Moving Images Challenge #57/CRC #86

CHILD'S PLAY

"Hello?"

"Jenny?  Is that you?  Jeez, girl, you sound terrible!"

"Thanks for waking me up to compliment me, Tansie!"

"Oh pooh, don't go all sarcastic on me, please!  And what do you mean by wake you up?  It's after noon!"

"So?  Is there some rule that says I have to get out of bed before noon?"

"Jenny," (patiently) "I know you're on leave, but this is ridiculous!  You can't spend the rest of your holiday holed up in your room!"

"Why not?  Besides, it's raining, so I can't go out."

A sigh.  "Look, Jenny, why don't I come over and we can make a gourmet meal together like old times, and after we eat, we can go for a drive.  The weatherman says the rain will stop soon."

"Thanks, Tansie, but I'm fine.  I don't feel like cooking."

"Jennifer Thomas, you 'haven't felt like' doing a whole lot of stuff since Jim passed.  It's time to let someone in to be with you and help you go through this!"

"I'm fine, Tansie!  Tell Mom I'm fine, she doesn't have to worry!"

A pause.  "You want me to tell our 86-year-old mother, whom you haven't spoken to in over a month, that you're okay?  And you expect her to believe me porque why?  Don't forget, she knows about the job you didn't get, before Jim died.  Two major losses, Jenny, one after the other.  Mom's beside herself with worry, and you want ME to tell her you're fine? Well you can forget it!  If you want Mom to know you're fine, YOU tell her yourself!"

A shrug.  "Sure, Tansie, I'll tell her soon."  Swiping at a tear.  "Thanks for calling me, anyway."

"Oh no, you're not!  You're NOT brushing me off this time!  When are you gonna call Mom?  She's home now."

"I don't know.  Maybe when I get out of bed."

"When will that be?"

"In a minute, Tansie!  If you'd get off the bloody phone I would, for goodness sake!"

Another pause.  "When was the last time you ate?"

Silence.

"Jenny?  Jenny!  Don't tell me you haven't eaten!" Low cursing.  "Jesus!  I'm coming over there right now, and you're gonna eat if I have to drench you like a horse getting his meds!  You hear me?"

Click.

Sniffling, then broken singing.  "Rain, rain, go away! Come again some other day!  Maybe I'll come out to play..."

Moving Images Challenge #56

STORM

The rose bush, his birthday gift to me three years ago, was decked in glorious red that glimmered in the rain.  I watched the raindrops sparkle on the passion-colored petals; I watched the rain drop ceaselessly from a cool grey sky.  It struck me then how great a contrast there was between the fire blazing in the blooms outside my window and the deluge that could not douse it.

I lay in bed, alone, and let myself recall another kind of fire.  It had burned up more than just the sheets...it had burned us both alive.  And we had kept returning to its crucible, to be tried, and proved, and made pure in its furious heat.  I could not lie still.  I had to record the emotions sweeping through my mind, my heart, my soul.  I had to get the fire out before it consumed me yet again.  Because I knew a single consummation was never to be borne.  I needed to expunge it with pen and ink.

And as I wrote it out, my tears fell, like the rain...

Moving Images Challenge #55

PRISONER

He opened his eyes, wondering why he couldn't see past the bottle lamp swinging over his head.  There must be a wind, he surmised, though he was damned if he could feel it.  He blinked, and then blinked again, and again, trying to get the other lights he could see into clearer focus.  No good.  They remained fuzzily flickering just out of his reach.  He wondered why he couldn't see them more clearly, but no answer suggested itself to his still somewhat addled brain. 

He stretched to alleviate the stiffness he felt in his arms, and found that they were bound fast to the arms of the chair in which he had just discovered he was seated.  No wonder he was stiff!  Taking a further visual assessment, he found not only his forearms and wrists bound, but his chest and thighs as well.  And judging by the feeling, or lack thereof, in his ankles and legs, he was as securely bound down there as well.

It figured!  The one time he was on legitimate business -- if you can call a half-hearted vacation in the desert a vacation -- he was captured.  Way to go, Brand!  He shook his head, irritated by the prospect of having to fight to escape.  He was tired, so tired, he had wanted to crawl away from his last battle and hadn't been able to do it without help from a most unlikely source.  And now this.  Can't a fellow get a break?

