Daisy's Favorite Images | RESULTS, pg. 11

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[Nolori]

Username: Nolori
Prompt(s): Image 8
Title: The Puppeteer
Word Count: 2158
Short Summary: A man's love (a better word, perhaps, would be obsession) for his art brings his creation to life. Unfortunately, the creature's obsession with the man's love is just as strong, and more deadly.

The Puppeteer

Quote:

Art is obsession.

For the lucky, that obsession gives way to love. Love purifies the obsession from the obsessed. But what of those who are the object of that obsession?


David Owens had never thought of himself as a true puppeteer, much less an artist of any sort, but he loved puppets. The way their little bodies tossed and turned in the air. The way their feet clattered on the small stage like music. The way, when handily crafted, they appeared to be little people, whose eyes were just as soulful as any living thing’s.

That was what David truly loved. The creation of the puppet. Breathing imitated life into pieces of wood.

David was one of the lucky few to turn their love into a job. Lately, he'd been working on a rather large set of puppets for a children's television show. They were not the most life-like puppets, nor were they any stretch to his creative ability, but they were putting food on the table and leaving him time for his current passion.


David sometimes wondered if he'd watched Pinocchio too many times as a child. It was not Pinocchio's journey to humanity that captivated David, but rather Geppetto's ability to create life. What a gift that would be. To look into these porcelain eyes and see life, true life, peering back at you.

David often wondered what God felt like, watching His children run and play.

He walked past his littered table, past the children's puppets, towards his locked closet. Fumbling with his ring of keys, he opened the door to the dark room.

"Hello, Jonothon. How are you today?"

Porcelain green eyes stared back.

"Good. I am sorry to be keeping you in the dark, but I don't want anyone to see you yet." David flicked on the closet light and the naked bulb swung back and forth as David brushed past it. Picking up the alder marionette, he brought it out on to his worn couch. After closing the many shutters to his windows and pushing the litter off of his work desk, he pulled the marionette affectionately dubbed 'Jonothon' onto it. Lovingly, David rubbed the sleeve of his shirt around the puppet's face, wiping off the thin layer of dust that it had accumulated.

"I shouldn’t leave you in there. Would you like to see the sun?”

A grunt like sound came from the corner of the room.

David looked over and smiled to a brown rabbit, sitting on its haunches, "Do you not like that? Would you like the windows closed?"

The rabbit settled back down and made something of a clicking noise with its teeth.

David smiled at his pet, "You are the living one Peter, and you win this round." He turned back up to the marionette and stroked its hair, "When you can argue back I'll be more than happy to open the windows and you can have your run of the house."

“Tomorrow…” David stroked the puppet’s thick hair, “Tomorrow I’ll open the windows for you.” He stepped back to see the marionette's head turned slightly towards the rabbit.

He laughed and turned the marionette's head back towards him, "Did I push you? I'm sorry, Jono."

David worked on the marionette long into the night. Longer than was usual for him, but the beauty of the puppet was penetrating and David found he could not let go of those green eyes. As sleep began to fall over his mind, his carving knife slipped along his hand. The wound had barely skinned the side of his palm, but he dropped the knife and cursed none-the-less. He brought the cut up to his mouth and began to suck on it. David didn't much care for that metallic taste that was bound to linger on his tongue, but better that than letting the blood spill freely onto his wooden child.

As David took his lips off of his wound he looked to his marionette sadly, "That's all for tonight. Goodnight Jono, Peter.”

Jono's green eyes briefly glistened with red as drops of blood fell from David to his puppet.

In the corner the rabbit made a grinding sound with its teeth. David ignored it.

The puppet did not.


David went against his promise the following day and kept the windows’ shutters closed in his first story workshop. Though later he would rationalize this to himself as being from sheer forgetfulness than any promises to the marionette. It all seemed so ludicrous in the morning light; promising a doll anything instead of a living breathing creature like Peter.

David threw on his clothing as he brushed his teeth, hastily rushing from here to there trying to gather up his puppets for the television company by noon. He hurried down into his workshop, squinting into the darkness. The silhouette of a body was strewn over the rabbit’s cage. The toothbrush fell out of David’s mouth as he groped around quietly for one of his carving knives.

“Who’s there!” He demanded of the body.

No reply but the whimpering of Peter inside his cage.

“Who’s there! I have a knife, you b*****d!”

No reply.

David stood entirely still, wishing that the pounding in his chest would quiet long enough to convince his legs to move forward. The pounding in his chest only began to hurt as he reached out a hand to look for the light switch to the dark room.

His fingers found the switch and fluorescent light filled the room. David sighed heavily and tossed the knife back on to his working counter.

The marionette lay face down over the rabbit’s cage.

“How did you get there?” David walked over to the marionette and righted it on top of the cage, “Fall over, did you Jono?”

He smiled at the puppet, loving how child-like it looked. Sitting on the rabbit’s large cage it came up David’s chest, arms dangling over the side of the metal bars. David frowned then, noticing a dark spot along Jono’s chin.

“What’s that?”

David put his hand up to smear it away.

Blood.

“Did I get that on you last night? Sorry, Jono. I didn’t mean to. I’ll clean you up tonight.” He picked up the puppet, “Let’s get you put away.”

As he carried the marionette into the closet a clock struck noon in his house loudly. David swore, propped the puppet up against the closet door, swiftly grabbed his commissions and ran out of the workshop.

