loud laughter and golden light.
The music spilling out from inside is the new album from the same band we saw back in October. It hit number one in its first week, and stayed there for its next seven.
I took a walk, a dozen and a half steps through the woods, and ended up on the edge of the lake. The lakewater looked kind of unhealthy. Thick and dark and with absolutely zero visibility, flat and reflective as glass.
I knelt by the water and played with the urge to break the perfect surface.
When the reflection first started blurring I thought it was a wave, but it was just me.
“Hey,” Reed said from somewhere behind me.
“We sure spend a lot of time on the edge of parties, don’t we?” I said, words feeling thick as I said them, and what I really meant to say was you’re always here when I see the future, aren’t you?
He laughed as he stepped into my blurred field of vision, midway through taking a sip from the bottle in his hand-water, I think, but everything’s shifting, the tattoos running across his arms making me nauseous.
There aren’t as many blank spots for the visions to be filling, but everything seems to be compensating by running triple-speed. He got the outline for the first of the sparrows a week ago, maybe two.
“You spend a lot of time on the edge of parties,” he corrected. “I’m just here to make sure you don’t fall into the lake.”
Watching the tattoos made my vision swim too much, so I turned back to the flat mirror of a lake and watched. Watching the future reminded me of the things I used to see when I pressed my fists into closed eyes, all dizziness and rolling layers of blackness with polygons around the edges.
“You too?” I asked, knowing without seeing that Reed has sat down next to me, sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees. He’s all tattoos, and I always thought he should be larger, shouldn’t have been able to fold up so neatly, but he did.
He didn’t ask what I meant, just unfolds one arm and sweeps through the round pebbles on the beach before tossing a handful into the air.
They stay there. They stay there, and then, slowly, shakily, they fall-no, fly-towards the water, and they each skip four times before sinking into the water.
I could never skip rocks. They always slipped straight under the water. In this water, I feel like they might just sink forever, all the way down to the end of the world.
“You too?” he said.
“Not like that,” I said, and then I reached out without turning completely around, brushing the spot on the inside of his left wrist that I know by heart. “You’re going to get a tattoo of an moth there. One day.” It’ll have tattered wings with black spots on them, and it’s going to be my favorite of his tattoos.
He doesn’t say anything to that, and we sat there for a moment watching the ripples spread across the pond.
“Something weird is going to happen now, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Probably,” he said, and I slowly fell back onto the beach, letting my hair fan out while rocks dig into my shoulder blades.
On a branch to the left of our heads two birds sat together, a couple inches apart at the edge of the party.
.....
I've been having this weird thing lately where I write short stories and really like them afterward. Weird. I like it.
Fun fact: the word doc of this story is called "Swine Flu." Even I don't know why.