I got stories!
Jun. 21st, 2015 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniSo -- there's a woman in my reading circle: dialecticdreamer, who's pretty nifty. And every second Monday of the month, she hosts "Magpie Monday," and asks folks to give her prompts (like a magpie, she just wants to collect the ALL the shiny!). Then she spends the day, from wake-up to can't-keep-eyes-open, writing ALL THE THINGS.
So, this last Magpie Monday (the 8th), she posted a theme for the month: "Equal does not mean 'Identical'!"
I prompted her with my own retelling of the British folktale Sammle's Ghost. And she responded by writing this (in just a couple hours!! <3):
The streets were soggy with water, drowning beneath a steel-gray night where not one star could be seen. Even the street lamps struggled, hazy yellow glow as feeble and unfriendly as an old man's crooked teeth as they marked a path from the graveyard toward… everywhere else, really.
Samuel sighed, and set out -again- on his endless journey.
The Great Worm had not told him he had died, it had been pretty simple to figure that out, but Samuel had needed the help of another spirit to decide what to do about it instead of simply wandering forever. He'd made his way to the Great Worm, only to be told that he had to gather his own ashes, every speck and chip of bone.
The rain dripped through his insubstantial body, unhindered.
But every drop in the sheeting, miserable deluge reminded him of his mother's soothing voice, reassuring him that “Rain is only the angels crying, little Shmuel.”
Every drop brought another memory, bittersweet, grieving, lonely, or painful.
Sometimes, all of them at once.
Samuel picked a direction simply by continuing to move. There were few spirits here, so close to the graveyard, and even fewer living souls, so close to the reminder of Death.
His death hadn't been much of anything, really. He'd simply… woken up… a little different than he had been. Still Sammle, for all that it mattered. Even finding his ashes hadn't appeased the Great Worm and allowed him to rest.
Another spirit drifted by, hunched and flinching with every drop of rain, as though beset by hammer-blows. Samuel hurried toward them, spreading his arm around the other figure and leaning close. Some of the shivering stopped, and when the figure raised their face to look at him, one eye was nebulous and cloudy, like tea left in the sun.
The other was empty and desolate, only a space.
“The Great Worm… Whatever He actually is, “GREAT,” isn't the right word!” she spat. Her jaw was fine and narrow beneath prominent cheekbones, making her face seem heart-shaped.
“What has happened?” Samuel nudged her forward, guiding her down to a subway entrance. “I'm Samuel,” he added absently.
“I was on the way home from work, doing the crossword. Something rumbled, something snapped,” she began. Samuel tightened his embrace, then leaned back. She didn't sound particularly upset by her death.
“You know you died?” he ventured carefully.
“Of course,” she snorted, rolling her cloudy eye at him.
“Then...” he trailed off, unwilling to ask directly.
She brightened as she ran her fingers a few inches above a round concrete pillar. “I know all the stops in the network,” she told him. “My name's Maria.”
He nodded, letting her lead the way. His arm rested on her shoulders lightly now, connecting them in the damp and echoing space. The platform held nothing but litter, and the announcement board was unlit.
They passed to the end of the platform, dropping to the narrow path between the outer rail and the wall. Maria trailed her hand over an occasional splash of graffiti, shaking her head as the last marking passed behind them. “Fools, the lot of them. Think they're immortal, they do! I've had to tell more than one of them the news.”
“You've...” Samuel paused, unsure how to ask the question.
“Been here awhile?” Maria informed him. “Yes.”
“Why did the rain affect you so?” He paused, stiff and cautious, as a squeaking, shifting movement of the darkness ran past.
Maria laughed gently. “It's only a rat. Haven't seen many, have you?”
He shook his head. “You're older than me,” Samuel began, lilting the words into a question. “Had you been to visit the Great Worm? Is that why you were leaving the graveyard?”
She nodded, but did not speak again until they saw the lights of the next subway platform, and heard the rumble of human heartbeats beneath the hum of lights and chatter and mundane life. “When we get up the stairs, we'll be near the old library on Oak Street, which shut down the year before I died. If it's still raining...” she bit her lip. “I might need your help to get to it. We need to get to the back door, the steps to the basement. The doors' boarded up, but there's a bit of broken window visible. Picture reaching through it, and one of the others will pull you through. We're safe there.”
All the words seemed to exhaust her. Samuel let his gaze roam over the trio of young-ish men in suit jackets and slacks, wearing tennis shoes and thick woolen caps in deference to their commute. Near them, an old man curled into a seat, hunched and broken. One tiptoed over, waving a hand behind him to shush his companions. He drew a breath, his dress shirt straining to contain the man's simmering life, and held it.
