Sky – pt. 1

This is just a snippet of a story I began writing several months ago based on a series of oddly cinematic, continuous dreams. I haven’t written very much more, and it’s plausible to argue that I never will. This story is my own work, so please don’t go off stealing it or anything. It’s hardly worth plagiarizing.

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      Stars. It’s not like they’re anything new. They’ve always been there, just the same. Distant, shining… even when the sun comes and hides them, they’re still there, still watching. So why is it that humans have always been so fascinated by them? Always thought of them as something so mystical and amazing? So from square one they started making machines to get closer to them, to look into their secrets, and they traveled out to space to see them up closer. But from where I was floating, the stars didn’t look any closer, and they certainly didn’t seem like guardian angels watching over me of any sort. The truth about stars is that they’re made of fire and gas. They aren’t meant to guide your way, or grant your wishes. They’re made to burn. Still, from where I was floating, they seemed cold, and mocking. Like spectators to a murder they won’t do anything to prevent. Still, if I could’ve wished on one of those titans of gas and fire, I’d have wished for air.
       While I was floating there, watching my breath make little fog clouds on the glass in front of me and wondering how many more breaths I had before I was dead, I stared back at those mocking stars not with defiance, but pleading. “God, please let them send me someone. I don’t want to die. Not yet. Not ever.” It was a selfish thought, but it was mine, and one of the only real thoughts I had left. It’s funny how quickly suffocation limits your brain. Not funny like a good joke or watching someone else fall down the stairs, but funny in the way that makes you want to vomit or cry, but somehow you can’t find it in you to do either. I think I did laugh at myself a little, then, if only because I couldn’t breathe enough for tears. The chances of anyone finding me in this floating body field were so small they could hardly even be considered, but I clung to them. “Maybe someone saw the explosion,” I thought, but I knew it wasn’t likely. Fire doesn’t go far in space. Just like me, fire needs air. Maybe I was made to burn.
     In a way, I guess I’m glad what little breath I had kept me from seeing much but the pinpoints of light so far away. I knew all around me that other bodies had already run out of air and that now space was stealing their heat, discoloring them, and bloating them into forms that would barely be recognizable. I didn’t want to turn blue and twist like that. Already my lungs felt stretched, my throat was tight and burning. There, in that graveyard of twisted metal and floating bodies, I gave into death. And just as I was breathing my last, counting my last regrets, and whimpering out my last pathetic tears, a star came closer. To be more exact, it burst to light before my nearly sightless eyes, and the darkness surrounding that star blotted out all the others and drew me into itself.
        When the light came back, there was an angel holding me. At least, at the time he was an angel. Future knowledge would prove him more to be a fox or perhaps a horse’s ass, but for then, he looked perfectly like every picture of an angel I’d ever seen. His hair was as pale as moonlight on new snow, though he couldn’t have been more than a couple years older than I was. His features had the same sharp, icy quality, even through the fog of my dying mind. He was breathing for me, his lips pressed against mine, forcing air into my exhausted lungs with all the insistent gentility of a lover. As we breathed together and I breathed him in, I slipped away again. In some strange way, this angel smelled like a planet – a real planet – one with dirt and trees and musky, untamed places. In that moment, I thought I was dead and Heaven was an untainted world.
      ”Breathe,” the angel murmured, calling me back to myself as my lungs filled themselves with cool air. “You’re safe now.” Behind him someone snorted in suppressed amusement. He turned his face and stared coldly at the indistinct person until they were silent. Turning back to me, he lifted me from the floor as if I weighed nothing, even in that clumsy suit. I sank against his chest, drawing in his heat and gazing up at his dark eyes. I remember pleading inwardly that he would look at me again, just to assure me I was alive. As he laid me on a cot, my hand found his and I clung to it, but I couldn’t bring myself to speaking. He pulled free slowly and turned away. Within seconds, I was asleep in the metal bowels of the ship that had answered my prayers.
         

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And now we all know why Xae doesn’t write sci-fi.

