Fiction Page 2
---------------------------------
Attitude by Maddie McConaghy
Behind the crimson faded curtain, I stood waiting with my entire body in suspense. The salty-sweet aroma of boxed popcorn and packaged candy quickly penetrated my nose. The creaking curtain slowly parted and an entire audience was revealed before me. It’s stunning how a huge crowd will be chatting away with their neighbors before a show and the second the curtain opens up, you could cut into their silence with a knife. As soon as the rapid music hit my ears, my body fell into a rhythmic trance. The intense rush of adrenaline completely took over my body. Radiant spotlights above me enveloped my whole body with warmth and revealed my slinky silhouette on the backdrop behind me. Provoking my concentration was a strand of hair that got stuck to the lustrous gloss on my lower lip. The only fragrance I could smell was the unpleasant odor of sweat resulting from my many kicks, pirouettes, and leaps. Exhausted and worn out, the applause feels like an invigoration downpour on my perspiring frame. Leaving my audience in complete awe is the most outstanding reward.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Dark
By Sean Hart
The sun
was far behind the horizon and the cool autumn night held dominion over the tiny
village. The main road was deserted
and houses showed little to no signs of life.
The few that did held only one or two candles which seemed to be dying
quickly, as though at any moment they could gasp their last breaths and leave
the houses’ occupants at the mercy of the darkness.
Or perhaps they would simply whimper and fade away, giving in to the
all-consuming night. They were
doomed in either case.
Main Street was a small dirt road that ran through the center of the
town, separating farmland from the businesses and houses.
The few shops the village had to offer were all along Main Street, with
the inn, blacksmith, grocer, and church on the northwestern side, while a
tailor, a doctor, and a small schoolhouse stood on the southeastern side. The only one of these still open was the inn, which housed
the drunkards and the wanderers and always stayed lit until late into the night,
all the while bustling with song and drunkard shouts. The owner was a harsh brute of a man named Bruce, who was
known for keeping the bar fights out of his pub by any means necessary.
Though many were grateful of his ruthlessness as it kept violence from
the town, they were more forgetful of his aggression towards innocent bystanders
and his family. The town had a
convenient amnesia when it came to unkind events and doings.
It was on this night, where the darkness had set in so powerfully that it
threatened to crush the tiny town, that Catherine Elizabeth was walking from the
grocer’s back to her house. She
had burned her husband’s meat and husband’s meat and had rushed to catch Mr.
Goodman before he closed shop. His
door stood ajar and Catherine ran in, picked up a fine-looking steak and now
walked briskly down Main Street towards her house.
Her husband was the blacksmith, and though he was a large, powerful man,
he was considered by many to be the most kind-hearted of all the town’s
inhabitants. HE had never struck
Catherine, nor ever threatened to, and always forged an item even if the buyer
could not afford to pay him all at once. For
this reason, Catherine always found her budget thin and wished she had just a
little more money, but she was grateful for her husband’s kindness and
selflessness.
Earlier that evening, Catherine had been cooking up a fine steak for her
husband, whom she felt deserved the best after a hard day of working.
However, as she went to serve the meat, it was charred beyond
recognition; the hearth had burned it to a measly scrap unfit for a mutt. Her heart sank as the meat fell onto the table with a thud,
but her husband just laughed. Quite
a bit actually. Catherine though he
was laughing at her but he quickly saw the shame in her face and got up
to console her. She promised to run
to Goodman’s and get another, better steak, and against all his pleading and
kindness (choked out through bursts of laughter), she threw on an overcoat and
made her way down Gibson Street, which intersected with Main Street.
Catherine still felt ashamed and childish, perhaps even more so by her
husband’s compassion. She only
wished him to have a decent supper after a long day of banging hammers and
heating ovens, and she could not even do that.
She made a silent promise to herself that she would never allow that to
happen again, even if she needed to watch the food for hours on end.
As Catherine made this promise to herself, she noticed a figure moving
towards her down Main Street. It
was a tall, womanly figure making its way towards her that was recognizable even
in the surrounding darkness. She had long, raven black hair flowing down her
back and shapely curves. What gave
away her identity was the scarlet blouse she wore.
It was Pearl Dimmisdale.
Pearl was the innkeeper’s wife, a young woman who had come from the
Americas to seek a simpler, less turbulent life.
However, in marrying Bruce she got the exact opposite.
Everyone had heard stories of her treatment at his hands and how she
would sometimes go to Dr. Jacob’s with large welts or bruises, brushing away
his inquiries with excuses of clumsiness. The
town may have been forgetful, but it wasn’t stupid.
Pearl always wore her scarlet blouse and ankle-length skirt, which caused
many to question her integrity. Scarlet
was a harlot’s color. However,
the people of the area were forgiving and simply marked it up to peculiarity, of
which Pearl had plenty. She had
never attended church, and while not unheard of, it was slightly strange. Even more questionable was the resistance Pearl showed of
even passing by the front of the church, always opting to take the road behind
it. However, these irregularities
were swiftly excused when the townspeople saw the woman’s excellent
needlework. Using the simplest
colors and tools, Pearl was known to weave an intricate and beautiful web of
cloth, be it for a jacket or shirt or blouse.
So sought after was she, that several magistrates even owned clothing
made by her hands. Pearl always
seemed eager to stitch a new design and try her hand at something new.
However, Pearl now walked vigorously towards Catherine, and with her head
in her hands she was unaware that anyone else was around.