“Father?”

David stopped at the workshop door. Immediately, David was sure it was his wooden child. The wooden boy’s voice echoed off the walls of its hollow body.

But no. David laughed. No, that was impossible. He was imagining things. David had wanted to create life like Geppetto and now he was convincing himself that he had.

David rubbed his eyes with the back of his wrists. He was tired, that was certain. He was tired and hearing things.

David continued out of the workshop.

“Come back, please.”

David hesitated, his foot hovering over the threshold. No. No, don’t turn around David. Don’t turn around. You’re being stupid David. You have to get to the television company David.

Don’t turn around.

“Please.”


Someone was playing a joke on him. That had to be it. One of the fellows from work had thrown Jono down on to the cage and now he was pretending to be Jono…

No. No, not Jono. The marionette. It wasn’t alive, no matter how much David had ever wished otherwise. The marionette was not alive. It didn’t have any Christian name. It wasn’t alive.

“Why won’t you come back?” The voice was pleading with him now.



David turned around, against every logical thought screaming to do otherwise. Jono sat propped up against the door perfectly still. Someone was playing a joke. They had to be. And when David found out who he planned on doing some particularly brutal things to them. Jono’s mouth levered open.
“Thank you.”



David could feel his bowels waver in their conviction. Every piece of him knotted and contorted in fear. He dropped the children’s puppets on to the floor carelessly.

“You never dropped me.” The voice said behind him.

No. No he hadn’t. He had loved that marionette. His Jono. He had never dropped him.

When David’s throat unstuck itself long enough to make a sound, all that came out was a vulgarity.

Jono had no expression, not yet, David had never quite finished that. But the marionette’s voice changed as surely as the glint in its eyes wavered.

“Are you angry?”

David couldn’t bring himself to do anything but stare at the thing before him. He didn’t want to be Geppetto anymore. Slowly, his tense neck turned his head to say ‘no’.

No, of course he wasn’t angry. He was far too scared to be angry.

“Good.” Jono tilted its head happily, “Thank you for staying.”

“How.” David was able to whine out from his frozen throat.

Jono put his wooden hand up to the spot of blood on his chin. He wiped some of it and held it out towards David.

“It’s life. You have it. I don’t. You gave it to me.”

David Owens had the ability to create life. And he did not want it.

David looked down to his rabbit Peter, who had pulled himself as far away from the puppet as possible. Its body was pressed up against the bars, great tufts of hair escaping from the cage. Peter saw the false life as well. David was not going insane. Peter saw it too.



Peter. Peter was the living one.

David felt blood run down into his limbs again. Adrenaline had kicked and was spurring his body to action, even if his mind was somewhat behind. David ran to the cage and flung the thing open. His hands dove in and dragged the rabbit free of the cage.

“What are you doing, father?” Jono asked.

David didn’t answer; his mind did not have the words to do it. His legs acted on their own, taking him straight to the workshop door with Peter in his arms.

“Father!” Jono cried out, lunging over furniture and tools alike. Its wooden body had no sense of pain so when its beautiful face cracked as it hit the side of the workbench it did not stop. Jono reached the door before David did and slammed it violently.



“You love me, father.”

David stumbled backwards, only barely keeping his footing.


Jono looked at the rabbit in David’s arms, “Why do you love it, father?”

“It’s alive.” David croaked, still walking backwards towards a window.

Jono looked at the rabbit carefully before lunging at it far quicker than David could react. The marionette snatched the animal and flung it away carelessly. There was a crack as it hit the floor.

“Peter!” David roared turning towards the rabbit on the ground.

“You love me, father.” Jono said, “You said I could have the house. You said we could open the windows.”

David turned back to the marionette walking towards him, with something akin to heartbreak in its voice. He picked up the carving knife on the table.

“You love me, father.”

David ran at the thing. It was just wood, after all, and what was he but a glorified wood cutter?

Jono did not see it that way.

The puppet’s hand shot out at David’ wrist, breaking it as it grabbed the knife. It ran the knife into David’s stomach.

David stumbled backwards, now falling to the ground. He couldn’t feel much, considering the amount of blood that was spilling from him. Though whether that was thanks to his shock or adrenaline, he could not say. Spots were appearing in his vision. Everything moved, shifted and blurred.

Except the beautiful face looking down at him with the carving knife in its hand. Its living, piercing green eyes staring deep in to his own.

“You love me, father.”

David was thankful when the spots turned into nothingness.


Jono looked down at the puppeteer with a smile. He was silent now, and still. The man was silent now, and still. His father wouldn’t run anymore and would stay here with him.

Jono saw the deep, bleeding gash in his father’s stomach. The wooden boy was jealous of the blood, but the gash was ugly. It made his father look incomplete. He turned back to the workbench and saw a cabinet with a mirror on it. He could make his father beautiful.


The marionette’s porcelain green eyes stared back at him from the reflection of the looking glass. He gingerly touched the deep lines that ran down from his forehead to his chin. The statuesque structure of his face cracked down to its empty core.

What a beautiful face it had been.

Jono reached into the cabinet and pulled out the plaster.

What a beautiful face it would be.


Jono opened the windows.

[[ .days. ]]

ω And just for the moment – just for one night – you can rest. ω

You people have about an hour and twenty minutes to get your entries in!

