Fiction Friday: A Shining Legacy

I pictured the last time I saw my daughter. I had only dropped Briana off at school a few hours ago, but the memory of it was already graying at the edges. The blur of her tiny hand waving goodbye, her body-rocking nod when I asked her if she was going to have a good day. All of it shrinking and falling further and further out of the reach of my mind.

I wondered how she would remember me. The disheveled mom with the messy upswept hair and breakfast-stained sweatshirt that rushed to get her there on time? Or would she remember the love that beamed from my eyes as our foreheads touched and I whispered Go be brilliant, my love like I did every day?

Another pop, more screams, and I lost sight of my daughter. Her beautiful face and knack for bubbling over with joy, sucked into the void of last memories. I could only hope they waited for me on the other side. And that there was, in fact, another side.

Another pop. It sounded nothing like in the movies. I was sure it had a lot to do with my proximity. And a lot to do with the fact that filmed gunfire heard through speakers and watched behind the safety of a screen was much less harrowing then through the walls of my cubicle. Much easier to handle without the pain-filled, fear-soaked screams of my co-workers.

I pulled my knees deeper into my chest and scooted further under my desk. The veneer covered particle board pressed into my spine, reminding me that at least I was still alive. In the next breath, a sob swelled in my throat for the co-workers who couldn’t say the same.

I didn’t know much about this gunman, except that up until a week ago he was my co-worker, too. I wondered if it would’ve made a difference if I had known more about him. His favorite television show. His favorite movie. If he was married. If he had children.

Briana. Her sweet face hurtled through the vortex of despair and sat smiling in front of me once again. I wanted to reach out and rub her chubby cheek. To tell her one more time how much I loved her. As the impossibility of it nailed itself into my heart, another image pierced the surface. One that trickled through every pore, dug right into my marrow, and flooded me with a sudden calm.

Briana’s eyes, bright and focused. They were the same every time our foreheads touched and I asked her to shine. In fact, it was always her most attentive time. It struck me now that for her, they weren’t just words. That she got it. And through this realization, I knew she would be all right. That she would spend her life striving to be brilliant. And no matter what happened here, that was all I needed. 

Fiction Friday: The Girl With the Gift

[My apologies for the lack of Fiction Friday lately. But I'm back! A special thanks to my friend Melody for telling me about her crazy dream that served as the initial inspiration for this piece. Enjoy!]

Keeping secrets was all I knew. As natural as breathing. Such was the price to pay when born extraordinary in an ordinary world. Before my grandmother passed away, she made me promise to guard my secret, no matter the cost. But even as I promise passed from my lips, a certainty swelled within me. I knew that one day, I would break it.

The world was ending. It was obvious. But apparently, only to me. Trying to show my friends what I saw was met with confused looks and nervous snickers, followed by a mass exodus from my life. Consequence number one of people finding out the truth according to granny. 

Be prepared to live a life of solitude and harsh judgement.

Despite what I saw, the world continued to thrum along all around me. Clueless commuters and tourists meandered through the park on, what they believed to be, a beautiful day. A red-faced man knocked into me without apology, too caught up with yelling into his cell phone. I wondered if he would still be such an ass if he knew that this was the beginning of the end. Would whatever had him steaming mad be worth it?

Gazing up at the sky, my breath hitched at the sight of how much the tear had grown. It was like a frustrated artist took a giant knife and jammed it into the canvas of our world, starting deep in the heavens and dragging it toward earth. The slit between our world and whatever lay beyond glowed in the purest white.

My lungs filled with electrified air. My chest heaved. But I stopped myself short of screaming: Look! Run! Save yourselves!

I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t some tin foil hat wearing doomsday conspiracy theorist. I was just a girl with a gift. A girl whose main worry a week ago was whether or not Billy Ortiz was going to ask me to prom. And now, it was hard to believe that I’d ever cared about something as inconsequential as a dance. There would be no prom. Hell, soon enough, there might not be a Billy.

Or a me.  

I felt a tingling at the nape of my neck and I knew the time was near. It always started this way. Soft, almost comforting.

The brilliant slash had reached earth and disappeared along the horizon. I watched in horror as a blackish gray dot mutated into a long, skinny tendril. It unfurled from within the glow and entered into our world. Smaller tendrils sprung from its tip. As the terrifying appendage reached toward the ground, I heard the first screams.

The tingling in me grew and morphed into a pounding pulse that wracked my entire body. My abilities weren’t limited to just seeing what others couldn’t. I was gifted with a wide array of gifts. Each one important, according to granny, in fulfilling my ultimate purpose: to save the world.

Fiction Friday: [Waking in NYC]

I fell asleep cradled in a New York lullaby.
The steady pulse of passing traffic.
The blaring tenor of honked horns.
The biting falsetto of a siren’s wail.

The city’s rhythms worm their way into my dreams.
Fireworks of inspiration ignite all around me.
Their vibrant colors rain down, dropping
hopes and dreams
at my feet.

I am jolted awake by a New York symphony.
The shuffling hum of commuters.
The shrieks of school-bound children.
The crescendo of a new day filled with possibility.

Fiction Friday: Leonard's Blind Date
















 “So, Kelly tells me you’re a poet.” 

Fiction Friday: [Salvaging for Hope]

Despite living with a rowdy crew and the staleness of its recycled air, it was docking that Shapiro hated the most. The Vulture was an old girl, decommissioned before he was born. The odds of her dock being compatible with another ship was slim to none. The seesawing to make it work always left a queasy pit in his stomach. He learned the hard way not to look out the window. The lurching sent the stars dancing in non-rhythmic streaks and sent his head swirling. Shapiro wasn’t built to be a salvager. But life loved to throw curveballs.

