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 Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2014 3:12 pm
_______SOLO ☆
Aberrations [Part 1 of 3]
Word Count: 2123
Her first thought was, I'm going to die.
Her second thought was, I'm going insane.
Neither proved comforting.
The morning started out rather vague and uneventful, with Annaliese waking up to the moments before her alarm went off, too early to simply cut the alarm and get on with the day, yet too soon to go back to sleep. So she lay there, groggy and somewhat perturbed, staring at the ceiling while she let her mind wind into the long process that was her day. She knew the points of frustration that plagued her, both a particularly frustrating client and the advent of jury duty looming over her in the early afternoon hours where they might keep her for eight days straight. A malpractice suit, if she remembered right. The nerve severed in a man's jaw from a wisdom teeth excision, and the million dollar demands that followed.
And just before her alarm erupted into its airy jingles, she wondered if the same might happen to her someday - a client suing because she couldn't help them fast enough, encourage them down the wrong path, led a son or daughter to drugs and the mournful death thereafter. But the start of bells and chimes cut all thought of it quickly, and she was almost grateful for the disruptive noise. She tried to slide the touchscreen dial to the off position, yet her finger failed twice in keeping with the track.
And when she finally roused herself from the comforts of ruffle and silk, of deep violet bedding with the cream sheets in 500 count thread beneath her bare thighs, it was 6:42. Starting her day, she was 12 minutes off track.
And 12 minutes had to be accounted for somewhere.
So the paper took the axe, and Annaliese never bothered to seat herself while she waited for her coffee to brew. Nothing fancy, to her chagrin - Folgers, auto drip into a cheap brand coffee maker with a 12 cup and a pour spout that always leaked when she tried to use ceramic mugs. She never did figure out if it was the seal or simply her overzealous care that caused it to spill every morning. She hadn't even thought of it while she sat in the bathroom, on the countertop to get as close as she could to the mirror mounted on the wall, with her mascara wielded in one hand while the other hand braced against her mirror. While she managed the careful act of stroking bat guano to eyelash, she thought about writing a dissertation on the difference between 'the shaving face' and 'the makeup face'.
But the timer screamed from the kitchen, and she had but two lips and half an eye left before she was prepped in part for her day. The blush could wait, she figured. Blush would hardly make the difference between suitable for a malpractice suit and unfit to serve as a juror. She wished it would.
She wished blush would stave the morning away.
Finally Annaliese slipped off the counter, brushing away the stray granules of makeup that settled into her white lace camisole. It didn't help much, but to smear a few hints of dusky brown into her otherwise white top. But the coffee would burn, and no one would know it beyond the blouse and cardigan she intended to wear.
And the coffee was still shrieking.
She remembered the remainder of her day proceeding in the same fashion, at no point letting up on the strange occurrences that dampened her spirits. Today was a Wednesday, so she had Yoga class in the morning. The instructor showed a few minutes late, but that never bothered her normally. Truly what disturbed her was that one of the chattier women from her class never quite made it, which meant the man that was normally at her side now gravitated to Annaliese, with his yellow teeth and his bad breath and his tendency to stand too close to her person. Nothing really seemed off about the man, and she couldn't fault him for his behavior for any concrete reason - he was just a nuisance, much like her entire day.
Her appointments fared no better. She often met with a young girl, fifteen in age but her eyes said thirty, who arrived so punctually that she seemed allergic to anything past ten minutes before the appointed time. She always sat in the same chair and looked at the same issues of magazines - the old Better Homes and Gardens issues that Annaliese often pilfered from her mother. Sometimes she asked Annaliese about how to prune a rose bush without pricking herself, or when was a good time to transplant a tree during the year - questions that Annaliese herself couldn't answer. Annaliese always liked the quiet curiosity she held about herself, folded inward like butterfly's wings at the end of its chrysalis period. But in that very same way, she was delicate, and she was so often shattered by those she considered close.
The girl, Adrienne, never showed that day. Never called to cancel the appointment. Even when Annaliese phoned her number, hoped to hear her husky voice for just a simple 'yes, I'm fine', no one answered. Panic settled in for the girl, but nothing would come of it - only a voice message left in concern requesting acknowledgement of her good health and a means for her to reschedule the appointment she missed.
Everyone makes mistakes, she remembered assuring herself. It's easy to forget an appointment when I'm swept up in the thick of things. The same might've happened for her. Except deep in her heart, Annaliese doubted that Adrienne would space on an appointment that ingrained itself into her weekly schedule for the last three years.