ω You can rest and not fear the sky. ω

[dangerous xx L I A S O N]

● ● ● -------------------------------------------------------------------їмσ

Yeah. Mine stopped making any shred of sense about an hour ago.
"I got a magical key!"
"IAAAAAN, I am your father!"
"Dude, you're talking to a daisy."
That about sums up my entry.

Therefore, it's not going to be entered.
It's actually done, unlike my other entries for your contests. xDDD
But sadly, it is seriously BAD.

[mimi-luna]

Meanwhile I seemed to have lost motiavtion and seemed to think that my story sucks. Damn writer's doubt. Though I might try and help make the winning process a bit easier.

[fieri nova]

Isn't it done at a eleven our time, though? =O

[[ .days. ]]

ω And just for the moment – just for one night – you can rest. ω

Oh yeah. Sorry -- my bad. I was thinking of something else.

You have approximately 6 hours and 45 minutes left to write.

ω You can rest and not fear the sky. ω

[fieri nova]

Phew, good. Gives me time to edit, since I just rush finished in case I really did have that little time. xD

I'll be back after I eat dinner though.

[With A Pen Stroke]

And thus with each tick of the clock this contest slowly comes to its completion...

[mimi-luna]

Thanks for the freakout days! I've gotten it finished now! Just need to spell check it and what not.

[[ .days. ]]

ω And just for the moment – just for one night – you can rest. ω

XD No prob.

ω You can rest and not fear the sky. ω

[o c e a n filled]

► you say that we've got nothing in COMMON
...► no COMMON ground to start from
...... we're fallind adart ━━→
...... we're fallinga p a r t
you'll say the world has come between us
...our lives have come between us
xx______________ xI know you JUSTDON'T C A R E
xx....▌▌▌ ▌▌ ▌▌▌ ▌▌ ▌▌▌ ▌▌ ▌▌▌ ▌▌ ▌▌▌ ▌▌
x
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ☀ ☀ ☀ ━━━━━━━━

...I haven't touched this contest since I last posted. o.o Close to when it opened. My piece for it sucks.

...well. I have to wait for the floor to dry before I can keep cleaning. BREAK TIME TO WRITE.

━━━━━━━━ ☀ ☀ ☀ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
x
I said what about "Breakfast at Tiffany's?" ◄ ......................
she said, "I think I REMEMBER the film, ◄ ...............
and as I recall, I think, we both kinda liked it."......
And I said, ..........
"Well, that's the ONE THING we've got."x
x
▌▌▌ ▌▌ ▌▌▌ ▌▌ ▌▌▌ ▌▌ ▌▌▌ ▌▌ ▌▌▌ ▌▌xxxxxx

[mimi-luna]

Username:mimi-luna
Prompt(s):1 and 11
Title: Warning S.O.S.
Word Count:1781
Short Summary: An angel is suddenly asked to give a message about a city being destroyed and it seems the only one who gets the message. Is a youth who he saved for it was his angelic duty.

Warning S.O.S.

The city was covered in darkness, figuratively, though with the rising smog it could soon become literally. As it seemed the city seemed to represent the modern Gomorrah. In its many sins, caused by its many citizens each and everyday. Only time would tell before God would come down and bring it to its destruction.

Though it seems to be known among the angels, and not to all humans. God had matured a bit since he had destroyed the actual city of Gomorrah. Yet humans still would praise him or doubt him. Now he was sick of looking at the city and the innocent suffer. Through the department of Gabriel, he took one of the younger angels under code name Malachi to earth. Giving those who would listen a fighting chance to save themselves from his own amusement.

So down the angel went. Unsure of what to do, for it was the first time he had come down to earth. Even the training he had gotten from those that lived on earth. Didn't seem to help much in this city. As it seemed trying to start a conversation, the first thing it seemed anyone would do in the city was punch you in the face. Not shake your hand. Feeling ashamed in his efforts and thinking that he had failed. Malachi had transformed into a butterfly, and just decided to observe the humans suffering until he was allowed to go back into heaven, and God would teach them all a lesson.

That was until he looked down at a young man. He was bleeding and was pulling himself out of an ally and into the street. While all those onlookers just looked on ahead. Focused on getting from point A to point B. Seeing this, Malachi felt something. Sorrow, sadness, pity, then finally a drive. A drive to do something. He flew down, from his high view down to help this fallen young man. As soon as he landed on the young man's hands. The young man had appeared to be glowing. As Malachi changed back into his natural form, though his wings were invisible. Pulled the poor boy up, and personally carried him to the hosptial. For it was his duty, and it seemed no one else was going to do the job.

While the young man was being treated for his wounds, Malachi had decided to read the bible, that was sitting on the table. Most of what he was reading, appeared to be a bit out of context, though he was going to have to get a permit. If he were to back to go back in time, to when the writers still lived on the earth with those names that they were credited for, and told them to edit it right away.

As he flipped through its pages, waiting to see if Azriel, the angel of death. Was going to come along and take the human away. He never came, and now Malachi was curious of the person he had now saved. . He looked like he grew and lived on the city's underbelly. Which only caused more pity for him.

***

The next morning the patient had woken up and noticed the young man who was asleep in a chair not to far from him. He had never seen him before. Which only made him more wary of him. For it could just be about anyone who deals with the justice system, and if they were. Then it was just great...
However their seemed to be something different about this new face. For it was youthful, not the usual wrinkly depressing he was use to seeing.

