Failure

He was terrified of it. Terrified to be a failure. Afraid of failing, afraid of not getting it right. It shook him to his bones. He couldn’t bear the thought. It left him awake at night; it drove his days. He would stay curled up by the closed window, wondering when the next task would come, the next task that he’d fail at. It was his fault, after all. He couldn’t get it right. They didn’t need to trust any more lives in to his hands. There was no need. He knew he couldn’t do it. They knew it, too. Failure. The word echoed in his brain day after day. It was all he could do to continue functioning, to fight being paralyzed by the fear. He knew he had to go on; he knew he had to find a way. Too much was riding on him. Too many lives. But he couldn’t even save one life, much less dozens. Failure. The word beat in his blood. There was no way that they could fix him, no way he could fix himself. But he had to.

He sat on the couch in the company psychiatrist’s room. Failure. “How are you feeling these days?” Failure. “How do you sleep? Are you eating?” Failure. He may not be eating much, but that word certain ate at him.

He continued living. Finally began to be able to train. He let Failure throb in his mind, letting it drive him on in desperation to be better. He had to be better. He couldn’t fail again. Too many people depended on him. (How could they? He was a failure.) But it weighed on him. Weighed away body till he was a thin shadow of who he used to be. Still, he made himself sleep with special injections. He ate what he had to in order to stay lean and on target. He trained harder and harder, trying to train away that word. Failure.

It made him better, this fear. It pushed him beyond his limits, beyond limits that most men could endure. But his mind endured the training, his body endured the sacrifice, because even more than burning out, he was terrified of … failing. He knew it wasn’t, couldn’t be, an option. He knew it as deeply as he knew that he could never be more than a failure. But maybe he could still do this one last thing. Make amends. Redeem himself for one moment; redeem his failure.

But he knew he could never be redeemed. He had been a failure. He had failed her. And now she was dead.

Failure.

She walked in the night

She walked in the night
Holding the black leash in hand
Puppy trotting along in front.
She sighed and gazed at the sky
As the puppy sniffed at the grass,
Pounced on leaves.
She noticed
The distant stars
The unseen moon
The calmness
A quiet wind
A night-smell that reminded her,
For some reason, of standing outside
With an ex-boyfriend
When she was 17.
She glanced back at the shadows on the ground
Interrupted only by the
Lights from lamps
Buzzing in the night.

Lights. Night. She remembered…

She had walked in the night before.
Then she saw no lights, buzzing or not.
She had lived in nights before
That had no calm, still breeze,
Only deathly, stifling stillness.
She knew of nights with no stars
No moon, unseen or not.
She had walked in the night before…

The puppy pawed at her leg,
And it was time leave the darkness,
Go back inside
Where she lived
With lights.

And then she died

This is a piece of scratch fiction.

And then she died.

The children gathered close around her body, crying—or at least the little ones did. The older ones were too numb to see this as a tragedy, at least more of a tragedy than any other day. It just meant that she wouldn’t be there when they came home.

The dark, dank walls of the abandoned storehouse held in the soft sobs of the smaller children. Tiny fists wiped away the tears that ran gray streaks down their dirtied faces.  She was the only mother-figure most of them had ever known. Some were so young when they had been abandoned on the streets that she was their earliest memory. She had nurtured them, helped them, shown them the lifestyle of the streets. She had sent them with the older children to learn how to beg, how to gather, how to find small, odd jobs for extra money. As they grew older, she became a friend, someone to confide in.  At 16 or 17 the children left on their own to go into the world, but they were always welcome back to Momma’s home at the storehouse.

Shane was the oldest now. As the others stopped crying over the still, thin body of their caretaker, they looked at the 16 year old. Shane gazed back, swallowed. He looked at the next oldest, Emmy, who was 15. She tried to smile, but her eyes’ were like grey clouds, full of rain-tears she struggled to hold back.

“Children,” she began. She cleared her throat and tried again: “Children. It’s ok. Momma would want us not to be sad.”

Abe, a five year old, bit his trembling lip. “But Momma said she would never leave us.”

Shane walked over to him. “Abe, she wouldn’t. But she died. She couldn’t help it. Everyone has to die.” Abe’s rebellious lip trembled more. Shane rushed to add, “I bet she’s in heaven, though. You know Momma talked about heaven sometimes. I bet she’s there. I bet she’s gonna watch us.” Abe and the other children quieted. “I bet she will keep an eye on you, just like she used to.”

