Morning - Story

I've been awake for about 45 minutes now. I woke up before the dream I was having concluded to my satisfaction, so I lay there, staring into nothing, trying to remember and finish the plot my subconscious was toying with. I hear a squeak, and the bed frame shift slightly. A trill of excitement runs through me.. she's awake. I roll over in time to see her stretch, making a little sqeaking noise of exhaled breath. The room is mostly dark, except for a sliver of golden light breaking through between the heavy curtains. Still, it doesn't take much light to see how beautiful she is. Her hair, splayed out around her head on the pillow, catches the light in little sparkles where her hair dried curly. The fabric of her night shirt having settled around her curves in all the best ways.

At this point I'm wide awake, but I know she is still just starting to get the blood flowing. So I wait, though somewhat impatiently, before reaching over to take her hand. I'm still a little early, but she opens her eyes as I bring her fingertips to my lips. "Good morning.." I whisper, trying not to crack the tenuous spell that weekend mornings always hold. Soon, the responsibilites of the day will intrude, rushing time through the hourglass one activity at a time. Soon it will be a weekday again with early mornings dragging us away and imposing stress on our minds and hearts. But right now.. Suddenly I don't mind so much that I didn't finish my dream. Right now, I'm so glad to be awake and alive. For the moment, I have everything I could ever want in the little quirk of a smile on her lips. If only it would last..

Nighttime Rituals - Story

drip... drip... dripdrip... drip...

I'm awake. Again. I've rolled over and over trying to find a comfortable position. More accurately a quiet position. Someway that my mind will stop its incessant chatter. When I finally find it I hear the faucet I've been meaning to fix hammering away at the drain. Which in turn reminds me of another faucet which I'm sure is still leaking in it's pitter-patter rhythm. And that reminds me of her, and I start to roll again, kicking my sheets, flipping my pillow, grinding my teeth..

I don't know what time I finally got to sleep, but when I wake I'm groggy and irritable. The thoughts that had finally retreated from exhaustion immediately flood back making my bad mood even worse. I push back, quieting the shouts to a murmur in the recesses of my mind as I get ready for my day.

When I begin to brush my teeth I realize that I don't remember the last time I really looked at myself in the mirror. Oh, I've glanced now and then, fixed my hair, tied a tie, but I don't know when I actually looked. I find that I don't really know the face that looks back at me. When did those lines around my eyes and mouth get there? I've been putting on weight, why do my cheeks look so gaunt? I look... grim. I sigh and rinse my face off, hoping that maybe a few thousand hours of worry and sorrow will run down the drain with the water. Needless to say, I'm disappointed when I look back up.

Valentine - Story

**Note - Anything with the designation "Story" in the heading is a piece of fiction.**

It's that time of year again. The soggy snow, or freezing rain covering the world in a dull gloom that seeps into the bones of you. Someone a long time ago decided that this would be a perfect season to tell everyone that they need to celebrate that they have someone special in their lives. For the rest of us it's a time to glare and spitefully imagine throwing snowballs at the happy couples. Hands breaking apart as they reach to touch the tender red welts left by the heavy projectiles.

That's what I'm thinking as I walk down the street, hands shoved as far into my coat pockets as they go, headphones on blaring whatever I think will help me forget that I'm walking home alone on Valentine's day, again.. People talk about how it doesn't matter. That you shouldn't need to have someone in your life, and Valentine's day doesn't mean anything. But it's all bull. When it comes down to it, when you're flipping through tv stations in the dark because all of your friends are busy with their wives and girlfriends, when you've finished off your third drink and are fishing around in the fridge for another.. this would all be so much better with someone.

If it weren't for the wisps of steam fogging up my glasses, the sigh that comes so easily would have gone completely unnoticed. As I wait for my vision to clear I start to feel the anger and frustration rise in me. I grit my teeth and pull my phone from my pocket. No calls. No texts. I punch in my password and start to compose.

Hey. How's it going? Just thinking about you... :)

My finger hovers over the send button. Why shouldn't I send it? What's so wrong about letting her know? But then again, what if I scare her..? I want to throw my phone down the street. Instead I let out another sigh, close my eyes, and tuck my phone back into my coat pocket. Shoving my hands back into my pockets I start walking again, kicking little piles of slush as I shuffle along through the dark.