He listened.  Might as well make use of his enhanced senses if he were to have even half a chance of escaping without serious or life-altering -- or life-ending, truth be told! -- injuries.  He heard nothing, not even the cry of insects.  He only knew of one place that was insect-free, but he could not imagine how he or his captors could have gotten there from where he had been, unless they were...  He stopped that thought in its tracks, because to admit that possibility meant he also had to acknowledge the even more frightening possibility that he was in the last place anyone like him would ever wish to be.

So far, his limited investigations into his situation had made the following things crystal clear -- he was a prisoner, and alone.  No one was with him...the vibrations of their energy would have set his nape hairs quivering, particularly if they were outside his field of vision.  He tried desperately to free his forearms from the restraints which held them down, but he knew it was a futile attempt even as he wiggled his fingers uselessly. 

Giving up on his latest escape plans before they had even gained ground in his mind, he moved on to another of the senses he could deploy in his efforts to gain much-needed intel on his situation, and make better plans than the just-foiled one.  He looked straight ahead, and sniffed, like a dog on the hunt for his bitch in heat.  His acute sense of smell picked up, far out on the very edges of his olfactory range, an odor that sickened him, and made him wrinkle his nose.  It fluctuated in and out of range, a sonar blip appearing and disappearing on the screen of his mind, a vaguely familiar smell having some dangerous import that just escaped his memory, though he tried hard to bring it into focus.

Closer, and more sharply pungent, was the scent of meat at the very end of freshness, or at the very start of rottenness, depending on how sensitive your nose was.  His nose was so sharp that he gagged at the scent and searched for other scents to erase the one that now dominated.  Up close, aside from the sweat that had dried on his skin and clothes, and the scent of incense lingering in the air, as though the stick had long since burned itself out, and the bog that lay somewhere to his right, was the jasmine.  The sweet smell was almost overpowering, and it gave him pause.  Where could there be such a gathering of jasmine that it almost made one swoon?  The only place he knew...  He let that thread go too, as quickly as he had the first disquieting conclusion, but began to feel panic waking from its deathlike sleep in his chest.  He never panicked, and he would not start now.

Only one more avenue was open to him.  The air was cool, but that meant nothing if it was the result of its being night time, which was likely given the lanterns in the space he occupied.  He pressed his feet down, hoping to discern the nature of the ground beneath them, but was disappointed (fancy that!) to discover that his captors had apparently left his sandals on, as all he could feel were the ridges and hollows left by the imprint of his feet on the smoothly supple leather soles.

He shivered as though he were in the freezing cold, because all that he had managed to discover with his superior sensory investigation was what he had known almost from the start.  He was a prisoner and alone.  That was the clear bottle lamp in his situation.  The rest of the evidence -- bringing with it the fear that he was in the hands of captors he would gladly die to avoid -- was as blurry as the lights just out of focus.  He was screwed.  He did not know where he was, who his captors were -- even if he suspected -- or why he had been taken.

He didn't like the odds.  He didn't like them at all.  Best not to think on them, he decided, but how to occupy his mind, and take it away from the path it seemed hellbent on pursuing?  Ah...

He began to count the times the bottle lamp swayed before his eyes...

Moving Images Challenge #54

(WARNING!  "Colorful" language alert!)

THE BRUSH OFF

"I have been very busy with my job this week, but I am also trying to work through reconciliation with my ex. She has been staying here this week and we are hoping to get back together and perhaps re-marry. I have not really had any alone time until this morning.  Please know that I care about you and never want to hurt you, but I must say goodbye in order to give this situation a chance to work," he'd said.



"Fuck you, too, asshole!" she thought, spinning to keep the raging anger flowing, and the crushing tears at bay.

Moving Images Challenge #53

BROKEN

Always, the talk is of the glass half full,
or of the glass half empty. 
No one talks about the glass broken. 
I watch the liquid
pour out of the neatly broken wine glass,
and see my life. 

What should fill me up,
and make me me
is pouring out
unchecked, inevitable,
my defenses broken down,
no way to shore them up,
or save the essence that is me.

