Pet Cobra

IndieInk Writing Challenge #3: Untitled

 The IndieInk Writing Challenge rolls on. It's a pretty simple idea; one writer throws a conceptual gauntlet at the feet of another, and it's on, as they say. THUNDAHDOME. 

This week, Jules - she runs the Mean Girl Garage, AAA-approved and rightfully so - gave me a cryptic line as my challenge. It was

“I’m not a solution to your problem. I’m another problem.”

The line went dead. 

Fuck.

Fuckity fuck fuck.

She checks her watch. 0430. Smart. That time of night/morning when human reaction times are at their slowest. It didn't help that she'd had a couple rounds of cheap Scotch before turning in. Stupid. Stupider still: realizing only now, with an invisible icepick digging its way into her temple just above her left eye, that they'd known she'd been drinking. Blinds drawn, the only light the death throes of a flickering florescent bulb, and

somehow

they

knew.

She's lying on her bed, on her back. If she stands she'll be in front of the window. Would she hear the soft snap of glass, the whisper of the bullet? Lying down, maybe they can't tell where she is. She'd had the sense to turn off the light before drifting into sleep. The dreamless sleep of the dead and the professional.  And sometimes the dead professional, she thinks. She realizes that if the shot was going to come through the window, she wouldn't be having this conversation with herself. She reaches under her pillow and slowly

pulls

out

the

gun. 

It's a Magnum Desert Eagle, a massive thing, and the .50 caliber round in the chamber will slice through the hotel room door and a human heart with equal ease. 

The 

phone 

rings

once

twice

thrice

silence.

She rolls over on to her side, her back towards the window. Pretends to be in the grip of a dream, erotic, or terrifying, enough to cause her to kick the sheets off, in fear, or passion. If she has to move the sheets will envelope her and they'll become her burial shroud. She lies in something like a fetal position, her fingers entwined around the pistol's grip, the business end pointed at a spot on the door about five feet up. The bullet will go through the wood and into a throat, or, better yet, a skull. She

holds

her

breath.

Once, when she was a teen, she went scuba diving. What dazzled her was not the vast forest of brown kelp, undulating in the currents, or the garibaldi fish, orange and haughty, nipping at her gloves. No, it was the muted voice of the ocean. Silent, but not - the sounds of being adrift in a weightless echo chamber, hearing nothing, hearing everything. She's so quiet now as to be underwater - she hears a heart beating, as steady as that of a resting Olympian. She hears lungs processing air. She hears

footpads.

Exhales.

Safety off.

A knock.

"Room service."

IndieInk Writing Challenge #2: Martyr

A few weeks ago, the folks at IndieInk did me the honor of posting one of my essays. I felt kinda bad, because it was something I'd written for this site. So to assuage my guilty conscience, I volunteered to join a bunch of IndieInk'ers for the IndieInk Writing Challenge. It's a pretty simple idea; one writer throws a conceptual gauntlet at the feet of another, and it's on, as they say. I'm excited: recently, writing feels like work to me. Work that I love, but work nonetheless. This is my chance to play with words.

My second challenge was issued by Karla Valenti. "Photos reflect a life narrative that has moved the photographer. These photo montages are a collage of narratives taken by various photographers. Describe the story(ies) captured in photo 7 of the following collection:http://www.corinnevionnet.com/index.php?/photo-opportunities/." I was mulling over the photo, and decided to (GASP) write a short story featuring the main element in the picture. In doing so, my mind wandered into some dark places.

We are all believers, he thinks. Despite the throngs and their heat meshing with the sun's, he's not sweating. He's lived in deserts of one sort or another his whole life. The sick have a coolness to them and the dead are cold. Warmth buoys him. He shifts his weight. He's thinking about the didgeridoo, that bizarre Australian wind instrument. Funny how the mind can wander, even surrounded by thousands of people. He pauses to consider the crowd. They move like wheat in a windstorm. Swaying as if listening to eldritch music. He checks his watch. Any time now. He marvels at the fact that he's thus far remained unmolested, despite the benign nature of the crowd. 

A few more minutes. God, he thinks. These people gather here to worship Him. He looks down at the case at his feet, build to hold a television camera. No TV,  the security guard told him. You need to leave that here. Not that it mattered - he wasn't going to film, of course - but he'd gotten this far and wanted to get closer, to see it, to have it fill his eyes, and leaving the case wouldn't do. He considered the guard - early 20's, a green-tinted wedding band - and produced a $50 bill from his wallet. The case went with him. It had seen some miles; the al-Jazeera logo on the side was almost gone, faded from the suns of a dozen countries. He'd gotten it shortly after he began working for the network. It, and his false life as a network cameraman, had served him well. 