Other small hazards tainted her day, silly and forgettable as they were - dropping her pencil in the middle of a meeting, losing an earring while she jogged down the crosswalk from the coffee shop, forgetting to ask for an extra shot of espresso in her coffee, burning her tongue the first chance she got, rubbing her eye and smearing the mascara when she yawned, forgetting to call an insurance company on patient coverage... The list went on for miles, it seemed, and only partially Annaliese's fault.
The day simply sucked - a bad egg from the start.
Half past noon came around, and Annaliese just finished her lunch of hard boiled eggs sprinkled with salt, a garden salad with fresh cuts of red onion, grape tomatoes still sweet and firm, garlic parmesan croutons and a splash of light ranch dressing made with yogurt to minimize fat content. The court appointment, she knew, was in an hour and a half. Her heeled shoes waited patiently next to the desk (as she never wore shoes in her office if she could get away with it) and she slipped them on with surprisingly no hitches while she amassed her things for a journey. Cell phone in purse, tablet to follow, her favorite pen and a pair of napkins in case of strange emergencies.
The walk wasn't far, she reminded herself. Maybe twenty minutes on foot. Maybe thirty if she took her time. Maybe thirty-five if she spotted a fellow pedestrian with a cute german shorthaired pointer who knew Annaliese by the tone of her voice because they were neighbors for so many years. Maybe forty if she was delayed by construction, demanding that all foot traffic detour down one of the myriad alleyways that interconnected so many streets in Destiny City. Maybe an hour if she took the worker's advice, when she nodded in agreement when more of her attention drew to his tired, honest face and how the crinkles spidered out from the corners of his eyes from far too many days in the sun. She came away from it thinking about how he had the clearest, blue eyes she'd seen in many years, and how haunted they were by a sadness she couldn't quite articulate.
And she thought, maybe I'm just hallucinating.
And she thought, maybe I'm reading too far into things.
She continued to wonder of it while she started down the recommended detour, mind alight with the image of the man's face as he just looked up from his work - shovel in hand, perspiration smeared across his face, mouth slightly slackened from breathlessness. She wondered what was in his life, what prompted such a strange countenance when she addressed him, and all the while ventured further down the darker portions of the alley. The parts where the sun never deigned to touch the floor.
Her heels clacked loudly against the pavement and the few dead leaves that skittered down from the mouth of the alley. She always considered, in settings like these, the dangers she was putting herself in as a single woman of youthful age with no one around to protect her. She countered that thought with pepper spray, with simple training in defense measures. She didn't like it, didn't like the wet heat in the alley from fermenting trash to her right, but she knew of no other way - not through the mess of construction she left behind.
Annaliese froze nonetheless. She froze because her instincts roused prickling hairs on her neck, her hearing heightened and she became so vigilant of her surroundings that she noted every crack in the brick wall to her left and every fleck of rust on the dumpster to her right. She heard the cars rushing some distance behind her, the excited yells of various young teenagers as they engaged in their own brand of play. She saw a pair of legs shift from the crossroads in the center of the alley.
Then another pair.
Then another pair.
Then another pair.
She saw sixteen legs in total lift upward, shift, and push away from view with the sides of their feet. They each managed a similar length. The lot of them sported an ashen skin color, no different than the dead, with mottled splotches of black and purple like the tissue beneath the surface housed necrotic chunks of flesh. On some of them, she saw these dark portions move. On some of them, she counted toenails missing - sometimes entire toes.
Annaliese never knew such deep and paralyzing fear before in her life. Trepidation never suited her feelings, nor horror, nor terror. The extreme wrongness in what she witnessed rooted her to the spot with such a harrowing and raw petrification that she simply could not process what might operate those legs in such an impossibly sequential fashion.
These were not children rehearsing for a dance.
Shaking like a leaf in a windstorm, Annaliese swallowed heavily while she reached slowly, so slowly, into the confines of her purse. Every sound therein, from the shifting cloth to the unconscionably torturous unzipping of the liner engraved the fear that whatever lurked further down the alley might've heard her motions. Her mind ran through a gambit of plausible solutions, none more fitting than the last - someone sickly lay near the mouth of that juncture, and while it accounted for the state of the legs, it never answered the pressing question of why so many. Children playing a practical joke accounted for much of it, yet how would they manage so many legs in much the same presentation? The final suspicion seemed the most plausible in answering all of the above concerns - she suffered a hallucination similar to a schizophrenic with positive symptoms.
But how? She asked herself, grappling onto the thought. How could I be schizophrenic this late in life, beyond the typical presentation years, without a history, and with ventricles perfectly shaped? What-
She never managed to finish the thought.
