Category: fiction

Autumn Equinox

It’s 1 AM in the wee hours after the autumnal equinox, the perfect balance of daylight and darkness.  I fall into my rhythm this time of year, hit my stride.  Screw January for new beginnings; my rebirth is when the first hint of chill hits the air, summer yielding its power, relenting to cool nights, blankets on the couch, overflowing words.

I should be asleep, but what am I doing? I’m up streaming some YouTube videos, awestruck by talent.  Inspired.  Moved.  Thinking on what collaborations, what genius can come when one creative spirit crashes into another and sparks fly.  Late nights with blankets and winding conversations and empty shot glasses set my muse free.

Inspire me.  Let me tell your story thirty-five different ways.  Let me tell the truth; let me tell a lie.

And let me inspire you.  Move forward.  Smile.  Be happy.  Trust me.  Don’t waste a day, a moment-when I turn away, call my bluff, because I will sure as hell call yours.  Create create create, and share it with the world for free or for pay but don’t ever stop again…keep going, inspire me.

As the leaves start to turn, I feel the possibilities on the wind…something magical with wild potential just around the corner.  I don’t want to figure you out; I just want laughter, words, and for your music to play on.

 

A little more fiction from a book in progress

More fiction from a work in progress, perhaps Pompous Whiners part 2…

property o’ kat, trademarked by kat, copyright kat, yadda yadda: 

Jake wasn’t breathing regularly.  No one noticed his shallow, weak wheezing but me.  They were all drunk on Mad Dog, wobbling around on somebody’s grandma’s morphine tablets, listening to The Cure and deciding who was going to bed down with whom tonight.

I was secretly sober.  My Mad Dog went down the bathroom sink after three sips, and the pills I spit behind the couch.  I wanted to be with my friends, but I didn’t want to be like my friends.

Jake was sweaty, cold, sick.  His Misfits t-shirt was soaked through.  He didn’t answer when I asked him if he was ok.  I couldn’t call 911 because how would I explain this party, this mayhem, when someone finally showed up?  Someone’s bra was draped over the telephone.  I wasn’t even sure whose house it was, just some place where the parents were out of town, just another high school Saturday night.

Jake had epilepsy or narcolepsy or something, I just couldn’t remember what.  ADD or chlamydia or something.  Diabetes, I think.  Would that make him sweat like this?  Is he overdosing?  Jesus, why I am the only sober person here?

I decide Jake’s got to go to the hospital.  I’m not old enough to have my license, but I’ve had driver’s ed so I think I can pull this off.

“I need your car keys,” I say as I fish around in the pocket of Mike’s jeans.  He runs a cold bottle of Rolling Rock up my leg around the edge of my skirt and says, “Yeah, but I need you.”

“Later,” I promise.  Mike is Jake’s brother, but I know he’s so messed up that he’s useless to me now.  He looks good in his black leather jacket; maybe he’ll give me that jacket later.  I’ll tell him about Jake when he’s sober, maybe tomorrow.

I bend over Jake to tell him I’m going to pick him up.  He doesn’t answer.  Good thing he’s a small guy and I’m a big girl.  I heave him over my shoulder and weave out of the house.  His heavy Docs bang against my stomach.  I wonder why my life is not more like a Molly Ringwald movie.

Sean is sprawled out on the hood of Mike’s car staring at the stars.

“Help me get him in the car, open the door, do something,” I say, staggering a bit.  I feel like I’m going to drop Jake.  On the bright side, I don’t think he’ll feel a thing.

Sean rolls off the hood and opens the passenger door.  We push Jake into the backseat of the car.  Sean takes shotgun and I drive down Pisgah Highway as fast as I can with the Ramones blasting out of the Buick’s stereo.“You know, you can’t check him into the hospital, man,” Sean shouts over the music.  “How are you gonna tell his parents what he’s been doin’ and how are you gonna tell your parents where you’ve been, man?”

Sean rambles on for a few minutes.  I get the picture.  Parents.  Police.  Nothing good could come of this.

We cruise through the parking lot of the emergency room, stereo down low, headlights off.  It’s dark and empty.  I see a wheelchair in a corner of the lot and I know what we’re going to do.

I let the car idle in the shadows and send Sean for the wheelchair.  We put Jake in the wheelchair; he slumps forward.  I feel around and, yes, his wallet is in his back pocket.  That’s good.  They’ll know who he is.  I get back in the car, put it in drive, ease up close to the entrance.  Sean is running with the wheelchair, then lets it go, rolling toward the automatic doors of the ER.  Sean jumps in the car and away we go like the Dukes of Hazzard.  I don’t look back because I don’t want to know if Jake was going so fast that he smacked into the automatic doors; I want to think they opened and he rolled right in.  Either way, he’d be taken care of and my parents wouldn’t have to know a thing.

Sean is kissing me while I drive back to the party, pulling my hair.  I can’t see much of the road but the streets are deserted.  The car weaves through all the lanes.  His kisses and the Ramones fill my brain.  Sean is not my boyfriend.  This is not my car.  I don’t even have a driver’s license.  I have an English paper due on Monday on a book I haven’t read.  My parents think I’m at Penny’s house.  There is no one named Penny at my school.   My period is late.  Sean smells like cloves and sweat.  Hey ho, let’s go…

Can I throw a little fiction at ya?

