Day 130: Like Dances With Wolves

From prompt #197.

I just started seeing more of Trey.

In the one class we shared, Chemistry II, he no longer bolted for the door when Prof. Chang concluded a lecture. Instead he’d arrange his notes, sigh, and place his books one at a time into his bag. In the regular cafeteria in Parker Hall West he’d face my direction rather than show me his back or worse just get his cheeseburger to go. I’d even seen him shooting hoops at Jasper during my scheduled karate classes. He never said anything.

Back home in Bixby, we’d had a barn cat–we had plenty–but we had this one in particular that habitually sat on the fifty gallon drum that held grain for the horses. His perch warmed in the morning sun and stayed cool in the shade of a long overhang in the afternoon. Entertaining mice congregated in the spillage. Other barnies’d scatter when I threw the latch on the back gate from the house. They went leisurely, not like a rabbit might, but they did go. This one I had in mind’d stay curled up pretending sleep. I brought bits of store bought cat food when I watered the llamas in the evening.

One day when it was dark early he sat upright on the drum in the porch light. I pulled a few bits of kibble from my Carharts to place on the drum in front of him. “Dammit!” He snapped my hand like it was a bird taking flight in front of him. He pulled the food from my fingers. He purred after that.

Trey pulled his old Corolla into one of the good spots near the dorm and right on the edge of Chamber’s Lawn where we played Frisbee. He arranged his sunshade carefully and took time cleaning out the Taco Bell cups and wrappers that built up in the floorboard of the passenger’s side. Tweep. He finally set the alarm and headed the long way past us to the entrance.

“Trey!” I called out. “If we had one more person we could play Frisbee football instead of just throwing it in a circle.”

“Sure. What the hell.”

He ran up to me.  I said, “Hey man. Sorry.”

“Pussy. I knew you’d cave first.”

Word count: 389

Day 80: In the Lee of Lame

Let’s see what we can do to stem the tide of lame. Somewhat. I am going to dig up a prompt, maybe it will help, maybe it will reset the lame to a cheesier level.

This morning, this was the best of the lot…

“How did it get in there? Write a story where a character finds something interesting in an accidentally-broken keepsake.”

Seems like I did something like this with a shell in a bottle?

Motes rise and fall in the antique beams of the setting sun.  James is struck by the notion that they do this daily whether he’s in the attic to witness or not.  He swipes his hand through the gentle ballet to aggravate the dancers.  Before the swirls and eddies subside he’s disinterested again.

Upon returning to his mother’s home following her funeral his first inclination was to clean.  The dishes are five days dry–they can wait.  The sink trash has a fresh bag and a single Windex stained paper towel at the bottom.  He pulls the table back from the wall where it was pushed; he straightens the chairs a bit.  He is not surprised there is nothing to do in this room-mom’s office they called it.

Into the family dinning room the twenty years ignored record player attracts his attention.  In fact, once he’s noticed it, it’s like an orange in a bowl of apples or a butterfly on snow.  James kneels in front of the standup shelf that’s vaguely listing toward the east wall.  He pulls away the plastic cover and pokes the On button; nothing happens.  Of course the thing is unplugged; he toggles the player off, plugs it in, and turns it back to on.

A dim orange light surrounds the On button.  A soft static crackles to life in the speakers.

Ok, gotta go.  The plan here in case you didn’t see where I was going was to find an LP in the attic to play.  He’d discover a letter of some sort in the album sleeve.  Traditionally thats where I would leave it hanging and never know where or how to pick up from there.

Word count:  354

Day 42: The Approach to Epiphany

http://theworldthroughmyeyes.zenfolio.com/p621561972/?photo=230512538

Johnathan Goffe said, “Good.”

He worried he hadn’t turned off his Bluetooth soon enough. Tinkers on the trail ahead was a bit of a surprise. They looked intimate–probably had theirs off as well. Blah blah blah

As if the small black road through the big white snow wasn’t an obvious enough path, the generation old trees walled the trail in. The high grey fog obscured his retreat. Stay on the path. Move forward. Face the inevitable. The vanishing point.

Johnathan expected to be alone. He had expected to be contemplating his next action. He had expected this back approach would help him in that regard. Now his attention was drawn to the couple ahead. Drawn down from his own lofty problems in a way that was both compelling and unappealing.

eesh–less concrete anyone?

This is the road to his sister’s home. Her palace. She’s the queen–or something. He’s the disaffected brother. Brother-in-law. Ex-brother-in-law.

Most folks will circle around to the formal road even if they originally reach the palace from the west where this road would shorten the walk. There isn’t a law or a gate or a haunting or any other reason that tinkers should take this route, they just don’t. But Johnathan does/will.

Can’t tell if this seen is the first of the final. Given the presence of the mist I am thinking the later, but I’ve never worked out if mist was entirly metaphorical or only partially so. I like it both ways. In either case I he needs to be contemplative but unfocused. Once he gets to the palace he and the reader need to feel like there are two paths for him to take and that either one is as valid and likely as the other.

This is the approach to epiphany.