“I love you Jason,” JLC whispered in his ear.
That was what she said last night as she came up behind him. Last night was the first night he had seen her in over 10 years. She was shorter than he, but still average height for a woman and slender, with medium length dark brown hair. As always, he found those brown eyes with a hint of grey. She was wearing a black dress; in fact, it was the same black dress he had given her for their two year anniversary. He had tried to forget what she had done, but nothing could replace the heartbreak he had felt. Then here she was, right in front of him, and he remembered everything. All the love. All the passion. All the hatred. He didn’t know what to say, what to feel, he could only stare. After a couple of minutes, seemingly an eternity, he got up and left, returning to his apartment.
It had been 12 years since someone had called him Jason. Twelve years of James. Twelve years of hiding his emotions. Twelve years of looking through life but never finding what he wanted. Twelve years of isolation. It had been 12 years of letting no one close, letting no one know what he was truly thinking.
“Why? Why now?” Jason thought. You see James was not his real name. His real name was Jason. “Why should I care? She betrayed me. Why do I still care? Do I care? If I don’t care why haven’t I moved on? I haven’t trusted anyone for so long, why should I trust her now?” With this thought Jason finished his breakfast and decided to clear his head by going for a ride. He put on his leather jacket, which though years old, smelled of new leather, dirt, and smoke, and left the room.
He went to the garage to get his bright green and black YZF-R1 Yamaha bike, and turned onto Main Street towards the expressway. Weaving in and out of traffic, his surroundings blurred around him as he fought for freedom. Signs raced passed him as he pushed his motorcycle to its limit. He didn’t worry about the police, they never bothered him. He enjoyed these rides. It’s not like anyone ever cared whether he lived or died, so why should he. These rides always cleared his mind, but this time he couldn’t stop thinking about the past and about her. He had given her everything, she was his first and last. Everyone says how hindsight is 20-20, and now he understood why. She had manipulated and used him to get what she wanted. He had loved her, and loathed her, but now he didn’t know what to think. Had he over reacted when he found out? Could it really have been a simple mistake, a slip up, and that “word” still held meaning between them? “No,” he thought. “I was right for leaving, if she had loved me as much as she said, then she would not have…” And then Jason realized that he had ridden 200 miles outside the city. He needed to get back before he ran out of gas.
Once back in town, Jason stopped by the new root shop, Roots’ Edible Herb Emporium, which had just opened. As he approached the door, he saw a box lying just outside the door and a sign which read “Free Husky Puppies.” By now only one was left, a girl, who appeared to be sleeping. She was tiny and had a beautiful black and white coat. Jason wondered why someone would get rid of such a beautiful animal, but decided to think about it later as he walked into the slightly run down, hole in the wall store with the freshly painted sign. The owner immediately came up to greet him and asked him what he wanted, saying all the time that he was so excited about opening up this store and it was wonderful he already had his first customer. Jason told him he wanted the Salvia divinorum, a plant containing one of the most potent hallucinogens known to man. All of a sudden the man stopped all his giggling and dancing and was very serious. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked. “Yes,” Jason responded. Jason paid and left, paying the man no more attention. Once outside, Jason found the husky puppy had awoken, climbed out of the box and was sitting next to his bike. The puppy just sat there looking at him with her beautiful blue eyes. The same color as his, but with more emotion. His were dead. He often heard people refer to his gaze as that of ice and death, lacking complete emotion. Jason carefully placed the puppy in his jacket, zipped it up, so she was not in danger of falling out and returned home.
Back in his room, he pulled 10 Things I Hate About You, one of his favorite movies, from the rack under the TV. He had given a lot of thought to naming the little puppy and finally came up with Sasha. Sasha on the other hand was skittering around the room, still not able to walk completely, sniffing and biting everything she saw. He sat down on the couch and began to smoke. Sasha jumped up in his lap, curled into a ball, yawned, and went to sleep, while Jason began to watch the movie.
4 comments:
Aha! So you were jilted...
As she arrived at her dingy apartment building from her night excursion to the Tavern, Alana stood and stared at the lit windows and the bland door, remembering how she arrived there four years ago.
She was merely a child with no first-hand experience in a world of dark and dangerous people. The second daughter in a family of five children, Alana was the youngest. She grew up in the deserts of Arabia. In her secluded desert, Alana was considered beautiful and mysterious. Her eyes were all that were seen by anyone other than her family, but they had a piercing thoughtfulness about them. Alana was well-educated and sent to school as a young girl, one of the few women in her tribe to be sent to school ever. Alana's father doted on her and called her "أعين غامضة" or "mysterious eyes." Surrounded by warm sand and fiery eyes, it was a paradise not meant to last.
Upon her arrival in a new complicated place, where her English was far from perfect, Alana wondered how Allah could do this to her. A place where she was expected to live on her father's money that had been left to her after the ferocious fire.
Alana gazed for a moment longer and then ushered the thought from her mind. As she climbed the stairs to the third floor she heard a bottle crash and listened to the unseen man in 300b pace in his room. Alana wondered what the man was doing up at three in the morning and then realized she was up at three am. She made her way to the fifteenth room where she found her keys and entered the calm rustle of voices.
