She Wanted Me To Tell You

Posted on July 19, 2014 by Catastrophe Jones

His name is Thomas and it is always Thomas unless it isn’t and unless it is something else entirely something that has always been a backandforth about clarity and light, with starry eyes. He knows this, as fiercely as he knows up is up and down is down, and even moreso, because he also knows those things can change, that all things can change, in a blink of those same eyes.

“I have to tell you something,” he says, standing on the bench at the bus stop, where cars drive by at full speed, the light at the end of the block only making people speed up to try to jockey past it. “I have to tell you right now,” he says, shouting, even though no one is paying attention. “Are you listening?”

He rubs his face and sighs, shaking his head, looking down at his hands, empty one moment, full of bottlecaps the next.

“She wanted me to tell you,” he says, and then clears his throat. “She wanted me to tell you that it was the best time of her life. It was the best time, those moments. That she didn’t know how much she could love, until those moments, when everything fit together so perfectly.”

There are tears on his cheeks, and he wipes them away without pause. “There isn’t anything you can do, because you only go the one way, unless you’re tearing through it all,” he says softly. Soon, people will come to try to take him back home, like they always do. He climbs down off the bench, lowering his voice, and checking his watch. People are walking by, taking no notice of him, people who cross paths with one another, every day, all the time, and never give one another a second glance. Never giving someone like him a second glance.

Thomas bumps into a man with a rumpled suitjacket and thin black tie, and backs away, stepping off the curb, his back to the street, counting down, his lips moving silently. He lifts his starry eyes to meet a different pair, so blue, too blue, and the joy and heartbreak are clear on his face.

“She wanted me to tell you she loves you,” he says, his voice cracking, his hands reached out, as though in offering. “She still loves you. Always.”

The bus is right on time.

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Last Note

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Catastrophe Jones
Tipsy Lit, Prompted

This is for the prompt ‘Risky Business’

* * *

Heart in her throat, she sat on the back of the couch and kept her arms wrapped around the guitar. She had been playing, aching for hours now, callused fingers against fret and string, breath caught, muscles thrumming. He would be home, soon.

She looked toward the kitchen, and out the window above the small counter, that led to the fire escape. The blinds were down, and she could see out–to the night where the stars were lost in a sea of light pollution–because she was in the dark.

Stay away from the windows.

That was the last thing he’d said, before he left. He never looked at her.

She watched the clock numbers change, and she stayed out of the scotch, off of the computer, out of the cupboards, because she couldn’t bear to touch anything, change anything of his.

Because she didn’t know if it was hers, too.

She perched like some overgrown flamingo meant for other waters, other skies, her long legs bent strange, elbows tucked while she held the guitar like a familiar lover, the tumblefall of her riotcolored hair laying past bared shoulders, curls swaying when she turned her head to look from left to right hand, to watch herself play.

Her voice felt small, at first, humming along as she played. She had dropped the pick into the couch some time ago, so she was just using her fingers, biting her lips if a single string cut through the itching buzz to sting her fingertips. Eventually, her voice rose in concert with the sound of the guitar, and she made up words, memories of things that never were, and promises broken before they were ever made.

The hours rolled by. She still had time to make some kind of escape.

Even as he came in the front landing.

Even as he came up the stairs, fishing the keys out of his pocket.

Even as he cursed, fitting the keys into the lock.

She could run. She could get to the window, out the window, fling herself off the fire escape and keep running. She could go, and she’d never have to wonder if it was their scotch, and their couch, and their bed.

She’d never know, but she’d never have to wonder.

She kept singing, because he had already heard that much.

She kept singing, even as he opened the door, and stepped in, and watched her.

She kept singing, even as he came in, and she got down from the back of the couch and went to him.

She kept singing, even as she set the guitar down, and reached for him, the way she never had, the way she had been afraid to, until she decided it didn’t matter if she was afraid.

She kept singing, right up until the instant she covered his mouth with hers.

The last note hung in the stillness of the room, caught and trembling in the first kiss.

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The Autumn Queen No. 4 – The Banners of the Autumn Queen

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Catastrophe Jones

This is #4 of The Autumn Queen — You can start at the beginning, if you like, or continue on from here.

PREVIOUS

* * *

At first nadir, when the Fieldman lifted the Scythe from the horizon, we lined along the eastern bank of Houd’s Son, the wide river that ran down to the sea.

Flags of blood and bronze glimmered, the banners of the Autumn Queen fluttered delicately in the evening’s breeze. She rode a dark horse, bareback, her long red braid laid against its roan coat, her split skirts heavy with mail, her gauntlets fisted into the plaited mane. She did not carry a standard; she carried a greatsword with ease, and wore no helm, but painted her face in streaks of red, her wide, white eyes bright in the dark, her sharp teeth gleaming.