The man was asleep, or so it looked with his eyes closed and the cheap new testament bible laying on his face. That they often placed on the table for the faithful. He chuckled lightly, thinking that the book must have bored him to sleep. For it certainly did for him. The man had opened an eye, and leaned forward. He was awake now. He had so many things to ask him. Yet only the most cheesey's came out of his mouth. "Who are you?"
"I could ask the same thing about you" the man replied.

"Hey I said it first that means you answer first"

The man let out a sign, scratched his hair, and said. "You can just call me Malachi"

"Malachi...interesting name. A bit different..." The boy said to himself.

"Now its your turn to answer the question" The boy turned away, for a second. He couldn't bare the sight of someone's face when he told them that his name was "Alison...Alison Carter"

Why couldn't he have a cool name like Josh or Mike, but no. His estranged mother had to give him a girls name. The man didn't say anything, which surprised him. For he was so use to getting. 'Alison? Are you for real?' or 'Alison? Isn't that a girls name?' It seemed people were so stupid that they had wanted to check his birth certificate. He never had a middle name to fall back on, and there was already another Carter in his small group of friends. Nicknames were out of the question, for no one really gave him one besides Ally. No, it seemed this name was given to him for the whole purpose of catching people's attentions. It was what seemed to have make him more recognizable, and he couldn't exactly fight back against the bulky stupid. So in the end, what was the point of confusing the poor monkeys.

***

"So Alison just a bit much in my curiosity, but what happened?" he asked. Was it that bad that he couldn't even look at him straight in the eye when he had said his name? Not like he could really sympathize with humans all that much. He waited like he waiting before he woke up. Until Alison was able to say.

"I got attacked by some people. Nothing major"

"Alison, You were bleeding" Malachi said, using a stern voice as an undertone. For this was serious, and let it must have been so often that he was able to say nothing major was just more of a shock for the poor angel.

"I know...they were just wanting me to bleed does like a girl does" he said. "I think you can assume why"

Malachi couldn't believe what he had just been told. "I'll be right back..." he said. As sheer emotion had come over him. Most of it was anger. Why would God allow this poor child suffer just because of his name. Remembering the mission. He had gone upstairs to the roof, and prayer. Though for an angel to pray, it was more like giving a phone call, and it didn't involve kneeling like humans did.

"Lord Almighty, what exactly can I do to help him?" he asked. "Focus on the mission. Tell him of my plans. Let him spred the message" he heard God's voice say to him. "But God what if he suffers again?" "Malachi, children younger than him suffer more everyday. I can only do so much, but it seems the west could use a quick kick in the butt" "I understand God" Malachi replied. "Amen" Not exactly thrilled about the whole situation. For the east side of the world could use a good kick in the butt as well. As he had called it.

He went back downstairs and returned to Alison's room. He took a seat, and decided to get down to business. "Alison...I have a little something to tell you. Which I want you to tell everyone understand?"
"Yeah...whats it about?" Alison asked. To which then Malachi told him everything. Though the reaction was one that Malachi wasn't excalty wanting. Being new at the angelic messaging and the last one given from an angel to mortal was over two thousand years ago. "What the hell? Your crazy man!" Alison said. Disappointed Malachi signed. Changed into a butterfly right in front of him, and flew out the window. For at that point he didn't give a damn.

***

Alison was taken a back. At the sight of Malachi changing into the butterfly that he had remembered seeing before he suddenly slipped out of conscious. Made him go into shock. When he recovered, Malachi was gone, and everything else seemed to have become a strange dream or a strange reality.

When he was dismissed from the hosptial. He thought about what this 'butterfly man' had said, and decided to in vise a plan. He told everyone that he was going to have a party, outside of town, and everyone can come. Taking whatever they wanted even. Well it seemed to have worked and yet not worked.

It seemed only a few hours later after they had left. The city was destroyed by a earthquake and then was engulfed by a fire. The city was largely destroyed, and almost everyone was dead. While everyone gasped at how lucky they were, and wondered how could it be possible for these natural disasters to happen in such an unusual location. Alison let out a sign, and remembered the strange apparition. Truly he knew how lucky he was, and how spiritual his experience it was., But who would believe him. Especially if they had an argument where he was being delusional because of the pain killers, that the doctors had given him. "What do you think Ally?" one of his friends asked him. "An act of god" he replied.

[o c e a n filled]

Username: ShadedGray
Prompt(s): A dash of three and eleven, mixed with a dollop of five and a smattering of ten.
Title: Stranger Things
Word Count: 3,611
Short Summary: Andrew always knows how to make Yoshimi happy, even though he rarely understands a word that comes out of her mouth.

Stranger Things

The door opened, and Kevin stood there in his boxers and ankle-high white socks, his hair a delightful disarray in c-sharp-minor. He looked at Yoshimi, and Yoshimi looked back at him, thinking that he was, altogether, very c-sharp in nature. He tasted like c-sharp (a soft, fuzzy sort of taste, accompanied by a zing of citrus), he smelled like c-sharp (sort of pine with birch and wet dog), and looked like c-sharp, too, with curlies of fire-engine- and blood-red springing around his chest and legs. The minor came in the way it felt when Yoshimi looked at him, all hard edges with a squishy center. She didn’t like how he felt, but the rest of him wasn’t wholly unpleasant at all.

“You look very red today,” Yoshimi said brightly.

“Sure,” Kevin said, stepping to the side to allow her in. “You’re, uh, pink.”

