I wrote stuff!
Jan. 28th, 2013 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosI have two flash fiction pieces due for my fiction class this weekend, and I've been starting and not finishing stuff since last weekend. But I finished one! So, you know, yaaaaaaaaay.
*
Emily awakens to the purring rumble of a car engine igniting in spite of where she still sits, lost in the bowels of a forest she doesn't recognize. She must be dreaming again.
She nods off like this a lot, sitting upright in the rain with dim sunlight filtered through thick clouds still battering at her eyelids. She's read rescue stories before, four-page exclusive interviews in the three-year-old Reader's Digests at the pediatrician's office. People who get lost in the woods always seem to get found eventually, tripped over by local hunters or discovered by a troop of meandering Boy Scouts. They're fed water and jerky, granola bars or apples. Someone throws a blanket over their shoulders, some rough musty thing they found in their car's cluttered trunk. If they listen carefully, they can even hear the song that will play over the rescue scene in the harrowing movie about their ordeal, something slow but poppy, too grating for the radio, just grating enough for the Oscars. Taylor Swift could sing about her, if she crosses her fingers.
Maybe Anne Hathaway could play me in the movie, Emily thinks, and giggles at the mental image. It's a silly thought. Anne's too thin by half, too delicate, doesn't have enough scars or the right crooked angle to her nose.
She'll just wait here until someone comes. She's not uncomfortable, not hurt or in pain. She's not even hungry. Even if she were hungry, she knows she can handle it. She's got practice, after all.
Emily isn't quite sure how long she's been the woods. After a while, time just doesn't seem to register. There's this paper-thin memory she has of something her high school history teacher once said, about time being something people made up to keep track of things animals don't give a damn about. It makes sense out here among the rain-dampened trees, her feet threatening to sink ankle-deep into the rotting leaves carpeting the forest floor if she ventures into it.
She stays where she is, though. Her mother once told her, "If you're ever lost, just stay where you are and someone will find you." Emily's grown now, of course, all grown up with no place to go, but the warning sticks. She stays put.
If nothing else, the place where she's lost is beautiful. She doesn't recognize where she is from the post she's taken, cross-legged and lonely on a muddy mound of earth, but the view of the forest spills out before her like a dirty ruffled skirt tossed onto a bedroom floor. Trees shoot up through the humid mist like delirious cracks of lightning, dark and lost and going in the wrong direction. The rain doesn't fall straight from the sky, but ricochets off leaves and branches it's struck during its trip to the ground instead.
Occasionally, thunder snaps through the air in a low whipcrack. Emily once told her girls that thunder was God's tummy rumbling, and the rain was his tears. Sometimes it made God mad that he couldn't give everyone a happy ending, that some little girls would have to get stuck with ketchup sandwiches and angry daddies. So when thunder rumbled, that was when God went hungry, too.
The girls liked that story. Whether or not they believed it, of course, Emily never thought to ask.
Emily's bare toes squish in the mud she sits on, digging in like a baby's grabby fingers. She could sit anywhere in this forest, her own natural playground, but she likes it here for some reason. It makes her feel better, even though she doesn't know how long she's been lost, or where her shoes went, or why the rain never quits. Her honeymoon was like this, a week at a campsite in Ohio when it poured for days and the lake overflowed and Carl still wouldn't pack up their tent and go.
Emily wonders, not for the first time, if Carl's gathered a search party yet.
She tilts her head back, and raindrops spatter across her face like sprayed blood. It's a good warm rain, the kind she send her girls out to play in. She tucks them into Carl's old fishing hats, Goodwill slickers and Walmart galoshes, garishly pink with equally garish yellow plastic flowers glued to the toes. Then she sends them out into the rain, stands at the door and keeps an eye out for Carl's truck, watches them splash through puddles and thanks God for the kind of childhood fun that doesn't require expensive tickets.
She wriggles her rear in the mud, the underwear she's been left wearing soaking up the muck like a wet paper towel soaking up some hideous stain, and she laughs. She shouldn't be this happy to be out here alone, away from her girls, half-naked and lost, but suddenly there's lightness in her. She could float away, she thinks, just drift away on the breeze like a forgotten receipt discarded in a busy parking lot.
Off in the trees, she hears footsteps.
Even when wet, the leaves squish out a warning, and she scrambles to her feet to peer into the misty depths. She thinks about deer or bears or fat pouncing squirrels, but crosses her fingers and hopes for people. Shadows appear through the tangle of trees, turn solid and dark, then grow faces and limbs and clothing. Emily squints, spotting badges on their belts which catch the dull light and flicker weakly.
In the front, shuffling strangely, is Carl.
The closer they come, the lighter Emily feels, and she waves at them, a wide-arm gesture which arcs over her head. She doesn't feel the mud underfoot or the rain dripping onto her head anymore. It might as well be dripping through her. She's been found, and she'll be safe. She can leave now.
When they move closer, she sees Carl's hands. They hang limp in front of him like dead, lifeless sacks. The officer beside him clutches his elbow, helping him up the slick hillside to Emily's muddy perch. They stop just in front of her, and Emily's smile doesn't flicker, not even when she notices the handcuffs.
She's never felt this light before, this airy, this insubstantial. Yes, she can go now.