As a civil engineer on Pis Aller Colony II, he spent his entire career at a desk. He worked hard to create a world that was not only functional, but beautiful. But, as with anything involving human nature, there were those who disagreed. A faction of underground rebels made it clear they weren’t happy with the government’s vision for one of the last remaining colonies. From stolen equipment to strategically placed bombs, setting work back for months, their presence had everyone on edge.

Shapiro stayed out of his colleague’s conspiracy theory discussions, preferring to keep his head down and complete the work of making a better world for his wife and daughter. But, from the day Katerine and Mela were kidnapped, he regretted his lack of fraternization. Maybe if he had joined in, he would have realized his job put his family in danger. He would have realized he needed to take steps to ensure their safety. But he hadn’t. He failed them.

Worse, the faction was rumored to have fled the colony soon after. Unconfirmed sightings of them off-planet was how Shapiro found his way onto the rusty, clunker known as The Vulture. If his family was out there, he would find them.

A loud, metallic clang filled the ship and vibrated under his feet. They had docked. Already suited up, Shapiro waited anxiously for the door to open. While the rest of the crew sought out items to gain them favor and bonuses, he set off for clues that could lead him to his family.

Debris peppered the floor and somewhere in the distance, water dripped. He swept his light over the rust-dripped walls and rivets until his beam caught something up ahead. Shapiro stopped in his tracks, confused. As the newbie, he was always sent the furthest from living quarters because quality personal effects fetched the highest trade value. But, up ahead, according to the plaque on the door, was the holy grail of salvagers…Captain’s Quarters. The civil engineer in him argued the implausibility of what he was seeing. The ridiculousness of a ship’s Captain hunkering down this deep in the belly of his ship. But he pushed those thoughts aside because he had work to do.

The door eased open with an ear piercing squawk. The room smelled of mold and metal, adding to the war already raging in Shapiro’s stomach. He zigzagged the light from wall to wall and along the floor. The room was waterlogged and everything in it was soaked in shades of black, gray, and brown. Then the light’s beam caught a flash of pink in the far corner. It was only a tiny peek, but in the den of drab it shined like a beacon.

Shapiro carefully sloshed his way across the room, kicking aside long-forgotten debris. Memories that had once meant something to someone, now disintegrating and floating in rust water. The closer he got, the more he worried that his OxyBreather was faulty. But common sense pointed him toward the truth.

The temperature on Pis Aller Colony II was a steady sixty-eight. Always. His daughter never left home without her favorite pink jacket. The one that was the same shade of pink peeking out from under the layers of dirt and water stains.

The combination of hope and fear shortened his breath. The addition of the heat from his tears threatened to fog his view as he reached his gloved hand toward the corner. The first tug sent something into the water heavy enough to splash the glass of his helmet, but Shapiro didn’t care. He tugged again at the fabric that could potentially spin his world into overdrive. This time it slid out with ease from its watery grave.

The zipper glinted under his light. The sleeves hung slack and heavy, dripping. His gasping cries echoed hollow in the helmet as he clutched the jacket to his chest.  

This find wouldn’t get him in his bosses favor or garner him a bonus, but to him, Shapiro had just salvaged the most valuable thing on the ship. 

Fiction Friday: [Chiseling The Creative Block]

Yearning swells at the sight of it
glowing faintly through the fog.
Hands shoot out. Fingers flexed. Mind ready.
Fingertips graze, but the eagerness
sends it floating further out of reach.

Frustration swells as seconds pass,
ticking loudly through the panic.
Hands shoot up. Fingers flexed. Mind reeling.
Anxiety heightens, but life persists.
A reminder of another chance.

Lungs swell as breaths deepen,
calming the soul through deliberate gusts.
Hands float down. Fingers soften. Mind relaxed.
Chest heavy, but colors brighten,
clearing their way through the fog. 

Fiction Friday: [In the Shadow of the End]

Rachel watched her daughter run around the yard in awkward, drunken circles. The five-year-old’s arms and legs, already too long for her body, flailed out of control and added to her fun. Emma tossed her head back and the giggles flowed.

Rachel’s heart caught a tumultuous wave.

There was nothing more soothing, more perfect than the sound of her child in the throes of joy. But knowing what her life was to become cast a dark shadow. A shadow that dug deep into her as a mother, cracking her ribs apart and attacking the last vestiges of what had been their normal life.

It was the sudden silence that pulled her from her thoughts. The air grew cold in it. Jolting to attention, Rachel’s eyes fell into Emma’s, whose gangly arms were still raised a bit having stopped mid twirl. By the time she reached her mother, her face had morphed from curious to crumbled. Glassy eyes and quivering lip. It was a look that Rachel had dreaded.

Emma reached up and gently caressed her face and it was then that Rachel realized she was crying. Tears released without permission. Tears she had sworn never to shed in front of her daughter.  

Emma’s eyes held the question she didn’t know to ask. Rachel’s broken heart hung heavy with the answer she didn’t know how to give.

By the time she heard her husband drive up, Rachel had soothed her daughter. By the time her soon-to-be ex’s keys were in the door, Emma was already back to twirling with reckless abandon. 

Fiction Friday: Treadmill

Bare feet pound against dry, cracked earth.
Each step leading to nowhere.
The horizon never changing.

Heartbeats pound against tight, stitched ribs.
Each pulse leading to the last.
The horizon too far to care.

Despair pounds against ever-waning hope.
Each second leading to the end.
The horizon stares on, aloof and distant.

Faith pounds against the impatient horizon.
Each thump a call to believe.
The horizon swells. The horizon cheers.