Yoshimi laughed. Kevin tried so hard to say things that she said, but he could never do it right. She patted his cheek, and it was like munching on a chive. “No, silly, I’m gold,” she said. “People aren’t pink unless they’re fuzzy around the edges. They should also be apple-flavored D major.”

Still smiling, Yoshimi watched Kevin watch her. A moment passed. Kevin pointed down the condo’s hallway. “Andrew is in his room. I don’t think he was expecting you; he said he was going to take a nap.”

“Andrew never expects circumstances to happen when they do because he expects one thing to come after another,” Yoshimi said to Kevin as she turned toward Andrew’s room. “You’re all so silly, thinking cause always precedes effect.”

“Uh,” Kevin said as he shut and locked the condo door. Yoshimi heard him shuffle across the carpet to the kitchen’s tile floor.

Dismissing him, she wandered down the hall to Andrew’s room, taking her time in the ever-expanding space of the hallway. She liked to see how long she could stretch it before its finite space complained about being made infinite. When you stretched space into eternity, eternity tended to get a bit irritated, and it complained in triangles and squares to Yoshimi, who liked to make the squares orange and the triangles apricots because that usually made eternity be quiet. Eternity could get very, very loud in a frustrating, f-sharp-minor sort of way.

So when she found the space she was in starting to complain, she stopped trying to stretch it. Eternity wasn’t upset quite yet—there were no random triangles and squares floating around in the hallway’s usual mess of octagons—so when everything snapped back to its preferred state, Yoshimi closed her hand around the doorknob to Andrew’s room and turned it. She pushed the door open, the nasty taste of sour milk in her mouth from the doorknob. Something exploded. She glanced over her shoulder and saw an octagon drowning in a pool of flame. It shrieked like A-flat diminished seventh over E-sharp. Yoshimi wrinkled her nose.

Stepping inside Andrew’s room, she found him on the floor, surrounded by books and flat-white-lined-things. She had to remind herself that the white-things were called “paper.” Words sometimes ran away from her; the flat-white-things made much more sense as pineapple-and-cinnamon in her mouth with velvet under her fingernails. Sticking one of her fingers in her mouth, Yoshimi leaned over Andrew.

Green swirls surrounded him, and bright-blue sparked from his hands. She loved his green. She wasn’t so fond of his sparking blue; the blue was like hundreds of fireworks, and sometimes they stung because his words tasted like lemon and smelled like orange. Andrew didn’t always pay attention to how he words tasted and smelled, but he was always good about how they felt and looked. Andrew used lots of pretty yellow and light gray words, and Yoshimi liked those words best. They tasted like glazed ham, and glazed ham was delicious, when it tasted like it was supposed to taste. If she tried really hard, sometimes Yoshimi could taste things like other people tasted things, and glazed ham was one of the few foods with which she tried that.

Leaning down, Yoshimi touched Andrew’s shoulder. Her gold sparkles collided with his green swirls, and a butterfly floated away from them. She watched it, considering it for a minute. Politely, she told the butterfly that it would look much better as a sparkly red ball. It agreed and changed, and the scent of vanilla and Cyprus filled Andrew’s room.

Beneath her hand, Andrew shifted. He looked up at her. “Hey, baby doll,” he said, his voice thick with sleep and dreams and cotton balls. Yoshimi watched the cotton balls fall out of his mouth before remembering that wasn’t a nice thing to do. Andrew never seemed to mind, but it was just something one shouldn’t do, and so Yoshimi didn’t like doing it. “I wasn’t expecting you for a while. I was napping.”

“It’s not good to nap on all those cylinders,” Yoshimi said, sitting beside Andrew.

“What cylinders?”

Yoshimi pointed to his books. “They have cylinders for shapes, like you have squares and circles but no triangles, and there are octagons in your hallway when it likes the space it occupies. Sometimes it doesn’t, you know, and then it tastes like wet puppy fur,” she explained.

Andrew chuckled. “The puppies must not like that you put them in your mouth.”

Laughing, Yoshimi clapped her hands. “I like it when you think right!” she exclaimed happily.

“And I wish I knew what thinking right entailed,” Andrew said. He sat, little circles spilling off his body with xylophones and sleigh bells. Yoshimi sighed at the pleasant sound, enjoying it like pop rocks on her tongue. “Anyway, I’ll pick up and then we can go, okay?” He ran a hand through his hair. “I wish I had more space for all these books.”

“Why space?” Yoshimi asked, peering at the books. “If you had more dimensions, you could arrange them in more different ways, and it would be easier than getting more space. You can’t cram more space into less. It gets very pointy and irritable and then you need to make orange and apricots.” She ran a hand through her silvery hair, feeling vibrations from it all through her body. It was a pleasant hum.

After a long moment filled with all sorts of noises that only she could hear and taste and see and smell and feel, Yoshimi realized Andrew wasn’t talking to her. She looked at him, eyes wide and curious. “You’re very…” She grasped for an adequate explanation of his silence as she perceived it. “Metallic,” she finally managed.

Shaking his head, Andrew touched Yoshimi’s cheek. “Let’s go to the park, baby doll,” he said. “I’ll clean up later.”

