The Wall: Part Four

For Part One, click here.
For Part Two, click here. 
For Part Three, click here. 

She sat huddled in a corner. The day's events had drained the life out of her--she laughed sadly. How ironic, she thought, that this thought should occur to her mere hours after being told that she was immortal. 

The boys had asked her to stay with them, and she had agreed wholeheartedly. She couldn't see why she should not have.  She needed friends now that she knew she was going to be stuck here for the rest of her life anyway. 

“Rose," her father had said to her once, when she was smaller, “Be good to everyone you meet, because the countries of the world are taking up arms against each other, and might be at war with each other very soon. By then, it will be too late to apologize for past wrongs.  Be kind." The tears had dried on her cheeks.

And her brother, two years older than her, he was her rock, her guide, she would go to him when she wanted to talk about her troubles at school, or things she thought her parents would not enjoy hearing.  He humoured her even when she could tell he didn't find her words very interesting.  Where was he now? Was he even--no! She would not allow herself to think--she must be strong.

Now she allowed her thoughts to drift towards her present condition. Really, the High Council had no right to change them, much less this fundamentally. Then there was also the off chance that they were lying.

How was she to know? There was no way for her to find out stuck in this stupid bunker.  Of course, there was no other alternative really, now that the Earth was ridden with nuclear radiation from the--oh, yes, there'd been a war, too. She shook her head. After all these years of living peacefully--although they had seen the war coming, given the tension between certain countries--it was still very sad that humans had chosen to end this way.

But her mother had said that after a great fall, there was almost always a great triumph.

She'd been careful to remember the ‘almost'.

Was it possible, however remotely, that they would go home sometime?

Home.

The word stung.  She took a deep breath of the artificially purified air.  Everything was artificial here.  Except intelligence. Humans had learned not to mess with robots after the Fall of 2020, and that was enough to stop them from building advanced humanoids ever again. Now it was just machines--vacuum cleaners, computers, ACs. Innovation in the technological sector had been stalled for years after that, or so the governments said.

Of course, if they had found a way for humans to stay immortal, they wouldn't run around with banners proclaiming it.

Funnily enough, they still hadn't found a cure for cancer. That would have been on the news. 

She tried to stop the morbid thoughts racing through her mind, but there was nothing else she could think about except her family, and where they were, and other questions she had no answers to.

(To be continued...)

Carnival: Part Two

Hello everyone, this is the second part of the short story I'd started writing.  For Part One of Carnival, please click here.

Part Two



Robin chuckled to himself as he remembered his plan; he'd almost forgotten it for a few minutes there.  He'd left the painting in his studio in plain sight: heck, you could even see it from the roof of the Carnival Tower if you wanted to. Of course, she hadn't known that. She probably thought she'd stolen it.

He wondered if she herself would recognize the signs she kept talking about: signs someone is lying to you, signs someone is feeling uncomfortable, signs someone is in love with you--he smiled and grabbed her diary off of his desk, and turned to the last story.

It was called “Carnival".

Nice story--I've read it once, he thought, but I'd still like to read it again.  It was about two people, Jason and Rita, and each was madly in love with the other, but neither could work up the courage to share the way they felt.

Kind of like us, he thought--and corrected himself-- like me.  He still didn't know if she loved him.  He read on.

Rita was a writer, and Jason was a painter. Rita liked rainbows and starry nights and dreamed of falling in love one day (with one particular person), while Jason loved watching the sunsets, and generally busied himself with thoughts about weaving the things she liked into one of his own paintings: nothing too conspicuous, just a faint rainbow with daisies in the foreground, the sun still hiding behind the puffy white clouds.

They had met on a park bench on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and just when neither of them had felt the day could get any better, it did.  

And after that, of course, there was the usual exchange of phone numbers and the phone calls that went long into the starry nights, and secret meeting places, too.  The rocky patch near the creek in the forest was their favourite.  After Jason finished art school and Rita, her degree in English Literature, they would spend a large part of their days together, him painting, and her conjuring a story out of what she saw and believed.  



Robin sighed.  Jason and Rita--although they were characters in a story--had found happiness in each other, a kind of happiness he would, possibly, never find, and he didn't know if it--

That's it, he thought, and stopped himself.

To hell with this 'what if she doesn't love me' nonsense!  If she does, excellent, and if she doesn't, I can always move on.  No big deal.

He carefully placed the diary back on the table, wrote out a note for Laura, and grabbed his bike and sped off to the candy store.

*

(To be continued...)

Carnival: Part One

Part One

 

“If you have even one solitary light guiding you, remember, you are not alone in the tunnel of darkness. But even if you have no candles to light your path, look skyward, and rebehold the stars.  They will be your companions."

He remembered the words Laura had written in her little black book. 

Laura.

The girl with hair as dark as black coffee, who wore the same shirt every morning she opened the candy store at eight in the morning. 

Laura, with her beautiful stories and her pretty, sad smile.

“Believe in yourself!" the sea-blue coloured shirt read. A powerful message worn by a not-so-powerful woman.

But now, he had not seen her in a week. He wondered where she was--he missed her, and although they hadn't talked much, he had guessed everything about her, because of the little black book she'd left on the counter by mistake--or had it been intentional? As far as he knew from the book, Laura was not the kind of person who'd leave her things lying around, unless, of course, she had wanted someone to see them. Maybe she had left it for someone else? Mr. Marlon, perhaps?  The idea puzzled him. Mr. Marlon was reserved, unwilling to share his thoughts with even the closest of his acquaintances. Were Laura and Marlon friends of some sort? No, they couldn't be.

Could she have left it for a customer? He discarded the idea, it had too many variables.