The divide between loyalist and rebel cut deeply through the shattered Heartsreach of our nobles; the countryside had erupted in a thousand small skirmishes, blood painted on the hands of friends and fathers, mothers and maids alike, and now it came time to draw together; we had begun this war, and now we had to finish it.

The Order of the Unending Night called out to the Queen and her army, urged her to go back, to give up. “This is folly!” the Fullpriest shouted. “You must give up the fight You have been overthrown!”

The Queen did not answer; she had ridden with her ranks in silence. It was pure rumor and loyalty that brought her soldiers along; they believed she had been wronged, been robbed — but they did not know in what fashion. It did not matter; they loved her. They would put down the rebellion with quick strokes. They would still us, and quiet the petty ragings that led us to rise up against her majestic right to rule. They believed it would be quick, and that when they had cut through our lines, we would be quick to dissemble, quick to give back what had been taken.

Some were thrilled to ride against me, their Commander, having never loved serving beneath a soft noble’s daughter. I could count half a dozen leaders that had tried to wrest control of the armies from me, three by subterfuge, one by outright force, and two, with clumsy attempts at romance.

All had failed, and I had mistakenly allowed them to live, as a show of grace and mercy. Elias had counseled me to it when these things happened, never having had my taste for blood, as I had never had his taste for prayer. No matter. At moonrise, we rattled our swords and stood tall; we were not a small force — I had managed to take control of three-quarters of the army, and all for the sake of the Unnamed Prince, son of my brother. Elias sat across from his long-ago love, his face turned toward hers. Tears would not fall from his ruined eyes, but I could taste the salt of them anyway.

“We are in the right, Elias,” I promised him. Kellis’s half-mad shouts still haunted me, even as I gave the signal to advance. “She never should have kept him from you.”

“It doesn’t matter, Elodie,” he answered softly. “No one will win.”

“We will,” I soothed him. “You’ll see.”

As the moon’s pale sickle of light spilled down over us, as we faced down the cavalry that tore up the ground with their black hooves, stamped and panted frost plumes in the chill, the rallying cry of our enemies was not ‘Return our prince!’ or even ‘Thieves!’

Instead, much to the horror of those who faced brother and sister across imaginary lines drawn against silver grass, the Autumn Queen’s voice was a howling command, bearing no justice, only revenge: “Kill them all!”

* * *

NEXT

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The Autumn Queen No. 3 – Unending Night

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Catastrophe Jones

This is #3 of The Autumn Queen. If you want to start from the beginning, go here.

PREVIOUS

* * *

There had been songs of the sun for as long as I could remember. Epics about the shining light of the sky that was brighter than the silver of the moon, a golden color, a warm color.

In the romantic poems, it was a soft light, sweet and lifegiving, restorative. It made secret flowers bloom, and made snakes grow legs and lay out on rocks to worship its gentle heat.

In the cautionary tales, it was maddening, scalding, blinding, and would burn the surface of the world away to nothing but dust and glass.

They said when the sun rose, it would first be seen as though the horizon were consumed in a great fire. The edge of the world would lighten; the twilit sky would fade from its velvet indigo, and pale to lavender, which would then give way to a blue such as we had never seen, that would blot out all the stars, and even cover the face of our brilliant moon.

Some believed it would be a new era of beauty, and scores of artists made paintings, odes, sculptures, and plays in homage to the sun and all it might mean, while others were convinced it was a harbinger of our destruction.

The Order of the Unending Night, one of the most powerful sects, required that all acolytes put out their eyes before they apply to the priesthood; that way, they would never be able to look upon the light they believed would drive all of us mad.

My brother was such a devotee, but only after our transgression, after we had returned from the court of the Autumn Queen, who had been roundbellied when we set foot in her halls, and was now empty, raging and insane, while her seed was at the breast of a wetnurse we had hidden in the lower streets.

He, Kellis, and I had made the journey weeks ago, a secret envoy whose only purpose was to steal the prince and hide him away. The Queen would start a war she could never win, to try to retrieve the child she should never have had — the child that belonged, by right, by all our laws, to its father.

A father who now would never see its bright eyes, because he joined the Order, and had put out his own.

“Oh, my brother,” I said, and kissed his cheeks. “What have you done?”

“What I had to, Elodie,” he answered. “What I had to.”

* * *

NEXT

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Dream a little dream

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Catastrophe Jones

You’re in my head,
night after night,
where sleep bleeds
into nightmares,

where you are
a remembrance
of things past
and things never done.

You’re in my heart
when I can’t breathe

anything but
fire and smoke,
whisky and wine.

You’re so far away,
and I can’t wrap
my arms around you.

Everything’s been
fiction and dreaming,

and your heartbeat
is only an echo
of what I wrote
years ago
in my loneliest hour.

When I wake up,
the sunlight will
banish you,

as it does,

as it must.

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