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21 MayThere’s a First Time For Everything

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“I’m tired,” said Becca, slipping through the front door that her mom was holding open.

“So,” asked her mother, a smile pulling at the edges of her mouth, “How was it?”

“Fine,” said Becca, pulling off her high heels.

“Fine? It was your first date! Tell me how it went!”

“Mom,” said Becca, pulling out the word in annoyance, “Give me a minute to breathe.”

“It was that good?” asked her mom, “Oh wait, does that mean it went badly?”

“It went great,” said Becca, smiling, “I just can’t help feeling that this is all a dream.”

“Aw,” said her mom, “That’s so adorable! It’s real. This is real. Oh my goodness…let’s tell dad!”

“What?” asked Becca, “No!”

It was too late, “Daaaad! Come down and see how beautiful Becca looks. Her date went fantastic!”

“I’m trying to sleep,” came a muffled voice, “I’m sure she wants some space too.”

“I want to call him actually,” said Becca, to his mom.

“Are you kdding? You just saw him…he just dropped you off. He probably isn’t even home yet.”

“Is it too soon to call?” asked Becca worriedly.

“Yes, honey…why don’t you just go upstairs and think about it…You can call him in the morning.”

“Okay,” said Becca softly, “He won’t be offended that I didn’t call him sooner, will he?”

“Honey, give him some space. You talk to him every single day, I think he’ll live without hearing your voice for twelve hours.”

“If he gets mad, that’s your fault,” said Becca, “and I don’t want him mad!”

“He’s been your best friend for four years, he’ll live.”

“Yeah, but best friend is totally different than dating.”

“Just go to bed, honey,” said her mom. Once Becca was gone her mother sighed quietly, “I remember when I was that young.”

Category(s): 56 stories, Writing
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20 MayDefine

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There is a defining moment in every person’s life, a minute that they decide, for better or worse, what they will do with their lives. These moments are often not as monumental as they might seem but they completely change a person.

These moments in people’s lives often do not end positively. People most often make the wrong choice. They choose the past of least resistance. Why? Because they do not have the will to act.
The skill of moving even when the whole world is still is hard to learn. I remember my grandfather lecturing me on this as a child, reminding me, “Dead fish are the ones who follow the current of the river.”

My father often reminded me of his defining moment. He was fifteen when he saw his best friend being beaten by seven bullies at his high school. He ran over to help, even though he knew he would lose. He could have walked away but he chose to stand up for his friend. From then on, he told me, he always had the courage to do what was right, even if he knew that he would fail.

“You too will have this moment,” he told me, “You won’t know it at the time and you won’t always know if you did the right or wrong thing but it defines who you are as a person. Once you realize your defining moment…you will know what kind of man you really are.”

Since I was five, I’d carefully followed my father’s advice. At every opportunity, I considered, “How does this define me?” I never knew which moment would define me. It wasn’t until I was sixteen and wondering where my moment had been that I realize the truth. Every one of those moments had defined me.

Category(s): 56 stories, Writing
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19 MayDiet

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In all the wreckage of the surrounding area, very few valuable resourced were available, but the soda can I spotted across the sight was one of them. A shallow wind blew through the deserted city and sent the can scuttling into the gutter.

I picked my way through the garbage and broken glass that filled almost every square inch of the city. I wanted that can. Reaching it, I carefully leaned into the gutter and pulled it out. Once considered useless, empty cans could provide both shelter and defense. I slowly looked at the writing on the can. I had learned to read once, but after so many years without any written words, the skill took a while to pick back up.

It was a Diet coke can, the words, “zero calories” was written prominently on the side and I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony.
Years ago, no one argued that soda was bad for you, so they glossed over the problems and stuck a shiny label on it.

World leader4s in the late 2030’s started to give up on solving world problems. World hunger increased, not because there was not enough food, but because the people in control of the food just didn’t care. The leaders panicked. How could they erase a worldview? How could they destroy an idea? Humanities atrocities got more and more severe until genocide simply became a sport. The world powers collapsed, cities were abandoned, order was forgotten.

Humanity had done this so many times and in so many ways. Unable to break the addiction, they had tried to see the evil as good. That’s why I was struggling to find shelter in what used to be Washington D.C.. Maybe if we hadn’t bothered with diet coke, we could have saved the world.

Category(s): 56 stories, Writing
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18 MayBreathe

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There are only ten things you need to learn from life. But you will have to learn them on your own, because life is not about what you do know but what you don’t understand, and how far you are willing to go to learn it.

Life is a quest to understand the vast sum of equations that are impossible to understand. Therefore, to live is impossible. To breathe and exist are common, but to live is unattainable. The greatest people, however, have tried to understand and have failed miserably, but they, at least, tried.

