pre-April Flash Challenge 2 & 3

and the prompts were…. 1) “it was that girl smell”, “his family had no sense of humor” (pardon me in advance, this flash was done under the influence of Vicoden and antibiotics)

It was the girl smell. The truth was, everything smelled like the girl these days. It was a scent that could not be defined or explained away by the undercurrent of other things – a dinner cooking on the stove, the smell of salt water air and cinnamon twists. It permeated the reality of everything that was and became something else. And the scent shifted in other moments. The pressure of a hand on the curl of your stomach deep into the night, after falling asleep, exhausted in a pile on a rumpled bed. It was a scent I caught, despite how many times I showered, bathed or put on cologne. It was everywhere. It was like the air had taken on a new texture to remind myself constantly of her existence. And now that I knew her, I knew I couldn’t go back to a world where I didn’t. It was enticingly provocative. Alluring. Addictive.

She liked to be awoken, in more ways than one with the sweetest of gentle kisses. My fingers often found their way in the early morning hours curled through her hair, wrapped around the beauty of a naked shoulder – skin to skin in a mess of blankets. She’d sigh in her sleep, and the corners of her mouth would smile in the knowing of dreams. She never spoke of them upon waking, but I could see the realities of fairy tales come to life with the sparkle in her eyes. The truth was, the girl glowed constantly. It’s like she was alive with a spark that had been raging for years without the joy of fulfillment, until now. Like she always knew this moment would come. Maybe I was the wind that whipped that spark into a fire. Or maybe it was just the dreaming of what could be. It was for me.

I found myself lost in the various curves of her skin when I least expected it. The prominent hip bone, poking out gently past the rise of her jeans that begged kissing – awakening. She moved under me constantly, a reminder that the best of things are completely incapable of remaining still – stagnant. we moved together like waves, often and in her, I constantly had a sense of drowning – not in a way to claim my life, but to renew it. I was learning to breathe under water in fragmented gasps and moonlight whispers. And when the moonlight touched her face, I felt like a shooting star. That was the way it was, really – the way it was supposed to be, with her. We were two night creatures – two galaxies of our own making, colliding together like an errant evolution, creating a world of our own. And the reality of this was we were our own little creators – making life out of nothingness, moving over the surface of the waters, and bringing high tide.

I tried to express this knowledge to others. And my father’s kitchen table, splintered and broken in with the weight of a thousand fist pounding arguments, leaving wood chips in my palms and a fire in my belly, I spoke of the certainty of maybe – of a lost hope, long ago abandoned, reawakened. The truth was she had lit a fire in me as well, and I thought no drought on earth would ever be able to act towards its extinction. I realized that the dynamic of family had changed – that home was not a building made of walls, a floor or a ceiling. He looked at me, like he so often did – like I had lost my one remaining marble. Shook his head and condemned me to a life of unhappiness, not realizing for a moment that I was no longer bound by the wishes of vengeful men. What sway did mortals have over stars? I had become something else, and called home elsewhere. But that family…that reality was a quickly fading memory of sad, in a world that was alight with the beauty of hope. Then again, his family had no sense of humor. They weren’t mine, anymore.

prompt: there was a full person’s worth of skin and hair in her drain

She didn’t know how it happened, really. One minute the world was a calm, peaceful place and the innocence of life was something to be reveled in. A merry tune to be danced to, celebrated and expanded. Its amazing, how quickly some things change. And now she wanted to remove it – remove the memory, scratch it from her brain, burn the images from her eyes and awaken to a new world. But there were scars on the world now, an overlying layer of tissue, a residue that could not be gorged out. She had been caught unaware, painfully ripped from the underbelly of hope and had been given a new reality that she was unprepared for. She stumbled, bleeding from the alley out into the street. Passers-by stared in horror or shock at her appearance but their revulsion was overcome by their apathy. Not one offered to help. No one lent a helping hand. No one went out of their way, going about their busy life that did not contain a smidgen of a moment to help a stranger. Any stranger. Least of all, her. She knew she looked a mess.

She stumbled towards home in the dark, streetlights blinking forbodingly, as if daring her to go further. Daring her to stop. Daring her to continue. It seemed a lifetime of effort was expended in moments, the will it took to move one foot in front of the other. Inhale – ignore the stabbing pain in her chest, ignore the blood that made the world slick, wet and sticky. Ignore the nightmare going on behind her eyes. Ignore the stares of the ignorant and oppressive. Then, footsteps. Distinctive footsteps. Not that. Please, not that. She quickened her pace, keeping time like a metronome, faster – always faster. Her raw hand scraped the rough edge of the brick building on the corner. They had coffee there twice a week. A hot cup of Java would never be the same again, knowing the nightmare that lurked around the corner. There was danger everywhere now, in the lilies that had fallen, broken from her hands. In the glow of moonlight and the sweetness of a summer stroll in the dark. And the dark was breathing with a life of its own now, a pulse of movement that matched her rapid, increasing heartbeat. The broken wooden stairs of her building acted like a demented jungle gym, catching the rip in her jeans and sending her sprawling. Her head met the stair above with a sickening crack. As the stars swam before her eyes, she pushed herself back to standing, and when her legs gave way, she crawled. On the third floor landing, she stumbled for her keys. Straight through the hallway, past the bedroom and the kitchen to the bathroom where she cranked the water to scalding and didn’t even bother taking the time to get undressed before crawling into the porcelain safety of the tub. She shakily ran her fingers through her hair, her eyes squeezed shut against the pounding of the incessant watery violation. She sat there a long time. She scratched at invisible wounds, wondering what it would be like to vanish, to swirl around in a wild abandon puddling around the drain before being sucked in by it. She wondered. When she opened her eyes, there was a full person’s worth of skin and hair in her drain.

And she stood, then – a creature transformed. An avenging angel, feathered wings spread against the night, knowing that this becoming had been necessary, and that all living things needed

to change. But she wouldn’t remember.

She rolled over in her sleep and smiled, unaware – and a single black feather traced a line across her cheek in the flow of the air conditioner humming in the background before settling gracefully on her pillow – a moment of memory before an inevitable surrender.

new prompts:

Temporary permanence, Stop-loss, Blur the lines