Tag: Writing

Poetry-Thing Thursday: The Final Sigh

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The Final Sigh

 

Confusion,
it’s all that comes out.
Is it pathetic,
or a fake-out?
Do you know,
what you feel?
Or is it all,
too surreal?

 

You need to vacate,
your mind’s current state.
You should maintain,
keep straight and abstain.
But will you know,
when you’ve gone too low?

 

It’s all a matter of lines.
Do you see the signs?
We’re living hard times,
all around us ’til the final sigh.

 

She’s got a girl,
who is her world.
She drives her insane,
it isn’t humane.
But can she tell,
when life’s a living hell?

 

It’s all a matter of lines.
Cross and pay the fines.
Three or four chimes,
bell’s at the final sigh.

 

Can you feel it,
on the inside?
Will you stay lit,
in a breaking tide? 

It’s all a matter of time,
until the final sigh.

Poetry-Thing Thursday: And I’ve Gone Blind

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

And I’ve Gone Blind

 

She said,

I like the way you dress

I said,

I’d like to know you best

 

When the winter came,

only sadness.

Then a new-formed spring,

with her forever-rest.

 

Along a winding road,

life passed us by,

while we were told,

nothing but to die.

 

Were we affected,

by love’s demise?

Or just afflicted,

by toxic sighs?

 

I’ve no certainties,

now nor does she.

A life long passed,

her eyes no longer see.

 

But paid in time,

eager ‘n serpentine,

my eyes have grayed,

and I’ve gone blind.

 

I cannot see,

what lies inside of me.

All my sense,

in past tense.

 

Am I dead,

far from life’s caress?

Where do I tread?

For sight I do not possess.

 

And I am blind,

to any happiness.

Hell-bound, without kind,

I have failed the test.

Krubera: Part 7

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

7.

The Jungle

It was another three watches, or six hours, before the darkness set in. The team had gathered their things, began to make their way down the slope and back through the forest. They crisscrossed their steps over more vine traps, emerged on the far-side of the mist-covered plain that had receded in the darkness. They headed west for the mountains, cut a straight path through the plains until forced to curve around a large lake. Water rushed between the banks of a stream that wound from the lake beneath the mist.

It was two hours after nightfall when they’d made the five kilometer trek between the forest and the mountains. They rose from the ground to high peaks that were by the high darkness. Everywhere about them were large, coniferous trees, similar to yews. Their trunks were wide– fifty meters at the smallest– and stretched a hundred or more meters into the air. The larger yews, it seemed, were close to that in width but doubled in height. All seemed clad with the same, iron-hued bark they’d seen elsewhere. Some of the trees had shed their coil-like bark as a snake might shed its skin, large broken pieces of it cluttered the ground, trampled the grasses. As always, each tree they found glowed from the luminescence created by their unique photosynthesis.

They stopped at the base of a smaller mountain that still dwarfed them as though they were ants, to take rock and soil samples. Raymond examined a piece of the mountain in the light of his torch, called to Elliot. She rose from the brush, closed the few steps to him.

He held out the sample he’d just collected, “Elliot, these are limestone mountains.”

“Shouldn’t they be?” She asked, dully.

“Yes, if they’re mountains,” he replied with emphasis. His face reflected a deep concern, uncharacteristically agitated. He explained, “The entire theory I’ve concocted in my head relies on these being stalagmite speleothems– in other words, enormous, natural stalagmites composed from calcium run-off of the ceiling above. I figured their size was simply attributed to the age of the cavern. But now? Age has nothing to do with it.”

Elliot shook her head, “I’m sorry Raymond, I just don’t understand.”

His tone was critical, “They’re mountains, Elliot. Mountains within a cavern, within a mountain. There’s tectonic activity here.” Her face blanked. Raymond voice grew more grave, “If there are plates here, it’s only a matter of time before they quake.”

“You’re telling me it’s only a matter of time before a massive quake hits this place?”

He grimaced,“Yes, and judging by the amount of activity lately, it’s could be catastrophic.”

For the first, she saw fear in Raymond’s eyes, his confidence shaken. Anthony called her name, pulled her attention away. He motioned for her to follow, led her beneath and around a tree, to an opening in the mountain. It was small, cramped, enough that they were forced to hunch to at the entrance. The faint, orange glow that had illuminated the valley through-out the day shimmered from the small cave’s entrance.

Anthony knelt at the wall, near a patch of the light, scraped some of it into Petri-dish, “It’s some kind of moss.”

“Moss?” She asked, alarmed.

He capped off the petri-dish. It filled with mist, exhaled in vapors from the moss to cloud out its light. He passed it over, the glass hot in her hand.

“It’s heating up?”

He nodded. The Petri dish warmed fast, burned her hand. She dropped it to ground. The glass shattered with a puff, like smoke released from burning room. Liana entered the cavern called for her. She stopped mid-turn as her wrist vibrated. She glanced down feared the inevitable; “SGSM READS EARTHQUAKE MAGNITUDE 8.0: EURASIAN-ARABIAN PLATE: SHOCKWAVE ETA 12-MINUTES TO CURRENT LAT-LONG: ADVISE APPROPRIATE MEASURES.”

“We’ve gotta’ move,” Elliot said, without further explanation.

Liana looked to Anthony, panted in a lean, her abdomen clutched, “SGSM?”

He shrugged, hurried past her and out of the cave. Elliot was helping Raymond pack his samples into his bag.

“Eight-oh,” she said.

“Then we need to get out of here,” he replied as he shouldered his pack.