—

Yoshimi didn’t like the park. She never had, but she didn’t say anything because saying things about it made mauve spikes drive through people’s abdomens. They never noticed, but Yoshimi did until she forgot, and it was hard to stomach. Pressing close to Andrew, trying to wedge into the sanctuary of his arms, Yoshimi closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Cool water sluiced over her skin; it smelled like lavender and peaches. Parting her lips, Yoshimi pressed her finger to her tongue. Pins prodded her back and leather wrapped around her thighs, tight and painful. Trumpets and cellos in B-flat rang in her ears. She tilted to one side.

On the ground in front of her was a boy. He was drawing on the pavement with a blue piece of chalk, writing words along the lines of an ever tightening spiral. Yoshimi stopped walking, looking down at him as he wrote. Colors flared around him like sparks of electricity when a plug gets inserted in a live socket. He was surrounded by squares—Yoshimi hated squares—and tasted like dirt and mud and sparkles and carrots. She smacked her lips before sucking hard on her lavender and peaches finger.

“I cannot find the light,” he wrote. “It makes me…”

Made him what?

“Tiny,” Yoshimi offered.

The boy looked up. “What?” he asked, and thunder rolled over the hills in his voice while sandstorms flayed the skin from Yoshimi’s hands.

“Your word.” She pointed to the empty space. “You should put tiny there.”

“There’s already a word there.”

A frown marred Yoshimi’s face. There was no word. How could there be a word where the world simply fell away in a hole in the ground where there was white and there were whispers and horrible tastes and feelings and falling falling falling falling

through nothing at all until she was floating in a sea of stars in the middle of a city filled to the brim with awful noise and no color and barbed wire chafing her skin while ice cream melted all over the ground and in her hair. The wind sang in F-minor, diminished a seventh, resolved and then exploded in chartreuse and cadmium yellow hue paint, like guts spilling out of a Dutch oven on a hot day in December and Yoshimi wailed. She clawed at her abdomen with a sharpened piece of metal until everything melted and there was no Yoshimi or noise or self or anything.

There was, however, a hole in the ground-that-wasn’t-real.

Yoshimi peered at it. There were words in the hole in the ground-that-wasn’t-real. Reaching out, she picked up one of the words.

Darkness.

Sleigh bells and toffee and sweetener and cashmere. Yoshimi discarded it for appalling. But that word wasn’t any better, because it made her itchy and squishy and fuzzy around the edges with purple sparkles and swirls of burgundy. So she tossed that aside, too, and continued to root through the words, pulling out one after the other until she dug through to the other side and found herself swimming in the ocean with a pink tree and a pig with a Cheshire cat smile.

“Hello,” she said to the Pig.

“Aren’t you going to ask me the Answer?” he asked.

Yoshimi reached out, pressing her hands to his face, and discovered there was nothing to discover about him. “I want to put the diamonds in my pockets, but rocks—”

—

“—don’t belong in pockets, Yoshimi, come on,” Andrew said, gently tugging on her arm.

Yoshimi blinked.

The pig was gone.

The boy was gone.

There were no holes in the ground.

“Where’d they go?” she asked.

“Who?” Andrew inquired.

Yoshimi pointed to the ground without the holes where there was wholly nothing. “Them,” she said. There were rocks there. Strawberry and sandalwood rocks. She wanted to touch them; they’d be hot and icy cold and so smooth they’d rip her hands to shreds.

“Yoshimi, baby doll, there’s no one there,” Andrew said with a smile that lit up the air around him like firecrackers and Christmas trees. Yoshimi reached out and plucked a light from his hair. She put it in her mouth and it caressed her tongue like Andrew did.

Patting his shoulder, she said, “I’d like some ice cream.”

Since Andrew was a good man, even if he was sometimes confusing and had bad colors and tastes and sounds, he smiled and took her to get ice cream. With delight, Yoshimi closed her fingers around her small cup of ice cream after Andrew bought it for her, the coolness of it very real under her fingertips. When she took a bite of it, fruity flavors exploded all through her mouth, and swirls of pinky-violets and indigo and blue-green filled the air around her.

She sighed, closing her eyes.

—

Opening her eyes, Yoshimi found herself standing on a precipice. She peered over the end, and silk fell around her while fire and ice and lightning exploded from the gorge below in showers of magenta and cerulean. Following the sparks with her eyes, she cooed softly. Reaching out, Yoshimi fell backwards, through the rocks, sliding through the earth.

Dirt and rock parted for her descent until she fell out of the sky and stood before a tree. A boy wrote words in an ever-tightening spiral on it, but there were words missing. His fingers were bleeding, and soon Yoshimi’s were, too, and it was quiet with birdsong and chocolate and celery.

Reeling back, Yoshimi turned.

The park was full of bleeding people, and it was frightening, but no one noticed anyone else was bleeding, so Yoshimi forgot to notice. It was always there, the blood all around her as she waded through it, and she could hear it and see it and taste it and feel it, but it didn’t matter because she could turn it into diamonds by mixing it in her hair, and she could put the diamonds in her pockets and everything would be shining and muted in brilliant, shimmering—

Abruptly, she stopped. Looking up, she saw a hole in the sky. The sun was gone, and the hole was awful; C-sharp over f-flat-minor-seventh and A. She pressed her hands to her eyes and pulled them out, but she could still see the hole, and the words and the spiral and there was a boy sleeping in his books and a window surrounded by the sparks.

Discarding her eyes, Yoshimi stepped toward the window, the scent of wet grass and burned hair surrounding her. Birds screamed overhead, warned her away. “Can’t see, can’t see!” they shouted.