Leonardo de Vinci, a man famous for art and futuristic understanding of anatomy and science is hailed as one of the most brilliant man to ever live. Ironically, he only attempted to live. Ironically, on his death bed he said, “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should.” Leonardo de Vinci understood how far from perfection, from living, he came.

And as I lie here, on my death bed, I wonder what I should say. What last words of wisdom to impart to the world. Karl Marx died saying, “Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.”

I have written influential books my entire life. They are fiction but they do not tell the story of one man but of every man. A few, great people in life have been given insight into the universe and I know that I am one of them, but I also know that my understanding of the universe is minuscule compared to what it actually is.

To think after a life spent to understanding human nature and the world that I have never lived. I am breathing my last, and without meaning it the words slip out, “Does nobody understand?”

Category(s): 56 stories, Writing
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17 MayPerception

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In the middle of a battle, time literally slowed down. It took years to master time during war, but once conquered, the ability to carefully watch your opponent before acting was invaluable. I had fought in more battles then I bothered to remember. If you still kept track of your fights, you weren’t a warrior, just a soldier.

This battle was a losing one, I could tell already. My comrade and closest friend had challenged an opponent with three times as many troops. He knew it was a hopeless situation and why he had decided to go ahead with it, I’ll never understand. I doubt I’ll have time to, really.
There was an arrow in one of my legs and three gashes on my side where my armor had given way and the warm, sticky blood ran down my thighs. I didn’t even notice the pain; I just felt the itch of the blood drying on my legs.

Slowing time could only help you so much in a fight, and I realized too late that an enemy had been moving behind me. Before I could spin around to defend myself, I felt the edge of the blade slide into my back. The sharp blade cut through my skin as easily as butter but stopped when it hit my ribs, jarring my whole body and sending arrows of unbelievable pain through my torso. I’m sure that my rib broke, just as I am sure that I fell to the ground but I did not feel it. Perhaps my spine was torn by the blade.

All I knew was that I was dying, staring up at the clear blue sky. My closest friend stood over me, “I am sorry,” he said, and leaning down, he closed my eyes. I was still alive.

Category(s): 56 stories, Writing
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16 MayAsh

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Rick lit the red candle and watched the orange flame flicker tall and then short, like a whirlwind tornado full of emotion.

Fire was an unpredictable force, beautiful and powerful but as seemingly fickle as all women’s love.

Rick remembered when he had first met Joan. Her shining red hair that flowed down her back like a satin ribbon instantly made Rick think of fire but he never realized until now how perfectly that description fit her.
As Rick began to know Joann, he discovered her passions and her electric personality. She loved excitement and adventure and couldn’t stand to do the same thing two days in a row. It was almost as if a literal fire burned inside of her, pushing her to move constantly, change, and flicker up and down. Rick could barely keep up. He usually wouldn’t have bothered with such a woman, but he loved her. There was something inside of her flame that matched his cool soul.

Rick traveled to four countries with her, mountain-climbed and base jumped. As a novel writer, the experiences were useful but Rick knew he was living a lie. He could only write base jumping characters for so long before he ran out of money and time.

He loved to watch Joann and sit next to her fire and be warmed by the flame. It couldn’t last, fire made ash. It couldn’t produce anything new, it couldn’t produce anything living.

Rick watched the red candle burn, the wax dripping off the sides and hitting the table, landing in a pool like bloody tears.

Fire was beautiful, but only when it was controlled. When it ran rampart, it only burned and scorched the things, and people, around it. Fire destroyed without any consideration or care. Rick knew that all too well.

Category(s): 56 stories, Writing
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15 MayThe Eye

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Only ten more stories left…

I always threw out my sketches after a few weeks. I got sick of the elephants and flowers taking up space on my desk so into the garbage they went. Saying I always threw out my sketches is a lie because one drawing I made, of an eye starting straight at me, was hung up on my bulletin board and stayed there for years. It wasn’t my best drawing and it wasn’t my worst drawing but I was obsessed with the idea of someone watching me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about a stalker, I’m talking about more of an angel. I think it was something more than an angel though. It wasn’t someone who looked at me and made of list of the things I do right, it was someone who watched my actions and judged me accordingly.

I was always the good kid all through high school and college and then even when I got a job, but that was one people were watching me, judging my moves and developing opinions about me. When it was just me, I didn’t know who to be. Should I stretch out on the coach with a bag of potato chips and a good show or work out on the treadmill? Should I do what I wanted to or what would make me the best person?
I liked to imagine that someone was watching me always. That way, I would try extra hard to do the right thing, someone, besides myself, to measure up too.

I used to think this person must be God. I even asked my mom in high school if she believed that someone was watching us, and I’ll never forget what she said.

“Honey, for both of our sakes, there better not be anyone watching us.”

