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....

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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The Candy Seller--Part One

Hello everyone!  I've been working on a new story--a new short story.  It's called 'The Candy Seller' (I think you might've gathered that much from the title--if not, you're free to read anyway.) This is what I've finished 'til now.  Hope you like it!

*

THE CANDY SELLER

It was dark.  The moonlight danced its way to fill the gaps between the few trees that stood wearily in the middle of the road.  The air was heavy with unwelcome dust and smoke, and if you stood still long enough, you could hear the trees groaning, and the female birds silently comforting their children, who were complaining about how hard it was to breathe in the foul breeze that blew.

None of this, however, was noticed by the girl who roamed the streets at night, looking for a place to sleep or a half-eaten sandwich carelessly tossed into one of the bins on the sidewalk.  The world had been like this—smelly, dirty, foul—ever since she had been born, and so she never questioned the absence of fresh air—she didn’t know what it was.

The girl had blue eyes, and if you looked closely enough, you would see the starlight reflected in them.  Her mother, before she had died of illness, had told her to look at the stars whenever she felt abandoned, or alone; she had told her the stars would be her friends, ready to lift her out of any darkness that was unfortunate enough to have crossed her path.  No, she was never unfortunate.  It was always the darkness that was unfortunate, her mother would say.  For soon her inner light would vanquish the darkness, and the world would shine and sparkle once more, as it always had.  But she also reminded her that without darkness, light would not have existed.  And so one must also allow a little sadness into one’s life. 

She now sat in front of a shop she had found the other day.  The sweet, stuffy smell of golden-brown caramel filled the air.  The old bearded man would come out any moment now.  She remembered how he had talked to her the other day when she had asked him for a rabbit-shaped chocolate. 

*

This is only the first installment, Part Two's coming soon (if I don't leave this story midway like all the others.  I really do hope I don't, because that says a thousand words about my...perseverance, you could say.)  Anyway, thank you for reading, and see you soon!  

Oh, and check out Melissa Chelsey's blog, I just found it, and she's awesome!

She's got a book coming out soon, I think, I don't know.  
Cheers!

Want to check out more of my writing?  Click here! (I've never quite got this bit right in my posts.  I'm still unsure how to phrase this part correctly....and without sounding like a troll.)

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