She must have left it for him.

He shook his head, not wanting to distract himself from his painting of the end of a dark tunnel. He would have time to think about it later.

He looked around the room, feeling something was amiss, but maybe it was just because he'd been thinking of Laura.

                                                                       

   *

She sat on the hard, wooden chair she had got from the old lady across the street.  Stealing the painting had been easy--(what kind of artist keeps his studio unlocked when he's going to be outside for the whole day?)--the hard part was looking at it. She examined the masterpiece in her hands. Every stroke, every colour was perfect, just as she had imagined it. The snow, a grayish pearly white, the trees, bare, the sun, nonexistent within the painting, and her heart, broken.

No, he doesn't know about that.... Or does he? He could have found out from Mr. Marlon, for all she knew. 

But then he never talked to the old man except if he wanted him to pose for a portrait. Even then, the exchanges had been minimal.

The only question now was if he'd been clever enough to take her diary off the counter that day.

She noticed he had signed his name--Robin--in the corner of the painting, in black.

Every story she had ever written was about him, every last one. He was not mentioned in the most obvious of ways--by his name--but she had made sure all of them included things he liked-- the sunset, snow, children ice skating, shafts of sunlight cutting through the gaps in the leaves in autumn. She had been daring enough to make two of her characters, Jason and Rita--very similar to herself and Robin--fall in love.  That was the last story she'd written in the book.

She'd called it "Carnival".

To be continued....

Follow Your Heart.

So this guy got one of the top two places in a short story writing contest last year!  Hope y'all like it!

 

 

FOLLOW YOUR HEART

 

WHAM!

 

Amelia slammed on her brakes with a screech; her blue Honda Fit swerved violently before it finally came to a stop in front of the green traffic light. People honked behind her as she got out of the car. She ran to the spot where the cyclist she had just hit sat rubbing his forehead. A police officer stood next to him with a bottle of water.

 

“We’re letting you off this time, ma’am, but if it happens again, you’re gonna get a sure trip to jail,” the officer said, handing her a speeding ticket. Amelia fumbled in her purse for her wallet.

 

She frowned; she’d left it on the dresser. Again. She looked apologetically at the officer, who shook his head and turned away. She glanced at her watch: half past ten already?! She bolted to her car (which was pretty difficult considering her attire consisted of a floral skirt and a purple-and-green plaid coat), slammed the door, and stepped on the gas. Her boss was going to get really angry. She was certain he was going to fire her.

 

Over the past year, Amelia had been trying her hand at writing. One of her articles, titled ‘The Bush Effect', which was about the problems the former U.S. President’s ‘trickle-down’ policy had on the economy, had gone absolutely viral. It was so popular she even thought about leaving her job and devoting all of her time to writing. After that, she wrote a particularly provocative article about the White House travel office controversy; it was not well received, and editor after editor turned it down. Not one magazine wanted to publish her articles because they were afraid of getting kicked out of business. Gradually, she lost interest in writing, and after a few months she stopped altogether. Amelia was devastated.

She’d lit a matchstick in the fireplace and torn and burnt all of her manuscripts one by one—she could still remember the crackling sound that had ensued as they were reduced to ashes. Her brain told her to pay attention to her work, but her heart told her to get back to writing.

 

She had listened to her brain, and she regretted it, even now.

 

Amelia turned left. She could hear a cardinal whistling and the rustling of leaves. She stopped and looked long at the majestic red bird strutting across the branch of the tree, and suddenly in her heart she knew that what she had been doing all these days was simply out of fear. She’d stuck to what she was comfortable with, even though she knew it wasn’t right—for her. And now the universe was making her pay for it.

 

She parked her car in the lot and got out. She knew what she had to do. She walked

towards her boss’s office and waited until he opened the door for her.

 

“Amelia—”

 

“I know; I’m resigning.”

 

“What?” he looked shocked; he’d wanted to do the honours. “Why?”

 

“It’s too stressful in here for me....especially after last year. I’ve just realized I like writing more than sitting around worrying about money and credit. I’m not into this anymore.”

 

“Well, it’s your choice. Good luck.”

 

Two weeks later, Amelia was driving her Honda with the windows rolled down and the sun on her cheeks. She was finally back on track.

 

She smiled. She just had the coolest idea for an article!

*

 

Thank you for reading!  Please comment/ like/ share if you liked it.

Hasta la vista, amigos!

 



The Candy Seller--Part Two

Hello, everyone!  I'd said that the second part of my story called 'The Candy Seller' would be out soon, and here it is!

Hope you like it.

*

“Hello there, young lady, what can I do for you?” he had asked, smiling.

“Oh, well,” she hesitated, but fought off the fear of being reprimanded and breathed, “Could-you-please-give-me-a-rabbit-shaped-chocolate?”

“Of course,” he had said as he produced one (seemingly) out of nowhere, wrapped in shimmering gold paper and a sparkling red bow tied on top, dead centre.

The girl grinned and fumbled around in her pocket, her ears straining to hear the characteristic ‘clank’ of metal upon metal.

It was empty.

Apparently the candy seller had realized the enormity of her situation: “You can have it anyway, child.”

The girl frowned—she did not like being pitied.  Her love for chocolates—or rabbit-shaped chocolates, in particular—eventually won the ensuing internal battle.  The old man placed the box into her hand gingerly.

“Thank you, mister!” the girl exclaimed happily, her eyes twinkling—the world was a beautiful place, she said to herself.

She looked up to see the candy seller still standing there, smiling at her. 

She grinned back.

And that was how a young girl who had no home to live in and an old man who was a candy seller became friends.

*

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