“Any idea where were going to go?” Chad asked belligerently.

“Jungle?” Ellie asked.

Raymond winced, “If you think its best,”

“Do we really have a choice? We need whatever we can get from there, and the Jungle’s furthest from the fault, right?”

He started forward, “Theoretically but the fault’s probably a few miles wide. There might not be anywhere safe down here.”

They followed his lead. He’d neglected to say his thoughts aloud; even if they survived the quake, it could collapse any number of passages they’d taken from the surface. Elliot didn’t need him to say it though, it was at the forefront of her mind. The earthquake might produce several shock-waves; the first would be the most violent, but the subsequent shocks would be a danger for hours. She wanted to be gone from this place by then, have as much ground crossed as possible before the first wave hit.

They doubled their pace, Liana’s weight redistributed to compensate for the severity of her injuries. Even still, she lagged behind. They were only able to traverse half the kilometer to the jungle, when the quake hit.

They pushed themselves harder, fought opposing forces from the waves that built to a slow climax. Each step threatened to topple them. Shrieks and growls echoed from the jungle ahead, the creatures within awakened prematurely by the ground that rolled beneath them. The trees shook, fern-leaves rustled in a torrent of violence. Flashes of fast-movements sprang between the trees, gave only glimpses of tails and wings in profile.

The first climax came, knocked Liana to her knees. Elliot shout the others forward, doubled-back to retrieve her. She struggled to her feet. Her equilibrium failed from unstable ground. She slipped back down. Elliot pulled her up hard. They planted their feet against the pitch and roll of the grasses. She planted her feet on the ground, stepping forward one foot at a time. The unmistakable crack of trees sounded in the distance. The Earth gave a massive lurch.

The shock-wave had triggered a separate quake from the cavern’s fault. The treeline boucned through their vision, their steps thrown to and fro. A stomach-curdling vertigo overtook Elliot as the cavern’s quake fought against the opposite shock-waves. Dirt and roots snapped, ripped with the surge of Earth as it rose. Elliot risked a look back to see gigantic trees felled near the mountains.

She and Liana managed to make the jungle as the second quake climaxed, toppled limbs and trees over the path the other three had made. A scream sounded from one of the men, beneath the deafening shrieks and growls of the jungle’s residents. Elliot forced Liana forward through the foliage. Ferns and thorny shrubbery tore at their faces, arms, punctured their wet-suits, and shredded their bandages.

The quake’s waves began to low. Its rumbles quieter as it died out beneath them. They stopped short of the screams from the three men, stuck in the depths of a pit-fall trap. A thick, cloudy fluid stuck bubbled up from the bottom of the trap, began to fill it. Massive, thorn-like teeth on the sides of the walls folded in, like a Venus fly-trap that readied to enclose them.

In a flash, she had a climbing rope out, anchored to a tree. She lowered it to them, drug the rope up with it wrapped tortuously around her wounded arms. Anthony’s head became visible, he fell out of the hole, threw himself to the side, to scramble up and help. Raymond was pulled up next; he laid his weight into the rope, managed to slide Chad up and out of the hole just as the teeth snapped shut on the trap.

They fell about in various states of exhaustion. The suits at their ankles sizzled away, pocked their skin with smokey burns. The digestive acids seared their flesh.

“Vinegar,” Elliot shouted. “Then water.”

Luck was with them for once. The vinegar neutralized the chemicals, water washed away the severed bits of boot and neoprene. They readied to bandage Chad, when an ominous, low grumble sounded around them.

“Go,” Chad insisted. “I’ll just slow you down.”

“Don’t be a drama queen,” Elliot spat. She slipped his arms under one of his shoulders, called to the others, “Get him up!”

Anthony and Raymond helped to lift him. The growls sounded louder behind them. Anthony and Raymond bolted with Chad between them, left Elliot to un-sling Liana’s rifle from her back, pass it to her. Elliot readied the pistol.

“Firm grip,” Liana grunted, pained and fatigued.

Elliot nodded. She’d never fired a weapon before, never even held one; yet, here she was, ready to try. They backed up, around the trap, away form it. The growls were louder, more than before– at least five now. A sick scent of blood wafted up their nostrils. They back-stepped as red-eyes appeared through-out the darkness. Had Liana not seen its glowing eyes she would not have seen it at all. A flash of light glinted off a transparent body, a large dog, but with a boxed jaw. It prowled forward complete with spiked, sharp teeth and a chameleon-like stealth.

Liana fired in a burst, killed the first animal. Pairs of eyes began flickered open before the eerie light of the trees. The creatures stalked, ready to strike. Liana flicked a lever on the side of the weapon, firing single shots at them. Two fell. The others bounded forward.

Liana and Elliot fired together. Rhythmic blasts sounded with an erratic beat as they backed away in their crouch. The gun recoiled in hard in Elliot’s hands until her grip was firm enough. She managed to hit a creature as it jumped away. She attempted to aim, pulled back on the trigger, hit another. It bounded for her, unfazed.

Liana finished it off, shouted, “Move. I am behind you.”

Elliot didn’t question it. She turned, sprinted down the path the other three had created. Liana’s gunfire followed after her in cut-time. New shrieks and growls sound from the beasts that were slain behind her. Elliot tripped, fell forward smacked her head into something hard. Her face fell into the soft dirt, her mind dazed from the impact. She recovered, scrambled back on her hands and knees. She run smack into a lumbering creature as it crossed the path in front of her. It was as tall as her on four legs, its skin the color of pus, with large spikes on its back for protection. It glanced sideways with a prehistoric snout, gave a smelly grunt, then continued forward.

