posted on 26-Mar-2002 6:56:30 AM
I figured I would make this first bit a sort of Index. Mostly, my fics tend toward the darker side of things, though, I am told, with some beauty hidden inside. I don't have any incomplete fics here - which means that Revelation and a few others aren't posted anywhere as yet.

Index:

Long Day Coming - 1/1 - What I envision were the Czechs ever to leave the humans behind.

Midnight - 1/1 - A look at the symmetry between Tess and Liz over the 14 years from 'End of the World' to the time Future Max would have come from.

This Mess We're In - 1/1 - This is just a moment in time . . . the group has had to go their separate ways, each alone, and then a phone call and a meeting and a final farewell.

[ edited 1 time(s), last at 26-Mar-2002 7:07:01 AM ]
posted on 26-Mar-2002 7:02:47 AM
Author: Demoira
Contact: demoira⊕hotmail.com
Title: Long Day Coming
Rating: PG
Distribution: By permision.
Diclaimer: Property of Katims and the lot, JK Productions, 20th Century, and the UPN. Lyrics property of Dido, 'Isobel'.
Spoilers: Through 'Viva Las Vegas' at the latest.
Summary: What I envision were the Czechs ever to leave the humans behind.



I thought it was funny when you missed the train

They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

when I rang you at home they said you’d left yesterday

Dropping the phone had been an accident. She hadn’t meant to leave the Evanses worried and anxious on the line. But, suddenly, her lungs had closed around the knowledge she had been denying all the way home. She had rushed to the bathroom, leaving the others behind.

No one had picked up the phone; they had all known what the Evanses would say.

They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

I thought it was strange when your car was found

Kyle was the one who had gone to pick up the jeep. No one else wanted to touch it. They were all afraid that there would be some last sign of hope left there for them. The promises of the past would dwell heavily in those leather seats. Crumbs from last week’s snack were enough proof that the others had existed to make their absence worse.

They were each slowly throwing out the crumbs from last week’s snack.

They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

by the tree in Ennis where we used to hang around

Of course they couldn’t just leave the jeep. They couldn’t just ignore it and leave it baking in the desert sun. None of those left behind could imagine the process: stepping out, looking it over to make sure that there were no signs that aliens had once ridden in it, denying the urge to drop a note that would explain the disappearance of four Roswell teens. The jeep was their only goodbye, but, in leaving, their silence had been the loudest.

They left nothing.

They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

dear Isobel, I hope you’re well and what you’ve done is right

Every night they each said their private prayers. They each knew the others’. They were only private because they were unspoken. That was all the privacy any of them wanted.

It was strange, the awareness that they all shared. And the fear they shared of ever being apart. They shared this apartment. It had four rooms in it. They only slept in the one. It had originally been Liz’s room. But the first night, first Maria, then Alex, and finally Kyle had come in. Only when they were all there and had said their own private prayers did they sleep.

But every night they each dreamed the same dream. They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

oh it’s been such hell, I wish you well, I hope you’re safe tonight

Images of war were their constant companion through the days. Some days the frightening pictures would only come to one of them.

The flashes never made sense – horror upon horror numbed the mind. There was killing and being killed and anguish beyond measure. Guilt. Remorse. Hatred. After a while, all they could see or feel was the blood. And they could smell it. It didn’t smell like human blood. It smelled overripe and sweet, like a rotten apricot or dead flowers.

Maria stopped buying flowers for the center of the kitchen table. Alex stopped buying fruit when he bought the groceries.

Some days, they would all come home at lunch to a crowded bed. They would pile into the room, pull the curtains, and cry in the dark together.

They each knew the others’ prayers. They were only private because they were unspoken. That was all the privacy any of them wanted.

But every night they each dreamed the same dream. They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

it’s been a long day coming and long will it last

It wasn’t that it hadn’t been expected. No, the worst of it was that they had all known; somewhere in the back of their minds they had known that they would love and lose. And they had thought it was better than never loving at all. But it wasn’t. Not loving didn’t hurt. This hurt like hell.

They all knew that the scars would never fade. They each knew that they would never find peace again. Even without the war that they were fighting in their heads. they were all marked, branded by the others. They had given up ownership of their souls, and they couldn’t get it back.

None of them were surprised when the test came back positive. Kyle, Alex, Maria, and Liz had been resigned to it long before the signs had begun showing. It was simply more tangible proof of the control the others held on them. And not a one of them felt anything. The test was positive. But nothing changed.

Every night they each dreamed the same dream. They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

when it’s last day leaving, I’m helping it pass

They had never even really tried to cut off the ties they had to the others. Never did they reach out to one another. They slept in the same bed, holding onto each other, but nothing ever happened. They were children in that bed, innocent of the thoughts and urges that might have led them to cross the unspoken boundary.

Even as the proof that they weren’t innocent grew in that bed, they never let it intrude. The bed was their sanctuary. They needed it’s warmth. And they needed each other.

The days seemed to grow longer. The moment forever on repeat in their minds. Their dreams and their days began to fold seamlessly into one another. And nothing changed. Even as their lives teetered on some invisible brink – they could fall either way, but they couldn’t go anywhere – they remained the same. The same as the day they dreamed about.

So every night they each dreamed the same dream. They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

by loving you more

It was an obsessive habit, placing the extra glasses and then removing them from the table every night. It was always treated as an accident. One too many people setting the table: they both brought four glasses. And the two sets of four glasses would sit in their neat squares beside each other until one by one they each picked up a glass and set it at their place setting. Then they each would pick up another glass, and together they would move to the kitchen cabinet to put it away.

They never spoke about why they had bought enough dishes for eight people. If asked, they would have said it was for company. They never had company. They never spoke about that either.

They left a lot of things alone. Like the bed, the table was a place of silence. And some words were banned from their lives: peace, war, destiny, alien, FBI, Czechoslovakian, soulmate, love. Instead, they talked about whose turn it was to do what. And then they would all go to bed.

And every night they each dreamed the same dream. They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

and who he would become, all the things he’d have done

It took the heartbeat to make something shift in Liz. The sound of the heartbeat filled the room. So fast and desperate, she imagined it was what her heartbeat sounded like every moment of every day.