Inside her quaint apartment, where there were little piles of manuscripts, she gazed at the pastel walls and paintings of her youth. The black flowing tail and deep dark portals to a soul that saved her life brought tears to her eyes. She turned away from the portrait and slipped into her bedroom. She let her clothes fall from her slight frame and her thick dark hair fall down her long tanned back. She meandered into her kitchen clad in her pajamas, the thought of her father's expression if he could see her now created a perfect curve in Alana's lips that hadn't been there in days. Her pale yellow kitchen brought warmth to her small apartment, although the food in it was scarce. She did not need much to live off of and she saved most of what she had. The piles of native manuscripts that she had managed to save were a constant comfort for her tormented mind.
The Tavern had become a frequent place for her to visit at night, not to "hit the bottle" as the men did, but to write in her journal and watch the people float through their obviously meaningless lives. She could not blame them for their addictions though. One face always stood out to her when she arrived and she watched him the most. She couldn't help but notice his soft blue eyes and the way he moved inside the Tavern, he seemed to float like the spirits in her room. He lived in her building but Alana did not know where. Her curiosity kept her from ever approaching him, she could not stand to ruin this image she had of him. He was an unknown character in her life as was the man down the hall. The man from room 300b only came out at night to stand on the roof. She saw him leave his room sometimes, but he scared her and she would not look him in the eye. But the man in the Tavern had this air about him that Alana could not resist.
Shawn your second post is the most entertaining post I have read yet. I really like how caught up and depressed your character is, I especially like how he gets lost in thought and drives 200 miles out of town before realizing that he's running out of gas. And I like how on the brink he is, anyone who wants to smoke salvia in a depressed state is in for a very intense journy. I'm looking forward to the trip description.
Jimmy's legs began to cramp as he knelt on the floor of his living room, picking up shards of glass and pieces of dill pickles and carefully placing them in a wicker trashcan. Sunlight came streaming in his windows, forming beautiful shapes on the floor. The stained glass window turned the white sunlight different hues of blue, green and red, and Jimmy felt slightly comforted, recognizing a familiar sight. Jimmy forced himself to recall the events of the dramatic, unsettling last twenty-four hours:
He arrived home yesterday to an open apartment and found his refrigerator empty of food and his guitar, signed by Lynard Skynard, missing. Frantically racing out of his apartment to look for signs of the thief on the street below, Jimmy tripped over an abandoned jar of his favorite type of pickle, shattering the jar and soaking the already water-damaged wooden floor. Still feeling the thrill of pursuit, Jimmy leapt onto his feet and raced down the stairs, through the lobby and into the daylight, whipping his head in all directions, scanning the surroundings, trying to glimpse his fire-engine red guitar. He began to run in one direction, then another, then another, until finally the unyielding forced of gravity caused him to collapse into a pathetic, panting heap on the concrete.
Jimmy rose slowly, defeated, unable to understand, unable to comprehend what had happened. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before- he had never been driven to lock his doors from the fear of intruders. He though of calling the police but didn't know the number. No friends were here to help him search for the perpetrator. Jimmy was alone. Jimmy was not at home.
Hours passed and Jimmy found himself sitting in his old, moth-eaten recliner, staring out the window, feeling empty. He didn't recall returning to his apartment. Turning around, he realized that his door stood open; rays of light from the dim overhead lamps flooded into the darkness of his living room. Jimmy fumbled for his wallet and keys in the deep pocket of his jacket, found them and left, carefully locking the door behind him. A raw numbness sat in his stomach, and he slowly felt it spreading to the farthest corners of his body.
"Why would someone do something like this? Why would they take my guitar? My guitar... my guitar! Dad... dad!"
The rumbling of his stomach interrupted Jimmy's thoughts, so he headed for the Tavern; "One beer won't hurt- right? "
Part of him pleaded with him to not go inside the Tavern, to simply find a diner. But Jimmy felt the hunger deep inside, the hunger that didn't want food, the hunger that longed for escape. It longed to numb the shock, to take him away from this new place, to help him feel at home, to fix his problems. Frightened of the past and the could-be future, Jimmy gathered his strength and fought the hunger. He just needed a beer. One wouldn't hurt. He would be fine.
Jimmy walked blindly into the dimness and headed straight to the bar. He asked for a Bud, but pulled the bartender aside and asked him to only give him one beer, even if he demanded more. A lone man sat on the center bar stool, slumped over a glass that was one of an astonishing number of empty ones, which were spread out next to him. The two men made eye contact and Jimmy approached him.
"You know whar the nearest diner is 'round here?"
"Take a right outta here and it'll be a couple of blocks down," the man replied.
A silence followed.
"So- I'm James. And what's a young guy like you doin' in this shit-hole?" the man asked.
Before Jimmy could answer, the door opened and a beautiful woman walked in. The strange man immediately focused all of his attention on her, and had no more words for Jimmy. Deciding that it was worthless to be in a bar that had customers as miserable as that man, Jimmy drained his glass and went into the night, searching for a place to eat.
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