Them
Another original writing post. This one contains a bit more mature content than The Man And The Girl, perhaps a bit more social commentating as well.
~485 words, adult-ish content -- though nothing explicit and it's probably PG-13.
She understands them.
Oh, not how they all earn enough to pay for three-thousand-square-feet SoHo apartments with their suited bodies and talking mouths, leading clients whichever way to buy and sell according to ever-changing jagged-lined charts posted on giant flat screens inside Wall Street.
No, it's when the suits are shrugged off and their mouths turned to the better uses of frantic licking and biting that she understands them. Knows why they bother to wake up in the morning and put on their suits, empty shells that they are.
Everyone needs a pretense.
She sees them everywhere. Hollowed Eyes in the subway; Tapping Fingers in the cafeteria; and Checking My Stocks the next table over at a Starbucks, just to name a few. Even on Sundays-the company-imposed Sabbath-they don't stop with their Blackberries and their Bluetooth gadgets. She's even seen them in a church once (the one time she went), Buy You A Drink on the left pew and Bad Temper on the right. They hadn't noticed each other, of course; they never do.
They come in all shapes and sizes. Long, short, straight, curved, cut, uncut, pale, dark. Every once in a while she would catch their eyes-big, small, round, slanted, almond-shaped-different colors, but all flashing with need; the need to have, the need to feel, the need to be.
She accepts them all, takes them all in. There's nothing she can give them, so she opens herself, allowing emptiness to reach into emptiness. That seems to be enough for them.
Then They came for them, shouting mantras of righteousness that sounded more like hatred to her ears. Taking them out, They did, one by one. Hollowed Eyes and Tapping Fingers are gone, so is Checking My Stocks. She wonders if the two she saw in church pews managed to escape unscathed. They are in league with Them, after all, when they remember to wear their sheepskin to hide the wolf within.
And now she sits, looking out of the penthouse window in her own apartment, bought with their money-two thousand square feet and a bit northeast of SoHo, not too shabby. She understands why They did it, in a way. While the suited ones needed her for understanding, They needed her for condemnation.
A knock on her door, and one of Them shows up. She knows This One, short but thick and heavy in her hands. She leads This One to her room, and he is silent. She looks up, and stares into his (blue) eyes that open straight into a conflicted soul.
She draws him near and waits until his mouth remembers nature's instinct to start licking and biting. A few more times, she knows, and the tortured emotion in This One's eyes will disappear. Then it will be back to the familiar pattern of empty reaching into empty.
Then, she will understand Them.
~485 words, adult-ish content -- though nothing explicit and it's probably PG-13.
She understands them.
Oh, not how they all earn enough to pay for three-thousand-square-feet SoHo apartments with their suited bodies and talking mouths, leading clients whichever way to buy and sell according to ever-changing jagged-lined charts posted on giant flat screens inside Wall Street.
No, it's when the suits are shrugged off and their mouths turned to the better uses of frantic licking and biting that she understands them. Knows why they bother to wake up in the morning and put on their suits, empty shells that they are.
Everyone needs a pretense.
She sees them everywhere. Hollowed Eyes in the subway; Tapping Fingers in the cafeteria; and Checking My Stocks the next table over at a Starbucks, just to name a few. Even on Sundays-the company-imposed Sabbath-they don't stop with their Blackberries and their Bluetooth gadgets. She's even seen them in a church once (the one time she went), Buy You A Drink on the left pew and Bad Temper on the right. They hadn't noticed each other, of course; they never do.
They come in all shapes and sizes. Long, short, straight, curved, cut, uncut, pale, dark. Every once in a while she would catch their eyes-big, small, round, slanted, almond-shaped-different colors, but all flashing with need; the need to have, the need to feel, the need to be.
She accepts them all, takes them all in. There's nothing she can give them, so she opens herself, allowing emptiness to reach into emptiness. That seems to be enough for them.
Then They came for them, shouting mantras of righteousness that sounded more like hatred to her ears. Taking them out, They did, one by one. Hollowed Eyes and Tapping Fingers are gone, so is Checking My Stocks. She wonders if the two she saw in church pews managed to escape unscathed. They are in league with Them, after all, when they remember to wear their sheepskin to hide the wolf within.
And now she sits, looking out of the penthouse window in her own apartment, bought with their money-two thousand square feet and a bit northeast of SoHo, not too shabby. She understands why They did it, in a way. While the suited ones needed her for understanding, They needed her for condemnation.
A knock on her door, and one of Them shows up. She knows This One, short but thick and heavy in her hands. She leads This One to her room, and he is silent. She looks up, and stares into his (blue) eyes that open straight into a conflicted soul.
She draws him near and waits until his mouth remembers nature's instinct to start licking and biting. A few more times, she knows, and the tortured emotion in This One's eyes will disappear. Then it will be back to the familiar pattern of empty reaching into empty.
Then, she will understand Them.