The doctor had told her that she should try to reduce the stress level in her life. She wished she could tell him that she was falling apart because the source of all her stress was gone. She wanted to explain that anxiety and worry and stress were good things. It was when they were all gone that funny things happened to you. It was then that your nerves fought your body and all you wanted to do was curl up in bed and wait to see which would win. But he wouldn’t understand, and she wasn’t sure she could explain.

But listening to the heartbeat, the resignation in Liz became acceptance. It was real, was this life. It was something to live for.

For the first time since she had been seeing him, she smiled at the doctor. On her way out, she felt a little stronger inside, like her nerves were buzzing at a lower frequency.

But just as she felt she might be ready to stop going back to the bed for comfort, the war began again in her head.

The scent of the receptionist’s flowers wafted under her nose. And her head began to explode.

So that night, like before, one too many people set the table: they both brought four glasses. And the two sets of four glasses sat in their neat squares beside each other until one by one they each picked up a glass and set it at their place setting. Then they each picked up another glass, and together they moved to the kitchen cabinet to put it away.

And they each dreamed the same dream. They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

would he have loved you and not let you down

It had been shockingly easy. Maybe it was because she was already numb. She hadn’t needed the epidural. Or maybe it was because they were all numb. There hadn’t been any panicking in the apartment as she had announced it might be time.

There had been no one to swear at as she sweated. But then, she hadn’t really felt like she needed to swear at anyone. This wasn’t like they showed it in TV shows or in the movies.

But then, had there been someone to swear at, she might have felt enough to actually care. She was simply grateful that for those six hours there was no war. There was no meshing of dreams with life. There had been no repetitous rerunning of that moment. It had simply been breath in, breath in, breath out, breath out, push.

Breath in, breath in, breath out, breath out, push. Breath in, breath in, breath out, breath out, push. Breath in, breath in, breath out, breath out, push.

They didn’t let everyone sleep with her that night. She was terrified of closing her eyes, but she was so tired that she couldn’t fight the sleep.

The others didn’t feel the comfort of the bed that night. They didn’t eat dinner. They didn’t even set the table. There was no ritual with the glasses. There was no guarded conversation, because there was no conversation. Alone, they were incomplete.

But still they each dreamed the same dream. They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

and would he be stronger than his father

They held him. They looked out for him. They loved him, and played with him, and talked to him. They watched him with haunted eyes. But they never looked him in the eyes.

He was the one crumb from last week’s snack that they couldn’t throw out.

Still, there was no way of knowing, as they ghosted in and out of the house, who he belonged to. He slept in the bed with all of them. Whoever finished their silent prayer first would hold him in the dark.

They still had eight cups at the table. And they still talked only about the inane. And the bed was still their safe place. And the other four rooms were still unused. But one thing had changed – their private prayers always had one last part: keep him safer than this bed can, protect him from the scent of alien blood, leave his innocence intact.

And every night they each dreamed the same dream. They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

don’t punish yourself, leave it well alone

Each of them held one thing back from the others. Like the private prayers, they were only private because they weren’t spoken of aloud.

There were days that Kyle would wear his old jersey. He didn’t give an explanation, and the others didn’t ask why. On those days, he was quieter and left the table sooner. Those were the days when the child would cry the hardest for Kyle’s embrace. And those were the days that Kyle was the most willing to hold him. It was tearing at the old sores, peeling off the scabs, deepening the scars that would someday form. It was a pleasant sort of pain.

When Maria suddenly would appear with her hair down, covering her ears, they each would look away. The diamond earrings were a bright and obvious reminder. The child always wanted to play with her hair on those days. In her mind, Maria had long ago recognized the irony that the diamond had the greatest power to cut. The two diamonds in her ears cut her so slowly, that you would think they sawed laboriously through her skin. But she knew it was simply that she only used them for slow torture.

Some days Alex wore his baggiest pants, and if any of them brushed past him they could feel how full the lowest pocket was. He kept whatever he used hidden from the others, but those were the days the child would cling to him and beg for music. And, no matter what, Alex would pull down his guitar and play. He played his old songs: Love Kills and Hurt by Love. He hadn’t written a new song since that day.

Liz used to put the necklace that held her engagement ring around her neck and go to work. Those days she would come home late, and she would hold the glass she returned to the cabinet with extra care. The day the child had come though, she had put the necklace and the ring in a drawer beside the diapers and baby wipes. Now, the long days were the days she got up in the morning, woke the child, and looked him in the eyes while he fed. Those were the days she was even more careful with the glass she placed in the cabinet.

Somehow, for all of them, those were the days the dreams were clearer. The pain held throughout the day was stronger in the night when they each dreamed the same dream. They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

dear Isobel, I hope you’re well and what you’ve done is right

Every night they each said their private prayers. They each knew the others’. They were only private because they were unspoken. That was all the privacy any of them wanted.

oh it’s been such hell, I wish you well, I hope you’re safe tonight

They each knew the others’ prayers. They were only private because they were unspoken. That was all the privacy any of them wanted.

But every night they each dreamed the same dream. They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

it’s been a long day coming and long will it last

They hadn’t really thought about it when they began. The possibility that the day would come when the child was old enough to need more from them hadn’t even entered their minds.

The answers they didn’t have. The demand for them to talk about all the things they knew they couldn’t talk about, had long ago agreed not to talk about. It frightened them. Six years and they still had never spoken of peace, war, destiny, aliens, FBI, Czechoslovakians, soulmates, or love.

How could they begin now?

The child seemed to become aware of the fact that his demands would not be answered. The house became even quieter. He stopped asking for Kyle to hold him. He quit playing with Maria’s hair. He didn’t ask for Alex’s music.

He wouldn’t look Liz in the eyes.

The private prayers became more desperate.

Keep him safer than this bed can. Please find a way, there has to be, there must be some way to keep him safer than we can in this bed.

Protect him from the scent of alien blood. Whatever happens, let the secrets and sickness die with us. Never let him fight the war in his head. Never let him feel the pain of the killing and being killed and anguish beyond measure; guilt; remorse; hatred.

Whatever power is out there, leave his innocence intact. Wasn’t our sacrifice enough?

Leave him be.

But still they each dreamed the same dream. They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

when it’s last day leaving, I’m helping it pass

The silence never broke.

