Category: Writing

One more, just one more, I can do it, I can make it. My arm was immobile, my body filled with pain as it radiated from each spasming muscle, and my mind refused to accept it. I felt sluggish, like in a dream. Or was that the pain? The gray porous surface in front of me meant nothing. Words were thrown away in the wind, when I looked down and saw nothing but air.

My heart spiked to racing, my breathing quickened, but I still couldn’t move. The rope was clipped into a huge metal spike into the rock, then I was somehow tied to it as well. My voice was lost along with my ability to move. The blur of something beside me increased the fear. My god, what if I fall? Jesus fucking Christ I’m going to fall. The blur got closer and I could hear a voice, and then it disappeared again. The wind filling the chasms of my ears with it’s voice alone.

My left side was assaulted with more pain “PEOPLE LIKE US DON’T FALL FROM THE MOUNTAIN” came the screaming voice of my assailant. He then gripped the ropes holding me, and terror made my breath stop. Was he lying and going to undo the clip? In a click that’s exactly what he did.

And then it was just me and the air, the endless silence thundering in my ears, the nothingness of falling. In that moment, I let go of the fear, the anger, and despite those last words heard, I was, in fact, falling. Falling to the world beneath with only one inevitable ending.

People like us don’t fall from the mountain. What did he mean by that? And then to let go of the clip. People like us.

A feeling of warmth bubbled from my center, something growing and coming alive. It spread rapidly throughout my core, spreading through shoulders, hips, thighs, arms, hands and feet, then finally flowing up my head, like lava rapidly coating the land after the volcano erupted.

It was then that my eyes opened and I saw it all differently. The ground was not my destiny, the air was, and I could see it. See the tiny life forms in the wind that swirled around me. I reached out to them, summoning each amoebas cell towards me, directing them to surround my limbs, my core, all of me, and to retard the descent and allow me to float.

With that I was bobbing and dipping in the air, like a bouey in the ocean. I instructed to go left and began to fly that direction; the same with right, up, and down. I was flying, not like a bird, but this definitely qualified as flying.

People like us don’t fall from the mountain. Indeed. Beside me I saw him, his hand out, thumb up with a huge grin on his face.

“PEOPLE LIKE US DON’T FALL FROM THE MOUNTAIN” I yelled on the wind. He laughed and we continued in the air together.

She lay stunned, bruised, shuddering in pain. The silence consumed her head, ringing like air in a vast cavern. She opened her eyes and could see the final beams of light escaping the discarded body beside her. They radiated in shades of sunlight yellow, and orange fire.

Forcing her body to move towards him, the pain exploding throughout with each agonizing movement. She reached his immobile body, planting her fingers on the wrist to see if a pulse came through. All she could feel was her own racing heart. In panic and fear, she forced her broken body to move upward towards his face, maybe there was breath there, maybe some sign of life. Tears streaked down her face uncontrollably, though she doesn’t remember sobbing.

He wasn’t moving, no breath, no pulse, no sign of life. The light had faded from his form and she was alone in the dark cavernous space. Alone. Not just there and then, but in all things. There’s nowhere TO go, she thought. No one to go to. She readjusted to sit on the stony rock-littered ground, each movement echoing off the expansive darkness around her.

“Well, guess I fucked up on that one.” Her voice croaked out, the sound bouncing off the rocks.

She stood, her body was still riddled with pain, each movement was agonizing, but it meant she was alive. Alive in a world of death. A world she had chosen over the light and life of normality, and this is where she ended, failing in the one deed she deemed more worthy than living. Perhaps life is the penance for failure in not valuing it at all, she thought with a grunt. She was empty and she deserved that.

A sharp shriek echoed into the cave. She had forgotten about fear, or the fear of pain or death as she used to understand them. Now, after abandoning everything and everyone else, she had only one option, to follow further towards the sounds, towards the pain.

People ask me what living under the sea is like. You’d think it would get old or boring, but it’s really no different than living on the land, except it’s like 5 million times better!

Why is that? I’m glad you asked. You see, you’ve got vastly more space, it’s not really loud, especially if you stay deep, and you’re weightless all the time. Plus, there are some cool peeps down here. I mean Like really cool – I can hang with anglerfish, who are hilarious bee tee dubs, or a blue whale, man are those guys supportive.

I will NOT hang with any porpoises. Dolphins and killer whales – they are dicks with a capital ASSHOLE in the middle. They just love saying they’re the smartest ones on the planet. Fucking morons. Everyone knows that’s the seahorses, but because they’re not braggadocious no one seems to really know. Porpoises are basically the jocks of the sea.

But, they have to breathe water, so I can stay down low and avoid the assholes all I like. And trust me, I do. Please, take all of them and make bigger Sea Worlds with more ostentatious shows featuring their brilliant intelligence. Like you’re going to have a dolphin finish the New York Times Sunday crossword. Smartest on the planet, my amphibious ass. So yeah, take them. Maybe leave a few for sharks to eat, I like watching that.

The chair was plain and uncomfortable, identical to the one opposite, with its nondescript beige coloring and dark brown stripes. The man opposite her was flipping through index cards and mumbling to himself. She sat there waiting, and sipped the glass of water that was provided on the small table next to her.

“Thirty seconds!” the formless voice overhead rang out.

The man beside her snapped up, tucked the cards inside his suit jacket pocket and did an odd smiling stretch thing with his face.

She wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, she had never been on TV before, not like this, not being interviewed as someone of note.

“We’re live in five, four, three, two..” came the voice of god above. The red light on the camera facing them lit up.

“Good evening, and welcome to Chatting with Charlie, where we talk to notable people of the day. I am so pleased to introduce an up and coming writer who has just published her first novel titled “The Djin factory,” that’s djin with a d, not the alcohol.” Canned laughter came over speakers, which was really weird. He turned to the lady, and a different camera’s lights came on pointing at her, “So, tell me what writing is like for you.”

“Oh goodness, writing is like sucking out a piece of your soul and exposing it for all the world to see in the hopes it will feed their soul.”