Her heart skipped a beat, but was spurred to speed by gunshots that drew closer. The trees rustled, parted as Liana appeared and the creature ambled past into the jungle’s depths. Liana pulled her up, shoved her along the path. An abrupt silence fell over the jungle while Elliot’s legs regained their speed, charged her through the brush to a small, circular clearing.

From the far, left-side, Raymond and Chad looked on in horror as a bipedal creature pulled its claws from Anthony’s gut. Four other bipeds had encircled them. Elliot froze. Liana stopped, confused, turned to see the scene that unfolded before them.

Anthony was on the ground, the lead biped hunched over his abdomen. Elliot screamed obscenities, raised the pistol. The beast rose, mad a slow turn. Anthony’s flesh hung from its clawed hands, blood dripped from its muzzle-like mouth onto large, armor-plated muscles across its torso. The muffled gurgle of blood signaled Anthony’s screams, forced the pistol to bark until it clicked empty. The animal stumbled backward, jolted by the force, but uninjured. The bullets fell to the ground, crushed by the impact.

The other creatures seemed confused, began a slow advance on the two women. Grunts and growls turned to roars in steps with their short gait. Liana flicked a lever on the rifle, its magazine fell free. Its impact with the ground startled the beasts for a moment, but they soon continued their slow advance.

In a blink Raymond and Chad sprinted off. Liana slapped in a new magazine, sprayed ammunition at the bipeds. They stumbled back in shock, gave the women enough time to make for Anthony. They each grabbed an arm, drug him away at top-speed. He spit up blood, tried to scream, writhed and shook. They forced their way to the path on the other side. The bipeds suddenly screamed with a deafening plethora of frequencies that rasped over the jungle. The biped’s feet pounded the soft ground, then charged after them. A low rumble sounded off in the distance; a second shock-wave had begun.

Ahead, the jungle opened onto the rock shore-line. Raymond and Chad beckoned them from the water’s edge, shouted for them.

“Help her,” Liana yelled, releasing Anthony.

The others rushed toward Elliot as the ground gave a violent lurch. In a flash, Liana’s hands produced the white, clay blocks, tossed them into the jungle.

She shouted, “Down!”

She dove against the throbs in her abdomen, landed with a glance back. Three of the bipeds were within steps of the white blocks. Her hands were ready with a small box and switch. She flicked the switch. An explosion light the darkness, rained fire on the tree-line, and propelled the bipeds into the air. Their bodies and limbs were torn asunder, cooked to a crisp as debris from the jungle expelled with them.

Beneath them, the ground rocked with a second violent tremor that Liana fought to crawl for the others as they gathered around Anthony. He clutched at Elliot’s arm. Tears dripped from her face. She sniffled hard, gripped his hand. A final gleam from his eyes rolled way, and the life left his body.

Elliot’s heart ripped in two, shattered by the quake of the Earth beneath her and her own guilt. Animals shrieked, cried from the jungle as the fire spread rapidly along the tree-line. Even so, she didn’t hear it, too numb to feel anything but the hands that clasped her shoulder, maneuvered her around to face Liana. She mouthed a word Elliot didn’t hear, but read, “Dive!”

They divided Anthony’s gear, as she kissed his forehead, and slid a bloody hand over his eyes to close them. A moment later, they dove into the water as the last of the quake trembled into nothingness beneath them. Elliot gave a final, last look at the fiery horizon, cursed her vanity and the “lost world,” and dove in.

Epilogue

The surviving members of the team reached the surface without difficulty, and on time for their departure. They said goodbye to Liana, whom promised to attend Anthony’s funeral, but said little else the rest of the trip. John was elated at their discovery, seemed to regard Anthony’s death as a sacrifice for science. Elliot felt otherwise.

Upon presenting the evidence to John, they learned that Anthony had taken up filming after Chad’s initial injury. He had managed to capture everything they had experienced during the final hours, including the bipedal creatures and sounds of his final breaths. Elliot released the tape to the public, warned of the dangers of a return expedition. There was a resounding silence before the media and the masses exploded, most with questions most directed at John and his museum’s ethics.

While the resulting recognition afforded Elliot and the others several, considerable research grants concerning the samples they had retrieved: The moss alone was considered as a replacement light and heat-source if the luminescent chemicals could be extracted, synthesized. Despite the academic community’s insistence that they spear-head the research, Elliot and her team refused, turned the work over to another team, and set about other avenues of work.

True to her word, Liana ventured to America for Anthony’s funeral; a small service that consisted of an empty casket, and hallowed earth watered with tears. In his honer, the National Science Foundation, established a substantial foundation to be awarded each year to select, graduate students in paleo-sciences for doctoral research. And though Liana had only ventured to America for a short time, with plans to return home, the worsening relations between Abkahzia and Georgia forced her to reconsider. She was soon offered, and accepted, a position as head of security at a newly established research facility headed by Elliot and her team.

Although the team vehemently protested each time, several new expeditions were outfitted to attempt to breach the cavern. Each team that left failed to return. When one finally did, they reported that the underwater passage Elliot had marked on the maps was blocked off, likely by the recent increase in tectonic activity registered by SGSM. The passage that had allowed them entry was, as Elliot hoped, now permanently sealed. While new species of marine life continued to appear within the Black Sea, requests for further search-efforts for entrances to the Lost world were futile; everyone, including Elliot and her team, knew the passage should remained sealed, the remaining secrets of Krubera forever concealed to man.

