Tag: third-person

Majestic Beings (week 3, day 1)

“She is, in a word, majestic.”

“Majestic?”

“In a word, yes.”

“Are you looking at the same dog as me? ‘Cause I’m not getting ‘majestic’ as the first word that comes to mind. Persistent, maybe, or resilient, but not majestic.”

Slane folded his arms across his chest and peered down his nose at Bobby. “You’re not looking hard enough.”

The two friends stared at each other for a moment before breaking into simultaneous grins. The dog in question wagged her tail.

“See? She’s smart and majestic. A true intuitive.”

“I don’t know if you’re trying to convince me or you but whatever.” Bobby put his hand out for the dog and she moved tentatively towards him. “If you want to adopt her, do it. You don’t have to give her some important attributes or anything. Just say you think she’s the one and let’s go.”

The other dogs in the room were bounding to and fro, passing just close enough to Slane and Bobby to consider pets and then dashing away. Only the dog Slane had decided was majestic was quietly lingering by the two men.

“I’m not convincing anyone of anything. I’m just calling it like I see it. She’s majestic, intuitive, and likely to come home with me someday.”

Bobby sat down on the floor and the dog put her paw on his thigh. “She might want to come home with me at the moment. Just sayin’.” He looked up at his friend. “Not like she’d be the first bitch to choose poorly.”

Shane shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “A dad joke? About a dog?”

“What? I gotta get ready don’t I?”

“Practicing at the pound…wait til I tell Melanie.”

“You’re not going to tell her shit. You’re going to be too distracted by this majestic beast.”

It didn’t take long to fill out the adoption paperwork and pay the fee. Shane left Bobby with the dog while he took care of the details and only picked up her leash after everything was finalized. She looked up at him with her expressive brows up as if to ask a question.

“You’re coming home with me, Maji.”

“Magi? As in…gift of the?”

“Maji as in Majestic.”

Bobby let out a bark of laughter that made the dog jump. “Sorry, sorry.” He got up and put his hand out to Maji in an attempt to rebuild trust. “Maji works.”

Shane led the way out of the pound and towards his car. He didn’t have much in the world as possessions went. He lived in a studio apartment, and he drove the same car he’d bought over a decade ago when he was just a junior in high school. His clothes were well-worn and he didn’t wear jewelry. From the outside no one would guess that he was worth seven figures and could, essentially, have his pick of whatever he’d like. 

He and Bobby had been friends since the third grade and had traveled disparate paths while remaining friends.

In the Dark, Continued (Week 2 winner)

Darkness thick enough to feel filled the world for as far as she could see. She knew, she remembered, that there were trees lining the rough road but she couldn’t find even hints of them when she squinted. Her only hope of orienting herself now was for a car to drive by, and that was almost as likely as the sun deciding to rise four hours early. She lifted her arm to check her watch and laughed at herself for forgetting how impossible even the simple act of checking the time was in the nowhere she’d found herself.

Keeping herself facing the same direction had become deeply important. It had been over an hour, she was almost sure, since she’d found herself in the midst of the darkness. She could feel the rocks under her feet, and she could smell the sea even if it was shrouded by the darkness. Alternating between squatting and standing was all the movement she’d allowed herself for fear of losing herself while she waited for something to happen. 

She’d maintained an almost constant internal monologue, talking herself into a state of relative calm. Everything would be fine was a phrase she’d uttered too many times to count, and those were interspersed with plans for the future and regrets from the past. The past. For as little time as she’d spent out there she’d managed to revisit a remarkable number of missed opportunities. The people she hadn’t reached out to, the steps she hadn’t taken – all of them had played a part in her ending up in the pitch black situation she found herself in, and she knew it. 

Without a change in the intensity of the darkness, the world around her was starting to reawaken. She could feel the subtle shift in the air, the movement of creatures she couldn’t see, and the slow increase in temperature. She waited, straining her eyes to find some hint of light coming from somewhere. The light, she told herself, had to come. She didn’t know if it would come from in front of her, behind her, or on her right or left. She hadn’t thought to track the sun before the light disappeared. Why would she have?

She bent her knees, lowering herself until her palms touched the ground. The sharpness of the gravel against the smoothness of her skin was comforting. It felt real. More real than the darkness, and that was enough to keep her looking for the missing sun. She shook her head and banished the idea that the sun, the ever-present sun, could be missing. This, she told herself, was just night. Night was real and normal, just like the gravel she felt her fingers closing around. Night happened and was inevitably followed by day, she just needed to stay calm and be patient.

The wind started to pick up and grew strong enough to lift her hair off the back of her neck. Her skirt moved, too, and she closed her eyes in thanks. 

