Friday Night Randomness

Current Mood: Sedate

Current Musical Obsession: The Foiled album by Blue October, particularly Congratulations and Overweight

Current Current: 120 volts

Currant: the small, edible, acid, round fruit or berry of certain wild or cultivated shrubs of the genus Ribes

I have a lot of characters that I have developed for some writing groups I belong to. Most of them are female. It doesn't matter if they're a human assassin, a ghoul, a jilted lover, or a werewolf, they're all incredible badasses, able to take care of themselves and others with grace, style, and inner strength. This probably reflects how I feel about women in general. Then again, maybe I'm a heroine addict.

Ran across this picture online:

This is what I wrote:

Sometimes the perfect person to confess your innermost desires and fears to is a stranger on a train. No commitments, no judgments - just an ear in which to pour your dreams and fantasies. The night outside the coach window reaches in and cloaks you, and the rumble of the steel wheels masks your fevered murmurings.

We were heading for the same place. A city once built on dreams. But as happens so often with dreams, the joy had leaked out little by little, leaving only hollow shells behind. Gaping façades of blasted fulfillment stood mocking those that had dared to reach for the light. It was a place where you whispered your hopes, keeping them small and unnoticeable, hoping they would find a sheltered spot to grow.

Our rendezvous point: the old clocktower. Pole star for every desperate person anxious to create a small, sweaty pocket of connection with someone else. Rising high into the smoky skies, a phallic monument to the clumsy fumblings of cold numb hands desperately trying to maneuver past belt buckles and buttons. Sooty fingers staining delicate white satin and lace, driving towards the heat they hide away from the world.

The face of the clock mocks me. “You fool!” it chimes. “You believed her? The promise of a stranger on a train?”

“yes,” I whisper.

And I did believe her. I wanted so much to believe her. Her yearning was a great beacon in this grey world. Not just for satisfying lust, though that was a part of it. By design, that is always a part of it. She had spoken of the sound of boots dancing on cobblestones, and of spreading quicksilver wings of defiance, and flying away!…the two of us…flying…
together.

So I waited.

She had to come! She had to! She was a stranger on a train yes, but…

I looked at my watch, and the steam of my sigh was swallowed up by the dirty yellow tatters of fog that roamed the streets.

I couldn’t wait any longer. Soon the sun would rise, sweeping the protective shadows away into a corner, and illuminating the pain of false hope on my face. I crept away on my numbed feet, leaving behind the unfulfilled promise: a pile of broken breadcrumbs and a pool of shadow rapidly running down a nearby drain. This was my body, this was my blood.

I would have shared it with you.

The edge of the city is already awash with a cruelly delicate sunrise. A soft pink that only serves to emphasize the desolation it faces. A number of piers jut outwards, giant fingers grasping for a bit of the peace and beauty that surely is present just over the horizon. Surely all places can’t be like this, whistle stops for strangers on trains, rotting carcasses pretending to life. Surely somewhere people still dance on cobblestones. It can’t all be this…hopeless.

The call of a train whistle pierces me, and I turn to the sea to allow the wind to dry my tears. It is then that I notice. I still, not daring to believe, bracing against the culmination of a last cruel jest. But no. Her arms grasp the railing of the pier, holding herself down against the pull of the sky. And as I walk towards her, I can see quicksilver.