The Lost World had been found, and so far as most cared, that was all that mattered. Whatever had yet to be discovered there was little more than with man’s vain hope to understand what he ought not to. It was a realm where neither Humanity, nor its progeny, was welcome– one that should be allowed to forever carry out its curious machinations without them. Until, perhaps, it was once more lost to the annals of time that had so long ago buried it deep within the Earth, and hidden it from all who might seek it.

Short Story: The Plain and The Pretty

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The Plain and the Pretty

Sarah Morgan was a mostly normal girl. She brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and went to school. Day-in and day-out, she would sit in class at Bacatta High-School as dusty teachers lectured on about things as ancient or oxidized as themselves. These were things that would never affect her, that she’d never need in a million years. Despite the obvious trivialities that dribbled from their word-holes, sluiced across the other, assembled brains in class, Sarah took notes. Always. She dutifully copied every word of each subject, every single lecture, each day.

She would’ve stopped, but had no reason to. For that matter, she didn’t care to. It made her look busy and kept her hands at work. She scrawled pages with lightning speed, her eyes always down-turned at the back of every class, but her ears honed on each syllabic resonance and every phonetic clamor against her eardrum.

The only times Sarah wasn’t writing were lunch and dinner. Otherwise, when not recording lectures, it was creating magical fairy-lands, or dark, mysterious dungeons. All along the walls of her bedroom were stacks and stacks of notebooks, loose-leaf sheets of paper, even torn napkins. Each one was categorized, placed in a specific stack.

Where some teenage girls’ walls were splattered with friendly-faced photographs, budded artistic drawings, or the occasional half-nude pop-star, Sarah’s were empty. They were also impossible to find for all the towers of notebooks along them. And where most teenager’s rooms– whether girl or boy– were impassable from weeks-old piles of clothing, papers, and the general left-overs sloth-like youth, Sarah’s was impassable from used pens and nail-like pencil-stubs that created a fine layer of unstable floor above the carpet.

To enter Sarah’s room without agile feet was to take one’s own life in their hands– a fact that her mother and father loved to remark on. Whatever, it kept them out of the room, left her to work in peace. All she wanted to do was write, even skipped frequent meals when a particularly interesting passage flowed like a sieve from her thinker onto her pages.

While she wasn’t plain looking, Sarah didn’t have the bombshell-looks of the cheerleaders, or the brain-gasm smarts of the nerd-girls, or even the dexterous phalanges and sexual curiosities of the band and orchestra girls. In fact, whatever clique one could think to name, she wasn’t in. She was merely a hitch-hiker on the road of life, presently stuck on the far-side of the fast-lane that was high-school.

No-one bothered her, not even to pick on her. For that at least, she was grateful. She liked being alone, even if it was boring sometimes. So it was with extreme irritation to her inner-muse when, one day, she slammed notebook-first into someone in the hallway. Her notebook crumpled, fell. A pair of loud thumps signaled the collision of Sarah’s front-half with another’s. A catastrophic cascade of books tumbled to the floor. Opposite swears drowned the back-step and crouch of both Sarah and her new-found acquaintance.

The girl’s hands slipped beneath her pile of books and papers on the floor, while Sarah’s gathered the loose pages she’d added to certain, earlier sections of the notebook. Sarah’s eyes only captured her fellow victim of circumstance for a moment, but it was clear she was one of the “pretty girls;” a part of the clique that relied on genetics rather than talents– or anything else for that matter– to fit in. They held power over the boys, the prettiest of them alphas that dominated the other girls. Whether Alpha or not, this girl was certainly close to leading the pack.

“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

Sarah muttered something similar– more of a grumble than an apology. Even so, the message came across well enough that the girl continued with piercing, blue eyes. “I just moved here. Name’s Allison– most people just call me Ali.”

“Sarah,” she mumbled with less than a cave-man’s intelligence.

Allison gathered the last of her books, stood up, “Well, Sarah, sorry again. Maybe I’ll see you ’round.”

Sarah “mmm’ed” in reply, slid the last of her pages into her notebook, and continued on her way. The clack of Allison’s heels were distinct all the way down the hall, even over the din of lunch-time students in the halls. When the bell screamed through-out the school, it finally drowned the heels’ last reverberations, and ushered in a rise to the din as the students headed for class.

For the rest of the day, Sarah thought little of the collision, returned to her notebooks to record the geography lecture. The topic was long, as arduous as the formation of the lands that dictated the first part of the word. The teacher’s tongue and throat droned while his plump hands drug chalk across the board at an Earthly, slow pace. Sarah’s hands worked too fast for him. She had to drag out her other notebook just to keep moving. The jump between subjects and books made her eyes ache and her head spin, but even so, she managed to make it through the class.

The rest of the day was easy, mathematics formulas and theorems, and biology notes kept her busy. Both teachers were young, agile with their words, wasted no time between them. When the last of the two classes came to an end, Sarah had just enough time to stuff her notebooks in her backpack before the door uncluttered from the dismissal bell. By the time the mass of bodies formed the shapely, single-file line, she was up, headed for the hall.

She slipped out in the dissipation of students in divergent streams, floated out to the far-side of the hall to head for the stair-well. She dodged the few locker-clingers that blocked her path, her feet quick to juke sideways and back in-step without a missed beat. Near the end of the hall, a clamor sounded behind her like a band-geek’s tuba had just fallen and shattered on the tile floors. She smelled “fight” before the word was ever uttered. Her neck craned backward as her feet continued forward.