Emmy looked at another girl. “Yeah, Rachel, I’ll bet Momma will keep an eye on you to see if you keep stealing food from the other girls.” The tiniest girl, though she was 9, giggled through her tears, inspiring some of the other children to smile.

“Shane,” the boy Jacob asked, “does this mean you’re like our daddy? Or is Emmy gonna be our Momma? Or do we have to leave?”

Shane looked at Emmy. She stared back. It was true: other groups on the street would want to steal the storehouse from them without Momma there to protect it. It would probably take both of the older teens to keep the place they had called “home” for all their lives.

“Yes,” Shane said in a loud voice. “We’ll be the Daddy and Momma now. We’ll keep you safe.”

The other children sighed a little bit in relief. Some even smiled–except the 16 year-old boy and the 15 year-old girl who suddenly felt heavier about life.

Brilliance

This is a piece of scratch fiction.

It was first noticed when she was two. Her mother used to sit and read to her all the time, determined that her child would have the same love for reading that she did. Her mother, Karen, had no idea how much her wish would be granted.

Back to the story: when Kathy was two, her mother sat reading to her. Karen stood up and left for a minute. She came back, and Kathy was reading the book out loud to herself. Word for word. Karen couldn’t believe it. Her daughter must have a remarkable memory. But later, Kathy picked up a new book her mother had just bought for her…and she began to read that, too.

They had Kathy tested, and at age two, she had truly already learned to read. Her mother took her to a library and told her to pick out her own books. The tiny two year old toddled around and began pointing out books she wanted. But they were not small, picture books. They were young adult chapter books. Her mother placated her and checked the books out in her name. Soon she realized Kathy was being serious in the books she chose. She read every one cover to cover and could spout off summaries of each book.

Kathy’s vocabulary began to grow. Soon she was talking with well-articulated sentences, the only thing giving away her young age being the fact that she still had a hard time pronouncing some of her consonants.

At age three, her mother finally enrolled her in kindergarten. It was disastrous. The other children didn’t like Kathy because she only wanted to read. By this time, she was reading two- and three-hundred page books. She read biographies. She read fiction. She read non-fiction. She would sit with books almost too large for her tiny, chubby hands to hold. The other children laughed at her, but she would not stop reading.

When she turned five, she was put in third grade. Her reading level was tested, and she was already well into the high school, if not college, range. People began coming and asking to test and study this child prodigy. Her mother refused, trying to keep Kathy’s life as normal as possible. Except that Kathy’s life was anything but normal.

At age eight, Kathy not only read vociferously but began writing constantly. Not simple writing, but deep, detailed, thoughtful writing. She published her own, short autobiography that year, entitled An Appetite for Learning. This continued to bring more and more attention to her, but her mother kept her as sheltered as possible. Newspapers wrote and begged for interviews, as did magazines. Universities were already writing and offering full scholarships if Kathy would consider coming to their school.

When she was ten, she finally did decide to attend college. But she started out at her hometown’s local junior collge, a shock to everyone. No one thought about the fact that, after all, she was only ten. She wasn’t ready to leave her mother and father yet.

She began a blog that picked up where she left off in her autobiography. She wrote of the things she continued to learn. Gradually, however, her blog became more personal and less academic. She wrote of what it was like to be ten and a child prodigy. She wrote of her loneliness at having no friends her age. She wrote of feeling like a freak. And she wrote of what she wanted to do in the years to come. “Somehow, I want to change the world,” she wrote.

Readers came to her page at unimaginable rates. She made certain posts public, but her more personal ones were private. Still, though she wrote personally, she continued to write about academics, politics, anything she was learning. She wrote her own thoughts as well, analysis of world situations, etc.

When she was 12, her world changed forever. Agents showed up at her door. They came inside and said to her mother, “Ma’am, we have need of your daughter. It’s a matter of national security, and we need her to join a team of our country’s youngest and brightest.”

“Why on earth are you forming team like this? And why do you need my daughter?” Karen asked.

“Because she is the brightest we’ve seen. And we need her to help save our country.”

Star Trek

Julie used to watch Star Trek growing up. She watched it with her father. Julie’s mother didn’t really like science fiction, so her father used to watch it alone. One day when Julie was six, her father asked her if she would like to stay up an hour later and watch Star Trek with him. While most girls would be thrilled to stay up an hour later, Julie was ecstatic only that she could spend time with her father—just him and her. She would do anything with or for her father, so she patiently sat and watched the show she didn’t understand very well. Afterwards, he would always kiss her cheek and tell her good night. Then he would wink and tell her that in her dreams, she should “boldly go where no one had gone before.”

