Stories of mine.

Sweetalker Mon Jul 13 2009, 19:41

"Name"

It's an unfinished story, and it will make a lot more sense if you're a Firefly fan, but it's not bad for what it is. Written by yours truly. You have to click to get beyond the first chapter.

(EDIT... more in this thread below)

Sweetalker Tue Jul 14 2009, 03:52

I've also got a new vid up on yt. So embarrassing.

Kratos618 Tue Jul 14 2009, 03:59

The story certainly is interesting, you write in a compelling way and the characters are likeable, and it's more accesible than I assumed from your description, but I'm still a bit lost. Razz

Firefly was always one of those shows that I was going to "get around to watching", but never ended up following through with it. I do have some free time over the next few weeks, so I might just go ahead and watch it. I'll give a proper review on ff.net once I'm caught up to speed. Very Happy

Sweetalker Tue Jul 14 2009, 12:14

Firefly is, hands down, the best TV show I've ever seen. Avatar TLA is a close second Wink

The pilot episode might be a bit melodramatic, but by the first real episode "The Train Job", when the comedy elements start coming in, you'll be hooked.

A "Companion" is a legal prostitute, very cultured, educated, and highly esteemed in the Firefly universe. They are trained from a young age and are much like geisha from olden Japan.

In the series you'll recognize Nandi from my story, and Inara, and you might recognize who Tweeny is (most people don't, tee hee). The rest of the characters in "Name" are my own creation, with the exception of Sheydra, who is shown for two minutes in the Firefly movie "Serenity".

Sweetalker Mon Jul 20 2009, 14:34

The story below is called "The Last Eight Minutes". I wrote it some time ago. It IS fiction, but based on a very painful truth.

My father kicked me out of the house when I was 12 years old. He still sees this as perfectly reasonable, because I was a "shame" to the family. That scene on the Day of Black Sun, where Zuko tells Ozai how horrible it was that he fought an Agni Kai with a 13-year-old? How I wish my father could see that scene.

Sweetalker Mon Jul 20 2009, 14:35

So I haven't decided yet. What do I want? Do I want you to lie to me? Do I want you to just shut up?

Somebody wrote down the time, the exact time it happened. I saw. We'd been talking on the phone just eight minutes before. Eight minutes, and you didn't say a word. Didn't give even a hint of what was happening right over your shoulder.

I kept asking you why you were biting your lower lip (don't ask me how I knew you did it, I just know) and you kept shrugging it off. The nervousness of years – that's what you supposed, you said. “Wasted time” were your exact words, I believe. Coulda been the title of a crappy only-suitable-for-TV movie or maybe a pimply boy band's love ballad, but I wasn't gonna call you on it. Not in the first conversation, anyway.

How did it happen? Umpteen years of cholesterol lodged in his gut? A short fall out a tall window? Never mind, now I see it here in the obits, you're asking for donations to the Lung Cancer Society in lieu of flowers.

Smoking. The one vice he actually *called* a vice. God. I hope he didn't spend his last days in one of those stupid tents, with the oxygen hookup and the painkiller on tap sucked through a tube. He thrived on his own pain, relished it; wallowed in it like a warm bath. To deny him that crucial little bit of comfort would have been damned cruel.

You don't want to know how I feel, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I feel cheated. I feel scammed. I feel pickpocketed. I wanted to ask him things. Wasn't that my right? I want to know if he had trouble sitting through songs and movies and magazines with their posters of airbrushed happy families without screaming; I want to know if he thinks I grew up strong or pretty or wise; I want to hear his version of what happened on That Day and see his face as he tells it.

I want to know what he told himself. I want to know where the other half of my story is.

No, I'm not going to the wake. I don't want to see it. The snapshot I imprinted in my brain has no wrinkles etched into it, no creaky knees or sagging jowls or wispery old-man farts. No spare tire around the midsection, no reddish spots of age, no disappearing hairline. Just razor stubble that tickled, and a strong back for carrying, and eyes of washed-out blue.