Indeed, a pair of the testosterone-fueled, genius-carriers of the Y-chromosome had begun to trounce one another. With what little Sarah could see, it was like one of those hockey-fights– sans the usual, impressive act of balancing on ice-skates while they pummel one another. It ended as quickly as it began, the two boy-children torn apart by a pair of teachers over shouts. Sarah rolled her eyes. The next moment came in actions that seemed to slow time. She lifted a foot, began to rotate her head back to her forward-path. As her eyes caught the view ahead, a locker door was flung open. Her foot came down just as the door’s edge bisected the bridge of her nose.

She was smacked by the door, fell to her ass. The locker-door made a thwanggg with the sound of cheap metal. Sarah was certain her tail-bone was broken– or maybe that was just the feeling of her fractured pride. The locker-door flung closed as Allison’s face appeared, her piercing-blue eyes wide as saucers.

A hand covered Allison’s slacked jaw, “Oh. My. God.” Sarah half-expected the pretty girl to laugh at the plain-girl’s misfortune, was doubly stunned when Allison extended a hand to pull her up. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry!”

Sarah took her hand, “S’ok.”

“Sarah, right? Are you alright?” She asked as her hand pulled a jacket from her locker.

Sarah’s wits returned slowly, “Uh, yeah. Allison, the new girl.” Allison nodded. “I remember– Ali, that’s what you said earlier.”

“Yeah, are you sure you’re alright? I totally wasn’t paying attention,” She asked while she fished an arm out of the jacket, stuck her arms into it.

Sarah shrugged, the interaction already belabored past her comfort-zone. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, “Yeah. Nothin’s broken. Was my fault anyhow.”

Sarah wanted to make a move away, but it was clear Ali’s guilt was beyond that of the other pretty girls. Her turned head and eye-contact made it all the more clear she wasn’t going to let Sarah go until they’d exchanged some pleasantries– at least there was some sign of life in that pack of wannabe-plastic people that called themselves rulers.

“Well, still, I’m sorry.” She fished out her backpack, shut the locker. Sarah sensed the dreaded walk-and-talk that people did as Ali started forward, “Those fights happen a lot here?”

Sarah had trouble matching the pace of Ali’s “don’t-quit” legs, but moved in-step beside her to the stairs, start down them. “Uh, I dunno’. I never see ’em, just usually hear ’em– and usually at lunch.”

Ali grimaced, “So they happen a lot then?”

Sarah shrugged, “Once or twice a week.”

Ali rolled her eyes with a huff as they rounded the first foyer, “God guys’re retarded. It’s like… they don’t even have half the brains they were given. Just drooling, slobbering, ogres with B-O and ape-brains.”

Sarah laughed. Genuinely. It surprised her too. It even started with one of those throaty-snort sounds people made when they were genuinely amused. It made Ali’s piercing-blues brighten, her lightly tanned face almost glowed as he cheeks dimpled.

Sarah nodded, “Yeah, they’re cave-people with less hair.”

“At least most’a the time,” Ali joked.

They giggled laughed all the way down to the main-floor, were at the hallway for the front doors before they could speak again. The doors ahead gleamed like a holy beacon– and indeed to some they were– as the autumn sun splayed late-afternoon rays across the floor before them. The buses had already begun to depart, the crowd of bodies thinned to only the last, few hangers-on that waited for rides from parents.

“Shiiit!” Sarah groaned as she watched her bus lumber away.

“What’s wrong?” Ali asked with a glance.

She threw her head back, her shoulders slumped, “Bus’s gone.”

Ali patted her back, “Ah, don’t worry. I can give you a lift.”

They stepped from the less-populated entrance, “It’s cool. I’ve walked before. No biggie.”

Ali sighed, “Oh come on, Sarah. I smacked you with that door. It’s the least I can do.”

Sarah contained the squirmy discomfort that wriggled within her. In truth, she didn’t much mind walking if the alternative was more intimate time with another person. Before she could protest further, Ali wrapped both her arms around Sarah’s right bicep.

“Come onnn, my car’s right around the corner.”

Sarah sighed, “Okay, okay.”

Ali half-drug her the length of the red and white brick school, her gait double that of Sarah’s. They rounded the corner to the insanity of the Junior-Senior class parking-lot. All manner of cars from all makes and years filled the horizon; from old, rust-bucket clinkers whose mufflers were only such in a theoretical sense, to brand-new, shiny BMWs and Mercedes bought with the greasy cash of wealthier mommies and daddies.

Ali drug Sarah clear across the parking-lot, all along the way the two were forced to dodge the erratic, imbecilic drivers they called peers. Ali even heated up, flipped one guy off after he shouted, “Nice ass, baby. Now, move it!” She finally stopped at the rear-end of a relatively new soft-top convertible, Camaro. The car said enough to tell Sarah that Ali had some money– or her parents did anyhow. While she doubted it was BMW or Mercedes money, for a plain-girl forced to ride the bus everyday, Ali was leaps and bounds beyond her own fiscal benefactors.

“Wow. Nice car,” Sarah said with admittedly more awe than she’d have liked.

Ali slipped into the driver’s seat, and the engine roared to life, “Yeah, it gets me where I need to go. Sucks in the winter though– too much power and not enough weight.”

Sarah buckled her belt, “Better than the bus, I bet.”

“Oh definitely,” she agreed as she backed out, followed the aisles to the line of cars that waited for the turn onto Orwell Avenue. “So where we headed?”