Remembering - Story

I'm staring at the ceiling of my room, the only sound is my own breath and the patter of the rain into the pebbles beneath the overhanging roof. This is one of the few days that my alarm won't be going off. But I've still woken early, before the first paling of the sky announces dawn's approach. I try to roll onto my side to fall back asleep, but my mind has started its ticking and won't relent. It has begun its battle with my heart. For every reason my mind holds for me to examine, my heart finds an excuse, or a lie, that it tells me to disregard it. It won't, it can't, let go. Why not? Maybe it's because I've been holding on for so long I don't know how to let go. Maybe it's just because I remember...

It's another morning, long ago. I had fallen asleep to the rain, but it stopped sometime during the night. I take shallow breaths, trying hard not to wake her. I can hear her long, drawn out breathing telling me she won't wake for some time. Beyond her the curtains are blowing gently in the wind. She had me open the windows a crack before coming to bed so we could listen for thunder. The sun is rising now. Her body beneath the covers silhouetted against the golden light. Loose strands of her pale hair stick up and catch a ray or two as my gaze follows the gentle curves of her head, her shoulder, her hip.. I want to reach out and touch her, but I know that if I do it will startle her from her rest. I still want to. I want to start our day together. I want to start our life together. I catch myself reaching out to her, and roll away carefully, trying to shut out the selfish temptation. I close my eyes, breathe through my nose. The sheets still smell of her wet hair. She didn't let it dry before coming to bed last night. It smells good. It smells like her. I smile. Content. Happy.

I'm on my back again. Hands behind my head. I don't remember rolling again, or lifting my arms, but there I am. Staring at the ceiling, listening to the rain. Alone. My chest aches. I can hear the thrum of my blood fighting its way through my veins. A tear slips down my cheek, seeking the fibers of my pillow.

Lost Dream - Sayid

Just woke from an extremely vivid dream where I was Sayid and I found Nadia in Afghanistan. We were captured by insurgents and put in the back of a van with others they had taken hostage, including children, while the van traveled around the city delivering weapons. The Afghani military was tipped off about the van and came after us. The insurgents opened the back doors and fired at the army/police who returned fire with machine guns. I tried to protect her and pulled her to the side of the van even while bullets ripped through everyone else. Though we still received a few grazes, we managed to survive that only to get caught at a road block. We knew no one would believe that we weren't part of the terrorists, so we got out of the van right away, blended with the crowd and slowly, calmly started to walk away before we could be connected. But she was bleeding, and we couldn't hide forever. Then I looked up and noticed we had left the city in our chase and were in a forested region.. And the army was burning it to flush out any other terrorists. We were trapped. We couldn't go forward for the flames, nor back into the arms of the army, or we would surely be executed. We say an abandoned van seat at the side of the road and though I knew it would not protect us, we climbed under it. The last thing I remember was climbing on top if her to try to shield her from the coming fire.

Turn Away - Story

I could feel it. All of it. The cold breeze scraping across my skin, the soft pressure of my shirt collar around my throat, my blood pushing past with every beat of my heart, the subtle shift in the air as someone moves by us, and the even less obvious brush of heat of their breath and body.. But mostly, I felt my lungs empty. Completely. The unconscious part of my brain fights to keep me alive, trying to force me to take that next gulp of air. My conscious mind isn't listening. There's a tickle that is my eyes filling with tears, a single, hot drop sliding down my cheek. In the next gust of wind it cools, sliding cold and wet between my open lips. I want to blink. I want to wipe them away. All I can do is stare.
The hard set to her jaw, her shoulders straight, but in her eyes.. her eyes begin to glisten. I swallow hard even as she turns away. I think I see it fall. I think I hear her sob. But tap, tap, tap go her shoes on the pavement. Her heels like hammer and nail. I watch as she walks. The sway of her hips, the toss of her hair, the fire of all that she is burning around her. In that moment I remember every reason that I love her. My chest constricts. My heart shudders. The only sound I can make is a soft click as my airway tries desperately to open. I start to go numb.
I realize I should move, after her, to my knees, run away, something.. I can't. Not until she is out of view. Then my stomach unclenches, letting the air in. I turn walking unsteadily in a direction that is not hers. With every step the shock begins to ebb, giving way to fury. But it's not at her. It's at everything but her. I want to claw at my own flesh. Tear out every bit of me that wasn't good enough to make her happy. I glare spitefully at every couple I see holding hands. I want to spit. Clear out the taste in my mouth, the salt and blood. It gags me. I can't breathe. I start to run, though I don't know where to go, where I'm going.
Somehow I make it home. I don't remember driving, though I know my car is in the driveway. I'm stripping off my clothes in the dark. They are making me itch. I lay down on top of the covers, cold but not caring. I grip my shoulders my eyes open but unseeing. I swallow again and again, the lump refusing to go down. Eventually exhaustion shuts my body down and I sleep. There are no dreams. Just a feeling that I'll never be home again.

