Stories and Concepts

I am a spiral

a silent snake
winding and looping
mastering the universe
within my own skin

I change as light through water
ever fluid

intertwining fate
weaving sky and earth

Opening up and
Letting go

curling and doubling
twin spirits carving out a story
old and renewed
deep within your body

Silent orchestrater of your destiny

I am the dancer
playing through your blood
leaving my mark in your eyes
on your skin
flowing through curls of Silver
Gold
and Copper

echoing
hollow
in your voice
in the unoccupied cradle of your ear

Within, there is the swelling of the tide
resonating in minute measure

on my skin all colors shimmer
you trace the perfect curve of my body
I whisper a story softly
a time before you were born

you seem to listen intently
then I fall away

discarded and forgotten

and find myself
once again nestled in warm sand

Above me a galaxy swirls,
mimicking my form
its dazzling clusters of soundless stars
emulating the play of hues
under my sun-bleached skin

Deep within,

I am a spiral

Rain pelted wood and glass as it caste eerie reflections across mahogany. Yellow light settled on parts of the room like a thin coating of dust. A dog, black and huge, slept wearily beside an over-stuffed armchair, kicking every once and a while as he chased imaginary rabbits. His owner sat next to him, eyes and mind pinned to a book to keep from looking at the blue-clad girl who sat on the floor only a few feet away. Brown eyes watched the reader, who she knew wasn’t reading at all. She fumbled with the bottom lining of her blue night gown, waiting for him to give up and look at her. After several long minutes, and tired of the one-sided staring contest, the man looked up and sighed. The girl’s bored eyes caught a shine as she noticed his attention switch to her. She knew he couldn’t ignore her forever, she was his little sister.

“What do you want?” Paul asked, leaning back and placing his book on the chair’s arm.

The little girl forced a pout and sat up on her knees. “You don’t have to be so mean! You always ignore me. It’s not my fault things are this way, you know.”

A frown came to his eyes and he forced a half-hearted smile. “I’m sorry. You know I love you Tiff, but you seriously are going to have to stop popping in here whenever you feel like it. I have to live my life.”

“I don’t want you not to live your life. That’s why I’m here. I know you’ve been dreaming about them.” Tiffany sat back again and scratched her nose.

“Dreaming about whom?” He knew, but he didn’t want to get into this again.

“Those girls in the park, the ones the cops keep finding. It’s all over the news.” She motioned toward a strewn-out paper with a bold headline. “You even have a copy of the paper with it on it.” Tilting forward, she read the headline out loud to her older brother, “’Police Baffled in Park Killings”.

“I don’t want to go over this again, Tiff. I can’t help, and even if I can, it’s not as if they’d take help from someone like me.” Paul rubbed his right temple and sighed. “Police deal with fact, figures, and science. What do you think they would say if I told them that I can talk to dead people? They’ll think I’m nuts and I really don’t need any more problems to deal with right now.” It had been three years since his book had gone out on shelves, the one he had so much hope for and expected to be better than gold. Fool’s gold, he thought, it had been a horrible defeat. Now he was barely making enough money with his articles to make ends meet.

“I know you’re upset about the way things are going, but what if you could stop this guy? What if you could make sure he never kills again? Isn’t it worth it?”

“And what if they don’t want my help?”

“What if they don’t? At least you tried. Come on, Paul, I know you. You’re good at what you do. You see things other people can’t and sometimes don’t want to. You know things that astound people. You have to at least try.”

“Astound? Where did you learn that?” He frowned at the earnest look in her eyes. He’d lost.

Suddenly Jacqueline stopped; her arms outstretched between the open door and the car, and looked at them. Her two passengers had settled into their places as if it had always been so. As Jonathan had and would tomorrow and so on until the council saw fit to have her life flow otherwise. Slowly she leaned forward, placing her forehead against her arm and listening to her own deep and even breathing. The door handle that she had used as a depository for small coins and bits of paper came to rest against the back of her thigh. After a few moments, she tilted her head up, unburying her eyes so that her mouth was against her lower arm. All around was darkness, interrupted by a few floodlights at equal intervals on the compound’s cement outer wall. Above, though, was a vast expanse of space rich with stars like seeds laid out on dark and fertile soil. And there, a sickle of a moon, white and pure as new snow before it has been dirtied by careless boots. These were symbols of a timelessness she had never fully understood. All things were fleeting, nothing was the same. Tomorrow the moon would be bigger, or smaller, depending on her state of rise or decline. She would disappear, as if dead, then reappear once more. This was Jacqueline’s fate. But, whereas it was a foregone conclusion that the moon would come from its dark slumber in due time, how many times had she died and come back again? When would the day come when she didn’t open her eyes once more?