Sarah was still enamored with the plush interior. It smelled of something like dream-sicles tasted; creamy and orange with just a hint of cold.

“Sarah?”

“Huh? Oh, right. Up Orwell to Marigold, then a right on Beech,” Sarah said oblivious to her driver’s ignorance.

“Gonna’ need a play-by-play,” Ali replied through the right from the school onto Orwell.

“Just keep going forward. It’ll be on the left.”

The shopping mall gleamed in Ali’s rear-view mirror behind and to the side of other student drivers. Ahead to the left, Orwell branched off in city-blocks that gridded the northern section of town in a long rows of quaint boutiques, shops, and various, other establishments too small for the sky-scraping madness further North on the horizon.

All along Orwell Avenue, traffic made its start-stop procession through the three-way stop-lights that made up the bulk of the South-side of “downtown.” The cozy, beige brick and mortar shops that were sandwiched side-by-side, ended abruptly with the Y-fork of Orwell and Armistice. Sarah kept Ali on track past the police-department that hid the first sections of the southern neighborhoods. Then, well-manicured lawns rose and fell with the hilly topology of the middle-class side of town. The more expensive houses were even further South, undoubtedly where Ali lived.

The hilly rise of the police-station fell to Lotus Drive. After a few houses, Hyacinth passed with its sloped, Northern incline, and Marigold peered out at its re-leveled height to match Orwell. Ali’s left turn was greeted by a block of cookie-cutter houses one either side. The Camaro slowed to a stop at Willow and Marigold, kicked up into second before the next intersection and the turn on to Beech from the three-way stop. At the left, the river that ran from Grove Park to the center of town, was visible between the side yards of Elm Street’s houses. It marked the property lines of the homes on either side, twisted and turned beneath the small bridges on Orwell and Asimov– two of the main Avenues through town– to deposit in a pond far ahead.

Sarah pointed to a tall white house, its lawn as well-manicured as the rest on this side of town, save for the few weeds that grew through the cracked, cement driveway. As usual, it was empty in the early afternoon. Mom and Dad wouldn’t be home for another few hours.

Sarah readied to slip out of the car– in truth, readied to bolt like a deer in the headlights– and glanced to Ali, “Thanks for the ride.”

Ali smiled with perfect, white teeth that met one another at crisp angles, were obviously the product of expensive orthodontics; yet another testament to the pretty-versus-plain girl contrast between them.

“Anytime, Sarah,” Ali said. She hesitated as Sarah pulled on the door handle. She was almost to freedom when Ali spoke again, “Hey umm… Can I ask you something real quick?”

Now Sarah was a deer in the headlights. She had the vacant face of terror and confusion, the dumb stare into mysterious, fast-approaching glowey things that even Sarah couldn’t name in the moment. The question formed on Ali’s lips innocuously, much like the graceful automobile that went about its business as unwittingly as that most mentally-stunted of animals.

Ali drove on, completely oblivious, “Do you mind if I hang out here for a while? I mean, I don’t wanna’ be rude or anything but home kinda sucks this time’a day.”

With all the nimble majesty of an airborne deer in mid-collision, Sarah replied, “U-uh, s-sure, I guess.”

She would have said no, knew she should have, but something had compelled her not to. Terror might have been its source, or perhaps mere stupidity. In either case, a mental five-K began for Sarah the engine cut-off and Ali stepped out of the car. Sarah followed, even to the door, where the only indication that something was expected of her was the way Allison stepped aside to let her reach the knob. While she dug for her key, tried to produce it to unlock the door, the five-K turned to hurdles.
Why’d she accept the ride? Why’d Allison offer it? Was this some prank by the other pretty-girls? Was it mere chance, or even fate? Even then, what was the point? Sarah was a loner; a fact she knew and liked-well about herself. What good was companionship to her? What good was her companionship to another? More importantly, what would Allison think when she inevitably twisted her ankle stepping into Sarah’s room? Would her neurotic note-taking and ceaseless word-smithing become a new focus of taunts for the pretty-girls and their gimps? And why’d Allison’s house suck with her undeniable wealth?

All these questions sprinted through her mind in the micro-seconds it took for her to unlock the door and step into the foyer. She held the door politely, half-prepared to slam it shut on Ali’s face, but knew she couldn’t. As much as part of her wanted to kick Allison to the curb, the rest was intrigued at how things would play out– what exactly the answers to those questions would be.

She followed Ali up the stairs as she rubbernecked the white, tastefully decorated walls filled with typical, middle-class photo-frames, knick-knack shelves, various electronics and faux-wood furniture.

“Wow,” Ali said as she stepped aside to let Sarah up the stairs. “This place is nice.”

Sarah snorted, “Nah, it’s just home.”

Allison shrugged, followed her through the dry-walled archway and into the kitchen, “I like it. It’s cozy.”

Sarah set her pack on the table across the kitchen, “Uh… cool I guess. Well, you want somethin’ to drink?”

Sarah went about the tedious process of listing the house’s entire beverage repository before they settled on pop. They sat at the table in an awkward silence while Sarah’s leg made restless shakes underneath it.

Again the perfect teeth appeared as Allison broke the awkwardness with a smile, “I’m guessing you don’t have many friends.”

“Uh…”

She smacked her forehead, “Wow that sounded really insensitive.”

“No, it’s–”
“What I meant to say is; you seem nervous, like you don’t hang out much.”

