Challenge #15 - Explosion

This piece is kinda meant to be a bit Purple. Yeah...

#15 - Explosion

The little blonde girl with the skinny ankles and gummy bands around her wrists covers her eyes while every hint of what will never will be contorts towards the star-speckled sky. She hears the pop inside her head, and then nothing but cotton wool and pressure like the bottom of the ocean. Then Chaos comes calling, taunting her with the tinkling sound of broken glass and distress. The air smells like November 5th, but instead of fireworks all she can see is crimson behind her eyelids. Studded with shuriken sequins, her whole world falls into the cracks. And all she has to cling to is the rubble beneath her pumps.

Words: 111

Challenge #14 - Gratitude

I don't even have an explanation for this one.

#14 - Gratitude

She can’t believe that he’s just gone and done it
and she finds herself stood with her mouth agape,
lips flapping as if she were a fish.

How does she thank him for such a small thing?
It’s not like he could ever know how it’s lifted
the weight on her heart. Her arms hang

limply by her sides and she’s frozen
until her muscles respond and she smiles.
His face lights up like the top

of the Chrysler Building on a sunny day.
He holds out his hand, lets his fingers brush
against the sleeve of her jacket.

The affirmation is silent, but she feels
it buzzing through her veins like
adrenaline or caffeine

or a hurricane. 


Words: 118

Challenge #13 - Consequences

Today's post has background in my last NaNoWriMo novel, but the context is a bit complex. I hope you can gather enough of it to understand this short piece. =D

#13 - Consequences

Her suit is like moonlight; it folds around her skin perfectly, displaying every inch of her taught body as she bends backwards on the podium. The material is silky, it reflects the lighting above the stage as if this silvery liquid were emanating from within her very being. Her hair is the colour of dusk, a dark and rolling mass that in daylight would be autumn. Persephone watches from beneath as if from through tinted glass. She does not believe that this woman is the one whom she has ever known. There is knowing, she believes now, and then there is knowing. Emmeline looks like a doll, a puppet, only there are no strings - there is only this silver glistening light that comes from the rhinestones on her suit, and the line on which the acrobat is balanced.

As Emmeline begins to dance - if you could call it dancing - in a mythic and mysterious twisting of her entire body, Persephone finds that she can no longer watch. The thought of what is to come leaves the young girl stupefied, able to only imagine the colour of the suit against blood below the podium. Persephone can image the strange, musky scent of Emmeline’s perfume, see vividly behind her eyelids the rose colour of Emmeline’s lips before the lipstick; she cannot bring herself to watch the show.

It is because, she vows, it is because of what will happen. She knows.


Words: 239

Challenge #12 - Different Ways of Thinking

Once again guys, I have no idea where this really came from in relation to the prompt. Back-story-wise, this is a snippet of characters from a novel of mine called Juno & Diana, which I started last summer but am planning to overhaul sometime soon. I've been getting snippets of inspiration for these guys for a while. I want to write a lesbian romance that isn't just gimmicks; sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. This piece isn't really even romantic, so...

Also, I was attempting to write in the style of Marguerite Duras. I don't know how well it went because this piece is too short to fully achieve her style - and rather than using no names, I use their names often for more clarity. idk. Whatever. Enjoy. XD 

 

#12 - Different Ways of Thinking

Juno is cupping the wine glass between her fingers. They are very slender, Diana notices, the nails carefully filed and painted a dusky rose; her skin is pale against the burgundy of the wine. Diana wonders whether Juno has ever sunbathed. The younger woman has freckles on her nose, although they are covered with powder. Diana knows that they are there. Juno is watching Diana watching her. She can feel the older writer’s gaze as her dark eyes scan from the corners of Juno’s lips to her hairline. Juno thinks that Diana must be imagining what she looks like with her hair let down on her shoulders. She thinks that perhaps Diana is even imagining running her fingers through the curls; but Juno is insistent that her hair stays plaited neatly down her back. Diana unconsciously folds her hands on her knees. Juno continues to hold the wine glass. They never talk over dinner, although this is not what Diana is used to. Juno believes that dining should be silent, an experience of wealth and pleasure - not a chance to ‘catch up’. Diana has never known anything other than Catching Up; Jack only ever has things to tell her when she’s eating. Juno takes a sip of her wine, watching intently thought cat-like eyes as the older woman’s pulse shows in her throat.

Diana makes the first move. She puts out her hand.  

Words: 234

Challenge #11 - Guardian Angel

Sorry for the late post and the quality. I had a bad day. (Also don't expect much for today's post either. Today was even worse...)