The didgeridoo. The crowd emits a hum like a million of them. When he was in school, he spent a summer in Sydney and one weekend they went into the wilderness. There was an old man, obsidian skin, and he played one for them. It was a sound like the earth mourning. They listened for a spell. The old man spoke in broken English. The dreamtime, he said. The dreamworld. When they buried him and the blood-spattered didgeridoo along with the guns and shell casings, someone mentioned that even though he was a non-believer, a heretic, infidel, perhaps the one true God would remember his music and take pity on him. That was good desert, full of scrub, crevices, cover of all sorts. An ideal training ground. They all had code names - it wouldn't do to end up down the hole, screaming out your brothers' names in the hope that the enemy would stop pulling out your fingernails. Better to shriek out nonsense - in this case, colors, an idea taken from a recent gangster movie. They spend days in the furnace, learning about microcircuitry and line-of-sight and frequencies and spectra. Along with that they learned to field-strip a weapon blindfolded, and how to use the knife so that the trachea is severed, thus preventing the target from yelling for help as he bleeds out.

He reaches into his satchel. There, next to the pager - they'd had a hell of a time finding one that actually worked - is a the modified cell phone and a Q'uran. His copy, much like the camera case, is yellowed from use. He's read it dozens upon dozens of time, entire passages coming to him as easy as his own birth date. The pager begins to vibrate. A number appears. He flips open the battered book and finds the corresponding page, and then the corresponding phrase. He smiles. Of course. He'd bet one of his colleagues that when the time came, he'd know exactly what the code would be. Hours spent memorizing thoughts, ideas, passages, phrases, words. He picks up the phone, which will, when the proper text message is sent, transmit a signal to the case at his feet. He types in the code word, looking around as he does. Thousands of pilgrims, here to see, and - God willing - touch the Black Stone. Al-Masjid al-Haram, the Sacred Mosque. And there, the Kaaba. The ebon cube. The epicenter of Islam.

The code phrase. When sent, what's inside the camera case will detonate. 

We are all believers, he prays. No doubt he'll burn in Hell for what he's about to do. The Q'uran - which he'd read in the hopes of better understanding his enemy - and The Bible both say the same thing about murder. He prays anyway. There is no God but God, and He so loved the world that He sacrificed His only son, in Jesus' name, amen.

IndieInk Writing Challenge #1: "After the rain.."

A few weeks ago, the folks at IndieInk did me the honor of posting one of my essays. I felt kinda bad, because it was something I'd written for this site. So to assuage my guilty conscience, I volunteered to join a bunch of IndieInk'ers for the IndieInk Writing Challenge. It's a pretty simple idea; one writer throws a conceptual gauntlet at the feet of another, and it's on, as they say. I'm excited: recently, writing feels like work to me. Work that I love, but work nonetheless. This is my chance to play with words.

My first challenge, issued by the lovely and talented Fina, is pretty straightforward: "Head to IndieInk's latest art entry. Tell a story about the day/scene in 500 words or less. Link your entry to the page so that people can find the photograph you describe." So. Click. Keep it open. (It's a lovely picture, no?) And:

 

Consider the speed of light. When you look up at the night sky, you look into the past. The light from those stars is old beyond reckoning. By the time you wish upon it, that star, the one that you hope will bring you happiness, or prosperity, or even just a little peace, will have collapsed upon itself, its dust spreading out across infinity. The microscopic ruins of a star drift and swirl around the Universe, and will eventually become a part of something else - a comet, a moon, perhaps even a new star. But tonight, and every night, the stars that we see are just memories. Only the light remains.

Consider rain. You stand out in a late winter shower, the clouds billowing over the Pacific, a gray redoubt. Arms out, palms up. There's a reason you live here, of course; as a kid you lived through too many winters, too much cold, too many ghosts. At the warm edge of the continent everything is renewed every day. The Endless Summer. The rain: always cold, coming as it does from the heart of distant oceans. It feels ancient, as it should. Water is forever. It falls, is absorbed, evaporates, returns to the sky. The drops that fall on you fell on Magellan as he looked for a shrouded horizon. They were born from the icy depths where bowhead whales fed lazily, unaware of the harpoons awaiting them on the surface. The same rain carries the metallic taste of a U-boat's periscope and the hot smell of a sea lion's blood. The clouds cover the skies and the rain brings the ages down on you.

Then, it stops. The clouds break.

The raindrops become prisms.

Light.

Stars.