They hadn’t really thought about it when they began. The possibility that the child would also one day leave them. He had become such a part of their world, like the bed and the table and the glasses.

They were never sure if he knew who he belonged to. Liz felt that somewhere within him, he had long ago recognized his mother in her.

But he had also long ago learned the rules of the apartment. It was one of the many things of which he never spoke.

They had never even had to set an extra glass for him; he got it for himself, leaving them to their own ritual. And when he had grown, he had unobstrusively moved out of the bed and into another room. They never really thought about which one.

He had done well at not intruding on them. They held him. They looked out for him. They loved him, and played with him, and talked to him. They watched him with haunted eyes. But they never looked him in the eyes. And he learned to stop trying to look in theirs.

When he left, a few things changed. The war got worse in their heads. They returned to the bed more often. When the table was set, four glasses were set out, and five were put away; the ninth glass stood between the two squares, connecting them. Liz began wearing the ring on the necklace again. And the others returned to their tortures more regularly. The dreams and the days began to fold into one another more seamlessly.

But nothing really changed. Nothing had. Not for a long time.

Not since they had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others. While Maria wailed, Liz had allowed only the one solitary tear. Kyle said nothing, and Alex couldn’t move.

by loving you more

They had waited so long. The four of them with their arms aching to hold the others.

They didn’t know if they would ever stop waiting. Sometimes, Alex wondered if they even wanted to. The one time he had voiced the question, standing outside the apartment, holding groceries along with Liz and Maria while they waited for Kyle to unlock the door, no one had responded. They had simply rushed into the apartment, set down the groceries, piled into the room, pulled the curtains, and cried in the dark together.

By then, it was too late.

posted on 26-Mar-2002 7:21:00 AM
Author: Demoira
Contact: demoira⊕hotmail.com
Title: Midnight
Rating: PG
Distribution: By permision.
Diclaimer: Property of Katims and the lot, JK Productions, 20th Century, and the UPN.
Spoilers: Through 'End of the World'
Summary: A look at the symmetry between Tess and Liz over the 14 years from 'End of the World' to the time Future Max would have come from.



October 28, 2014
Liz


Almost fourteen years.

Five thousand one hundred and eleven days to be exact.

One hundred twenty-two thousand six hundred and sixty-four hours.

Seven million three hundred fifty-nine thousand eight hundred and forty minutes.

I stopped counting the seconds when I reached thirty-one million five hundred thirty-six thousand. Did you know that’s how many seconds are in a year? I didn’t until I started counting.

Thirty-one million five hundred thirty-six thousand seconds.

Give me a moment and I’ll figure it out: four hundred forty-one million five hundred ninety thousand four hundred seconds. But that will change too quickly for it to matter.

Five thousand one hundred and eleven days.

That long since The Day. October 30th, 2000. Not a very interesting date.

I lost my Journal somewhere in the middle of all the days and hours and minutes and seconds. Years. I prefer to count things in days. Years get lost in the days.

I think I lost my Journal on the two thousand one hundred and ninety-third day. The day of the moving van. Two days after the six-year anniversary of my ultimate betrayal. Two days after the six-year anniversary of my ultimate act of loyalty. Six years, two days after The Day.

Loyalty. Betrayal. They really don’t mean much, you know. They are these absurd ideas that you hold up and polish occassionally when you don’t want to notice that your life is falling apart. They are the china in the glass cabinet that you admire as you stand there unable to bring yourself to clean up the utilitarian dish that you just shattered on the dirty floor. They are the dishes you look at but never use.

Two thousand one hundred and ninety-two days before The Moving Day: I didn’t think about anything but The Day during all those other days. But The Moving Day I lost my Journal, and that changed things.

I wish I could tell for sure. I want to mark the date – count down from it; change my point of origin to that second. Then I could start counting all over again. I think I would like that.

Things get blurry; I begin lying to myself starting with The Day. I can’t be sure that The Moving Day was when I lost my Journal.

But that was the day the movers came. The only other option is that I forgot it on The Moving Day. But that would be the same as losing it. Losing. Forgetting. Letting go.

I stopped trying to understand the difference.

You see, on another anniversary it burned down. The Crashdown. My Journal. Unless the Journal really was lost, then it may have survived, and I have to commemorate The Moving Day. I prefer The Burning Day.

The Burning Day was two thousand seven hundred and fifty-three days after The Day. Two thousand three hundred and fifty-eight days ago. May 14th, 2008. It was my Independence Day.

Eight years after The Leaving Day. Two thousand nine hundred and twenty-two days after The Leaving Day. You see, The Leaving Day was one hundred and sixty-nine days before The Day.

I think maybe I left my Journal in my room above the Crashdown on purpose.

I never realized it, but a journal keeps you from talking to yourself. Have you ever noticed that? The tendency to read it aloud is just the need to hear your voice as you reason and sort. Alone. I spent hours – sixty-two thousand four hundred and twenty-four hours between The Shooting Day and The Moving Day – writing in that leather-bound book, filling it with me, only to read it back to myself as if it would make me make sense.

She caught me doing that.

Maybe that’s why she was the only one who came to see me the day before The Moving Day.

Twenty-four hours. A fraction of all the other hours: point zero-four-six percent of all the time from The Day to The Moving Day. That’s how much notice I gave them before I left for the fourth time.

You see, the Days are all exits and endings. The Shooting Day; The Leaving Day; The Day; The Moving Day; The Burning Day. One piece of me at a time I surgically cut myself out of their lives.

The Shooting Day. We didn’t know it then, but that’s when I began to leave. I became this thing – alive and buzzing and . . . I’ve never been satisfied with any description I could come up with in my Journal. I called it ‘coming to life’. I called it ‘chemical’. It took me months – right up to The Leaving Day – to realize that coming to life just makes life more unbearable. You feel more, and you can’t deny that all the time you are simply dying. So the exits begin.

I think they knew what I was doing: the surgical removal – healing by cutting. Surgery is a twisted thing. That was why none of them came in the twenty-four hour time span that I gave them; they knew. Nobody came except her.

I think she came because she heard me reading my Journal out loud that once. And she knew what that meant, the need to hear my own voice trying to figure me out. She recognized the loneliness. So she came.