Sarah opened her mouth to protest, but her mental faculties were tied up in the questions she’d asked. So much so that the lie-production machine in her brain had no room to cater to her already-minute ego.

She closed her mouth with a long sigh, sank back in her chair to open it again, “It wasn’t insensitive. I got what you meant. I’m not really easily offended anyhow. Stuff just sorta’ rolls off’a me.”

Ali chewed a corner of her lip, “You’re sweet, Sarah, but I’m an idiot.”

Sarah shrugged, attempted reassurance, “I can’t tell you for sure since we just met, but you don’t seem like one.”

“See what I mean,” Ali replied with a bigger smile than before. “You’re sweet.”

Again, Sara shrugged, “I dunno’ maybe. But you’re right anyhow. All I do’s hang around by myself. At home and at school.”

She frowned, “That must be lonely.”

Sarah slurped a sip from her can, “Sometimes, but not really. It’s just how I’ve always been. I mean, no one who doesn’t have mental problems wants to be alone all the time. For me, it’s just easier.”

Ali seemed intrigued, “Well, why don’t you make friends?”

“Just too busy, I guess.”

Her intrigue grew, “Busy how?”

Sarah was suddenly timid, quiet. Her mouth squirmed, her forehead hardened, angled closer together. Her face pointed downward at the floor, but Allison leaned to get a better look at it. Sarah was too scared to explain her utterly obsessive-compulsive writing habits. There was too much in her brain that didn’t want to come off like a freak. What little ego and pride she had was too delicate, fragile, to take the risk. All the same, Allison waited.

“Earth to Sarah. Come in Sarah,” Ali joked.

She shook off her petrified trance, “Uh, well, I um… uh… Mostly write.”

Ali’s eyes brightened, “Write? Like stories and stuff?”

Sarah was profoundly terrified– to the point that all the words she knew of to describe fear summed together still didn’t describe its depth.

Her words tumbled out like dice from an upturned cup, “Uh, well sh-yeah. I mean, um… most of the t-time anyhow.”

“Does anyone ever read ’em?”

Sarah shrugged. She knew the answer was no, but the ambiguity of a shrug seemed like it might keep the conversation from turning to its inevitable point. Eventually it would get there, no matter what, but Sarah hoped there would be time before then.

Ali was leaned forward, “Why not? You don’t want ’em to? I could read some if you want.”

Sarah sighed, “Ali, I don’t wanna’ sound like a jerk, but … it’s just not something I really wanna’ share with anyone.”

Allison’s pretty-face had that pinched frown and glisten that pretty-girls get when on the verge of tears from even a minor pin-prick on their feelings. Sara winced. Contrary to her expectations though, Allison blinked, and the gleam became depth-less intrigue.

“Well I get not wanting to be judged, but… d’you mind if I ask why you’re so worried about it?”

It was a fair enough question, and Sarah wasn’t rude enough to say “fuck-off” just quite yet, but even so, she wasn’t sure she had an answer. “It’s just not something I share with anyone. Just something I do ’cause I do it. I don’t really know why I do, but… well it’s like people who hang out with friends. That kinda’ takes the place of that.”

Allison grimaced, “Yeah, I get it, but… do you share anything with anyone? I mean, anything more than the air you breathe?”

Another fair question, granted more invasive than the last, and especially callous for two people who’d just met. But it was more than tame for a pretty-girl. Sarah was once more forced to run through the list of questions that had arisen at the door. She saw a clear pattern emerge from her knowledge of pretty-girl/plain-girl dynamics.

Sarah eeked out a grimace, “You’re gonna’ grill me about this ’til I let you read something aren’t you?”

Ever the more perceptive pretty girl, Ali giggled, “Most definitely.”

Sarah threw her head back, smacked it on the chair, “Blah.” She growled a throaty word that crescendoed in a whine, “Fiiine.” She stood with her shoulders limp, trudged forward, “C’mon.”

Ali followed her from the kitchen out to the right, down the long hallway that opened to the various rooms on either side. She stopped at the door to her room, only one arm limp now, the other with a hand on the knob.

“You light on your feet?”

Ali squinted confusion at her, “Huh? Oh. Well, I was in gymnastics for ten-years.”

“You’ll need it,” Sarah warned.

She shoved open the door. It only just cleared the height of the pens scattered at its threshold. In Allison’s view, the door gave way to stacks of notebooks, and the pen-covered floor. Her jaw fell open, her eyes nearly popped from her skull. Sarah stepped in– or rather-tip-toed– across the plastic and metal pens and wooden pencil-stubs. She slid sideways onto her bed as Alison planted one sure foot before the other to close the door behind her. Her eyes swept the room as she made a small circle inside the towers of notebooks and stacks of loose-leaf papers.
She almost came full-circle, but stopped on Sarah atop the bed, “Holy hell! I thought you were joking. But you aren’t. There’s gotta’ be five-tons of paper in here.”

Sarah shrugged, “Maybe. I’d have to do the math.”

Allison had the sudden urge to rush for a stack, begin tearing through it and soaking up the words inside. Instead, she stepped to Sarah’s side, almost slipped and fell, but managed to maneuver an upright sit from the near-fatal mishap.

Her jaw finally shut to wet her mouth, “Sarah, it’s really hard not to want read this stuff when you see it like this.”

Sarah was melancholic, “A lotta’ people’d probably disagree.”
“Yeah, but they’re not here.”

She had a point. “Dig in if you wanna’, I don’ really care.”

The bright-eyed intrigue returned to scan the room, “Wh-where should I start?”

“Doesn’t really matter I guess. You mind if I write?”