I’ve hesitated to publish any of my short stories or prose or vignettes or whatever, any of my fiction, online for a lot of reasons…I guess the main reason is that any time I’ve ever shared a story or a poem with someone, they immediately want to know who it’s really about.  “Is it about me? Is it about someone I know?”  It’s fiction, it’s made up.  Sure, it’s been inspired by people and places and movies and songs and everything in this goofy life of mine, but it’s made up.  It’s not about you.  It’s not about me.  It’s fiction.  OK? OK! OK.

But it is mine.  Kat’s.  Written by Kat.  Copyright Kat. Trademark Kat.  Not yours to copy. Amen.  So here we go…something from the Kat Fiction Archives in West Ashevegas:

I couldn’t write that day.  I had no words left; the guy with the green eyes tore all my words away, leaving me shaking and vulnerable.

 

The guys with the green eyes always take my words. 

 

I remember the tall one, the lanky man with the camera always within reach.  With every click of the shutter, he snapped away at my soul.  No, that’s not really true.

 

With every click of the shutter, I felt more and more alive, electric.  With every flash of light, I became beautiful, graceful and all the things I never was before; all the traits of the pretty girls I’d envied and feared were mine in the moments in front of his lens.

 

When the proofs were in my hands, I’d marvel at the confidence and radiance of the woman in those photos.  She was happy and in love and loved in return.  I knew she was some part of me, but she wasn’t the ‘public’ me.  She was the private me, the one only the tall man with the green eyes knew.

 

I have a photograph he took; I only saved a few, and this was one of the last images he snapped of me, just a quickie candid shot taken before I argued that I was too grungy to be on film.  In the photo, I’m looking up at a waterfall, only you don’t see the waterfall, just me gazing upward.  I kept it because it reminds me of my ignorance.  We’d just spent the whole weekend together at his request, and the hike to the falls was the icing on the cake of our adventure.  I stared up at the rocks and the water and thought about how fantastic it was to be sweaty and dirty in the midst of all nature’s glory with a man who obviously loves me.  I felt so comfortable, so safe and at ease with him and with myself.

 

Only an hour after that photo was taken as we drove out of the woods and back to the harsh realities of the city, the green-eyed photographer announced that he didn’t love me.  Not only did he not love me, but he could never love me because I was much fatter than any other woman he’d dated.  It just wouldn’t do for a man as sexy as he to be seen with someone like me. 

 

Someone like me?  I wanted to ask what that meant, but I had no words.  I rested my head against the cool window of the car and watched the world whiz by.

 

Later that night, I sat down with my journal and discovered that though the ink in my pen still flowed, my words had dried up and wouldn’t come out onto the page.  The next day, he emailed me the photos from our trip, said he’d hoped I wasn’t mad and hoped we could still hang out.  I hit the reply button, but found I still had nothing to say, so I hit the cancel button and mourned the loss of my ability to communicate.

 

Seasons changed and in the winter of the same year, there was another green-eyed gentleman, the gameboy.  When he wasn’t fawning over me, he was playing a computer game, some computer game, any computer game until his green eyes were bloodshot.  He adored me.  The gameboy told me he loved me.  I said it was too soon for me to know yet about love.  He said we should move in together.  I said if we’re still together in six months we should consider it.  He said goodbye, said I was distant and cold and good luck finding someone who would put up with my crap.  I said nothing, because of course I wasn’t able to utter a single syllable in my own defense.  All my words followed him silently out the front door and into the night.  I watched the taillights of his car until they disappeared.

 

Years later, I met another green-eyed man, the man who gave me the hour-long hugs.  Under the apple tree, he hugged me tight to him beneath the stars and as I breathed the scent of his neck, my words flooded back in a rush.  My muse was alive and well.  Inspired by affection, I wrote poems.  I wrote stories.  I sent letters.  I fired off a million and one emails to everyone I knew.  I scribbled little bits of nonsense on Post It notes.  I filled my journal and ran out of ink in my favorite pen.  I posted ramblings on the Internet.  I had so many words I just couldn’t keep them all to myself.

 

He hugged me.  He touched my face and I blushed.  He scratched my back at lunchtime while the summer heat made my skin sticky.  I could hardly keep still long enough to savor those times; I wanted to scamper off and write it all down.

 

The man with green eyes who gave me fantastic hugs one day decided he couldn’t be around, that the child whose hand was tight in mine was a burden he didn’t want to be saddled with as he gallivanted through life.  She’s not a burden, she’s an angel, she’s part of me, she’s amazing and fantastic…all the things I wanted to say, but I couldn’t even scream in pain.  My throat had closed and again my words were gone.

 

I thought the words were gone forever until I met the man with the brown eyes.  The sound of his laughter broke the dam that held my communication in check.  I could say anything, write anything, expose my secrets and he still smiled.  He held the hand of my child and made everything right in my fragile world. 

 

Today in the sunlight, I will stare at him hard to make certain that his eyes aren’t the slightest bit green.

 

 

 

Memorize

The curve of an arm

Backlit by the morning sun

Memorize

The scent that lingers

Just behind the jaw

Memorize

The feeling of bliss and

Cozy familiarity

Memorize

The possibilities

Before they disappear