100-Word Anonymous Writing Challenge (#6) - May 2015

[Kerrybuchanan]

Aidan

Aidan and I played in the river today. When he splashed me, I noticed he was left-handed. Another way that he’s special.

I’m not: I don’t come from another world. He says I’m exactly as special as him, but it’s not true. We’re complete opposites. I saw that, too, in the river, how he goes out where I go in. I blushed; he just laughed.

After, we lay on the bank holding hands in the sunshine until my mother called “Nadia!” across the meadow. There was barely time for him to get back into the mirror before she found me.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Waking Thoughts

"...the way life used to be, reflections of..."

Hate that song.

"Honey? You up?"

No. Sigh. "Yes."

Pants. Shirt. Shoes.

"You'll be late for the buss..."

"Coming." Ha, like it matters, like anything matters. Like anyone will ever look at me the same way again. My life is over, yet I'm still here -Living it. What's up with that? Goah why cant things go back the way they were, when we're all happy and ****. Why'd he have t'look at me that way? Why'd I have t'look back? Why does anything ever happen, Goah stupid questions...

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

The Damnation of Qaseem

In the Palace of Flames Genies of both sexes dance lasciviously before me, but I cannot touch: my hands rigidly clasp the hilt of my scimitar, its runes burning crimson. I await the unlocking of those secrets.

A table of epicurean foodstuffs stretches unendingly, but I cannot eat: my mouth is fastened.

Ghraib tells me I was a great king.
Idris says I was a learned scholar.
Carathis says I loved a thousand women, and desecrated a thousand boys.
I cannot respond: the Djinn took my tongue.

My search for knowledge doomed me to this eternal hell of reflection.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

One Last Kiss…

It’s 8:45. Jane is doing what she’s done for most of the previous five years – watching the mirror. Watching the boys. Watching Jack. And watching herself, of course.

Who’d have thought it? That something Jack had bought as a joke would have come to mean so much in her life – at least until 8:47.

“Slow Mirrors!” the advertisements had read, “See Yourself Again in Five Years Time!”

It’s 8:46. She can see the clock above their heads. Jack puts on the boy’s coats, kisses her goodbye and opens the door.

“Stop them!” she shouts. But she waves them off anyway.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Mirror of the Soul

‘The soul, if it lives anywhere, surely lives here.’ In the black circle he sees himself, distorted and dark. No one else understands as he does.

‘And so we have here the seat of life.’ He waves the orb around on the end of his forceps. Students’ eyes follow it, riveted by the gory sphere. ‘However much Jenkins might believe himself alive, from now on he is but half a man.’

Students glance at Jenkins, writhing on the floor, blood dripping between his fingers.

‘Essay on the anatomy of the eye for next week, Jenkins. Or lose the other one.’

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

The Shadows of Your Smile

Turned away, Talasa smiled in her mirror at Aldan from the carriage. Aldan tossed over the diamonds paying for Talasa's revenancing.
"Talasa will be at the church gate. Your bride returned."

Years of saving to pay her revenancing. Talasa had taken that sword for him.
"Talasa?" Aldan gently called. Moonlit, the mirrored smile answered in the shadows of the church lichgate.
Her veil drifted apart, revealing matted hair falling off skinless bone. Empty eye sockets stared. "Talasa!" Aldan gasped, his heart breaking as his dreams died.
" Wait inside the carriage.. I'll get rid of the house mirrors."

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

A Midsummer Night's Cleave

The dancing girl caught him stealing a kiss.
Fle tore himself away and escaped into the forest. Suddenly his eye caught a dark figure ghosting him.
Fle stopped and it disappeared. Scenting the loamy air, he started forward and gasped as the pointy eared, fanged figure leapt out.

Fle ran till he dropped exhausted, against a giant oak. Drawing his dirks, he peered into the gloom. As the moon climbed, a black hand emerged from his shadow, yanking him into the tree. A dark elf emerged, green eyes blazing. It heard the distant music and grinned, licking its bloody lips.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Ripple (100 words)

All at once she became transfixed. The pool, focused. Nothing breathed!
Alas, her being of no form, no image presented itself.
This was the perfect distance though! Too close, or too far, and everything blended.
But this vantage framed nature brilliantly!

These sensations echoed on the water. Living
things chimed! A ripple, creased the sheet of sky below,
stirring the sun to dance. Rhythmic peace enveloped her.

She saw then, a most peculiar yellow flower.
Beauty beyond all else she'd named!
'Narcissus' she decided. Sounds like the moment!

She gazed once more, at the pool, and saw herself looking back.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Time to reflect

“You will never marry,” her mother said, removing a toad from the kitchen table.

The time I realised things were not right was when the trees overhang did not shimmer. Neither birds nor clouds drifting across the sky rippled out their beauty in the lake.

You walked past me, sweet Miranda, to bathe in the water. Invisibility has advantages, it would seem. Your hair floats seductively, and the trees spread their dappled light when you are near.

“Do not be afraid, my darling,” I whisper. “Let me bathe in your beautiful light tonight. Tomorrow, together, we will kill her.”

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Satisfaction Guaranteed

"It's an unnecessarily complicated machine. The light is slowed by the gravity field, then bent by a jungle of dense liquids. It then runs an assault course of splits and prisms before falling onto the photoreceptor matrices. Each matrix measures a photon without affecting it. Finally it faces a mirror so shiny that it isn't reflected; it simply turns around and flees all the way back to your eye."

"And this'll tell me what kind of haircut I should get?"

"It'll show you the haircut you do get, if you don't like it then leave before I start cutting."

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

The Princess and the Mirror

When the princess was born, a mirror arrived. Soon they realized, it showed only her reflection, nobody else’s. The king was wary of it, and had it locked in the basement.

When the princess grew up, she found it and hung it in her bedroom. Soon, the mirror started making noises at night. She became scared of it, and had it locked in the basement.

When the princess died, voices started coming from the basement. Soon they found the princess in the there, alive, young and well. Everyone was terrified and left the country forever.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

PRISONCEPTION

Arthur had never been so happy. The small world that was his stone cell was a tad less cold, a tad less hard, a tad less dark now. He cradled the recently acquired glass shard like a newborn hamster, catching glimpses of someone on the other side by the moonlight. He covered it up in alarm when he caught the stranger staring, but curiosity always lifted his fingers, and the man would say hi every time, in perpetually recurring discovery. He had a scraggly beard and sunken eyes, and coincidentally, was also named Arthur. It's such a small world....

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

This thread is now CLOSED for entries. Please see the poll here and the discussion thread here.