Saturday, September 15, 2018

Short Story Week 2018: Day Five -I Hope You Like Her

It's day five now, or technically day six when you factor out yesterday's day of doing nothing (in my defense, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Bojack Horseman season five were both released, I've had priorities).

I'm back in reality today. Caris has returned to the Carousel where she doesn't have to contend with medium awareness, leaving me where I usually am. Staring at a screen with an intent to write a short story and absolutely no clue what it is to be about.

I miss the days when I could just do whatever felt right at the time. I remember what it was like. I was a child. I could sit down and draw Seth and Theo in a runaway mine cart and feel good about the accomplishment, no explanation as to why they were in it, how it the braking system became disabled, or what the outcome was. It was simply a snapshot of two characters in peril. That was the whole story, and it was all it needed to be.

Seth and Theo were the co-protagonists of a very poorly drawn comic strip that I took great pride in when I was in elementary school. I never settled on a title for the strip, and I think I changed my special signature twice. They lived in a suburban neighborhood populated by a small cast of monster/alien/Seussian characters in a manner similar to Peanuts and Sesame Street. Seth was the smaller of the two; armless, green and frog-like, with an innate sense of adventure. Theo was brown and furry, with pointed ears and elbows perpetually bent at right angles. He was the slightly more responsible of the pair. Theo-centric strips involved things like his inability to chop down a tree or his revolving door of sidewalk merchanting (binders, bananas, watermelon). Seth was more of a free spirit, his adventures connected to treasure hunts, run ins with criminals, and various attempts to master the skateboard (in situations that raised serious questions about the topography of their neighborhood).

The nature of their relationship was undefined. They may have been brothers, friends, or coworkers, it didn't really matter. Likewise, age was irrelevant. There were no parents or children, schools or workplaces in this locale; although their snake-like neighbor Hafley had an irritating little brother who was apparently 'sent' to live with him. Even Theo's vending didn't stem from a need for money so much as an alleviation of boredom. Seth and Theo owned (and possibly lived in) a spaceship which took both of them to pilot. I think they only took it into space once, the rest of the time using it for transportation around town.

I don't know why I'm bringing them up- well, I do now, I didn't three paragraphs ago when I started writing about them. Seth, Theo, and company were my first real foray into story creation. It was a complicated story without any kind of goal. There was no ending, and no clear beginning. It was just an exploration of a world. And I realize now that it's a part of me that has remained ultimately unchanged as I've grown up. I don't naturally imagine the ends of stories. And I've never had much interest in beginnings either. Maybe I'm just the kind of writer who always starts at chapter two and then wanders off before the third act. I don't know.

But I think I've got my last story for Short Story Week 2018 now. Not that it's crucial to the proceedings, but it involves a minor character who started as far back as the days of Seth and Theo. I redesigned her in the early nineties when I briefly considered picking up the comic strip again (deciding for whatever reason that she was a she). She made a random appearance in the Lotus campaign, arriving and vanishing with no explanation, and she showed up most recently in The Carousel as a video game character Brandon had programmed in his spare time. I never figured out what she was until just now.