It was the crunch of tires on the road that made her heart race. The first tendrils of light were starting, just enough for her to begin to discern the presence of shadows. She turned her head towards the sound but stayed down in her crouched position, just in case. The car or truck or whatever was driving towards her was going so slow, too slow. She strained against the dark and was just able to make out the edges of the vehicle. There was slight contrast where the headlights should be but not enough to make sense. They should have been bright beacons cutting through the darkness and illuminating everything in their path. Instead, it was just a slight difference in the quality of the darkness that told her they were there. She felt her heart beat faster, harder as she tried to make sense of it all.

The shadowed vehicle stopped before it reached her. She heard a door open with a reluctant creak, heard the shift of the vehicle as someone emerged, jumped at the snap of the door as it was pushed closed. From her position close to the ground she could smell the gas fumes, the stale smoke from inside the car, and something else emanating from the disturbed gravel. The vehicle was close enough to block some of the wind and she missed the breeze. Each step the person took seemed to reverberate through her body, making the hair on the back of her neck stand up for a different reason. 

Leather, denim, cigarettes, and sweat – the smells commingled in her nose as the person approached. She squinted, trying to see more than the barest of shadow where the person started and stopped. Her muscles tensed as she realized they were crouching down across from her, putting themself on her level in front of the would-be headlights. She heard their labored breathing and was thinking about who they might be when they spoke.

“My name is Xiana, and I’m here to help.”

The person’s voice was smooth and warm. She felt like their short introduction was like a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The hairs on her neck laid back down and her muscles relaxed. The sun would come or it wouldn’t. She would be ok.

“You’re here to help? To help me?” Her voice sounded painfully loud in her head. Loud and not quite right. She wondered if it had been that long since she’d spoken, and then realized that yes, it had been. How long had she been out there? 

“Yes, to help you. Do you think you can stand up?”

She brushed off the question as nonsense. She’d been standing. Standing, walking, running – she was only crouched down to keep her bearings until the sun returned. “Of course.” Her voice still sounded wrong. “I’m just waiting for the sun.”

She felt the person pull back and felt their scent change. The other scents were still there but were now joined by a tangy spike of fear. 

“I’m not sure what you mean. Waiting for the sun to do what?”

“Arrive. It’s too dark to stand.”

Silence fell between them and she was aware of the extra charge in the quiet. She didn’t know what the person was afraid of. Was it her, or the coming of the sun, or something else entirely. Her heart rate had slowed down once she heard Xiana’s voice but she could tell that Xiana’s had sped up once she started talking. 

“How about you take my hand and let me help you stand up?”

Xiana stood up and she felt the wind about her again as a shadow of a hand appeared in front of her. Letting go of the ground didn’t feel safe but she remembered the blanket quality of Xiana’s voice and let the gravel go. She reached up to the shadow and put her hand where it seemed to stop. She felt Xiana’s hand wrap around hers and was startled by how warm it was. With Xiana’s support, she straightened her legs and let go of the gravel in her other hand.

She turned her head from side to side, expecting to be able to find the sun. How long had it been since the shadows started? Long enough that the rest of the world should have begun to come into shape. Everywhere she looked seemed to be equally shrouded in shadow with no sign of a horizon line. She turned towards the shadow that was Xiana, holding onto the warmth her hand provided.

“Let me walk you to the car. You’ll be warmer inside.”

She felt the gravel through her thin-soled shoes as she let Xiana lead her to the car. The smell of gasoline intensified as she got closer and she waited for the groan of the car door. As she lowered herself down onto the seat she became aware of a new leather scent, different from the one that clinged to Xiana. The interior of the car was leather, as were Xiana’s boots, but of a different quality. 

It wasn’t until she felt Xiana climb into the driver’s seat that she felt the panic rise in her chest again. The sun should have been there. Now, inside the car, there should have been lights. All she had to orient herself were smells and sensations and the barest glimpses of shadows. 

“Xiana?”

There was a pregnant pause before Xiana replied, “keep breathing and everything will be fine.”

She gripped the fabric of her skirt in one hand and the arm rest in the other as she willed her heart to calm down and her breathing to go deep. Her first instinct was to go through her grounding exercise but as that started with “five things you can see” the thought of it only brought forth more terror. 

“Xiana?”

Another pause, and then she felt Xiana’s hand cover hers. Feeling the armrest beneath her hand and Xiana’s warm skin on the top helped, at least a little.

Cradles Rock (Week 2, Day 1)

Cradles rock and parents sing, that’s how the world is run. Babies squeal and children scheme, that’s how the world is fun. Teens feel and adults think, that’s how the good is done.