#11 - Guardian Angel

I’ve watched them before, and I’ll watch them again. They flurry like snowflakes through the haze of distance. Sometimes they glow. That means they need help. My help, perhaps. I used to swoop to the rescue, my wings ruffled out to the span of a man’s height and everything, because that was my job. And then one day, I didn’t. I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what changed. Not exactly. I guess I just got sick of seeing their pain up close. It’s much easier through the haze.

You can call me selfish, but I guess I just got tired of it.

Words:  104

Challenge #10 - Disillusionment

Unedited, terrible quality. Blah, blah. It's 1am and I have class tomorrow. 

 # 10 - Disillusionment

The air on the porch seemed stifling to Emma as she sat with a book in her lap; the pages fluttered lightly as she flicked them between her fingers. She let her gaze fall out beyond the wooden posts and the swinging fly-screen to the roses that were wilting behind a statue of a Kingfisher. She couldn’t believe how different things seemed now, as they were coming into the fall of such a year. The world seemed a different place.

Two months ago she had sat in this very spot, with this same book, and everything had seemed so much stronger in her mind - painted in vibrant colours rather than the monochrome that blanketed everything now. Two months ago it had been a vacation from real life to be here, back home again. Two months ago she had Ollie with her.

The little boy had spent his afternoon running around the back yard with a piece of wood longer than he was tall, shouting that it was his horse and he was a pirate. He had named the horse Captain Silver, and everybody nearby was to call him only by his new name: Ollivander.

“He thinks Harry Potter is a book about pirates,” Adam explained to Emma’s mother. “But, whatever. It’s the best thing since sliced bread.”

“Or chocolate,” Emma said, laughing. She watched Ollie run circles around the rose bush, every so often knocking a flying limb against the pink blooms.

“Oh, be careful Ollie!” Adam had scolded. Emma smiled.

The roses were dying now, she knew. They probably wouldn’t last the winter; the soil in her mother’s garden had never kept anything alive for more than a season. Their house had been the last built in the neighbourhood, and the grass covered more than just mud. Emma had once found an entire shoe, still whole, with several nails hammered into the heels. It was no wonder than nothing grew.

Without realising it, Emma had let herself begin to cry.

She should have known from previous experience that things were going too well to last. Like the roses, her relationships never lived for more than a season. But Ollie - he was something new. At twenty-five years old, Emma had never dreamed that she could love a child so much. Adam said that she was brilliant with his son, better than Ollie’s own mother.

What Emma didn’t know then was that Ollie’s mother hadn’t even stuck around long enough to name the kid before dumping him on Adam. If she had known that, Emma thought, would she have acted differently? Perhaps she would have steered clear of Adam, stayed away from him and the heartbreak he was sure to cause when he decided that nobody could be good enough for his son.

But thinking about it, Emma knew that things wouldn’t have been different. Knowing where Ollie had come from would just have made letting him go harder.

Three days after Ollie declared he was a fireman, thank you, Adam told Emma that she had to leave.

“You’re filling his head with too much nonsense. I can’t have him learning all this stuff, only to have his teachers tell him it’s wrong. It’ll mess him up too much.”

Emma didn’t say anything about the fact that Adam was just as guilty as she was when it came to telling stories. She surprised herself with how easy it was to just stand up, hand Adam the bag with Ollie’s toys, and leave ten dollars for her meal. The cafe around them was bustling, but that didn’t stop her either; nobody looked at her any differently as she laid down her money; nobody frowned when she kissed Ollie’s soft, blonde curls for the last time.

Her mother hadn’t been surprised to see Emma on the back porch when she returned from work. She came outside bearing a plate of cookies, two glasses of sweetened ice tea, and the book her daughter had left behind on her last visit.

“Your old room is ready when you want it,” she said. That was all there was to it.

Emma nodded. “Yes. Are the roses dying already?”

“Who knows,” Emma’s mother had responded. “They might take us by surprise.”

Emma thought, sitting on the porch and watching the roses die, that her mother must have been waiting for an explanation, but she never got one. Instead she got warmer weather, dying foliage, and Emma.  


Words: 744

Challenge #8 - Orchard

Sorry this is late. I was drunk when I wrote it, so, uh, I decided to wait to post. XD

#9 - Orchard

In the sun-dappled grass
sweeping boughs hang
vaulted like the walls of a
cathedral, over the head of a
sleeping boy.

In his hand he clutches
an apple that is the colour
of the dark rouge lipstick worn
by his mother; its skin is a mask
of glamour.

His hat is tipped forth over
his rosy cheeks and
his lips are framed pouting, as
though they were made of
cocktails cherries.

This one afternoon
he will wait for the world
to pass him in sepia, instead
of simply trying his best to
escape it.

Words: 94.