Copyright © 2012 by Teri K. D. Bannerman

Moving Images Challenge #52

THE KEY

Sharps and flats converge --
pitching chordal tensions high --
he'd come back to life!

Moving Images Challenge #50

TABLEAU

The silence broken
only by the hissing steam --
kettle calls for tea.

Motion suspended,
except where he and she touch --
slowly pulsing heat.

Their bodies aligned,
noses, beating heart to heart --
aching groin to groin.

Time marking their place,
waiting for the rolling boil --
passion's lazy play.

Table, patient, waits,
almost knowing, food or lust --
either end fulfills.

Copyright © 2012 by Teri K D Bannerman

Moving Images Challenge # 49

She stared at the image, her mind going to the novel she'd been reading only that morning -- vampires who moved so fast you couldn't see them. The picture was part of a visual anthology composed for Valentine's Day, so she assumed she was expected to see some message about love in the two who stood perilously in the midst of traffic, the young man hugging the unresponsive young woman in his arms.

She tried, but couldn't see that.  What she saw, the thoughts that came to her as she tried to see love, she wrote down in a poem...

REALITY

The reality is -- 

strange though it may seem -- 

that WE are calm 

in the midst of chaos.  

WE are reason 

in the face of madness.  

WE are stability

in the face of uncertainty.

The reality is --

strange though it may seem --

WE are knowledge

in the face of ignorance,

WE are hope

in the face of doubt,

WE are love

in the face of hatred.

The novel was supposed to have been giving her some inspiration to finish her own fourth novel, her first about a vampire.  She was enjoying it, but was not so far inspired by it, and this digression into picture viewing had instead stimulated a different kind of writing than the one she needed to do.  She sighed, adding the poem to her aptly named "Scraps" file, hitting "Save", and then closing the laptop.

Time to go back to work.  She picked up the novel...

Moving Images Challenge # 48

FEAR

"There's no escaping the fear, is there?" she thought, trying not to be mesmerized by the sight of the churning water.  She felt herself swaying dangerously, feeling dizzy and ready to fall overboard.  She could almost feel the crushing water closing in over her head, cutting off her supply of air, choking her.

She screamed...

 

Moving Images Challenge #47

THE WAITING

The trouble with costume parties was that secretly everyone went as the character she wished she could be, even if she chose not to acknowledge it publicly.  Ardith knew, for example, that when her mother used to go to one of those parties as Scheherazade, it was because she had harbored a secret desire to have the man of her dreams fall in love with her because she could tell such beautiful stories.  Her mother had been a romantic at heart, trapped in a mundane marriage to an ordinary Joe who sparked not a flicker in her, and those parties had been one way she found a reprieve from her situation.

So did that mean that the bridal gown and veil she had donned for the party represented her wish for a wedding?  She shuddered at the thought, but it was a shudder of desire, not fear or disgust.  She raised her toe idly and pushed the knob on the tap, letting a stream of cold water trickle into the bath.  The veil she still wore on her head tickled her neck as she stared unseeingly at the tap, the empty glass still clutched in her hand.  She knew who she wished to wed, but she didn't know how he felt.  She hadn't seen or heard from him in more than a fortnight.  Her dreams, and her thoughts, had been silent.

The bath water grew cold, and still she sat in it. shivering now, but unable, it seemed, to move, to get out of the bath and dry herself off.  She was caught, like a fly, in a web of silence and memory.  The towel was there, draped across the chair, waiting.  Just as she was waiting...

...Jonah's eyes snapped open, his body on instant alert, his heart pounding out of control.  He swallowed great gulps of air, and sent a thought out to find her...Ardith.  She was there, cold, shivering.

"Baby, get out of the bath!"

He felt her instant attention, her sudden fury...her fear.  It broke him, and he swore.

"I'll be there as soon as I can, Ardith.  I promise you!"

Moving Images Challenge #46

DROWNING

Droopy eyes watching the liquid slosh into the glass, following its progress to the lips of the man next to her, she puts her finger to her lips.

"Shhh!  Don't want them to hear us, do ya?"  Wild eyes look around vacantly; she gestures for him to pour her another as well. 