Three minutes and twenty-four seconds to midnight. Three minutes and twenty-four seconds before The Moving Day began. Three minutes and twenty-five seconds before I lost my Journal. Or forgot it. Or let it go.

I stopped trying to understand the difference.

I think maybe I left my Journal in my room above the Crashdown on purpose.

But I can’t tell if I left it there for her or because of her. Or not at all.


*

October 31, 2006


Four minutes and fifty-four seconds to midnight.

I’ve been trying to decide when it was that I became obsessed with numbers and time passing.


Liz looked up from her journal. Tomorrow the moving van was coming to take her away, and she was thinking about counting minutes and seconds again.

So what is it that I don’t want to think about as I notice that it is now four minutes and thirty-six seconds to midnight?

The stars were swirling. They never seemed to stand still anymore. There was a time when Liz had thought of their relationship to her as fixed, ignoring all the proof of science to enjoy their constancy.

I listened to Les Miserables one too many times, obviously.

Somewhere along the way, Liz had decided that she didn’t love the stars anymore.

‘Somewhere along the way’? I know the exact moment the stars began to swim before my eyes. It was the same night that Quantum Mechanics became plausible: one world ended and another began in a single instant.

Her mouth quirked ironically. At least she hadn’t started talking to herself. Instead, she had begun having conversations with herself in her journal.

As long as no one else reads it, what does it matter?

I wonder why I haven’t started counting the stars? It would take a lifetime, and I wouldn’t finish it. I wouldn’t have to think then, but I would have to invent numbers. I don’t know of any number beyond a trillion. Quadrillion? It exists. There would be a point when infinity would be the only description available.

I could become lost in infinity.


She looked back up at the stars. Not everyone could sense the subtle shifts of Orion’s belt as he cartwheeled around the sky. He used to be her companion – but now the two of them understood one another too well. Being friendly with anyone who really understood her was hard. They both spent every moment spinning in slow motion; no one else could see it, but they could both sense the spinning.

Her head began to ache as she tried to hold Orion steady in her sights. Some nights they both moved too fast for her eyes.

Four minutes and two seconds to midnight.

I move tomorrow. I wish I knew where the moving van was going to leave me. I mean, I know – Russian Hill, San Fransisco, an amazingly good deal on an apartment. I have a job waiting for me. College had to be good for something, even if it was accounting, and I studied it at UNM. But I just want to know what it will feel like to stand by as they unpack the moving van. I want to know now so I can make up my mind. Can I do this?

Three minutes and fifty-six seconds to The Moving Day. What don’t I want to think about that has me writing down the seconds?

What do I want to think about?



*

October 28, 2014
Tess


The moment I picked up the Journal was the moment I began counting time.

It was addictive, the flow of numbers moving as swiftly as the flow of seconds. She prefers to count down the time in days. I prefer hours. The days get lost in the hours. And what are years to me? I can’t even think of an accurate way to age myself. What am I: centuries, decades, or years old? So I have become the keeper of the hours.

Seventy thousand and fifty-six hours.

It’s been that long since I really heard her voice.

Two hours and thirteen minutes. That’s how long it has been since I talked with her – half of a conversation she held in her journal rather than talk out loud to herself. I read them over and over.

Seventy thousand and fifty-six hours. They each are longer than the last. There is no exponential growth in the speed of the minutes. They slow and I can’t seem to hurry time along. My counting only keeps me from becoming lost in some infinite second.

I hate the seconds. If you try to count them, they are gone faster than you can mark the hundred and fourteenth; but if you only want to hold your breath for one, the second can grow into an eternity: swallow you whole. Suffocate you.

Two hundred fifty-two million two hundred one thousand six hundred seconds.

Seventy thousand and fifty-six hours.

She called the next day The Moving Day. How do I know this? I talked to her in her Journal. She told me.

I call it The Divorcing Day. It was the day she made it all legal and binding: this emotional seperation from the rest of us. It’s worse than a divorce. I don’t know if she knew, but her relentless surgical severing was what forced us all together.

While she was leaving, consumed by her exits and endings, we were all standing in the wings, breathless, waiting for our entrances and beginnings. Together. She didn’t know. If she had known, she would have laughed.

I know this because she told me. Seventy thousand and fifty-six hours and she tells me that.

I become half of her when I read her Journal. That’s why I cried on The Burning Day.

Fifty-six thousand five hundred and ninety-two hours ago. It burned down: the Crashdown. We all stopped believing she would come home from Russian Hill, San Fransisco, an amazingly good deal on an apartment. There was nothing left for her to come home to.

Except her Journal.

No one knows that I have it. I wonder if she left it there for me on The Moving Day. I wonder if she left it there because I understood why she read it out loud. The shock that the person who would understand the sickening feeling of watching Orion slowly spin out of control would be me was strong.

I know that. She didn’t have to tell me: the shock that the person who would understand the sickening feeling of watching Orion slowly spin out of control would be her was strong.

It would be enough to make me forget the Journal. Forget it. Lose it. Let it go.

It was enough for her. I know. She told me; I told her.

We talk. Seventy thousand and forty-seven hours and we’ve talked through every one. A cycle completed and broken: our discussions.

Seventy thousand and fifty-four hours since I picked up this leather-bound book. Seventy thousand and forty-eight hours since I set it down, finished it, pulled her into me. Her Journal. I emptied it of her.

I picked up a pen and began to write for her. Seventy thousand hours since I set a black ballpoint pen to the first of the last twenty-three and a half pages and began to write as neatly and smally as I could.

I wrote about Russian Hill. The brightly-painted and close-set apartment buildings. The cable cars. The view of Alcatraz if you stand in just the right spot. I wrote about Pier 39 and the taste of salt in the air and fudge on ice cream. I wrote about working as an accountant and the cute, annoying, little-brother-type guy who worked three cubicles down. I wrote of the sun and the rain and the fog.

I wrote about fifty-two thousand five hundred and thirty-six hours ago when it was the eighth anniversary of The Day. How it was celebrated in Chinatown with a guy whose name she will never know but who had great taste in dim sum and a loose wallet.

About the ninth anniversary of The Leaving Day: forty-seven thousand eight hundred and thirty-two hours ago. Marked with four hours in a bar she’ll never go to again allowing some guy she wouldn’t recognize now grope her.