“But I have no eyes,” Yoshimi reminded them. One of the birds landed. It looked at her with her own eyes, and Yoshimi smiled at it. “You’re very olive,” she said to the bird. It cocked its head. “And there are lots of circles around you. Which makes no sense because you have squares, too, and squares are bad but circles are bad. Why do you have both? That’s not allowed.” Yoshimi paused. “I need to see in that window.”

The bird launched itself at her, exploding into candied chestnuts right before it struck her. Yoshimi popped a chestnut into her mouth, spun in a circle, and hurried toward the window. She pushed through the trees, and they waved at her, sparkling with red swirlies. Yoshimi ignored them, which wasn’t nice, but there was a hook in her stomach and it was yanking her about and left her feeling very uncomfortable.

Shuddering, Yoshimi stepped up to the window. She reached out and the glass gave way, rippling around her. “Cherries,” she said softly, eyes widening, and in her ears a car slammed into a telephone pole, wrapped itself around a four-year-old, and burst into butterflies and ravens.

Stumbling through the water-glass, Yoshimi stopped. Stared. “Hello. I’m Yoshimi. Were you waiting for me?”

—

“No.” The woman with no sound, no taste, no smell, no feeling, no color frowned. “Why are you here?”

“I found the window.” Yoshimi stared at her. “You’re gray.”

“Yes, I know. Is that a problem?”

“People aren’t supposed to be gray. Are you real?”

“No.”

The woman touched Yoshimi’s face and it was like air brushing against her. Yoshimi stilled, then wailed. “You’re not right!” she shrieked. “Let go let go let go!” She thrashed and struggled and jerked but the not-real woman wouldn’t release her. “Let go!”

“You’re as improbable as I am. You don’t exist just like I don’t.”

Yoshimi froze. She stared at the gray woman’s green eyes. “Not true.”

“True.” The woman released her face and stepped back. Her passing sounded like wind chimes on the sea, but she sounded like nothing. The way she moved tasted like cream, but she had no taste. Yoshimi whimpered.

“Not like me.”

“Just like you. Don’t argue with me. You’re looking for something, aren’t you?” the woman asked. She pulled a book from a shelf and offered it to Yoshimi. Yoshimi grabbed it eagerly, feeling its stucco, tasting its blue cheese, hearing its gong, smelling its lemon, seeing its blue bars lined with silver and gold. “Open it, why don’t you?”

Relieved to have something real, Yoshimi opened the book.

Words jumped out at her.

—

Descriptive.

Adverbs—nouns—adjectives

verbsverbsverbs

Yoshimi clutched her head as everything did everything else all at once. Everything had all the colors, the tastes, the sounds, the smells, the feelings, and it wasn’t okay. It was too much. She was used to too much, but this was too much even for her and the words were piling up all around her. There was no place to run. There were no sticks.

“I need to build my island!” she shouted.

The words roared back.

verbs – adjective adjective noun noun noun

They weren’t sentences; just words. The hung and existed and were real in ways nothing else could ever be real, and it made Yoshimi cry because the gray lady was right: Yoshimi wasn’t real. Yoshimi stole realness from everything around her, and when everything was everything else, it wasn’t real, so she couldn’t be real either.

She wailed and screamed and cried and tried to deny the words, but they were insistent.

There was no way to turn them off.

There had to be a way to turn them off.

“Go away!” she shouted. But they wouldn’t, and there were no sticks. She couldn’t build the bridge to her island if there were no sticks.

“We’re in a park, baby doll. Of course there are sticks.”

The words faltered at the noiseless sound of the man’s voice, and Yoshimi pounced upon it with eager hands. She closed her fingers around the man’s voice, held it to her, bit into it. It was green and blue sparks, and the sparks bit her, snapping at her gold, but she clung to them. The words the voice spoke were yellow and gray—not bad, dead gray, but living, moving gray—and there were familiar things about them.

Yellow and gray.

Green and blue sparks.

Circles and triangles.

“Andrew!”

The screaming words fell away, and Yoshimi fell through the earth again.

—

Standing in the park, Yoshimi looked around. It was the dead of night. “I lost time again,” she said to the raven pecking at her melted ice cream. It cawed at her and flew away without any other response. She thought that was rude.

“Hey, lady!”

Yoshimi turned and saw a boy standing on the sidewalk, a bucket made of red plastic in his hands. Yoshimi moved toward him, because he sounded like cellos and trombones in g-minor and it sounded good and real and nice. “Good morning.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“If you think the sun means day and the moon means night.” Yoshimi looked at the sky. The moon was there; there were no holes. She could see all the stars, could hear them singing and taste them jumping in her mouth. They spoke their names in her ears until she looked away. “And how long your minutes are. People don’t remember how long minutes are. Do you know how long a minute is?”

The boy grinned. “Sixty seconds.”

“What about that? How long is a second?” Yoshimi asked.

The boy’s grin faltered.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, smiling. “I don’t know either.” Her gaze shifted to the red bucket. Bassoons blared.

“I have chalk,” he said. “But it’s too late for chalk. Mom will want me home soon.”

“Does she know how long a second is?” Yoshimi asked. He shook his head. “Then soon doesn’t matter. Divide by zero.” She took the bucket and spilled the chalk on the ground. Crouching, she picked up a blue piece of chalk and began to write in an ever-widening spiral.