Carl's gaze passes through her, then down, down like a weight, down to the muddy mound she stands on.
"Here," he grumbles. "She's buried here."
*
Emily awakens to the purring rumble of a car engine igniting in spite of where she still sits, lost in the bowels of a forest she doesn't recognize. She must be dreaming again.
She nods off like this a lot, sitting upright in the rain with dim sunlight filtered through thick clouds still battering at her eyelids. She's read rescue stories before, four-page exclusive interviews in the three-year-old Reader's Digests at the pediatrician's office. People who get lost in the woods always seem to get found eventually, tripped over by local hunters or discovered by a troop of meandering Boy Scouts. They're fed water and jerky, granola bars or apples. Someone throws a blanket over their shoulders, some rough musty thing they found in their car's cluttered trunk. If they listen carefully, they can even hear the song that will play over the rescue scene in the harrowing movie about their ordeal, something slow but poppy, too grating for the radio, just grating enough for the Oscars. Taylor Swift could sing about her, if she crosses her fingers.
Maybe Anne Hathaway could play me in the movie, Emily thinks, and giggles at the mental image. It's a silly thought. Anne's too thin by half, too delicate, doesn't have enough scars or the right crooked angle to her nose.
She'll just wait here until someone comes. She's not uncomfortable, not hurt or in pain. She's not even hungry. Even if she were hungry, she knows she can handle it. She's got practice, after all.
Emily isn't quite sure how long she's been the woods. After a while, time just doesn't seem to register. There's this paper-thin memory she has of something her high school history teacher once said, about time being something people made up to keep track of things animals don't give a damn about. It makes sense out here among the rain-dampened trees, her feet threatening to sink ankle-deep into the rotting leaves carpeting the forest floor if she ventures into it.
She stays where she is, though. Her mother once told her, "If you're ever lost, just stay where you are and someone will find you." Emily's grown now, of course, all grown up with no place to go, but the warning sticks. She stays put.
If nothing else, the place where she's lost is beautiful. She doesn't recognize where she is from the post she's taken, cross-legged and lonely on a muddy mound of earth, but the view of the forest spills out before her like a dirty ruffled skirt tossed onto a bedroom floor. Trees shoot up through the humid mist like delirious cracks of lightning, dark and lost and going in the wrong direction. The rain doesn't fall straight from the sky, but ricochets off leaves and branches it's struck during its trip to the ground instead.
Occasionally, thunder snaps through the air in a low whipcrack. Emily once told her girls that thunder was God's tummy rumbling, and the rain was his tears. Sometimes it made God mad that he couldn't give everyone a happy ending, that some little girls would have to get stuck with ketchup sandwiches and angry daddies. So when thunder rumbled, that was when God went hungry, too.
The girls liked that story. Whether or not they believed it, of course, Emily never thought to ask.
Emily's bare toes squish in the mud she sits on, digging in like a baby's grabby fingers. She could sit anywhere in this forest, her own natural playground, but she likes it here for some reason. It makes her feel better, even though she doesn't know how long she's been lost, or where her shoes went, or why the rain never quits. Her honeymoon was like this, a week at a campsite in Ohio when it poured for days and the lake overflowed and Carl still wouldn't pack up their tent and go.
Emily wonders, not for the first time, if Carl's gathered a search party yet.
She tilts her head back, and raindrops spatter across her face like sprayed blood. It's a good warm rain, the kind she send her girls out to play in. She tucks them into Carl's old fishing hats, Goodwill slickers and Walmart galoshes, garishly pink with equally garish yellow plastic flowers glued to the toes. Then she sends them out into the rain, stands at the door and keeps an eye out for Carl's truck, watches them splash through puddles and thanks God for the kind of childhood fun that doesn't require expensive tickets.
She wriggles her rear in the mud, the underwear she's been left wearing soaking up the muck like a wet paper towel soaking up some hideous stain, and she laughs. She shouldn't be this happy to be out here alone, away from her girls, half-naked and lost, but suddenly there's lightness in her. She could float away, she thinks, just drift away on the breeze like a forgotten receipt discarded in a busy parking lot.
Off in the trees, she hears footsteps.
Even when wet, the leaves squish out a warning, and she scrambles to her feet to peer into the misty depths. She thinks about deer or bears or fat pouncing squirrels, but crosses her fingers and hopes for people. Shadows appear through the tangle of trees, turn solid and dark, then grow faces and limbs and clothing. Emily squints, spotting badges on their belts which catch the dull light and flicker weakly.
In the front, shuffling strangely, is Carl.
The closer they come, the lighter Emily feels, and she waves at them, a wide-arm gesture which arcs over her head. She doesn't feel the mud underfoot or the rain dripping onto her head anymore. It might as well be dripping through her. She's been found, and she'll be safe. She can leave now.
When they move closer, she sees Carl's hands. They hang limp in front of him like dead, lifeless sacks. The officer beside him clutches his elbow, helping him up the slick hillside to Emily's muddy perch. They stop just in front of her, and Emily's smile doesn't flicker, not even when she notices the handcuffs.
She's never felt this light before, this airy, this insubstantial. Yes, she can go now.
Carl's gaze passes through her, then down, down like a weight, down to the muddy mound she stands on.
"Here," he grumbles. "She's buried here."