There was a slight shrug as Ali stood for a stack across the room. She walked for the stack like an acrobat; her hands flat, arms locked for balance across the strewn floor. She reached for a red-covered notebook, returned to Sarah’s side while she scrawled across a fresh piece of paper. The intermittent pauses between ink-scratches gave rhythm to Ali’s thoughts. In the span of a page and a-half, she was transported to a world where a king had sworn fealty to his subjects only to be back-stabbed by a traitor courtsmen whom viewed him as weak.

More short stories gave way to poems about love and death, beauty and pain. The words flowed with rhythmic rhymes and swelled with alliteration whose pace was ever-more kept by the tempo of Sarah’s pen. Every-few pages, detailed histories of worlds, cities, and people would arise with intriguing dichotomies, secrets, and flaws to put the greatest of literary contemporaries to shame. All of this, in only one notebook.

It could’ve been a fluke, Ali knew. She dove into another. Then another. The pattern held strong. All the while, Sarah’s pen worked. A pause a drum solo saw it tossed at the wall ’til it bounced, fell with the others on the floor, and was replaced with a new one.

Ali finished a fourth notebook, the sun already set in the sky. She looked sideways at Sarah, curiously absorbed in her work, as though the world in her mind was the only one that existed.

“Sarah?” It took a minute before her pen stopped, and her head rose from the page with a dull question on her face. Ali was hesitant, all the more emphatic for it, “I’ve read a lot of books and stories. But this is by far the greatest stuff I’ve ever read.”

Sarah’s brow furrowed in disbelief; partly from her self-consciousness, and partly from distrust that a pretty-girl like Allison would ever read, “You don’t have to flatter me, Ali.”

She was insistent, “Sarah, I’m not.” Sarah’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “I know I’m mostly eye-candy to people– like I haven’t got brains– but I know greatness when I see it. Apart from hanging out with friends, all I do is read– like you write. All these stacks of notebooks? That’s how my room looks, but with other people’s books. And I’m telling you this stuff is awesome!”

Sarah was suddenly dumbstruck by her own prejudice, as if Ali had heard her thoughts all along. She was also, admittedly, flattered by the idea that someone found her work so intriguing. At the same time though, she was profoundly embarrassed by the way she’d thought of Ali. Here was a girl not unlike herself, save a hyper-critical label Sarah had applied to them both, defying said label to befriend and show her admiration and interest.

“Uh… I-I’m sorry,” Sarah admitted suddenly. She put her pen and paper aside, sat forward to speak openly to Ali. It was a curious thing to her, she’d never opened up to anyone, let alone a stranger. “I judged you, Ali, I’m sorry. I’m an ass.”

It took her a moment to connect the subtext that had lingered between them all day, “Huh? Oh you mean ’cause of the pretty-girl stuff, right?”

“Uh… I wanna’ make sure we’re on the same page… what d’you mean by that?”

Ali explained, “I know you know. You’re what pretty-girls call a plain-girl, someone who’s not super-model gorgeous, or otherwise wrapped in plastic to their eye-lashes. Truth be told, I’m not really either. I just got lucky genetically. I hate those girls.”

“You hate them? But I thought–”
“That I was one?” Ali asked. Sarah nodded in acknowledgment. Ali chuckled, “I know I look it, but I’m not. It’s one’a those weird coincidences– like the ISS they people confuse for a UFO… it doesn’t quite look like a star, and you know it’s not a plane, so what else could it be? Most people go for UFO ’cause they’re not thinking that the space-station’s there.”

Sarah simplified it for her, “You mean Occam’s Razor, right?”

“Exactly,” Ali replied. She pulled her legs in to sit cross-legged on the bed. “I didn’t keep talking to you at school today ’cause I’m an airhead who’s got boundary issues. I like you. You seem interesting. You probably didn’t even notice it, because you’re always writing, but I have two morning classes with you.”

Sarah’s brow furrowed, “Man, I really got pay more attention.”

Ali laughed, smiled, “Point is, I knew I’d either end up being poached by the vapid pretty girls, or be alone. I saw some one that looked interesting, got curious. I was just lucky that I bumped into you at lunch.”

Sarah rubbed her nose, smiled, “I don’t know if the after-school thing was luck, but I get what you’re saying.”

Ali chuckled again, “I really am sorry about that, by the way.”

Sarah shrugged, adjusted herself to hug her knees, “It’s no big deal.”

Ali grimaced, “Actually, it kinda is. If you hadn’t hit that locker door, we wouldn’t be hanging out right now. And I wouldn’t know how awesome you are. And you wouldn’t have someone to tell you.”

For once, Sarah felt perfectly at-ease without her hands constantly working her pen across a page, “That’s… actually a pretty good point.”

They met each other’s eyes with giddy looks that transferred glee between them, and suddenly fell into a mysterious fit of giggles. The plain and the pretty together at last, both equally enamored with the other; one, for its unquenched thirst for friendship, the other for its insatiable hunger for mental stimulation. It was a freak-accident-caused friendship that they both knew would last ’til death. The first few weeks of hanging out only further proved it as Sarah and Ali returned daily from school to write and read respectively. Long evenings soon turned to long nights and weekend sleep-overs, and the latter pushed the former ever-nearer toward greatness with her unassailable support.

The precarious nature of their meeting alone would have given Rod Serling another one for the black-and-white picture-show. The plain and the pretty, Sarah and Ali, writer and reader, entwined in friendship forever over a simple, innocuous mishap.