There's no wake for those. They've already been burned and buried, long ago.

And you: in my picture you have chipmunk cheeks and chicken-fluff blond hair, and a little bit of spittle leftover from a baggy full of Cheerios. Even if my last sighting of you was dated just yesterday, I will still miss that baby. Just as I will remember the washed-out blue and revere him and maybe even love him but I will still hate that old man.

Did he cry afterwards? Did he shut himself up inside? Did he refuse to say my name? I know how that feels, too, to throw away a match not because it's useless but because once upon a time it held a fire.

No, really, it's all right. I would've done the same thing. In fact, I almost did.

Because I was the one who forgot.

A child's mind can't help but scab over the bad parts. That's what my shrink says, anyway.

Even now I can't see the faces of the most critical players; they're all fuzzy and smeared and steam-wrinkled. I see myself, and you, and a highchair being shoved back and forth between two sets of strong hands.

I see dishes being broken, and sometimes I even dream about the murmured screams. But not them. Not those two about to decide who was whose and who went where.

Maybe I'm easy to blame, because I'm easy to remember. I remember me and you remember me, and I remember some part of me believed that if I went with her I could always come back, but if I stayed she never would.

No, that's not it. I'm not saying it right.

I knew if I left, I could keep getting fresh starts. Fresh starts, hot and toasty, plopped right into my lap over and over and over again. Houses that didn't smell like babies. Apartments missing the marks on the baseboard showing how much we'd grown. New schools and new friends who envied my mysteriousness, who didn't ask questions.

Who went where. Who was whose.

I am choosing to believe that he lost the ability to speak those last few minutes, or didn't want to. I am choosing to place the blame on his stubborness, and not on you, because if I can't ever forgive you for your silence I would just as soon not know.

You ever noticed that? How corpses make useful little dumpsters for stuff like blame, and love, and forgiveness, and pity? The dead are lucky; they don't know what a mess they've made of things and wouldn't care if they did. At every funeral, it's ourselves we cry for.

What you think you know is this: that I was the golden one, the chosen child, the one she wanted to keep.

What you refuse to remember is this: she wanted both of us, and I was the only one he didn't want.

My shrink tells me weird things. Did you know it takes eight minutes for light to travel from the sun to the earth? That the moment the sun dies, the world still has eight minutes left before it even knows what's wrong?

What good is that? I don't know what could we possibly do with those last eight minutes.

But I do know that I want you to lie to me.

I want you to tell me that I'm forgiven.

Deciheximal Mon Jul 20 2009, 19:52

What would we do with those 8 minutes? The same things we do with every other minute. Like your story said, we wouldn't know as the speed of light is also the speed of gravity and the fundamental limit as to how fast information can travel. So if the Sun suddenly vanished, our first clue would be when things get dark our planet starts to cruise out of where the solar system used to be.

Of course, our galaxy has real threats that we wouldn't know about until it hits us. http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1878 describes a binary pulsar 8,000 years away that is pointed at us like the barrel of a gun. When it goes off, our whole planet may be directly in the line of fire 8,000 years later and completely irradiated. And it could have gone off over 7,999 years ago.

Sweetalker Mon Jul 20 2009, 19:55

At first I wondered where all the movie stars and supermodels and makeup tips were.

Then I thought, "Oh. Cosmos Magazine."

Kratos618 Tue Jul 21 2009, 03:40

"At every funeral, it's ourselves we cry for."

This line especially hit home for me. Amazing story.

Sweetalker Wed Aug 12 2009, 00:24

Thank you

Sponsored content

Stories of mine.

Stories of mine.

Re: Stories of mine.

Re: Stories of mine.

Re: Stories of mine.

Re: Stories of mine.

Re: Stories of mine.

Re: Stories of mine.

Re: Stories of mine.

Re: Stories of mine.

Re: Stories of mine.

Re: Stories of mine.