Category(s): 56 stories, Writing
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14 MayImpossible

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Sam flipped on the windshield wipers as the skies poured down water from above. The angry rhythmic swishing of the blades matched the angry, frenzied beating of Sam’s heart. He knew he couldn’t turn around, head home and apologize like he usually did, but he couldn’t help feeling that he was making a mistake.

He was tired of the endless cycle of fighting and apologizes and promises that these arguments would never happen again because people would change. People never changed, Sam knew that now. By the time someone was out of college, their personality was defined. The personality was the equivalent of a person’s fingerprint. You could smudge the marks, blur the lines, but the person would always be the same underneath.

Sam wanted to believe that Casey would have changed by now but he had trouble keeping the hope alive. Every night he came home from work exhausted and every night she complained about something they did. Sometimes, they got over the fights and then lie awkwardly in bed next to each other before falling asleep, but usually, Sam ended up on the coach downstairs with his half-collie, half-shepherd mutt sleeping beside him. The dog was another thing that Casey complained about.
Right now, the dog was asleep in the back seat of the car. Content to follow Sam wherever he went, no questions asked. The dog was more loyal than any person he had ever met, Sam thought.

The problem wasn’t just that humans didn’t change; it was that they weren’t ever good to begin with. Sam wanted to believe that he could find someone to replace Casey, but he knew that any other person would be just as screwed up.

Sighing, he turned the car around. He would just have to work harder than humanly possible.

Category(s): 56 stories, Writing
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13 MayAlien

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“What if I told you I was from another planet?” said Jeff, leaning down in the hammock to watch me on the ground.

“What if I told you I think you’re crazy?” I responded, picking a blade of grass and trying to whistle with it.

“I’m not kidding,” said Jeff, rolling back in the hammock so he was staring up at the night sky, “See that star there? On the left? That’s where I’m from.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, abandoning the grass to look up at the sky with him, “What’s it like there?”

“Oh, it’s nothing special. A lot like California actually. Hot and full of cannibals.”

I couldn’t help but smile, Jeff’s sense of humor was one of the first things I had noticed about him.

“What’s it called?”

“What?”

“Your planet?”

“Oh, yes, well…human tongues can’t pronounce it right. My tongue has more flexibility.”

“Why can’t you say it for me then?”

“Oh, you know, my tongue is out of shape from being around humans for so long.”

I rolled my eyes and considered the conversation over. I had no idea why Jeff had bothered to mention it anyway.

“You know,” he said, after a long time, “I have a lot of fantastic memories from that planet.”

“I sense a long, convoluted story coming on,” I commented wryly.

“Hey,” he said, sounding offended as he flipped in the hammock to look down at me again, “Don’t insult this. I was going to say that even though I have a lot of memories from that planet, I think I like this one more.”

“Because I’m on it?”

“Don’t be conceited,” he commented, “the climate is better.”

“What?”

“Of course it’s because you’re on it!”

“Well, for an alien, I guess you’re pretty cute.”

“You think so?”

“Oh, yes.”

Category(s): 56 stories, Writing
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12 MayPondering

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“What are you doing, honey?” yelled Trisha up towards the ceiling, hoping her husband in the attic would hear her.

“Just pondering,” Eric yelled down.

“I don’t like it when you use SAT vocabulary words…that means you’re going to make a big life choice.”

“Don’t worry,” said Eric, “I’m fine…Did I ever show you my guitar from high school?”

Trisha groaned, “Just because we have to clean out your mom’s attic does not mean we’re going to relive the glory days.”

Trisha started to look around her mother-in-law’s former home. Eric had never really been close to his mom, but after her death he had seemed pretty upset. Trisha opened the kitchen drawers to find newspaper clippings mixed in with cookie cutters.

“Your mom wasn’t much of an organizer, was she?” she yelled up at him.

“Seriously,” she heard, “I forgot how much I love this guitar.”

Trisha rolled her eyes, “How good were you?”

“I was good, good.”

“Sing me a song.”

“…I’m in the ceiling, honey.”

“Well, why didn’t you go into music?” yelled up Trisha.

The ceiling was silent for a moment before he answered, “Mom…didn’t really want that.”

“You know, I feel like this isn’t really the kinda conversation that I should be yelling up at a ceiling.”

“It isn’t a conversation,” Eric yelled, “I was just stated a fact…You know what? I’m over it.”

“Whenever you say the word ‘pondering,’ you are not ‘over it.’”

“I’m just wondering what would have happened if I had played guitar instead of studied law.”

“I feel like every person in history has had this discussion with themselves,” yelled Trista, “You can’t change your decisions.”

“No,” said Eric too quietly for her to hear, “But I can regret them.”

“Honey, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just pondering.”

Category(s): 56 stories, Writing
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