Gentle fingers slipped a folded bill beneath the old man's chin, tucking it into the pocket on his worn flannel shirt. The younger man was already backing away when a tug at Samuel's waist distracted him.
Sammle wanted to see, wanted to know what happened next, but Maria was tugging him toward the stairs again, with her hand looped around his waist. “Don't worry about either of them,” she told him gently. “Let's just worry about getting through this horrible rain.”
Samuel forced his feet to stop on the landing, still sheltered from the unfriendly night sky. “Maria. What's bothering you so much about the rain? If it's…” he felt himself draw in a breath he would never need again, then rushed out, “If it's how you died, I'm confused.”
“My death was simple. Easy, really. I've never been one to bemoan what can't be helped. It's...” Maria trembled. “When I … the first thing I felt, here, was someone digging into my face, tearing away...” She waved toward the empty eye socket.
Samuel's heart seemed to fall through his body, and his head rocked back and forth in automatic denial.
“Another spirit,” she added. “He needed his eye back, you understand, to appease the Great Worm and his ridiculous rules. I'd gotten it intact in a transplant, oh, twenty-seven years before. I'd probably had it three or four years longer than the damnfool motorcyclist who took it back so forcefully, but the Great Worm insists that the other spirit was born with it, so it's HIS. That young man is in for a disappointment, though. The Worm isn't nearly as fair and logical as He presents himself.”
“And that's--?” He shivered again.
Maria nodded. “That's what I think and feel with every drop of rain.” She ran a shaking hand over her eyes, then stiffened her spine. “The loss, the arguments with the Worm,” she spat. One foot tapped soundlessly on the concrete landing. “Come on, it's no use putting this off. Remember, the back entrance. Broken window.”
She moved away a step, took a breath she didn't need either, and began climbing the stairs as quickly as she could.
Samuel dashed after her, catching her hand as the rain splashed through them.
Where their hands met, he could feel the echoes of her sorrows. The press of their palms together brought memories to him. Her childhood had been mostly happy, only lightly touched by fear or tragedy. As a young woman the accident which had cost her a healthy eye had been a brief torment, endured and surpassed. It was the decline of her neighborhood from working-class to working-poor to slum that hurt her most, before her death. The decline of the corner park from a small green jewel to a derelict abandoned lot strewn with moldy sofas and broken syringes came to him in sharp, stinging flashes with each raindrop.
Was she learning as much about him?
He was pulling her along now, his hand tight around hers as they stumbled across the empty road and shambled their way along the cobweb-laden bushes. They kicked through a crushed beer can as they passed, careening under the tiny awning. The landing at the bottom of the stairs was ankle-deep in water, and black mold crawled almost halfway up the sheets of plywood boarding up the door and windows.
Samuel almost missed the chink of visible window, almost missed the darker spot which hinted at the lack of glass. But he held Maria's hand tightly, thinking through the problem she hadn't foreseen. “Maria,” he began, then shook their joined hands tightly to get her attention. “You have to hold on to me,” he insisted.
“I--” she gasped, wracked by soundless sobs.
“You,” he explained, guiding her hand to his waist again, “have to hold on. Hold. On.” Samuel demanded.
His one hand free, he reached through the gap. The frame would've scraped his knuckles if he'd been solid, and he tried to fold his thumb tightly over his palm, touching the base of his pinky finger.
He reached farther.
Someone grasped his hand, bringing a flash of summer sunlight and a sense of laughing welcome.
He blinked, and found himself standing in a mostly-dry, mostly-empty room which still smelled of mildew and forgetfulness. The puddles dotting the concrete floor gleamed in the wedge of light which spilled invitingly from the hallway.
“Lights?” he blinked.
“Good memories,” the sunshine-feeling person answered. “Everyone who stays here spends a little time remembering something happy, or exciting, and lets that seep into the walls of the rooms we use the most. Hello, I'm Dav,” he greeted, and the sunshine was suddenly wrapped in a middle-aged man with silvered temples beneath a shock of black hair, his stoop-shouldered form including silvery half-crutches. His right leg was missing below the knee.
“Come on,” Dav coaxed, pitching his words to Maria. “There's a day at the beach in the next room,” he promised.
The hallway had been painted the industrial green somewhere between 'pea soup' and 'bottle glass' that made Sammle think fondly of his grandfather, a dim memory of a warm lap and rumbling voice as he fought to stay awake. Sometimes, he thought he could smell rum-soaked pipe tobacco. He smiled to himself as Dav led the way deeper into the abandoned building.
