I'm never in the right place. Though I suppose I'm never in the wrong place, either. Best of both worlds? I found myself, yet again, on the edge of empty city. I was staring at the settled area in front of me, and I found a sense of fear creeping up the edge of my spine. Uncommon.
I decided on a whim to walk down to the settlement. The closer I got, the stronger was the fear. I found myself walking backwards twice before I caught myself. Finally, after an hour and a half of agonized travel, I stood at the center of the town. The whole place had the air of life about it. It smelled like bread and laundry, looked like chores and pride, and felt like emptiness and fear.
I stood still for a long time, feeling the freshness and the deadness of the place against my skin, stomach, and heart. My guts screamed leave but my mind yelled stay.
I think, I said to myself, I feel unlucky. For having found this place, and the people from it, and the smell of it. I feel unlucky, for not having been here to stop it, and the sorrow that I missed out on, and the happiness I couldn't save. I haven't felt lucky or unlucky for a very, very long time. The longer I sat, though, the less unlucky I felt, so the longer I tried to stay. I was relishing in the new feeling until it was so faint that I couldn't feel anything anymore.
It was about then that I realized that my arm was burning at my side with a fierce blue light and an intense pain. When I finally noticed the pain, it rocketed through me straight through my legs to my feet. I crumpled to the ground in a bright blue heap.
I shook my arm.
I slammed it against the ground.
I tensed it, released it, and cried.
Nothing happened, until finally the pain grew so great that I started blacking out. Right as my vision closed down, I saw blue so bright that it was the last thing I remembered.
When I woke up, I did so in the middle of a crater.
It smelled like rubble.
It looked like rubble.
It felt like hell, or loneliness. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
These are getting super intense.
ReplyDeleteThere are all kinds of metaphors and parallels spinning in my head right now, but I'm pretty sure you'd call them constructed meaning and not derived meaning, so I'm letting them go.
There are a few things that sort of vaguely bothered me:
1. "I haven't felt": "haven't" should be "hadn't" because it's not thoughts.
2. So there is only one right place and one wrong place? What are all the other places?
3. "I found myself . . . before I caught myself": In general I suppose this is true, but here, aren't they meaning the same thing?
Look at Janelle, being critical. :-S
I like the way he fights the Arbiter.
I like the way you describe luckiness and unluckiness and loneliness and hell.
I think "I was relishing in the new feeling until it was so faint that I couldn't feel anything anymore" is interesting.
I think the worst hell is the one a person creates for him or herself, and that does interesting things in the context of this story.
Oh, and also, why is "was relishing" in past progressive tense when the rest is in simple past tense?
ReplyDeleteI love the way you ended that.
ReplyDeleteI don't know.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't really paying attention. I tried to write this, but it took me like, four tries to just keep going at some times.
Sad, how many bad things I did, right?
OH WELL
I think maybe he is addicted to the feeling of Luck now? I'm not sure where I'm going with it.
"I think maybe he is addicted to the feeling of Luck now?"
ReplyDeleteMakes sense to me.
You didn't do many bad things, and I'm pretty sure you know it.
This is a good story, Robby. Very descriptive, very creative. Thought provoking.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to the right place and wrong place thing, I think there are right places and wrong places--the other places are just places. Nothing particular happens in them.
He has the power to save, no? So the right places would be the places where he gets to save lives. And the wrong places would either be where he destroys or is destroyed. Eh? Maybe? That's how I take it. The rest are just places--empty, lonely places.
Hmm. Empty places. I think I like that.
ReplyDeleteEmpty places, empty spaces--that makes me think of Robert Frost.
ReplyDeleteAnd the last two lines: yeah, I think you're right. Sometimes you can't tell the difference, except that I usually expect hell to have flames. But I'm glad you wrote this and kept with it.
"Some say the world will end in fire,
ReplyDeleteSome say in ice."