New York - Story

You would think that over time the memory would fade, that somehow I would be free. To be honest, so did I. I thought that if I could just make it one more day I would forget a little more. So, I fought. I pushed that burning down so deep that from the outside it looked cold as a diamond, distant as a star. What I didn't realize is that, like a diamond or a star, I could never extinguish it. I could never destroy something that I had made such a large part of me without tearing it out and throwing it away, leaving a gaping hole where it once was. A void in the darkness of my soul. A void that seeks to be filled so desperately it devours everything. I fed it all of my sorrow, my pain, my anger, but it spit these back in my face. It hungers for what once was there, but now is lost.

When I first met her I had no idea what I was doing. I was sitting in my favorite little pub, the Galway Hooker, a marvelous recreation of a simple pub in Ireland complete with a long old wooden bar polished lovingly from hours of mopping up spilt alcohol. The place smelled of wood and spice and deep fried food. I had just finished a lunch of just such food and was relaxing with a book when I heard a laugh near the bar. It wasn't that laughing was uncommon here, or that it was a particularly loud or obnoxious laugh, no it certainly wasn't that, but it was light and full of joy and mischief. It was as if someone had given voice to a candle flame, and in that moment it was alive and bright and happy to be. I looked up, and there she was, leaning forward with her hands on the bar, white blouse, black vest, blue jeans, with full, long red hair flowing down her back. She glanced over her shoulder and I saw that smile for the first time and gaped openly. I had never seen anything so fresh and lovely, it was spring, it was sunshine, it was hope, it was every cheesy line from every poem I had ever read rolled into one. And it was there at the Galway Hooker. I tried to turn my attention back to my book, to ignore the fact that perfection had somehow sauntered into the room, but I simply couldn't. I found myself inventing reasons to glance up and around the room, always passing my eyes over her at least once before pretending to go back to my reading. I stopped myself in the middle of angling my body towards her, trying to give myself a better view. In my mind I played through every scenario I could think of to give me an excuse to talk to her. My ego discovered very quickly that in every way I imagined it, I always made a fool of myself. What would a woman like that want with someone like me anyway? Regardless of what I might have to offer, she was probably married or had a boyfriend. Women like that we're never single for very long. So I sat and watched and did absolutely nothing about it. Until eventually she left. I hadn't read a single word since I saw her, and then she was gone. I took a breath, finished my drink, and went home.
For weeks after that whenever I had a day off I always found myself at the Galway Hooker for lunch. I told myself that it was because I had come to really enjoy their fish and chips, or that I was trying to develop a routine it could fall contentedly into. The truth was that I was looking for her. In a city with hundreds of bars and restaurants, I thought maybe she would come back to mine. Next time I would talk to her. Next time I wouldn't care if she had a boyfriend. Every girl likes to be told they are beautiful, what harm is there in that? And for weeks I left disappointed, but not particularly surprised. Finally, after I had given up on the possibility of seeing her, there she was. I was on my way to my normal booth, but she was sitting there instead, wearing a t-shirt and black jeans, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, a mug of something hot on the table in front of her. I stopped dead in my tracks and could do nothing but stare. Probably sensing someone watching her, she looked up at me, an eyebrow raised. My mind was sluggish, my pulse pounded, my legs buckled, and I probably would have bolted had she not been staring at me with her green eyes. Finally I managed to gather my wits enough about me to smile. I didn't even realize I was holding my breath until she smiled back, and then it was as if someone had released me from some kind of spell. I was able to move. I stepped forward, eyes fixed on her.
"Hi," she said, her voice warm and gentle as a breeze.
Of course, the only thing I manage to get out is, "You're in my booth."