“We should probably get going,” Angelique finally said, half-wondering if the Garou planned to ever get in the car.

Jacqueline closed her eyes for a brief moment, and then allowed herself to slide into her seat and close the door. She started the car, ignoring the poor attempt at a sympathetic look the vampyre was offering next to her.

Tiny punctures from exploding metal pocked the red soil beneath her belly. It took all her concentration to breath at safe pace, no more than four inhalations per minute. If she dared take in air faster than that, she was dead; it was one of the first facts drilled into her mind. The creatures, the ones that had led to most of the earth being turned into a giant wasteland, could somehow sense heavy breathing. They could also sense movement and vibration, so getting up and making a run for it was out of the question. Not just that, but where would she run? The nearest base was at least three miles away with several nests lying like living booby traps under the surface. There was no way to know where they were without specialized equipment, which just happened to be in several smoldering pieces ten yards away to her right. To make matters worse the scorching desert heat had left her in a confusing mix of pain and light-headedness. Through courses that had been heavily regulated by the government after The Arrival, there was no doubt of the symptoms Cat was suffering from. Soon the foggy thoughts and hazy vision would give way to a mystifying assortment of hallucinations. She had to get out of the sun, fast. But, judging by the dark figures only a few meters away, getting up and hauling it would be even more treacherous. Instead, she waited. She didn’t know what for, perhaps a miracle. Playing dead would only work for so long, they’d get curious. They always got curious. The scent of blood and already decaying flesh would soon bring them by the dozens. One squatted and rested its long and jagged claws against its sinewy legs. Suddenly it straightened and joined the other two in gazing at something in the distance. She didn’t dare cock her head to look at what had caught their attention; the movement would give her away without a doubt. Then there was a shuffling behind her, a chill rolled over her whole body and the breath caught in her throat. Was it one of them? Did it know that, as apposed to the bodies that littered the dusty ground around her, she still was alive?

Without warning a light came blaring out of the west. What the hell was it? Perhaps her distress signal had been picked up. If it was an Earth Base Omega Destroyer, they weren’t there to save her. Instead, the pulse that reverberated through unseen waves would actually be used as a target by the EBOD. Heat Guided Thermo Missiles were the human’s most devastating weapon against the creatures that had nearly conquered Earth, what was left of it. Whether or not the aliens had sensed her was no longer important and that realization became ever clearer as the light came closer. Cat took a breath and closed her eyes. It would happen fast, she wouldn’t even have time to scream.

Then, it impacted sending shockwaves and sand radiating out from all sides. Clods pelted her tattered uniform and went skittering across the dry earth with an almost a metallic resonance. The thin dust, earth that had been pulverized by the sheer force of the object impacting, swept out in a billowing form until it faded away.

At that moment, the oddest thing was that she could feel when she let the air out of her lungs. She also felt the bloodied bruise over her left eye that started to ache terribly. This was all quite impossible; she should be ash like every living thing in a square mile of the blast site. Warily she opened her eyes and looked up to an empty landscape, its continuity only broken by a mass of glittering metal. With the energy it had hit, she could only guess how much lay under ground. Above ground three meters of dark and angled surface glittered. “What the hell?” Her better instincts to survive gave way to a horrified amazement. The beasts that had been all too close to her were gone. Had they been killed by the impact? If they had, why was she still alive? Cat methodically moved her arms and legs. Except for shrapnel wounds in the outside of her right thigh, she was all in one piece. Well, if it’s going to kill me anyway, I might as well check it out, she thought. With skilled hands she ripped apart the cloth of her over shirt and tied it tightly around her thigh. Why bleed to death when you can be tortured by whoever the hell came in that craft? It was a macabre thought, she smiled and stood shakily.