May+19th+Workshop

Post your writing here! Be sure to include your work's title and your name. Also, to distinguish between pieces, click the "Horizontal Rule" button on the edit window (the button is directly to the left of the "Link" button) before and after your piece. The newest posts should appear the closest to the top of the page. Happy posting!

Aw, man, //look//, it's Sarah, with her not-quite-meta and her run-on sentences. Quick, hide the legitimate fiction!

(I am sorry for the single curse word, Ms. Schultz. Censorship makes a bit of sense, since we're in a school setting, but I'd be hard-pressed to find a teenager who would be shocked and appalled at this second-rate cursing.)

__ perhaps not to be is to be without your being. __  I think real relationships – living, breathing, wriggling ones, ones that live inside of your lungs, in your gray matter – come saddled with a certain amount of frustration. I think you can’t call someone a friend unless you’ve found yourself worrying your lip between your teeth at three o’clock in the morning, wondering at the multiple implications in five words in one text message; unless you’ve let them see you at your worst, squeezing your eyes shut because there’s no way you’ll be caught dead bawling like some tantrum-prone toddler, especially to //them// – this friend of yours – because they’ve kindly let you know that, hey, all of those insecurities? Are completely true. I think that maybe you could call someone a friend without your heart fluttering in your chest like an aggravated bird every time you talk, that tense, delicious anticipation of the fight before the fight, the conflict without true conflict, like a tease, but probably not.

The generation of falsities and faded photographs – of two girls with their arms around each other, smiling tight like the sun’s too bright in their faces, standing proper and straight-backed in someone’s toy-strewn, weed-infested backyard – is over. It is the advent of technology, of being all at once too close and not close at all, of gossipers with gum snapping in their maws, of friendships akin to surface-shallow water. There are no more cramped backseats, no more sleepovers heavy with secrets disguised as games, no more fantasies of towns bigger than Here or There, USA.  There is only you, now, which is a comfort and a curse. It’s a riddle, this independence. It’s desired and feared, revered like a god and loathed like anyone with their shit together; the compulsion to seek out others is as strong as the yearning for solitary, and when these wants clash, it’s chaos at its finest. You can’t live inside of your body without tug-of-warring with yourself.

Meg Bradley
 * Cassandra (Part 4)**

Gingerly, she felt her way over to the wall, running her fingers along the rough edges. There.

“Remember this?” She reached for his hand, placing it where hers had been moments before.

//He had taken his pocket knife, carved it into the wall. “See?” He had said, proud of his handiwork.// CL + JB = 4EVER, //it proclaimed.//

She heard his sharp intake of breath.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I remember.” He looked at her closely. “Forever,” he said, trying out the word, rolling it around in his mouth.

“I don’t think I believe in forever anymore.”

The look on his face was as if she’s slapped him, but she just looked down at the floor, drawing swirly patterns in the dust with her index finger.

“Hey Cassie?”

“Yeah?”

“Why were you there?”

“Where?”

“At that club. Doing…that.”

She shakes her head, lips pressed tightly together. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

There is a brief silence as she continued doodling mindlessly on the floor.

“What do you mean, you don’t believe in forever?”

“I just mean…forever is a really, really long time. It seems…hard to believe that anything could last that long.”

She lets this sit for a moment. When he speaks again, the sound seems misplaced.

“You didn’t correct me that time. When I called you Cassie.”

“Everyone calls me Cassandra now.”

“Why?”

“Because //you// were the one who called me Cassie.”

“Shit.” He stood up so fast that he knocked into her. “C’mon.” The silver knife glinted in his hand briefly before he tucked it into his belt and grabbed her by her thin wrist, pulling her up, all without meeting her eyes.

Before she even had time to register her fear, he was dragging her bodily up the circular staircase, her thin frame banging against the metal stairs. A loose nail caught in her jeans and sliced neatly through them, leaving a trail of red on her leg. She cried out in pain, but he didn’t turn around.

When they reached the top, he let go of her, swearing under his breath. On the handle of the door was a padlock, fastened shut.