The tenth anniversary of The Shooting Day: forty-four thousand seven hundred and eighty-four hours ago. Rung in over two and a half hours spent in stiletto heals that hurt like hell and lipstick that made her lips too red, waiting to part her thighs and forget.

I celebrated them each with her as I talked with her shadow in the crinkled parts of her Journal. Tenth, eleventh, twelveth, thirteenth, fourteenth; fifteenth anniversary of The Shooting Day.

Nine-hundred and sixty hours ago. That was a hard one. It could have been a different anniversary. That’s all we could think about.

Sometimes the past and the present are only moments away from each other.

Forty-eight hours to the fourteenth anniversary of The Day. I can feel the something in the air that is changing. This is the one that counts.

It will be one hundred twenty-two thousand seven hundred and twelve hours since The Day. This anniversary.

Fifty-six thousand six hundred and forty hours since The Burning Day.

Seventy thousand and eighty hours since The Moving Day.

Two minutes and twelve seconds to midnight. Then it will be ninety-six hours to the eighth anniversary of The Moving Day. The eighth anniversary of our conversation.

Of me finding her Journal. And I want her to come back for her Journal.

This time, it will be me that will be emptied from the leather-bound book into her. This time, she will pick up the ballpoint pen and begin on the first of the last six pages writing as neatly and smally as she can.

She’ll count hours, and I’ll count days.

This time, I will tell her things about me.

She’ll know that I had once been to San Fransisco. I once lived on Russian Hill. I will tell her – in the conversations that I had with myself for her in her Journal.

Seventy thousand and fifty hours of conversation. For her.


*

September 17, 2003


The streets of Roswell in the dark were an eerie quiet. It was a small town with a small town dead of the night. The alleys called to Tess at these moments. The quieter moments, the oppressively silent moments, begged for the echoing of footsteps off building walls.

The closer the buildings were together, the louder the echo. The further downtown, the closer the buildings. So she wandered downtown on the oppressively silent nights.

She resisted the urge to stomp to make the echoes even louder.

You’re standing in the middle of this really busy place. It could be a classroom, a streetcorner at lunchtime, a restaurant, your own dinner table. It doesn’t matter where, because you are standing there, and you can’t close your eyelids. Or you can’t open them. That doesn’t matter either, because while you are standing there, eyelids frozen, you can hear everything everyone is saying. Or you can’t hear a thing. But it doesn’t matter, because while you are standing there, eyelids frozen, hearing, you can’t move.

And no one can tell that you are there.

It’s not that you have disappeared, or even that you are a ghost. It’s nothing that you dream about; this isn’t a nightmare. They just have stopped looking at you.

You are there, and no one notices.

You wonder what would happen if you couldn’t hear everyone, or if you could hear them. You wonder how they would react if your eyelids moved: opened or closed, it doesn’t matter. You wonder what would happen if you sat down. What would happen if you moved?

And then you realize: it doesn’t matter. They stopped looking, and once they stop looking, it doesn’t matter.


Tess couldn’t move. Why hadn’t she stomped her feet as she walked down this alley? She looked around her, suddenly realizing what alley she had wandered down, wanting to avoid the deadly silence of the night.

Of course it was Liz’s alley. Of course it was Liz’s voice that broke the silence. And of course she couldn’t say anything now. Tess didn’t want the other girl to know that she had heard her speaking or reading, whatever it was she was doing.

With curiosity, Tess crept to the wall beside the fire escape. Quietly resigned to waiting. She couldn’t leave now – it would be too noisy. So she rested there against the wall of the Crashdown.

Tomorrow will be four years since The Shooting Day. I think that must be why I am thinking about being looked at. Before The Shooting Day, I don’t think I would have noticed if everyone stopped looking at me – because before then I never realized what it was like to be looked at. I mean – I knew what it was like to have the whole town watching, but they were only watching. The town wasn’t looking at me and seeing me.

Max was, but I didn’t know that. Not until The Shooting Day. And that was tomorrow: four years ago, tomorrow.


That’s when Tess realized what was going on. Liz was reading out of her journal. Tess looked up, half expecting Liz to be leaning over the side of her balcony looking down at her. Instead, all Tess saw were the stars. They were moving so beautifully around the sky. Slowly they rotated – no, she reminded herself – slowly I rotate here on this rotating planet; the stars aren’t interested in movement; that’s my obsession.

And Liz was reading from her journal.


*

October 28, 2014


For two years I kept going back.

Seventeen thousand five hundred and forty-four hours of my life I waited for and listened to her voice.

Seven hundred and thirty-one days.

Seven hundred and thirty-one hours, one every night. I always went back and listened to her speak me, make me make sense. She was good at that.


*

October 31, 2006


Three minutes and forty-seven seconds to midnight.

Her feet compelled her to the alley once more. It had been over a year. She had not been coming down this alley on these oppressive dark small town nights for over a year.

But I’m here now. I am here waiting for her to speak what she has written. Why doesn’t she sleep at night? If she would only sleep at night maybe I could stop wandering at night. If I didn’t know that she would be here, I wouldn’t be here.

She is leaving.


Tess hadn’t been able to think of much else. Liz was leaving. She was packing her things tomorrow into a moving van and getting out of Roswell. Liz was going to cut herself off from the alien happenings in this alien tourist trap. She was going to stop pretending.

Stop pretending what? None of us have been as real as Liz these last years. Why won’t she start reading me out of that journal of hers? She leaves and we all will pretend harder. I just want to hear who I am one more time.

Standing there in the alley, she noticed for the first time in the last three years that she was standing in the light of the streetlight.

All that time, as she spoke, I was standing in the spotlight. But it was worth it to hear someone say the things that I can only think. Maybe she’s been me all this time. I just want to hear who I am one more time.

It was her mantra. She thought it again.

And again.

And she waited.

Three minutes and thirty-three seconds to midnight.


*


[ edited 3 time(s), last at 18-Jun-2002 10:06:46 PM ]
posted on 26-Mar-2002 7:25:43 AM
Author: Demoira
Contact: demoira⊕hotmail.com
Title: Midnight, part 2
Rating: PG
Distribution: By permision.
Diclaimer: Property of Katims and the lot, JK Productions, 20th Century, and the UPN.
Spoilers: Through 'End of the World'
Summary: A look at the symmetry between Tess and Liz over the 14 years from 'End of the World' to the time Future Max would have come from.




