Category: Daily

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Day 52: Introducing the Mr. Leon Wrecks


Lionking By .tyler. – Claudio Martella.

This one’s been in the interesting list on Flickr before. Or I find it so compelling that, having seen it earlier this week but never before, I felt it had.

If Leon would just do one thing to let you know you couldn’t trust him you’d relax a little, enjoy the ride. But he won’t and he never will. He won’t pull forward as you start to get in his idling car. He won’t palm the coins from the ashtray of your ride. He won’t speak ill of you when you’re not around. He won’t try to convince you he doesn’t need a condom. And he won’t kill you in your sleep. He just won’t.

But you know he could. You know that if you just let your guard down you’ll end up pwned.

You first met Leon in high school. He was a grade up from you. Your buddyfriend’s sister hung with his little brother…or something. You were all at a party you shouldn’t have been. He sat down in the circle of your friends just like they were his. Offered you a smoke.

In the moment it took you to politely decline–because WTF does that?–you realized you’d just failed a test. A test given by the universe, but administered by the Mr. Leon Wrecks.

That’s fine. Life moved on. In college you learned that the universe was giving plenty of tests and it had plenty of proctors. Some you passed; some you failed.

The next time you ran into Leon was in the parking lot in the basement of your first real job’s building. You discovered the shorcut to Starbucks by accident one day when you went one more floor down when you thought LL meant lobby and not lower level. To this day you still can’t decide if he was breaking into that Chevy or getting out of it. Unstartled and as if he’d known you’d be there he turned and called out your name. Next thing you know you’re late to get back to the office and jittery from too much caffeine–probably too much caffeine.

Gonna stop there.

If you can’t tell Mr. Leon Wrecks is a work of fiction despite the accompanying picture of a real person. Thanks Sig. Martella.

Word count: 393

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Day 51: Grandma has a Wolf’s Heart

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37451064@N00/1480066693

The newly fallen leaves stacked poorly in her hand.  These red and yellow and gold leaves retained their suppleness.  This natural, nearly flesh-like offering, contrasted her brittle metalic fingers.  The leaves’ tones wavered through the various shades of autumn.  Their organic patterns occasionally punctuated with a spot of green or a tear or an insect-made hole.  Haphazard symmetry drew my eyes to the web of veins branching from larger to smaller paths and out to the rim.  The brown wind-worn edges showed the future for each.

Her knuckles were stamped and folded tin.  I hadn’t seen a tinker of this generation outside of picture books.  I would have expected a rime of [chemical name here] darkening the simplistic joints, but she seemed greased and newly made.  I knew she wasn’t.  Her arthritic posture and shuddering movements betrayed her age.  The gleam of her naive but precise frame was the result of care not recent making.

When I did not immediately take the leaves, she spoke.

“Take them or I will unmake you.”

Word count: 166

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Day 50: The Solex Guy

Gane stood back from the clearcrete wall and the nerve-vibrating edge of oblivion. He was on deck for the next slide over to the ah’Taconschienteen spike. He had purposefully fasted since early the day before yesterday. His hunger drown out any nausea and focused his attention enough to stave off the worst of his vertigo. Chabe, a long dead technomonk, taught him that particular hres within a month of Gane taking vows. Gane had never been to ah’Taconschientee well fed.

His proper title was Solexcorp Technician – Prim. But the Tacons, and everyone else, just called him “The Solex Guy”.

—

While Gane’s bimonthly trips to the ah’Taconscienteen spike kept him lean of body and broad of billfold, they rolled tidal on his spirit. No hres he instantiated dampened his fluctuating emotions. Gane was certain the problem lay with the nature of his visits not the frequency or timing. One month wasn’t down and the next up. One trip wasn’t down and the next up. He could probably handle that–novitiate hres or even just alcohol could handle that. His problem was that his appointments bounced out to the extremes multiple time each trip. The best he could tell was that it matter where the solex was that he was blessing.

Higher up the spike things were brighter, bluer. Lower down he had to intone the blessing with greater ferocity to get the same effect. Lower down it smelled. Brine. Refuse–human and other. Lower down it was brown.

His visits were never timed to start at one end and work to the other. That might have helped. He wasn’t sure if top to bottom or the reverse would be more pleasing. He did think that gradual was the way to go. On this visit he’d been able to force a few of the appointments to different times. He’d wanted to go bottom to top, but even before he’d gotten the calendaring girl to swap a few around they were trending downward.

The light breeze off the ocean reversed. Cool salty air became the succulent sent of barbecued lamb in an instant. Gane’s mouth watered and he inhaled deeply. The cheenwood smoke mixed with the near burnt aroma of meat made him close his eyes and forget his fear of heights. Involuntarily he reached for the coins in his pocket and took a step toward the nearest vendor.

Hunger simultaneously propelled him forward and questioned his earlier decision to fast. The flavor of berry pepper in his nostrils suggested that this time his nausea was cured. He could eat this trip with no problem.

[some stuff here]

“Free sample,” the veteran vendor called out. The old man deftly sliced a bite sized morsel from the end of a cooling skewer and thrust it in Gane’s direction. When Gane didn’t respond the vendor quickly switched to Taconese, “Quee quee!”

Not wanting to be rude and balancing the likelihood of one piece of meat crashing his hres he accepted it. He hoped he didn’t look ravenous gulping it down. But then he felt even more compelled to purchase the remainder of the skewer. Rather than eat it, he held it in front of him like an unmade decision till it was cold.

Word count: 205