Agnes sat on the porch, her feet tapping the bottom step while her fingers drummed the top one. The overhang of the roof provided a bit of protection from the blazing sun but not enough to keep her from sweating. After fourteen days straight she’d resigned herself to having pit stains and chaos hair. Agnes kept her gaze focused on the gas station sign across the street. There wasn’t much else to look at and she wasn’t about to be caught watching eagerly for his car to pull up.

Living in this one-street town hadn’t been a part of her plan. Nothing had been a part of her plan which, she knew, was the problem. One of the problems, anyway. Agnes would have stood out in most spaces given the combination of her height, hair, and fashion, but she was so much of an oddity in this place she didn’t get even a moment’s respite from the reminders that she was different.

Agnes felt the car turn onto her street well before she heard it. That magnetic pull he had on her was one of the few things she could count on these days and she hated it. She kept her head forward and her eyes on the sign all the way until his car pulled into her line of sight, and only after she heard his car door open did she look at him. 

Dale wasn’t handsome, he wasn’t built, he wasn’t even charismatic. He was everything this small town represented – short, squat, and defeated. It was as if he and the town were linked in a deeper way than even the five generations warranted. That he and the town shared a name was just icing on the cake. Dale Fountainhead the Fifth didn’t carry himself like local royalty. 

As he made his clumsy way around the front of his car, tripping over a rock and stopping to kick it out of the way of his beloved tire, Agnes sighed. She wished he would push her out of the way like he had done to the rock, and then shook her head at the idea of being jealous of an inanimate object.

“Are you ready?” Dale stopped at the passenger side of his car, seemingly afraid to come any closer.

“Ready enough.” Agnes pulled her shoulders away from her ears and forced herself to go towards Dale and the car even though every fiber of her being wanted to turn away from him and walk off into the eventual sunset. Walking away might have been an option if she were playing a part in a romantic movie but here in Fountainhead unwed pregnant women didn’t have that sort of luxury.

Dale opened the door for her and snapped it closed once she was settled. Agnes felt the backs of her legs immediately glue themselves to the seat.

This is part of the 2022 500-Word Short Story project. Comment with “Tell me more” if you’d like to vote for this to move to the next round.

Breaking (March 2022, Week 1 Day 1)

“You ok?” 

“Mhm. Why do you ask?”

“The table is clean.”

“Fuck you.”

She’d left after that. Without a word. She left and didn’t look back. 

He didn’t let himself break. He kept all his appointments and completed his tasks. He was just as charming at the monthly meetings for book club as always. He kept himself together by sticking to his routines and not poking at the gaping hole her departure had created. He even, every so often, sat at the empty table. Only ever for breakfast or lunch – never dinner. He knew enough not to go too far.

It was on a trip to the grocery store that he broke for the first time. The grocery store, of all places. In the aisle with cheap wines on one side and freezer cases on the other. Maybe it was the sheer audacity of the incongruity of the aisle that did it – that’s what he would blame it on later, anyway. Standing there, looking at the wine bottles working to intuit which one would be decent enough to bring to book club and not leave him with a reminiscent headache afterwards, he felt a tear sliding down his cheek. Just one tear, on one cheek. It took him a moment to identify it. He had only just pulled the desperate puzzle pieces together enough to realize he was, indeed, crying, when a raspy voice came from behind him.

“You ok?”

Instead of doing something reasonable like waving away the question or even answering with a brief, “yep” with or without “!”, he broke. He watched it happen as if he were a spectator, as if he’d been the one to ask instead of the one to be decidedly not ok. He saw his knees buckle, saw his grip on the basket in his left hand loosen, saw himself fall to the ground and crumple into a heap. 

“Shit!” The gravelly voice said, closer now.

He saw himself as clear as day but the person with the voice stayed out of his vision somehow, even though he saw/felt their hand on his shoulder and saw/felt them crouch down next to him. His spectator-vision didn’t extend beyond his person. The voice-holder stayed by him as other unseen beings added their voices of concern to the scene. He stayed on the ground, forehead pressed against the cool floor. He found himself thinking that, perhaps, the floor was cooler in this spot because of the presence of the freezers on the other side of the aisle and wondering if the temperature difference was enough to impact the wines on the shelves. Thinking about wines and freezers and floors was much safer than thinking about the fact that he was crumpled on the floor of the grocery store, sobbing silently. 

“Give him space,” the gravelly voice was saying now, and he saw/felt the other people backing up. He wondered if it was the gravel in the voice that caused the others to listen and obey, of if there was something more to the person talking that commanded attention. 

***

This is part of the 2022 500-Word Short Story project. Comment with “Tell me more” if you’d like to vote for this to move to the next round.