Soon a head loomed out from beyond the juncture, but it wasn't human - not entirely. he neck and lower jaw offered no deviation from the human form, but the abomination looked as though someone seized the teeth on the upper jaw and stretched them beyond the nose, they eyes, all the while crushing the back of the skull inward to accommodate the L-shaped change in anatomy. In the center of what she assumed was the roof of its mouth, it split in half to reveal razor-sharp, inhuman incisors lining the inside - and the two flaps guarding those extra teeth moved in a manner that only muscles could, as if the skull inside was dissolved away long ago.
The rest of the creature followed, all torso and legs like a centipede of unearthly proportions.
Annaliese never found the voice to scream.
She only ran because the man with the blue eyes yelled for her to go.
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Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2014 3:32 pm
_______SOLO ☆Aberrations [Part 2 of 3] Word Count: 572It doesn't have to end here.
The thought felt comforting, though misplaced, like a shimmering scarf left atop a subway seat. Sequined and woven with brilliant tinsel, yet left discarded atop the grimy, weathered surface.
It doesn't have to be a tragedy.
You can save yourself. You can save him.
You can stop the nightmare.
Yet she ran because she had to, because she thought she had to, because she already discarded her heels in the alley and her nylons stuck and tore with each frantic step taken along a pavement littered with gravel and possibly broken glass. She ran because her heartbeat pounded in her ears, and every fiber of her being screamed for her to leave that place.
She heard the clank of shovel against meat - against flesh rendered with bone beneath and breath in lungs and a consciousness to retaliate. She felt her stomach revolt against the noise.
Stara Maslina.
Breath of the Cosmos.
What does that even mean? She wanted to ask. What does it matter? But even those thought took a backseat to the realization that she moved in slow motion, that the harrowing thing lurking behind her found no deterrent in the hard metal face of a shovel. The mouth of the alley felt so far away, and as she watched her destination, people simply passed to and fro without a glance down the potential deathtrap. Half of her wanted to yell for help. Half of her wanted to tell them to scatter as quickly as possible.
She ceased her running when she heard him scream in pained torment, the man with the blue eyes. She remembered how his skin crinkled at the corners of those eyes, how the perspiration clung to his face so obstinately. She remembered how he gave her directions to the courthouse, and how a deep sadness lingered in his features, however imagined it might've been.
She remembered, when she got up this morning, to dress in a white camisole (dashed with makeup), a cream blouse, and a cardigan over the top of it to stave off the cooling temperature.
That wasn't what she wore now.
She knew it by the jingle about her chest and waist, but she dared not wrench her eyes from the monstrosity. She felt constrictions around her biceps and forearms, however light they were, and a weight at the bottom differing from that of gravity. Cloth whispered against her legs, and were she in a better state, she might've realized that the shoes she wore felt far more comfortable than the heels she insisted on wearing nigh daily. Instead, she noticed her white knuckle grip around a small olive wand, not longer than two feet, and a small glass orb hanging from the edge of it. Something swirled and swished inside the globe, but she lacked the time to start any scrutiny.
The creature advanced on her, the blue-eyed man lodged between the two halves of its face, and there was
so.
much.
blood.
Soon it discarded the man quickly enough, attentions now turned on her as the ostensibly lifeless corpse burbled with a few breaths. She raised the globe and wand in retaliation. It drifted to and fro, whimsical and predictable as a pendulum. Something told her it was a weapon yet it never looked the part.
Her first thought was, I'm going to die.
Her second thought was, I'm going insane.
Neither proved comforting.
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Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2014 3:55 pm
_______SOLO ☆Aberrations [Part 2 of 3] Word Count: 644It doesn't have to be a tragedy.
Stara Maslina never knew where those words came from. Annaliese never knew she was Stara Maslina. Annaliese only knew that something stood before her, something so great and looming and petrifying that it took a man's life before her and fully intended to take hers.
In those moments, all the nuances that dampened her day never truly mattered. Annaliese never considered the smear of makeup on her camisole, or how she laid in bed 12 minutes after her alarm went off, or that Adrienne never showed or called to let her knew what happened. Jury duty demanded not a thought in her mind, and neither did any portion of the world around her beyond the mouth of the alley behind her and the juncture just behind the beast. The shovel lay closer to its surfeit of legs, but her instincts, strange as they were, informed her that the wand and globe proved a better weapon.
She knew she would wonder afterward where she went wrong - what part of nature or nurture led to this unfortunate turn of events. She would wonder what drugs she might have to take, which antipsychotics might do the job. She would wonder if it would impact her career choice, if she'd find herself resigned to a Skinner-styled world where performing daily necessities earned her coins and chits for purchase of snacks at a hospital. She would mourn it, she knew, but not now.