The inner stairs were meticulously clean, leading to a small room with frosted glass doors . One of the private reading rooms, though there were no books on the gleaming, empty oak shelves. Dav guided them to sit along the oval table, then pressed his hand against the wall where the light switch had been mounted in an enclosed box painted a few shades lighter than the woodwork. The wiring, too, had been enclosed in metal tubing, though Samuel couldn't remember what it was called.
Funny how many things really weren't important in the long run.
Dav stood there, his smile widening as the lights brightened and the room warmed several degrees.
Samuel shrugged off his questions for a moment to help Maria into a chair. “What is this place?” he asked.
“Rest, for those who don't feel like playing the Worm's game any more,” Dav told him simply.
“But he said--” Samuel felt his throat tighten, never mind that he had no body.
Dav's voice was gentle as a spring breeze. “Did you miss your arm before you died?”
Samuel started to answer, but Dav shook his head. “Think about it.”
Sammle thought. And thought. Then he glanced at Maria. “Then why...” he nodded.
Dav worked himself into a chair with the ease of long practice, tucking his crutches against the table so they wouldn't slide or catch a newcomer's feet. “Somebody has to talk sense into that… Worm,” he scowled. “So far, no one's had any success, but Maria tries, every five or ten years.”
“There are more?” Sammle's brain wobbled, that time.
“Yeah,” Dav agreed, laughingly. “People who were born without a limb don't have to chase it down, but the rest of us?” he shrugged. “Why should I go chasing after some piece of diseased meat the doctors removed to save my life? Wouldn't retrieving it for the Worm say that they'd made the wrong decision?”
Sammle felt his brain wobble again. “And it's just… that easy?”
Dav put a hand on his shoulder. “It's easier with friends. That's why we share. If you want to know which memory I shared, touch the wall.”
“There's … is it still a library? Are there still books?” Hunger flickered, like a tongue of smoke from a match not quite lit.
Maria gathered herself enough to nod. “When I'm feeling a little more myself, we'll show you,” she agreed. “Thank you Dav. It's good to be home.”
*-*-*-*-END-*-*-*-*
Naturally, I wanted more, so for this most recent Crowdfunding creative jam, I prompted her again, and got this:
Rebuilding Home.
Life is good! :-)
dialecticdreamer, who's pretty nifty. And every second Monday of the month, she hosts "Magpie Monday," and asks folks to give her prompts (like a magpie, she just wants to collect the ALL the shiny!). Then she spends the day, from wake-up to can't-keep-eyes-open, writing ALL THE THINGS.So, this last Magpie Monday (the 8th), she posted a theme for the month: "Equal does not mean 'Identical'!"
I prompted her with my own retelling of the British folktale Sammle's Ghost. And she responded by writing this (in just a couple hours!! <3):
The streets were soggy with water, drowning beneath a steel-gray night where not one star could be seen. Even the street lamps struggled, hazy yellow glow as feeble and unfriendly as an old man's crooked teeth as they marked a path from the graveyard toward… everywhere else, really.
Samuel sighed, and set out -again- on his endless journey.
The Great Worm had not told him he had died, it had been pretty simple to figure that out, but Samuel had needed the help of another spirit to decide what to do about it instead of simply wandering forever. He'd made his way to the Great Worm, only to be told that he had to gather his own ashes, every speck and chip of bone.
The rain dripped through his insubstantial body, unhindered.
But every drop in the sheeting, miserable deluge reminded him of his mother's soothing voice, reassuring him that “Rain is only the angels crying, little Shmuel.”
Every drop brought another memory, bittersweet, grieving, lonely, or painful.
Sometimes, all of them at once.
Samuel picked a direction simply by continuing to move. There were few spirits here, so close to the graveyard, and even fewer living souls, so close to the reminder of Death.
His death hadn't been much of anything, really. He'd simply… woken up… a little different than he had been. Still Sammle, for all that it mattered. Even finding his ashes hadn't appeased the Great Worm and allowed him to rest.
Another spirit drifted by, hunched and flinching with every drop of rain, as though beset by hammer-blows. Samuel hurried toward them, spreading his arm around the other figure and leaning close. Some of the shivering stopped, and when the figure raised their face to look at him, one eye was nebulous and cloudy, like tea left in the sun.
The other was empty and desolate, only a space.
“The Great Worm… Whatever He actually is, “GREAT,” isn't the right word!” she spat. Her jaw was fine and narrow beneath prominent cheekbones, making her face seem heart-shaped.