September 17, 2005


So one more year I wait for my death. That’s really what it’s like, being able to celebrate the anniversary of my death and rebirth: I wait. It was in the afternoon that they killed me, but I wait for the death in the night. The morning brings new life. Rather Christ-like you would think.

For a minute, Liz lifted her head. The night felt expectant. But recently, the nights had all felt expectant, as if it were listening for her self-pitying words.

As if the night waited for some preordained act, and simply shook its head in exasperation at her self-involvement. Tomorrow was the six-year anniversary of her death. What a strange thing to remember.

There is this overwhelming sense of anticipation. When will fate take it back? Every year I come back to this final realization: I’m supposed to be dead. Only the interference of someone who was also supposed to be dead changed that. So when will fate take it back? I’m the living dead, each day spent on borrowed time.

A sound jerked her eyes from the page. Standing up, she held her journal tightly to her chest. Her stockinged feet made no sound on the concrete of her balcony as she moved carefully to the side.

Below, in the dim light of the streetlight, she could make out a blonde head tilted femininely to the side. The woman was leaning against her wall beside her fire escape. Only the light sound of breathing drifted up to her.

Liz wondered what would chase Tess out into the night and down this alley. Sighing, she returned to her seat, lifting her pen to her journal again.

I wonder who I borrowed the time from? And I wonder if Tess, Michael, Isabel, or Max ever wonder the same thing. Whose time are they living on?

Setting down her pen, she returned her eyes to the beginning of the entry. She opened her mouth and deliberately began to read aloud.


*

May 14, 2008


Tess hadn’t come back here in so long. Once in the last twenty thousand two hundred and eighty hours; she had come back once in the last nine hundred and seventy days.

I came back once to say goodbye to Liz. I didn’t even spend time in the Crashdown in the last twenty thousand two hundred and eighty hours.

She had come back to see Liz that last time on The Divorcing Day: thirteen thousand four hundred and eighty-eight hours ago. But every hour had been spent with the Journal.

Pausing for a minute in the alley, she contemplated the streetlight. In the dawning light it was so unimpressive. The last time she had stood down here in this alley, she had been intimidated by the light – captured in the spotlight it created. Caged to hear Liz’s voice as it swept into the alley.

Captured and forced to listen to the voice I prayed would speak me to me.

Twenty thousand two hundred and eighty hours ago.

She climbed the fire escape.

How appropriate that I would come in through the fire escape.

She looked around, for the first time seeing Liz’s place in the daylight. The dawnlight.

The morning light brought Liz’s life and all of her leavings. She would wait for the life to come back in the morning every Shooting Day. And every Leaving Day she would remember that it was in the morning that she walked away. Things were too bright in the morning light. The dawnlight.

The light glinted off Liz’s bedroom window. Tess knew that every morning the sun would shine onto Liz’s face and wake her. There was no avoiding the reminders of the morning light when it woke her. Liz had told her; in the Journal.

The bed will start it. That’s where she started her days; that’s where today will start. Liz will be thinking that it is three thousand two hundred and eighty-eight days today since The Leaving Day.

I know because all I can think is that it is seventy-eight thousand nine hundred and twelve hours since The Leaving Day.


Tess’s hand began to glow, the spark of a flame nurtured there inside her fist. She stepped into the room, reached out, and lit Liz’s pillow on fire.

You don’t need to come home anymore, Liz. Stay cut off. Do that. For me.

This is my gift to you. My ultimate betrayal; my final act of loyalty. After this, I will begin cutting myself out of you life. Just as you did. And then you will have the Journal. This is the china you look at, Liz. I’m cleaning up the shattered dish off the dirty floor, Liz.

This is my gift to you.



*

October 31, 2006


I’m waiting for her. That’s what I don’t want to think about.

They air is expectant again tonight. I think that something is supposed to happen. Maybe tonight fate will take back this extra time that I was loaned.

I can feel her waiting in the alley, trying to decide when it will be the right time to come up. Maybe she’s waiting for me to read to her.

Three minutes and twenty-seven seconds to midnight.



*

October 31, 2006


Three minutes and twenty-six seconds to midnight.

Tess was immobilized by the sight of the fire escape. Had she ever gone up that ladder? All she had to do was reach out, grab the rung above her head, lift a foot, and take her first step.

All she had to do? It was like leaping off a cliff. Diving into the ocean. Jumping in front of a bullet.

So she stared at the rung that sat there at her eye level. Of course the spotlight streetlight grabbed onto that rung and made it grow brighter and brighter every moment. Of course it would sit there and look at her as if she were an idiot for not grabbing it.

I would rather jump in front of a bullet. Why does Liz call it The Day? It was yesterday. The Day?

She’s leaving. Tomorrow. Grab the damn rung. One second and I’m up the ladder and facing her.


She turned away. What was there to face? She and Liz had nothing in common. There was nothing to face.

She only knows what it feels like to wait for fate. Borrowed time? I keep thinking I should move.

Three minutes and twenty-five seconds.


She grabbed the rung.


*

May 13, 2004


Every night she stood here, locked in the spotlight and listening to Liz speak her.

And every morning she would wake up with the reminder that she shouldn’t return. She would greet each morning with the knowledge that in so many ways standing there made their ties tighten and strengthen.

Tess was beginning to accept that their strongest tie was that they were one another. The same person. No, not the same person. They were each other. She should have been born Liz. Liz should have been born Tess.

And every night she returned to the fire escape to listen to Liz speak her.

In the days they would fight the enemy. Even Liz who was always cutting herself out of their lives would fight the enemy with them. And then at night Tess would fight herself.

If only Liz would begin.

Tess sighed in relief as Liz began.

Another anniversary. The only thing that tells me the days are passing. The Leaving Day is here again tomorrow.

I wonder over and over why I stay.

It repeats itself in my mind: why stay? why stay? why stay?

No love. No life. No dreams stay here with me. All that is left is this balcony – that bed where I wake up every morning. The telescope. Max, Maria and Alex aren’t even the same any more. They don’t exist. They don’t keep me here.

Am I really locked here by the view of the stars?