"Hi...hi...hit me!" she finally manages, though unable to hold the glass steady.

"You don't need any more, young lady!"

Her head came up, eyes suddenly sharp, focused...furious.

"Don't you dare tell me when I've had enough!  I'm grown.  I don't need a damned babysitter!  I need to drown...to..."

Her voice trails off, her anger dissipating as quickly as it has stirred.  She grips her glass and drains it, looking comically into it as she holds it upside down, searching for the last drop of the elixir of forgetfulness.

"Lisa, let me take you home!"

She stares blankly at the one offering her a ride, and he seems to weave in and out of her line of vision.

"Home?  Where's home, huh?  I have no home!  I HAVE NO HOME!"

Her raised voice causes a few to turn their eyes in her direction, in time to see her collapse, like a wilted flower, over the counter. 

No one sees the tears that stream down her cheeks...no one but him.  He picks her up, raises a hand in farewell, and walks out with her draped across his arms.  She has never been drunk before, and he wants to pound something with rage that she should be so disconsolate as to try to drown her pain in a bottle.

Her pain...his pain.  His heart broke, again...

Moving Images Challenge #45

STORM WARNING

She sat with her head against his shoulder, watching the waves crash ashore.  The wind was strengthening -- she could feel the storm approaching in her bones.  She swallowed the taste of fear that tainted her tongue.  He needed this.  The storms that raged in him needed the space to range free, to exist without the restraints he must place on them inside the four walls of his house.  She didn't know how else to show him that she was with him, other than to be with him when his soul raged.

His hands hung between his upraised knees, and every now and again, he clenched them into fists of fury, the knuckles white with tension.  He did not move or make a sound.  He did not shift beneath the slight weight of her head on his shoulder.  Once, earlier, she had tried to lift it up, to move away and give him room, but he had pulled her head back to its spot silently, demanding the connection she had thought he might not wish for.  She sat still, and waited.

He had made a large fire, and she was glad of its warmth as she stared out at the oncoming waves. They were still a distance off, but creeping closer, as the night grew dark as pitch, making the huge boulders morph into monsters. She wondered tremulously, as they sat looking out over the invisible giant that nudged the shore hard, what had triggered this latest episode.  They had not been in touch all week, but she had thought nothing of it, as she herself had been too busy to do more than remark on it in passing to herself.  So when he had called, two hours ago, and asked that she meet him here, the alarms had gone off inside her.  She could tell that  something was very wrong, but knew she'd have to wait till he was ready to tell it.  She sighed quietly, and watched the waves.

"I can hear you thinking, Andy!"  

His deep voice slid through her ears like liquid fire, warming her.  She heard the faintest amusement, and relaxed, though she made a show of  indignation.

"Can you blame me?" she asked with asperity.  "Your summons was more than usually dictatorial today!"

His chuckle warmed her further, and she felt the knots that had been gathering in her spine unroll themselves slowly.

"Is that what you think I do?  Summon you?"

The dark roundness of his tones washed over her, making her shiver in reaction.

"Isn't it what you do?"  she counter-questioned him. "Like a king commanding his subjects!"

Suddenly, his arm was around her shoulders, pulling her closer into him.  The move startled her.  He had never done such a thing before.  What could it mean?

"The ocean calls to me," he remarked, in a random shift of subject.  "Can you hear it?"

She remained quiet.  She knew he was not asking her a question to which he expected an answer.  He continued,

"On days like these, when storms push and pull at it, the energy burns me, like lightning crackling overhead.  I cannot resist."

He stopped speaking, but she knew he was not done. She had learned to wait with him, and had come to know the value of patience.

"I have been summoned," he said finally, after a long pause.  He chuckled again at his choice of words, and turned to face her, his arm still around her. "Will you come with me?"

She could feel the fine tension in the fingers that curled around her arm, in the hard chest that cushioned her side, in the tight thigh that sat rigid next to hers.  He spoke calmly, when he was anything but calm.

"What have I always said, hmm?  No matter what. That's what I said all those years ago.  I meant it then. I mean it now."  

She let her words sink in, and felt the tension begin to ease from him.  She smiled.  

"So, when do I have to be ready to leave?"