Legs and jaws bolted toward her with unbelievable speed, an unearthly agility possessed of the creature despite its undulating body and considerable weight. Skin slapped against the pavement as the many feet vied for purchase, seemingly immune to what shards of glass pierced through the flesh. When it charged, the pair of almost-tendrils crowned with teeth split wide, offering a prime glimpse at the myriad teeth housed within.
Stara swung the orb, timed in such a manner that she considered pure luck. With a soft clink, it lodged in the creature's mouth. Despite its simple glass appearance, the creature struggled and jerked in trying to crush the globe within its jaws, and each display of sheer strength jerked the page to and fro. Finally the monstrosity applied enough pressure to the globe that something within its neck shattered with a wet crunch, earning a throaty squelch of agony from it. Finally she relinquished the weapon entirely, backing away while she watched the wooden wand swing wildly with the creature's thrashing, while it tried so desperately to whittle holes in the glass and drain it dry.
She didn't dare breathe while she watched.
Ultimately the creature tried simply swallowing the globe, gulping it down into a hatch that opened just barely wide enough to accept the burden. Yet it must've lodged not far from the opening, for the monstrosity exhibited hitches she recognized almost immediately as choking. More thrashing ensued, the centipede beast thrusting itself against dumpster and wall as if to perform its own heimlich, yet it found no success. As it wore itself down, it soon retired to the floor of the alley, body still heaving for relief from the lodged artifact.
Stara knew not whether it was dead. Stara found no interest in making certain of it. Instead she crept around the thing in a wide berth to where the man with blue eyes now lay, bleeding through the brilliant yellow oranges of his uniform, and gaze fixed toward the sky.
He wasn't breathing.
A churning wind stirred ash along the ground in thick waves that drew her attention. Looking back toward where the creature lay, she found nothing more than a long strip of ash with a globe and wand lying near the top of it.
Finally she fled toward the mouth of the alley, calling for an ambulance.
It doesn't have to end here.
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Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2014 4:56 pm
_______SOLO ☆
Another Day in the Dirt
Word Count: 497
Annaliese woke that morning, but she didn't feel right. No fever, no lethargy, no localized aches or pains - she knew well enough to run through the gambit before deciding on a tentative diagnosis. Malaise maybe, she thought. Ennui, she thought. Maybe her nails looked just blue enough in the right light to indicate cyanosis. Or her eyes looked just yellow enough for jaundice. She knew she was grasping at straws, at fabricated lies, but denial often helped as much as it hurt.
And it hurt to confront the truth.
Yesterday, she remembered cheering. She remembered being happy. She remembered how the gallows stood high and medieval, complete with the procession of prisoners to the stage. She remembered how the crowd roared, how they stomped and cheered and frothed for the murders that ensued. They wanted it, didn't they? All of them. And her, but not her, Stara Maslina stood among them in the dirt and muck, her boots muddied by all the activity. She felt it, how her throat rasped so terribly with every call, yet she kept screaming. The tears she shed wore away her eyeliner into streaks, her mascara into blackened shadows cast beneath her lashes.
Yet she was so, so happy.
She remembered it like it had happened. She knew because the woman to her side wrung her hands so many times that she left scrapes in her epidermis, and the man in front of her had the strangest pattern of goosebumps on the back of his neck. She never remembered such detail in dreams, she knew, yet here she recalled them in clarion accuracy. A little girl, maybe in her teens, blonde hair and purple eyes so clear and brilliant despite the threat of death before her took the stage. She remembered how the clouds reflected in those eyes. She remembered a girl in scrubs came too (was it before or after?) and capitulated to the unyielding strength of a sword severing her aorta.
And before that? She remembered a man asking her to dance. A howl of delight among carnage and flame. She remembered daggers frozen in her hands, held fast like lifelines. And Anna. Who was Anna? Her? Annaliese? Anna Freud?
Annaliese stumbled into the bathroom, flipped on the lights, examined the disheveled blonde staring back in the mirror. Makeup smudged, as usual. Dark circles nested beneath her eyes. Her rumpled bedclothes hung loosely from a night of tossing and turning. She seized her toothbrush, and her nails looked fine beneath the fluorescent lighting. Her nail plates and lunula offered no indications of cyanosis. Her breathing was normal. Her eyes looked fine. No jaundice, no anxiety or tachycardia or any manner of symptoms pointing toward a more traditional solution.
"No," she spoke aloud, as she plucked the toothbrush from its glass enclosure. She popped the cap of her toothpaste open to spread a thin ribbon across the bristles. "I'm just insane." She finished, as she started to brush her teeth.
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