Short Story: Forgotten Remembrance

While I stand on the crowded subway station, she comes up to me.

I've seen her before, always lurking from a distance and biting her lip. But something has shifted. She walks towards me with her chin high and quivering. 

"Do you know who I am?" she asks.

"No." I walk toward my gate. 

"I've known you my whole life," she says. "When we were children, we passed notes in class. And when we were adults, we shared secrets and built a life together."

"I don't remember having met you."

"You didn't. Not in this life."

I bring up the newspaper, not so much to read as to put a barrier between us. But her eyes remain embedded in my mind. Sad brown eyes in a pale green face.

"You don't remember, do you?" she says. "The time when the world was real, when our bodies were physical objects, not images of the mind. Before they trapped us in this prison of virtual reality. I was your wife once."

"I'm sorry," I say. "I don't know what you want."

"My name," she says. 

"I don't know it."

"But you have it," she insists. "It's written in red ink over your heart. You placed it there ages ago, so that you'd never forget me. As your bodies changed, you kept it. I need to know. Tell me who I am." 

I put my hand over my left breast pocket. The tattoo was a relic of my youth, or so I thought. Yet it had some special meaning to me. No matter how many times I shifted bodies, no matter how many old memories were destroyed or deleted, I kept the name upon me. It was the one thing I couldn't bear to lose.

I whisper the name to her.

She smiles. "Thank you."

She fades into the air in the blink of an eye.

* * * 

This story came about due to a 5-minute writing prompt based on the sentence: "That's strange, I don't remember having met you." I'd just added in the sci-fi element when time ran out. I was originally just going to post it in its unfinished state, but I decided to tack on an ending, just for the heck of it. Hey, it's something at least.

Unfinished Fiction: Blood on the Sand

Blood soaked the sand in an angry crimson patch.  

It was nightfall on the beach, and the sky was a cobalt blue with a faded orange streak on the horizon.  Star twinkled on the cold winter sky.  I'd walked here alone, hands shoved into the pockets of my windbreaker, my breath a wispy frost.  

I saw the body.  My back went stiff.

It wasn't the corpse that bothered me, but the fact that it was here, on my turf, on my hunting ground.  A man, stout and middle-aged in both body and dress, lay with a single bullet hole through his chest and a white handkerchief over his face.

That concealing cloth was an invitation, a dare.  Do I turn around, feign ignorance, and continue on my merry way?  Or do I take off the handkerchief and see?  Curiosity, morbid fearful curiosity, got the better of me.  I lifted up the cloth.

My stomach heaved into my chest.

Next thing I knew I was running, running over the sand dunes, running toward the foam of the surf.  As though my legs knew before my mind did.

They were coming for me.

They were on the hunt and I was the prey....

* * *

Now I leave it to you.  Who's the corpse?  Why are people hunting the main character?  How does the story end?

Fiction: Singing the Blues

Blue eyes stared at me.

At first, I thought I must hallucinating.  Hours I'd clung to my life buoy, watching the sky go from pitch black to gray, watching every other passenger succumb to exhaustion and slip beneath the waves.  Now, with my teeth chattering and my limbs numb, a girl's face appeared, fresh-faced and curious.  Her hair was slicked back and her lips were red and she reminded me of a supermodel.  For a moment, I thought I'd drifted into a photo shoot.

Then she dived into the water, and I saw the flick of a fish's tail.

Mermaid.

I wanted to laugh.  When I was a girl, I used to be obsessed with mermaids.  It was one of my many magical phases, along with fairies and unicorns.  Now I'd seen one, and I was dying.

I could no longer feel my fingers but they must have given way.  My head sank under the ocean.  I tried to kick.  I failed.  Above me, squiggles of yellow dawn broke the surface of the waves, beautiful enough to make my heart squeeze.  This is the last thing I'll ever see.  I sobbed and salt water rushed into my mouth.

Goodbye.

I don't know what happened after that.  All I remember is darkness and pain.  The pain started in my lungs, but soon blossomed over every part of my body.  It felt like millions of pins carefully skewering each one of my nerves, inside and out.  I screamed.  Pain blotted out all conscious thought.  White lights danced before my eyes and I clawed at them.

I woke up.

My head rested on sand, a strand of floating hair tickled my cheek.  As my eyelashes fluttered against the light, I opened my mouth to take a breath.  I tasted salt.  That's when I  realized I was still submerged.  I pushed up with my hands and my head broke the surface of the water.

I was alive, stranded on an island with white sand beaches and gentle waves that pushed foam upon the shore.  The burning in my lungs had receded.  I felt strong again, strong and alive, and I wanted to laugh and cry and thank God all at once.  But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a single bell-clear note, like the vocal stylings of a pop diva's solo.

Then I noticed the tail.

It was white as ivory and with long spiky fins.  I poked the tail, felt the roughness of the scales beneath my finger.  I couldn't believe this white thing protruding from my waist was mine.  I must be hallucinating again.  Stand up, I told my legs, but the tail only flopped and thrashed.

A girl in the water nearby clung to a boulder, slowly hoisting herself up, like a foal on slippery new legs.  My legs.  I recognized the scar on one, where I fell on a piece of broken bottle.  What's happening? I wanted to scream.  Only music came out, sweeter than any sound a human could make, and it filled my soul with horror.

The girl looked at me.  Her eyes were blue.

* * *

Author's Note:  This was originally a 10-minute prompt from my writer's club, using different colors to tell a story.  I cleaned it up and expanded it for this blog.  Couldn't think of a good title, though.

Quick Fiction: Fishing Trip

"Daddy," said the little boy, "how can we go fishing when there's no water?"

"We'll make water," the father explained.  "Watch and you'll see."

The sand in the desert stretched long and flat, barren of any tree or bush.  The father put down his saddlebag and took out a trowel.

"Now watch," he told his son.

He scooped up a clump of dirt.  As the trowel hit the ground, there came a mighty crack and the earth split open.  Sand fell away in a round circle; a deep crater appeared in the once-flat land.  The little boy's eyes shone.

"Watch," the father said again.

He took a flask from his saddlebag and poured a single drop into the crater.  A fountain sprang up from the sand, spraying white jets into the sky.   The little boy laughed.  Soon deep blue water filled the crater.

"Watch."

The father picked up a single egg, luminescent as a pearl, and dropped it into the water.  A huge rainbow fish leapt out of the lake, its scales shining like oil swirls in puddles.  The little boy clapped.  Other fish followed the rainbow giant, frisking and splashing all along the surface, churning the water into waves.

"It is done."  The father smiled and closed his saddlebag.  "Now we fish." 

--April 6, 2013

I wrote this story in about five minutes based on a photo of a boy and a man with fishing poles out in the desert.  This was a prompt for my writer's club.