—

Yoshimi’s fingers closed on the door to Andrew’s room. Andrew’s fingers closed on Yoshimi’s. She paused, blinked, then looked over her shoulder at him. He was all green around his face, circles and triangles. He smiled, and butterflies made of velvet fluttered away from his eyelashes.

“Hey, baby doll. Kevin said you were here,” he said.

Yoshimi frowned at him. She frowned at the doorknob. “I’ve done this before,” she announced to him. “Gone to the park. There’s a boy with chalk, writing in spirals. You’ll buy me ice cream and I’ll buy you dimensions and the gray Lady Reina will be upset with me.”

Laughing, Andrew kissed her cheek. “Did you do things out of order again?” he asked her.

Stifling a groan of frustration, Yoshimi turned and closed her fingers around his shoulders. He was so much taller than her. She stood on her toes. Octagons bounced down the hallway. “I always do things in the right order!” she explained, exasperated. “You’re the ones who bounce around and make cause come before effect all the time and I don’t want to go to the park today because we’ve already been there.” She huffed. A star popped out of her mouth.

Leaning his forehead against hers, Andrew smiled. “Why not?” he asked. It was rhetorical. She knew because the words were ochre. “Stranger things have happened.” He was talking to himself. “Why don’t kick Kevin out and make cookies.”

Yoshimi considered this. She turned her head to one side. At the end of the octagon hallway, the gray Lady stood with her book and the boy with the blue chalk and spirals. He waved to her.

Yoshimi turned away from them. “I want to go to Barbados,” she announced.

Andrew blinked. “Why Barbados?”

“Because Barbados is green and gold, like you and me.”

Smiling, Andrew slid his arm around Yoshimi’s waist. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll call your father and arrange a trip to Barbados.” Her heart squeezed and popped in her chest, and she watched little bubbles of purple blood drip down her front. Andrew didn’t see it; he didn’t need to. He always knew when she was happy.

[fieri nova]

Username: Stand Alone Origin
Prompt(s): 10, 11
Title: Window to Eternity
Word Count: 646
Short Summary: Sometimes, the right thing to do isn't always the preferable thing. And sometimes, the lamb is more than just that to the lion.

Window to Eternity

Meir opened his eyes slowly, pushing himself up from the ground. “Ouch,” he muttered, looking around. “Where am I?”

A butterfly flew past his line of vision, and he sat up.

It was like a giant window in front of him, crackling with energy with birds fluttering around it. The trees around it looked almost dead, which was weird. It was spring after all, so why would they look like it was winter?

“The boy’s awake.”

He turned, seeing the silhouettes of two people. They were hard to identify because of the large, bright moon behind them, but he thought both looked to be women. He stood, but did not take a step forward or back.

“Will you do it?”

There was a pause from the other person as they reached up, seeming to run a hand through their long hair. “I will.”

“Good. Get it over with, then. We don’t have much time before it closes.”

“…I will.”

The other person seemed to merely vanish, and the second walked forward until she was merely a few feet from Meir. She turned slightly as the butterfly from before flew over, alighting on her outstretched finger, and Meir’s eyes widened. “Lyris?”

----

“What, Meir, do you not get enough sleep? You’re always napping.”

He grinned sheepishly, scratching at his head. “Dunno. I just have weird dreams, I guess.”

“Like of what?” Lyris asked, resting her chin on the palm of her hand as she leaned forward.

“Like of big windows and birds and some kind of energy around them. I’m not sure why, but I always have to walk through it, and…”

“And what?”

“And then I wake up.”

----

“Do you remember your dreams, Meir?” Lyris asked, turning to look at him for a moment before turning her attention back to the butterfly. “How you’d walk through a window just like that one, and then you’d wake up?”

“Of course I do. What’re we doing here, Lyris?”

She ignored the question. “Meir, when you wake up prematurely from a dream like that, do you know what has happened in that dream?”

Meir watched the butterfly’s wings flap slowly. “No. Why don’t you answer me, Lyris?”

She turned away from the butterfly to meet his eyes. “If you wake up, you die.”

He bit his lip, and looked again at the window. “…So…”

She nodded slightly, and met his eyes. “I promise it won’t hurt, Meir. Just a pinch, and it’s done.”

“But why, Lyris?” He felt his throat close up, and his fingers clenched. “Lyris, I thought-”

“It’s all been a lie.” She looked sad to him and looked away again, a short laugh escaping her lips. “All these years, Meir, you’ve been a lamb raised for the slaughter. Those who are in positions of power…They need you gone. It’s how they survive.”

“You knew, Lyris?”

“Always. I wanted to stop it, Meir, you don’t have to believe me on that, but I did. But there’s nothing to be done now. It’s either I kill you, or they do.” She watched the butterfly’s wings flutter, and still did not turn to look back at him.

“And they’d be worse?”

She nodded. “Much worse.”

He took a breath in, then, and looked at the window. “So I just walk through that, right?”

“…Yeah.”

Meir nodded, and moved forward. It was silent, and he paused for a moment as the butterfly that had been on Lyris’s finger landed on his shoulder. It calmed him a little, and he continued walking, moving past the dead white trees as the birds seemed to watch him and the electricity crackled as if alive. He stepped through the window, and all went white.

A single butterfly flew out the open window, and alit on a slender finger. All was silent.

[[ .days. ]]

ω And just for the moment – just for one night – you can rest. ω

And...closed for judging. I'll try to have it done by next weekend, but you know me and judging. sweatdrop

ω You can rest and not fear the sky. ω