“What has happened?” Samuel nudged her forward, guiding her down to a subway entrance. “I'm Samuel,” he added absently.
“I was on the way home from work, doing the crossword. Something rumbled, something snapped,” she began. Samuel tightened his embrace, then leaned back. She didn't sound particularly upset by her death.
“You know you died?” he ventured carefully.
“Of course,” she snorted, rolling her cloudy eye at him.
“Then...” he trailed off, unwilling to ask directly.
She brightened as she ran her fingers a few inches above a round concrete pillar. “I know all the stops in the network,” she told him. “My name's Maria.”
He nodded, letting her lead the way. His arm rested on her shoulders lightly now, connecting them in the damp and echoing space. The platform held nothing but litter, and the announcement board was unlit.
They passed to the end of the platform, dropping to the narrow path between the outer rail and the wall. Maria trailed her hand over an occasional splash of graffiti, shaking her head as the last marking passed behind them. “Fools, the lot of them. Think they're immortal, they do! I've had to tell more than one of them the news.”
“You've...” Samuel paused, unsure how to ask the question.
“Been here awhile?” Maria informed him. “Yes.”
“Why did the rain affect you so?” He paused, stiff and cautious, as a squeaking, shifting movement of the darkness ran past.
Maria laughed gently. “It's only a rat. Haven't seen many, have you?”
He shook his head. “You're older than me,” Samuel began, lilting the words into a question. “Had you been to visit the Great Worm? Is that why you were leaving the graveyard?”
She nodded, but did not speak again until they saw the lights of the next subway platform, and heard the rumble of human heartbeats beneath the hum of lights and chatter and mundane life. “When we get up the stairs, we'll be near the old library on Oak Street, which shut down the year before I died. If it's still raining...” she bit her lip. “I might need your help to get to it. We need to get to the back door, the steps to the basement. The doors' boarded up, but there's a bit of broken window visible. Picture reaching through it, and one of the others will pull you through. We're safe there.”
All the words seemed to exhaust her. Samuel let his gaze roam over the trio of young-ish men in suit jackets and slacks, wearing tennis shoes and thick woolen caps in deference to their commute. Near them, an old man curled into a seat, hunched and broken. One tiptoed over, waving a hand behind him to shush his companions. He drew a breath, his dress shirt straining to contain the man's simmering life, and held it.
Gentle fingers slipped a folded bill beneath the old man's chin, tucking it into the pocket on his worn flannel shirt. The younger man was already backing away when a tug at Samuel's waist distracted him.
Sammle wanted to see, wanted to know what happened next, but Maria was tugging him toward the stairs again, with her hand looped around his waist. “Don't worry about either of them,” she told him gently. “Let's just worry about getting through this horrible rain.”
Samuel forced his feet to stop on the landing, still sheltered from the unfriendly night sky. “Maria. What's bothering you so much about the rain? If it's…” he felt himself draw in a breath he would never need again, then rushed out, “If it's how you died, I'm confused.”
“My death was simple. Easy, really. I've never been one to bemoan what can't be helped. It's...” Maria trembled. “When I … the first thing I felt, here, was someone digging into my face, tearing away...” She waved toward the empty eye socket.
Samuel's heart seemed to fall through his body, and his head rocked back and forth in automatic denial.
“Another spirit,” she added. “He needed his eye back, you understand, to appease the Great Worm and his ridiculous rules. I'd gotten it intact in a transplant, oh, twenty-seven years before. I'd probably had it three or four years longer than the damnfool motorcyclist who took it back so forcefully, but the Great Worm insists that the other spirit was born with it, so it's HIS. That young man is in for a disappointment, though. The Worm isn't nearly as fair and logical as He presents himself.”
“And that's--?” He shivered again.
Maria nodded. “That's what I think and feel with every drop of rain.” She ran a shaking hand over her eyes, then stiffened her spine. “The loss, the arguments with the Worm,” she spat. One foot tapped soundlessly on the concrete landing. “Come on, it's no use putting this off. Remember, the back entrance. Broken window.”
She moved away a step, took a breath she didn't need either, and began climbing the stairs as quickly as she could.
Samuel dashed after her, catching her hand as the rain splashed through them.
Where their hands met, he could feel the echoes of her sorrows. The press of their palms together brought memories to him. Her childhood had been mostly happy, only lightly touched by fear or tragedy. As a young woman the accident which had cost her a healthy eye had been a brief torment, endured and surpassed. It was the decline of her neighborhood from working-class to working-poor to slum that hurt her most, before her death. The decline of the corner park from a small green jewel to a derelict abandoned lot strewn with moldy sofas and broken syringes came to him in sharp, stinging flashes with each raindrop.