I stay because of the concrete under my feet. The wooden frame of the window. I can’t leave – and I could never stay gone – because this is still here.

And no matter how my dreams die, this never seems to change. But I want to go. I want this to change.


How Tess wanted to change! What was keeping her there? Destiny and duty; the words of her dead protector echoed in her head. Destiny and duty, destiny and duty, destiny and duty. God, she hated those words.

Maybe Liz, the one who made her make sense, could free her if she were free. Maybe.

But then, Liz lost to destiny and duty before.

I wonder why she calls it The Day? Happy Leaving Day, Liz. Leave, Liz, please leave.


*

October 31, 2006


The hollow clunk of a hand hitting the fire escape alerted Liz to her iminent arrival. She held her breath.

She’s never been here before. Why did I want her to come up? She wasn’t supposed to come up. None of them were. They all know that I am cutting myself out of their lives. If she would only stay down in the alley in the spotlight, I would read myself to her.

I would share. But she can’t come up here.


And suddenly, there she was. Tess was standing on her balcony, looking so wrong there. The light was so bright on the balcony. Liz had never noticed that before. Bright and blinding.

There was no escape in the shadows. She was suddenly caught in the spotlight of the moon. She was caged and desperately waiting for Tess to speak to her.

Tess had to say something. It was her turn to speak.


*

October 31, 2006


Why did I come up here? I knew that I would have to speak. I knew that there would have to be some truth in this. Maybe I can lie.

Tess opened her mouth. She would lie. She had to lie – for both of them. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be up here. She knew she was interrupting Liz’s exit. But she had to make her entrance before it was too late. She wanted to share the stage with her just this once.

The lie.

It was gone.

But her mouth was open. She had to say something. She looked Liz in the eyes.

Why did I look her in the eyes. Her exit almost complete, and I look her in the eyes. My entrance barely begun, and I fumble it in her eyes. Damn. And my mouth is still open.

All her words would be inadequate. She had let Liz speak her for all these years. How could she begin to voice herself now to the master. But her mouth was growing dry.

She spoke.

“You’re standing in the middle of this really busy place. It could be a classroom, a streetcorner at lunchtime, a restaurant, your own dinner table. It doesn’t matter where, because you are standing there, and you can’t close your eyelids. Or you can’t open them. That doesn’t matter either, because while you are standing there, eyelids frozen, you can hear everything everyone is saying. Or you can’t hear a thing. But it doesn’t matter, because while you are standing there, eyelids frozen, hearing, you can’t move.

“And no one can tell that you are there.

“It’s not that you have disappeared, or even that you are a ghost. It’s nothing that you dream about; this isn’t a nightmare. They just have stopped looking at you.

“You are there, and no one notices.

“You wonder what would happen if you couldn’t hear everyone, or if you could hear them. You wonder how they would react if your eyelids moved: opened or closed, it doesn’t matter. You wonder what would happen if you sat down. What would happen if you moved?

“And then you realize: it doesn’t matter. They stopped looking, and once they stop looking, it doesn’t matter.”

When did I memorize that?


*

Liz


And I stare.

Four seconds to midnight. I can’t look away from her. She’s spinning slowly like Orion and I am, and I can tell that she is spinning. She must know that I am spinning too.

Three and a half seconds to midnight. Can she see my spinning? But I have to say something. It is the last chance for us to . . . say anything.

Three seconds to midnight. But what do you say to the one person you never talked to but who changed your life in ways you can’t begin to describe?

Two and a half seconds to midnight. But I have to say something.

“Tess.”

And I feel the second absorb the sound – the single syllable – I think: what an absurd thing to say.


*

Tess


And I hesitate.

Two seconds to midnight. What an obscure thing to say. Is it an acknowledgment of me, my presence over the years? My spinning?

One and a half seconds to midnight. All I can see is her spinning. Do I even know this person? She knows my name. Who is she?

One second to midnight. I must know her. I vaguely recall change and a voice – her voice – shadowing years of wants and desires.

A half second to midnight. I struggle to remember more than the voice. I can see the face in front of me. Is this the person I always wanted to be? And then I know.

“Liz.”

I think: what an absurd thing to say.


*

Liz


Midnight seperates us now.


*

Tess


I am too late. My hesitation cost more than two seconds. It lost me a day; us a day.


*

Liz


Midnight seperates us now.


*

Tess


The Divorcing Day has arrived.


*

Liz


The Moving Day has arrived.


*

Tess


She doesn’t say anything. And whatever I thought yesterday is –


*

Lost.


*

Forgotten.


*

Let go.


*

Tess


She sets her Journal down and goes back into her room. I hesitate again.


*


Liz


I don’t know why I don’t watch. I don’t know if she wants to talk to me. I should watch, and see if she picks me up and takes me with her.


*

Tess


I don’t know why I hesitate again.

Yes, I do. I don’t want to have to pick her up. I want her to pick me up and take me with her. I want her to know me. Why do I have to pick her up?


*

Liz


I don’t know why I am leaving.

Yes, I do. I leave because I can’t take her with me. I have to wait for her to come and pick me up and empty me into her. Why do I have to wait?


*

Tess


I pick up her Journal. I take her with me.


*

Liz


I wait. I don’t know how long.


*

October 29, 2014


I think maybe I left my Journal in my room above the Crashdown on purpose.

I wish I knew the exact moment when I lost my Journal. Forgot it. Let it go.

The Shooting Day; The Leaving Day; The Day; The Moving Day; The Burning Day.

I don’t know which to commemorate. I should ask her. Midnight. That’s when I’ll ask her. I’ll ask her why she didn’t let me surgically cut myself out of her life, why it couldn’t be clean.

Midnight.



[ edited 3 time(s), last at 18-Jun-2002 10:06:16 PM ]
posted on 26-Mar-2002 5:10:07 PM
Author: Demoira
Contact: demoira⊕hotmail.com
Title: The Mess We're In
Rating: PG-13
Distribution: by permission.
Disclaimer: Property of Katims and the lot, JK Productions, 20th Century, and the UPN. Lyrics property of PJ Harvey.
Spoilers: Somewhere after first season.
Summary: CC, ?/? This is just a moment in time . . . the group has had to go their separate ways, each alone, and then a phone call and a meeting and a final farewell.


