Words like knives, thrown back and forth across the room, like a death-defying circus act.
Husband and wife tossing sharp insults, from the couch to the kitchen doorway. Neither landing anything deep, glancing wounds, already scraping scarred tissue.
Neither really feels anything for the other anymore. But the dance, the battle, the contest keeps them together. Light reflects of the blades as they flip and fly.
Thud into walls. Plink against the floors. Bounce of their scaly armour of experience, disdain and dull hate. It aches in their bellies. They think it might offer some release, against the mounting pressure....
I thought she was made of china, the first time I met her. Girls that perfect didn't exist, only dolls. Frozen icons of perfection, unattainable.
She made me feel clumsy - she was slight, small, pale, hiding behind perfect ringlets. On paper we sound the same - the same could be said of me (apart from the ringlets; my hair is straight, limp) but she wore it with pride, I treated my height as a disability, my weight as an inconvienience, my skintone a health hazard. I looked sickly, she looked ethereal.
Somehow it wasn't a surprise when she spoke...
Silence.
The vicar cleared his throat. 'Do you Isabella Riley take....'
'I heard you.' she said, suddenly reappearing from the dream world which had captivated. 'I er... I don't.'
Suddenly aware of a hundred pairs of eyes, she took a deep breath. Ben's mouth fell open. Shock visibly clear on his face.
'Iz?'
'don't Ben.' she murmured. She had to get out of this church. She couldn't possibly marry him. Be commited to one man for the rest of her life. She just couldn't do it.
'But Iz. What? I mean, why?'
'I'm sorry Ben. I really am so, so...
The wolves were out. Howling sounds tingled his ears. The moon, full, glowing, reminded Harold of the night it first happened.
Skin stretching.
Eyes twitching.
Muscles growing.
The transformation didn't take long - his body temperature dropped 25 degrees to a cool 73.6, perfect vampire temperature. Absolutely freezing to a human. Harold hated being a human - he loved the hunt, the chase of his prey. He was like those families in those books, the Cullens... He feasted on animals, not people. A different kind of monster - not a permanent one, one that changed on necessity. A vampire by...
"Travel light."
"But take everything with you."
A murmur of confusion ran across the gathered crowd.
"That will only slow us down!" The young man who had been such a cool head through all of their troubles spoke firmly, with an authority far greater than his age would normally have allowed.
"We can't allow them to find anything which they could use against us." The town drunk retaliated. Or at least, that was all he had been, until the shadow began to cross the land and the war drums had begun to beat once more, since then, he had been...
The red gown was more of a crimson really. I wasn't sure why she had taken it just to sit down at a doorway just down the street. She had shown up with enough money for a new garment, I'd given it to her and she'd just sort of walked aimlessly down to the doorway and sat down.
It kind of made me hate her. I know you shouldn't hate little girls but I hated this bullshit. I mean, seriously, just leave. Don't make me sit there and wonder about what the fuck is going on. Like, I don't need...
Morlane hung his head. At times like these, his emotions were torments of conflict. He was grateful, yes; but he was ashamed. He was melancholy, true; but he was jubilant. Every month for the last 4 years he had made the trek; every month he had experienced these emotions again. He couldn't talk to anyone about these feelings. His father, raised on a quiet farm, couldn't know about such things. His fiancee, sophisticated city girl that she was, couldn't be expected to understand. Only his regiment could understand. And he was the only one left. Except for --
"GOD BLESS...
Public Service Announcement (this has no relation to the prompt): When Hemingway (I think, but it doesn't really matter) said, "Write what you know," it was a critique of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who had said, "Write what you don't know." In other words, it would be like me saying, "You are therefore you think." It may or may not be true, but it was a critique of an idea that had been set in stone and codified. Codifying that idea, in turn, defeats the purpose.
To be more succinct, When I hear, "Write what you know," I reach for my...
"Knives."
The scientist looked up. The musician was bright-eyed, excited, although there were bags under his eyes. She replaced her spectacles (why did she always take them off for the close-up work? It didn't make sense) and gave him her full attence. "Knives?"
"Knives." He sat down on the stool, gangly, limbs too long. He was not suited for the labratory - not a huge surprise, really. "Knives are the answer. We...we cut."
It was almost cute, watching him try to describe what he presumed the scientific method was. "Do you mean dissection?"
He nodded, enthusiastic, excited. "Yes! Yes, we...
She was the most delicate girl in town. I liked to think of her as something made out of matchsticks, and knobby joints. Her voice, it never seemed to mature, even as she stretched into a teenager, and curves set in, she would still skitter on her toes, and wring her hands, and never make eye contact.
The crush I developed on her was no not so unusual, I think the whole town was in love with her in their own way, male, female, child, animal. Girls like that aren't meant to last if you think about it. Those quiet...