You wouldn't be far wrong to call me a fucking liar. Yesterday I implied that there would be more story, and yet here it is, no longer yesterday, and there is no more story. Horrible, aren't I? A complete betrayal, I realize, but one that I trust you'll get over.
Writing has been very interesting of late. Amazingly easy. This particular story is one of four things I'm working on simultaneously. I don't suggest this. I've got this story, another short piece I'm trying to pull together for a certain zine, a moden-fantasy thing about a kid and this strange...circus...thing. It's hard to explain. Plus, of course, I'm going through my book. So. Writing is busy.
Anyway, enough about me.
This story started here.
Which girl was it? Which girl had he loved? Which girl had he lost?
Thomas sat in the remnants of his living room. There was a pile of heartbreak around him; neat folded paper packages of betrayal. He took them out of the box and read them, one by one, slowly. Some notes were pure poetry, carefully written and penned, thought out, crafted. There were tiny origami flowers that unfolded into meadows of deliberate prose, stroked in thin ink on pages as softly white as snow. For every masterwork of devotion, there were three that were awkward and clumsy. Desperate letters, begging forgiveness, begging a touch, a kiss, pages and pages recounting coffee shops and garden walks, manic lines that tumbled out in lonely fear and betrayal. Always she came back, always she circled around again, and the writer would return to soft script and dedications to her eyes.
There were fuck letters, too, frantic and grotesque. Some were typed, some interspersed with lurid crayon. Thomas sat in the twin grip of arousal and repulsion, hating what he read and envying it, too. A pit of bile burned its way through his stomach and into his groin. His palms sweated on the paper. He had trouble picturing his Jenna, dear Jenna, as the subject of these heady tomes; but there was her name, sweet Jenna, and her body was accurately described. Worse, these weren't fantasies, they were recollections. Tributes to the rut.
Shaking, Thomas set down the papers and went to the kitchen to wash his hands. He ran his wet fingers over his face and tried to quiet the acid in his gut; nothing about the paper Jenna was familiar. They had loved, they had walked just like in the letters, twisting through the city's parks arm in arm, laughing to moonlight. The bedroom, though. The bedroom had never been anything like the yellow and red crayon energy scattered across the floor behind him. Jenna's tastes had always been mild. Her attitude beneath him had always been...patient. Jenna was a patient fuck.
Thomas dried his hands and returned to the living room. With the piles of letters he had mixed pictures, photographs that he and Jenna had taken on their many vacations. He dipped into them now, drew out a stack of slick glossies. On top was a laughing Jenna poised inches above a waterfall. She leaned out across the water to throw a flower clumsily into the current. They had watched it tumble over the falls, flutter as it dived through the mist and tornado roar below, shedding petals as it fell. He remembered. They had held hands, and talked about dinner. They had been good together. Happy.
Thomas dropped the pictures down into the scattered letters, and watched them flutter to the ground.
Writing has been very interesting of late. Amazingly easy. This particular story is one of four things I'm working on simultaneously. I don't suggest this. I've got this story, another short piece I'm trying to pull together for a certain zine, a moden-fantasy thing about a kid and this strange...circus...thing. It's hard to explain. Plus, of course, I'm going through my book. So. Writing is busy.
Anyway, enough about me.
This story started here.
Which girl was it? Which girl had he loved? Which girl had he lost?
Thomas sat in the remnants of his living room. There was a pile of heartbreak around him; neat folded paper packages of betrayal. He took them out of the box and read them, one by one, slowly. Some notes were pure poetry, carefully written and penned, thought out, crafted. There were tiny origami flowers that unfolded into meadows of deliberate prose, stroked in thin ink on pages as softly white as snow. For every masterwork of devotion, there were three that were awkward and clumsy. Desperate letters, begging forgiveness, begging a touch, a kiss, pages and pages recounting coffee shops and garden walks, manic lines that tumbled out in lonely fear and betrayal. Always she came back, always she circled around again, and the writer would return to soft script and dedications to her eyes.
There were fuck letters, too, frantic and grotesque. Some were typed, some interspersed with lurid crayon. Thomas sat in the twin grip of arousal and repulsion, hating what he read and envying it, too. A pit of bile burned its way through his stomach and into his groin. His palms sweated on the paper. He had trouble picturing his Jenna, dear Jenna, as the subject of these heady tomes; but there was her name, sweet Jenna, and her body was accurately described. Worse, these weren't fantasies, they were recollections. Tributes to the rut.
Shaking, Thomas set down the papers and went to the kitchen to wash his hands. He ran his wet fingers over his face and tried to quiet the acid in his gut; nothing about the paper Jenna was familiar. They had loved, they had walked just like in the letters, twisting through the city's parks arm in arm, laughing to moonlight. The bedroom, though. The bedroom had never been anything like the yellow and red crayon energy scattered across the floor behind him. Jenna's tastes had always been mild. Her attitude beneath him had always been...patient. Jenna was a patient fuck.
Thomas dried his hands and returned to the living room. With the piles of letters he had mixed pictures, photographs that he and Jenna had taken on their many vacations. He dipped into them now, drew out a stack of slick glossies. On top was a laughing Jenna poised inches above a waterfall. She leaned out across the water to throw a flower clumsily into the current. They had watched it tumble over the falls, flutter as it dived through the mist and tornado roar below, shedding petals as it fell. He remembered. They had held hands, and talked about dinner. They had been good together. Happy.
Thomas dropped the pictures down into the scattered letters, and watched them flutter to the ground.
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[Edited on Feb 20, 2005 7:03AM]