About three feet in front of Catherine, Pearl let out a gasp and pulled
her hands from her face to look up at the blacksmith’s wife.
When she did so, Catherine saw tears strolling freely down the girl’s
cheeks, which were flushed red from embarrassment and sobbing. There was a large yellow bruise on top of a welt over her
left eye.
Pearl wiped her face and smiled faintly at the woman, “How do you do on
this fine evening, Mrs. Elizabeth?” Her voice was raspy from crying.
Catherine stood bewildered for a moment and without thinking, blurted out
the question she knew she mustn’t ask. “What
happened to thee, child?”
Pearl’s eyes shot down and more color rushed to her face, but she
slowly began to speak. “Well I
was waitressing the inn as Bruce’s normal girl has fallen ill and the crowd
began to get rowdy and thought it a good laugh to trip the innkeeper’s wife.
I was walking with a tray full of glass steins, each filled with ale when
one of the Neanderthals stuck his foot out and I tripped and it went everywhere
and they laughed…he got angry…all laughing at me…ran down to go home.”
By the end of the story, Pearl had to blurt out nonsensical phrases
through bursts of tears and rushed through it like a child.
Catherine was thinking of something consoling to say when Pearl’s head whipped around to look up at the looming cathedral. It was the tallest building in town, with two stories and a large tower with four loud, ominous bells. A gigantic stained glass window sat dead center in the front of the church and, when the sun shone through it, reflected all those inside with a sinister red glow.
Pearl stared at the structure, not with fear or insecurity as she usually
did, but with anger and fire. Her
dark eyes shimmered with heat and fury and her mouth turned upward to form a
grimace of hate.
Then she whispered something so softly Catherine was not even sure if it
was said. She appeared to say, “How long will thou keep me ensnared?
How much longer must I pay the price of another’s indulgence?
How much longer will You hate me?”
And just like that, her fire and anger disappeared as though it had never
been and Pearl faced Catherine and genuinely smiled.
“It was nice seeing you, but I must be home.
I’ve a million things to do and I’ve no idea how to go about any of
them!”
And Pearl walked away quickly in the direction from which Catherine had
come, leaving Catherine awestruck and confused, trying to figure out what had
happened and if any of it had been real. She
looked around at the dark, sleeping houses and the looming cathedral and
listened to the shouts from the bar and came to as accurate a conclusion as
possible.
The town held a lot of secrets.
-------------------------------
Special
I woke up to the sound of what sounded like a big truck outside my house. I looked at my watch and found out that I’d slept until one o’clock. I stood up in my boxers, scratched my stomach, and looked out the window. Bob’s Move-A-Lot had a truck parked across the street. I watched the movers step out of the truck and sit on the curb. They were waiting for the people who moved in, I surmised, from the bored looks on their unmoving faces.
I pulled on a dirty pair of black pants from my laundry basket. My mom always complained about this habit, but I stopped caring when I was thirteen—that was two years ago—when my dad died. I grabbed a shirt off a hanger and my black zipper-up sweater off the back of my computer chair.
Down in the kitchen, mom and Jerry (my brother) were quietly eating breakfast. I ignored them and went out into the sixty-degree heat, not hot at all, despite my sweater.
I sat down on the front porch of my fading gray house and watched, curious of who might move in. Twenty minutes later, as I was slowly slipping into the dark depths of sleep, a piece of crap woody station wagon pulled up across the street. A shaggy-haired man with the first signs of a rusty-red beard showing on his strong-jawed face stepped out. He glanced quickly at me and walked to the movers. From my position, I could only hear some of the conversation, but I heard enough to understand that the movers weren’t happy.
“It’s not my friggin’ fault we ran outta gas!” the almost-bearded man said, “I can’t control that stuff!”
“Well maybe if you had some common sense you would’ve filled your tank before you left—“
The mover was silenced by a punch to the jaw. He spun around, wide-eyed, and fell to the ground. I moved closer, crossing the street.
“Are you going to help?” The I-almost-got-a-beard man asked the standing mover, “Or do you want to be on the floor like your buddy?”
“I can’t move all this stuff myself,” the mover said.
“Me and my son’ll help.”
“I can help too, I guess,” I said, moving up next to the guy.
“Okay,” Almost Beard said.
“I’m Chris,” I said, holding out my hand, “Chris Maverick. I live across the street with my family.”
“I’m Seamus Fitzfinnigan,” the guy said, shaking my hand. It took all my self-control not to laugh at how completely Irish his name was—if I laughed, he would most likely hit me with his purpling, swelling fist. “We’re new from California.”
A kid in a big black-hooded sweatshirt stepped out. Like me, he had chains hanging from his big black jeans.
“This is Tommy,” Seamus said, “He’s fifteen.” I shook hands with Tommy and introduced myself. We walked the ten feet to the truck and the mover opened it. There were boxes and boxes and boxes. I’d never seen so many boxes in one place. As we were opening the door to labor, I heard the car door shut. I turned around and saw an astonishing sight.
Standing next to the car was what must have been Tommy’ sister. She had beautiful shoulder length hair. Her eyes, in dark contacts, were as dark and beautiful as her hair. She was wearing a short black skirt that showed her legs up to her thighs. She was wearing a V-neck black shirt with a silver pentagram around her neck. I looked from her unblemished face to her faded Converse sneakers.
I was still watching her when Tommy yelled, “Watch out!” and the world wavered and blurred. I fell to the ground and everything went black. That was how I first encountered Erin.