“Goddamn!” He pounded against the wood, pushing against it with all of his strength. She reached out to him cautiously, fingers not quite touching the fabric of his shirt. Simultaneously, she slid her other hand underneath her camisole, drawing out a long, silver chain.

//“This is going to be our secret spot. No one else can know about it but us,” he told her, her fingers entangled with his. “You can’t tell anyone.”// //She had just nodded, her eyes bright with the adventure of it.// //He pulled the brand new padlock from his pocket, still in its plastic wrappings from the hardware store. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. She shelled off the wrapping and stared at it, then smiled.//

She kept her hand curled tightly around the pendent on the chain, letting it dig into her palm, and watched him.

//They had fastened the lock onto the door of the room. “There,” he said. “Now it’s ours.”// //He gave her the key, pressing it into her hand.//

Slowly, she unclasped her hand from around the key, letting it fall free. “I still have it,” she whispered.

He kicked the door one last time, splintering it.

A cool breeze blew through the open walls on either side of the room. Light rain beat a pattern against the large glass windows. She closed her eyes, feeling the mist on his face, hearing the rhythmic crash of the waves.

They stood in silence for a moment. When she opened her eyes, she saw the two of them, reflected in the huge circular mirror. Through the salt-speckled surface, they gazed at each other, and she could almost see what they had looked like before. Before pain. Before hurt. Before fear.

//She spun around and around for the mirror, laughing as her dress spun up around her. He had taken her hand, twirling her like a princess in a movie. Her carefully styled tresses were beginning to come undone, stray hairpins clattering to the floor, but she barely noticed. She sank to the ground, her dress billowing like a balloon before settling. He reached out and pushed her bangs out of her face.// //“You’re beautiful,” he said, and those two words filled up that little empty space inside of her.// //“You really think so?”// //In answer, he drew her closer, placing his mouth over hers.//

He turned towards her, peering at her in the dim light. Their gaze locked together, intertwined. That hope in her eyes seems intensified, bleeding into his, softening the cold blue edges.

“I didn’t come after you, you know,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Tonight… I wasn’t stalking you. I was…there…I saw you, I couldn’t believe it was you, you look so different and I…”

He scuffed his feet, kicking bits of plastic and sawdust.

“Just now, you asked me to kill you… but then…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said softly.

He ignored her and plowed on. “I was going to, though.”

“Talk about it?”

“Kill you.”

When she looked up at him, the tears entangled in her lashes were like the drops of water on the end of an icicle, threatening to spill over but never quite falling, hanging on by the tiniest thread. She quickly swiped the back of her hand across her face before he noticed.

//At first, it had been the most beautiful thing she had ever felt. But then she felt him pushing, wanting more, and her body stiffened.// //“No,” she whispered. “No, stop.”// //But he didn’t.// //Later, shivering and crying, she swore she would never go back there.// //Two weeks later, she saw the little pink plus sign on the plastic stick.//

She felt anger swell through her. “Why? Why the hell would you have any reason to kill me?”

“I know what you did, Cassie.”

The rush of feelings that swept through her nearly toppled her over, but she felt herself pressed up against the wall with lightning speed. At first she thought he was trying to help her, but then she saw the silver tip of the knife pressed at her throat rather than felt it, and remembered when she was ten and had gone snorkeling, only feet away from where she stood now. There had been the shiniest fish she had ever seen, silver and fast, darting in and out of the coral.

She was shaking so hard that the knife scraped back and forth against her neck, leaving a jagged pattern of red lines. “What //I// did?”

“You know what you did.” The words poked sharper even then the knife. “Why’d you do it, Cass?”

“Cassandra!” She choked out. “Goddamnit, call me Cassandra!”

“Fuck you. Why’d you do it?”

“//Do what?//”

“Like you don’t know.” The knife pressed deeper into her skin, and a drop of blood welled up around it.

“Please stop.”

He looked her straight in the eyes, and a chill rushed through her. His voice sounded strained. “You won’t even say my name.”

“Jack.” As soon as she said it, she began to shake again, and her voice bordered on hysterics. “Jack Jack Jack. You want me to say it again? Jack Bowman. Jack Aiden Bowman. Happy? Are you happy now? What do you want from me?”

“I want you to say you’re sorry.”