#2

Same series, but unrelated to #1.

The teenager in the passenger seat was acutely aware of the heat of the silence, caught in the black wrath of the driver. The dark, shabby buildings raced by as the driver gripped the steering wheel tightly, driving faster than was necessary. Every few seconds, the streetlights she passed lit up her face, a waterfall of too-early wrinkles with bushy grey eyebrows, all of which was only accentuated by the firm frown that added one more drooping line to her cheeks.

She slowed down only for a night construction crew, carrying truckloads of grey, dusty gravel into the lot where a seedy set of apartments had stood only a few, cold months earlier. The passenger stared at the trucks with his head held low, avoiding any feeling of contact between him and the driver. As the trucks continued to pass by, the driver spoke in a voice wavering with sobs, yet carrying a hot brand of anger from her deepest marrow.

“What could you possibly have been thinking?” The passenger looked away, and tried to find his voice, but as if in a dream, he was unable. His angular face grew drew together tightly, giving his normally healthy-looking, chestnut-colored cheeks a skull-like appearance. His silence ignited the full ire of the driver. “How could you do this to me?” She screamed, more than questioned, her voice breaking into an accusatory sob. “You know better than this!”

The passenger finally found his voice, and it rang out in a resonant tenor, “Since when have you cared? So long as I was a perfect little kid in school and ‘brought honor to the family’ you couldn’t give a damn about what I did otherwise!”

“How dare you! You know nothing—”

Headlights. Car horns. Blackness.

#1

First in a series. As always, constructive criticism is welcome.


On a calm and still night, the water caught the moonlight like a mirror. Tonight, it was clear and cloudless, but a slight breeze from the west obscured the mirror with coruscating ripples that slowly wiped the clear image from the surface. The incoming of warm air tickled the treetops of the nearby pine glade, inviting a rustling of delight in spring’s vivacity. It brushed lightly over the flowering clover by the lake side, bending over their top-heavy buds, and it carried away the discarded stems of the already-picked clover from the woman’s side.

She was young, but looked too wise for her years. Her skin matched the shade of the dripping moonlight, but was shadowed by the tension in her upper brow. Her hair, blacker than the night itself, drew a stark contrast with the white t-shirt she wore loosely, and also with the muted tones of her baggy blue jeans that failed to flatter her slender hips.

Tears that she was used to hiding dripped slowly down her face, though she had not yet learned how to release the choked-back cries she held in her breast. She idly grasped the clover flowers, staring at the beauty in their fragility, thumbing them back and forth in despaired deliberation. Dogs barked in the distance, and she drew in a shuddering breath. The cries were far-off, though she slowly grew tenser, curling into herself, near motionless.

In an instant a stronger gust blew, carrying to the woman the first dead leaves of fall, and she stared at the shriveled testimony of former beauty. Glancing again at the clover heads, she let out a series of sobs, her body relaxing as she released the tension like a plucked harp string as the baying of dogs grew nearer. The sobs died away as the woman stood up looked to the forest, and then ran into the deep forest.