I Hope You Like Her


A dream?
Perhaps. But almost immediately forgotten. Only a high-pitched hum remained in her head from wherever she’d been.
Desert sand. So long since dried out that its surface cracked under her weight. A new sun was rising. And there would be nothing she could do to prevent it from baking her.
Camilla’s life did not flash before her eyes like she should have expected. Instead, the place for which her memories were meant was left empty. Frozen. The way her skin felt. Freeze at night, scald at day, would the decision to rise and wander even matter? If not here then at most a few miles away, the end would be the same.
Then she felt it. On her cheek. Soft and rubbery, with a gentle suction, like the hose of a vacuum cleaner. Some kind of desert scavenger, deciding she was nothing more than scrap already? Camilla summoned what energy she had in her to scream at the intrusion, only managing a wheeze. But when she opened her eyes, her whole world was filled with the sight of a long, serpentine snout sniffing her.
She was too weak to move away from the creature and could only allow it to explore her with its nostrils. It was large, elephant sized, and the snout was unquestionably a trunk. But the beast was no elephant. For one, it was furry, like a yak. And its neck stretched entirely too long, similar to that of a camel. And its ears did not belong to any desert dweller she was aware of; they would be more at home on a domestic hound.
For several minutes the creature snuffled her, evidently to confirm that she still had a life force. Then it stared into her open eyes with its head cocked to the side. Waiting for her response.
Camilla mouthed the words “What are you?” to which the beast trumpeted-
REIHAHN!
It circled behind her, stamping heavy footprints in the sand and accidentally kicking dust in Camilla’s face. It burrowed its trunk in the sand beneath Camilla’s shoulders and pushed her into a sitting position. Fatigue tried to roll her back to the ground but the beast was having none of it. It tipped Camilla forward until she had rolled to her hands and knees. Satisfied that she was getting up now, it tromped in front of her and lay down as low to her level as it could get.
REIHAHN, it repeated. Camilla followed the instructions as best as she could interpret them, reaching for the creature’s fur to pull herself onto its back. She struggled, but a little assistance from a friendly trunk draped her in a reasonably secure spot. Whatever this thing was, someone had clearly trained it for rescue.
And with no command, it happily carried her away from that place.
Time, and desert, passed. The next thing Camilla knew, the creature had brought her to the edge of an oasis. No more than about a thousand meters in perimeter, this isolated resort contained a small lagoon surrounded by lush trees and bushes, and a large rock the size of a townhouse cast a protective shadow over the area.
The beast turned away from the oasis and sat down, causing Camilla to slide down its back and onto the cool soil. A moment later, its massive head joined her, nudging her towards the lagoon.
“Please don’t leave me,” she whispered, giving the beast’s trunk a grateful pet. The water’s edge was a mere foot away. Fresh. Camilla drank. And splashed it on her face. And with no warning, she felt her body shoved into the lagoon, whereupon she disappeared beneath the surface.
She had tears in her eyes when she came up, in part because the fear of her situation had finally swept over her, but also because her involuntary dip in the lagoon had revived her so fast that she couldn’t contain how good she felt. “You rat!” she laughed.
REIHAHN! The beast answered.
Camilla wrapped her arms around the creature’s trunk. “Thank you.” With one massive glomp it rolled over on its side, allowing Camilla the pleasure of rubbing its belly. “Well you are just one huge puppy, aren’t you?”
She spent the better part of the day playing with the beast, and splashing it with lagoon water. Curiously, it refused to set foot in the oasis, but it stayed close by, sitting diligently as she restored herself over and over, and at times she thought it might even be smiling.
Eventually the reality set in that whatever this oasis was, it wasn’t a place one could remain in permanently, and Camilla hoped the beast would help her move on to where she needed to go. She stroked its fur from as close to its shoulder as she could reach. “Are you ready to leave?”
But the beast’s attention was on the giant rock. It glanced at Camilla, and then at the mound, as if it wanted her to look over there.
“Is something there?” she asked. The beast showed no signs of response, it only waited for her to decide what to do.
Camilla walked around the lagoon toward the stone guardian, easily spotting a cave at its base that she hadn’t noticed was there. She looked back at her beast, which kept watching her proudly.
“Wait for me?” she said, and crept inside the cave.
At first there was nothing. Absolute silence. She yelled out, but not even an echo of her own voice reached her ears. The cave turned into a tunnel, and she felt her way through the darkness. It was cold. She kept going.
Then a peep. Some kind of a bird? It was some distance away, but she was positive she’d heard it. Camilla continued down the tunnel. Another peep, short and high pitched. “Hello?” she called. No response. She walked faster. The peep came again, followed by another one. “Can you hear me?” Another. It found a rhythm. And she ran to it. As the cave melted away.
Camilla awoke in a hospital bed with five members of the staff surrounding her. They were all talking but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Seated against the wall was her daughter, sobbing into her husband’s chest.
One of the doctors leaned in to where she was lying. “Can you hear me?” she said. Camilla nodded. The doctor smiled. “We’ve got you.”
A second doctor nodded to one of the other staff members, who set a comforting hand on her husband’s shoulder. “We’ve got her.”
Before anyone else could react, Camilla’s daughter was pressed against her face. “Mommy!” she cried. Then her husband’s arms were around them both, holding tightly for fear of losing her again.

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