Was she learning as much about him?
He was pulling her along now, his hand tight around hers as they stumbled across the empty road and shambled their way along the cobweb-laden bushes. They kicked through a crushed beer can as they passed, careening under the tiny awning. The landing at the bottom of the stairs was ankle-deep in water, and black mold crawled almost halfway up the sheets of plywood boarding up the door and windows.
Samuel almost missed the chink of visible window, almost missed the darker spot which hinted at the lack of glass. But he held Maria's hand tightly, thinking through the problem she hadn't foreseen. “Maria,” he began, then shook their joined hands tightly to get her attention. “You have to hold on to me,” he insisted.
“I--” she gasped, wracked by soundless sobs.
“You,” he explained, guiding her hand to his waist again, “have to hold on. Hold. On.” Samuel demanded.
His one hand free, he reached through the gap. The frame would've scraped his knuckles if he'd been solid, and he tried to fold his thumb tightly over his palm, touching the base of his pinky finger.
He reached farther.
Someone grasped his hand, bringing a flash of summer sunlight and a sense of laughing welcome.
He blinked, and found himself standing in a mostly-dry, mostly-empty room which still smelled of mildew and forgetfulness. The puddles dotting the concrete floor gleamed in the wedge of light which spilled invitingly from the hallway.
“Lights?” he blinked.
“Good memories,” the sunshine-feeling person answered. “Everyone who stays here spends a little time remembering something happy, or exciting, and lets that seep into the walls of the rooms we use the most. Hello, I'm Dav,” he greeted, and the sunshine was suddenly wrapped in a middle-aged man with silvered temples beneath a shock of black hair, his stoop-shouldered form including silvery half-crutches. His right leg was missing below the knee.
“Come on,” Dav coaxed, pitching his words to Maria. “There's a day at the beach in the next room,” he promised.
The hallway had been painted the industrial green somewhere between 'pea soup' and 'bottle glass' that made Sammle think fondly of his grandfather, a dim memory of a warm lap and rumbling voice as he fought to stay awake. Sometimes, he thought he could smell rum-soaked pipe tobacco. He smiled to himself as Dav led the way deeper into the abandoned building.
The inner stairs were meticulously clean, leading to a small room with frosted glass doors . One of the private reading rooms, though there were no books on the gleaming, empty oak shelves. Dav guided them to sit along the oval table, then pressed his hand against the wall where the light switch had been mounted in an enclosed box painted a few shades lighter than the woodwork. The wiring, too, had been enclosed in metal tubing, though Samuel couldn't remember what it was called.
Funny how many things really weren't important in the long run.
Dav stood there, his smile widening as the lights brightened and the room warmed several degrees.
Samuel shrugged off his questions for a moment to help Maria into a chair. “What is this place?” he asked.
“Rest, for those who don't feel like playing the Worm's game any more,” Dav told him simply.
“But he said--” Samuel felt his throat tighten, never mind that he had no body.
Dav's voice was gentle as a spring breeze. “Did you miss your arm before you died?”
Samuel started to answer, but Dav shook his head. “Think about it.”
Sammle thought. And thought. Then he glanced at Maria. “Then why...” he nodded.
Dav worked himself into a chair with the ease of long practice, tucking his crutches against the table so they wouldn't slide or catch a newcomer's feet. “Somebody has to talk sense into that… Worm,” he scowled. “So far, no one's had any success, but Maria tries, every five or ten years.”
“There are more?” Sammle's brain wobbled, that time.
“Yeah,” Dav agreed, laughingly. “People who were born without a limb don't have to chase it down, but the rest of us?” he shrugged. “Why should I go chasing after some piece of diseased meat the doctors removed to save my life? Wouldn't retrieving it for the Worm say that they'd made the wrong decision?”
Sammle felt his brain wobble again. “And it's just… that easy?”
Dav put a hand on his shoulder. “It's easier with friends. That's why we share. If you want to know which memory I shared, touch the wall.”
“There's … is it still a library? Are there still books?” Hunger flickered, like a tongue of smoke from a match not quite lit.
Maria gathered herself enough to nod. “When I'm feeling a little more myself, we'll show you,” she agreed. “Thank you Dav. It's good to be home.”
*-*-*-*-END-*-*-*-*
Naturally, I wanted more, so for this most recent Crowdfunding creative jam, I prompted her again, and got this:
Rebuilding Home.
Life is good! :-)