Pet Peeves

So everyone has those things that they really just can’t handle. Even if it’s something petty like people who smack their gum or overuse the words “like” or “really,” it can drive you completely up the wall. Well once upon a time I thought my top pet peeves were…

1. People intruding upon my writings without express permission.
2. People playing with my hair.
3. Blatant forms of hypocracy (e.g. – my sister yelling at my dad for most of my young life to quit smoking and yet now she is, herself, a chain smoker. Or people say they hate serious conversations, then insist on starting them at every conversation. Etc. etc.)

Lo and Behold I have found one that takes the cake. Perhaps this will sound ungrateful or like I simply cannot be pleased in one fashion or another, but this new annoyance takes the cake.

I hate, hate, HATE boys who ruin a perfectly good conversation with proclaimations of undying affection.

Seriously, how is it necessary? When I am talking to a fellow about choice in colleges, or the finer points of using a bazooka vs. a semi-automatic in some spontanious video game, or better yet the prime choices in plans for Z-Day (the zombie invasion) the absolute last thing I want to hear is “I love you.” Or perhaps in not so many words “you’re amazing” or “we’d be perfect together.” Pardon me, but do I have no say in the state of my own ‘perfection?’ Believe it or not, four incidents have of late spawned this onslaught of Amazonian man-hating.

Incident 1
      An ex-boyfriend with whom I am still very good friends has spent the last month beating around the bush about breaking up with his estranged boyfriend (yes, you read it) for me and dropping not-so-subtle hints about prom. Now looking logically at the fact that I broke up with this guy before (and being the “frigid bitch” that I am, “turned him gay”) why would I be holding my breath for him to come crawling back? When we were dating, he all but ignored me anyway, so how has this even become an issue?

Incident 2
    A different, and immensely more recent ex-boyfriend has begun to finally put the pieces of his life together. Hoorah!! Now granted, this was a long-distance relationship carried out via email and IM (a brash moment of stupidity. See prior posts regarding to breaking up.) In discussing his plans to finally begin his college career, getting a job, and really becoming a productive member of society, he begins to spout some bad imagery about climbing out of a hole and hoping I’ll be the one to pull him out and then “walk beside him.” Now as much as I am willing to help him out as a friend and encourage him when things suck, I’m only 17. I do not need nor want a boyfriend who I would have to babysit, pat on the head, and work on. If I’m going to have a relationship, how about an actual relationship instead of a project?

Incident 3
     Another good friend of mine over the internet who has made it no secret that he is fond of me has once again been ranting on about my perfection. Flattering as this is, I can see where it’s going and now possess an intense averstion to online relationships (refer to Incident 2.) I try to hint at this so as not to upset my dear friend, because he’s had a rough track record. Now it’s not that I’m not attracted to him, because believe me he fullfills nearly all the qualifications of my “type,” but the boy lives halfway across the country and wants me to move to his state. He promises on and on about “putting me up and supporting me,” but who says I’m ready to be “kept?” Besides, this is a little bit insane to ever picture it working so I’ve accepted the fact that he is a friend who lives in a very, very cold climate who I might visit once in July, but no other time, lest I freeze. I gripe at 65 degrees, I won’t even consider – 20.

Incident 4
    This one really takes the cake. My best friend’s … fiance’s…. best friend (got that?) is a really, really nice guy. He’s great fun, gentlemanly, sweet, and I have no complaint with him in the world as a person. Until Friday. Now I know that he is a clawing, plotting, guilt-tripping, pitiful fool. Maybe that’s a bit harsh, but I’m still rather irked. We made a run to good old Wal-Mart partway through an evening where the four of us were hanging out, partly to give best-friend-and-fiance some alone time, and partly to procure another bucket of addictive cheesecake bites. Big. Mistake. For the entire trip, he rambled in 3rd-person hypothetical ways about the 8-million reasons why I should date him. I kind of deliberated just opening the door and kicking him out of my car into the freeway. Alas, I have short legs, and he is no small individual.

So anything I’ve said about being unattractive and having ‘no options’ is evidently a lie, so allow me to rephrase: I am somehow able to repel anyone of whom I would have even the slightest interest that falls into the ‘available’ category. Slightly lengthier, but a bit more accurate.

Thus far the only solution presented to me is that I flee to Canada to be in a three-way lesbian relationship with a long term friend of mine.

It’s oddly more tempting than I would have imagined.

You know, except for the part where I’m not really into girls.