Can you hear them?
The helicopters?
I'm in New York


It was a desperate phone call. She didn't even think that it would connect . . . all the logic in the world suggested that he would have dumped the phone or left it somewhere, maybe even had it disconnected, gotten a new number under a different name. It was dangerous, his having it. Like it was dangerous, her calling it.

But the need was in her bones and muscles now, a spasm, an ache. A draw – like a cord from the pit of her stomache drawn tight and pulling her toward him.

And he answered.

"What?"

"I need you."

He didn't even ask who was calling. In the silence that followed, she savored the sound of his breathing, the reassuring rasp of it. She thought of a thousand things to say to him – yell at him for still having the same phone, beg him to let her join him, say she loved him. Her mouth was dry and no sound came out. He rasped again – breathing so loud she could hear the indecision he was fighting.

Finally – "Where are you?"

"New York."

Then – "I'll be there. I'll find you."

No need for words now
We sit in silence
You look me in the eye directly
You met me
I think it's Wednesday
The evening, the mess we're in


Stepping out of the bakery where she had just bought two croissants, she wasn't surprised to feel the arms wrap around her. The cord drawing on her belly had loosened just a little, and the ache in her muscles and bones had become sharper and nearer.

He had found her.

The croissants fell from her fingers.

She ignored the rest of the world as her fingers ran through his hair and their tongues tangled. His hands were everywhere and she moaned as her skirt rose minutely and her thigh was brushed once, twice, with rough, beautiful hands.

The ache was a fire and she was kindling. She went up in flames, his tongue scorching a path down her neck. She threw her head back and gasped, her fingers greedily consuming every bit of flesh they could reach under his shirt.

And then he pulled away – so fast she stopped breathing and her heart quit. Then he was back, his arms tight around her and the thump of his heart steady under her ear.

He had found her.

The next thing she knew, they were sitting opposite each other in a little hotel room with the small table between them. The only connection between them their fingers, tenuously meeting in the middle.

She looked at his eyes – glorious and perfect – and saw everything there. He had ached as she had all this time. The need for each other was impossible. And he had been hurt too these last months. The loneliness wasn't all of it. This world was a horrible place for him. Worse by far than it was for her. And she wondered why he had kept the phone.

But she didn't ask. She already knew the answer.

The city sun set over me
The city sun set over me


She felt his hand shake as he slipped his fingers up hers and wrapped them around her palm. His grip was instantly tight and secure – he wasn't letting go. Not yet.

His eyes asked her the question, with the slightest lift of eyebrow and shift of lid. She nodded.

And then he opened the connection. The pain slid through her hand, flowing both ways – into her and into him.

Without realising it, the time passed. The sun set and the stars came out.

Night and day
I dream of
Making love to you now baby
Love making on screen
Impossible dream


Flesh on flesh. What a raw scraping it made. She marveled at the different sounds as they dwelled in each others' bodies. The soft sounds and the harsh ones – sounds of sweat and moans and desire.

Sounds of desperate need.

Sounds of love and fear.

The raw sounds of the raw flesh – the raw wounds and raw bare fear. Desperation.

Need and desperation, and they twisted the sheet round each other and off the bed, hair knotted and each threw themselves into the other. They delved and penetrated and drowned. But the fear didn't go away.

And I have seen
The sunrise over the river
The freeway reminding of
This mess we're in


The dawn wasn't far away. They could feel its rays reaching round the earth to find them. They had finally exhausted their bodies beyond any desperate need or fear, but their minds and souls were awake to the loss waiting with the sun.

She tightened her arms around him, pressing her bare breasts into his chest and twisting her legs around his. She would have kept him captive there if she could. But he would leave soon.

His fingers were tied up in her hair, but he didn't try to remove them. Instead, he massaged her scalp, and then, deep within his chest she felt him begin.

He told her of all the places he had been, faces of strangers he had seen. Highways and back roads – buses and long walks – dirt and grime and the poor. Sometimes the rich. But never beauty. Never joy.

The pool on his chest the she formed with the tears from her eyes told him her story as well.

The city sun set over me
The city sun set over me


The white hotel curtains fluttered and the sun stained the sky its many colors. Blood and bruises on the clouds, she thought, as his voice drifted off.

Blood and bruises on the sky. The sun rose and the people below came out.

What was it you wanted?
I just want to say
Don't ever change
And thank you
I don't think we will meet again


They sat in silence again. She was in his shirt and picked at the baguettes while he stared at her.

Finally – "Love."

He raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything.

"That's what this is."

"Yeah."

She was silent. He cleared his throat.

"You look the same."

"Yeah?"

"I thought you would be different. Inside everything's changed."

"I feel different."

They were quiet while she sipped orange juice, and he continued to stare.

Then – "I feel old."

"You don't look old."

"Old as dust. I think I'm dust."

And then he moved around the table and picked her up, holding her while she cried.

I really must leave now
Before the sun rises
Over the skyscrapers
And the city lanscape comes into bloom
Sweat on my skin and – oh
This mess we're in


He pealed the shirt off her and marveled at the sunlight on her skin. Goddess in all her perfection.

Then he replaced the sunray's strokes with his fingers and sought her moans, the calls to his soul, the peace from this ache in his bones and muscles. His need for her body was nothing like the need for her husky sighs and clutching fingers. She drew him in, and in he dove.

The city sun set over me
The city sun set over me


The sun had long passed its peak, and was dimming. Dwindling. Waining. They were losing time.

She slept, lashes spread on her cheeks, skin moist and plump and the need rising off her like a foggy haze. Her scent was everywhere, and he desperately hoped it was on him. He wanted it everywhere, had bathed in her.

Now he had to leave. He stepped back, praying that her eyes wouldn't open, whispering words to nameless gods and goddesses asking for that one boon. He walked away, the ache growing. The desperation and the ache threatening to take over. The fear that he would never see her again wrenching.

Closing his eyes, he pressed the button on the elevator.

Down on the street, he gave his cellphone to a beggar.

A New York crowd swallowed him up.

And time passed. The sun set and the stars came out.

She opened her eyes.

Cried – "Goodbye Michael."


[ edited 1 time(s), last at 18-Jun-2002 10:03:40 PM ]