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Five stories project: "Let me think"
This is a throwaway account for a project I've been working on where once every few weeks, I pick a theme and over the next 5 nights, write 5 short stories about that theme. Each story can't take more than a night. This story was drawn from the theme, "Let me think". =========================== When I was young, I moved. I moved like the ground was being pulled in front of me, and every frantic breath measured a stride. I ran. I lived in a sprint. From outside Atlanta in the sweaty eves to shivering in the awnings at Gare L?est. I am 15, I am 19. A busker with uneven teeth smiles at me and I think she is the world. Jon, my best friend brushes me with his elbow. -Not this one, he says. -Rock, paper, scissors, I joke. Wait, let me think. It was morning, and I am 43. The island sweats. The dog and I run in silence. The sun has risen and the land heats. We spring up the hill, panting and dizzy. Beyond us in the peninsula, the sea beating foam and white against the granite. I measure sides of granite sliding into the ocean in degrees. 37, 49. It was two years ago since we came here. -Come on, I say to him. We cross the end of the of the road and navigate through the boulders and cacti along the path. As we descend, I feel the air thicken. Salt like nettles. Ahead, for some reason, the tide pool is a dark black. I slow, tie the dog to a branch and regard the gleaming layer. For some reason my reflection is nothing more than a dull figurine. The dog whimpers. I reach out with my hand. And then I vanish. I am 19, at a horrible electronic music show. The singer pulls a sheet over his body and shrieks into the microphone. I rattle off my list of four letter words and my friends rescue me. They drag me outside where it?s still light and dump me on a curb. I fumble for a cigarette that reaches my lips before I understand how. The light escapes me and suddenly I burn bright. A face, familiar and new acquiesces my premature death. I think I want to marry her and know instinctively that I will never see her again. She gives me a name that I forget and offers a hand. I reach forward. And then I vanish. Alexandra always regarded me with caution. We are at dinner. I am 28. I know our marriage won?t last I know she is gaining weight. I know my hair is starting to recede. I am not as fast as I used to be. I still stand straight, but my legs carry more than my frame. She and I once met as youngsters. She and I once fell in and out of love. Now in a different age, we have dinner, forget how we used to be and make vague promises. Land to spread out, air to breathe, a literary life. She turned me to Nabokov and Kinglsey Amis. She taught me that Russian beers are numbered to reflect your drunkenness. She excuses herself from the table, and suddenly the room changes. I see visions of myself stumbling in from every door. I am confused, because just one second ago I was here and I saw this. It lead me to that and now here I am. We shake, trying to clear out the fog. The poor bartender opens a few bottles and slides them down the bar. I am a set of ages and lifetimes. We amble, have the same taste in drinks, love the same songs. But no, I am 15. Jeff has just run into the street. We?ve been drinking. His sister bought us beer and a couple friends came over. Tonight is sweltering. July, and the Georgia air that stinks of sweat and mosquitos. We did shots of bad vodka, we swam and goaded the girls to remove their tops before hoping in the pool. The water was warm, and I felt floating through the chlorine and the floodlights that all my senses were deadened. I looked up to see the faint outline of clouds brushing past. Later we lit off fireworks. I remember my trunks still dripping and my feet caked in dirt. The bottle, fully loaded with munitions tips over. Meteors and cannonade stream past me. Jeff is 15 and so am I. He darts into the street hollering. I follow. Two bright stars explode. I pause to think. The universe tells us that all things are permitted, that in some incarnation I am 37 and swerving along a desert road. That give enough time, maybe not me, but a close approximation is staring down the sights of a rifle at a fine looking doe on a chill November morning. I am one ensemble in the sum of possibility and there are others around me, gathered by the void, we snack on tuna and crackers. We bask in the afternoon sun. So imagine if you will this. I am in a room at the end of a long day, struggling through drinks, wary that I?ll fail to stomach dinner. Versions of myself meander about. Some grab snacks, others talk quietly. At first, it was such a shock. Even to hear one?s voice projected in a mass, but now after a couple passes, it seems second nature. I converse with myself, I am 45, 52, primes, divisions of 3, dead, mangled, born again. The maitre d? announces the first course. We precipitate towards tables, the same habit of crossing left over right and folding the napkin just. But I tarry behind. I think about the time in my youth, a feeling of warmth, sitting on a bed of pine needles. I?ve heard about a distant day from an old friend. About a walk under the Gothic arches of the place I so dearly called home. The creak in my knee is not yet come to pass. The knot in my wrist is only just now begun. I wince at the pinching of nerves and the grinding of joints and the momentary pain awakens me. I feel as if I can?t breathe, trapped here in this dinner party. Bunel was insufferable enough without himself as a guest. Do you think they remember who it was that told that story? She had brown hair, and I could at least never forget her. I wonder if she would recognize my face now. I wonder if she would notice the difference when I step back into that room. Some things can never be made right. Some things can never be made whole. Many of the others have given up, but I believe the next time through I can get it right. Around me. Like version of Judas, we conjure and we exist. We permute and arise, crowding an already suffocating room. We sin and we shuffle. God save us in our disgrace, our possibility. I bound for a door. Who will I be when I return? more