At first she her excitement was simply about the extra time with her father. As time went on and she grew older, she began to love the show. She would discuss the plots and characters with her father.  They used to talk about the technology on the show and if such things would ever exist. She eagerly awaited each new episode. Soon they moved onto Stark Trek: The Next Generation, and it started all over again.

There was also the homemade popcorn, which her father always made on Star Trek nights. He would buy popcorn kernels and pop them in a special big pot. Julie’s father would always sit with the red, scratched pot on the floor by his chair and reach down to grab a handful of popcorn. Julie got a small white bowl that she would dip into the huge pot of popcorn, using her hand to contain the white puffy kernels in her bowl. She would usually get to refill her white bowl once or twice before her father had eaten the rest of the popcorn up.

As she grew into a teenager, her times with her father never changed. There was always the excitement before the episode, the excitement of a special time that was their own. At the end, he would always kiss her cheek, whisper good night, and tell her to “boldly go” in her dreams where no one had gone before.

The popcorn and Star Trek continued until she went to college. She left a tearful mother and sister, hugging them tight. Her father hugged her briefly and handed her a letter, telling her it held a check for her. She cried and kissed him. “I love you, Daddy,” she said. And then she left. When she arrived at her dorm, she opened her father’s letter that night.

“Sweetheart,” he wrote, “I am so proud of you and all that you have accomplished.  Work hard, never quite dreaming, and always go boldly into your future knowing I love you.”

The Word: Hear and Obey

If I had heard a word
Maybe I would
Have stood to move mountains
Have cast down dark oceans
Have run to the throne and thus
Have moved nations.

If I had heard a word
Maybe I would
Have loved better
Have served better
Have sought
The lost
Better
Have seen You better.

Yet if I had heard a word
Maybe I would have found
All it had to say is
“The Word becomes flesh.
“Maybe you would see the Word
“Live like the Word
“If you would have heard
“And obeyed.”

Headache

Scratch fiction (click here for explanation of scratch fiction)

Topic: Headache.

It was all she could feel as she woke up. Her head splitting. Moaning, she held both hands to it, rolling over. Funny, Joy thought. My bed feels weird. She blearily opened her eyes, squinting. The light made her head hurt worse, so she shut them quickly. She rolled back onto her back, hands searching for her pillow. It wasn’t there.

She took a deep breath and made herself open her eyes. The light hurt, opening her eyes hurt, everything made that throbbing headache worse. But not bad enough to chase away her shock. As Joy’s eyes focused, she saw…the sky. An overhead, blue sky shone brightly at her. She blinked. Blinked again. What on earth was this?

Only another half second went by before she changed focus to the bed that was not her bed at all. She gasped, sitting up. She did not lie on her comfy, pink-sheeted bed at home. She was on a beach!

A full minute must have gone by before her mind began working again. Oh, but that headache—if only it would stop pounding! She could hardly think at all. But even if it had been working, she could not figure out how on earth she had wound up on a bed of sand, 15 feet from the ocean. The waves crashed along with the waves of pain in her head. She wanted to stand up, but any time she moved, her head split into dynamite explosions. Gasping, she once again grasped her head. Why wouldn’t it stop hurting so bad? She could not understand it. She needed to think, to figure out her circumstances and where on earth she was. But her head kept pounding, Hurt, hurt, pain, pain.

“It’s ok,” a deep voice said beside her. She moved her hands and struggled to look beside her, though it just increased the throbbing in her skull. A young man kneeled beside her. He looked to be about 21, maybe only four or five years older than she was. “I know,” he chuckled briefly, “it hurts like heck doesn’t it?” She could only moan in agreement, her head pounding away any questions she could have asked him. “Here,” he said. She gasped as he pulled out a giant syringe. Before she could even move or react, the large needle had been plunged into her arm. She cried out as a searing pain spread through her body. As the fire travelled up her arm to her head, though, it left a cooling path in its wake. The coolness spread throughout her head, reverberating out to calm and ease her entire body. She stretched, sighed, so relieved at the lack of throbbing in her brain. She twisted her neck, chasing away memories of the ache. Blinking she looked back at the young man, his sandy-brown hair tousled over his forehead, a crooked smile on his face. “That help?” he asked with a small laugh.

“Yes,” she answered hesitantly. “But what was it? Who are you?”

He laughed again. “I’m Brian,” he answered, “but you already knew that. Or would have if we hadn’t had to mess with your head.”

“Mess with my head?” she asked, anxiety rising. “What do you mean?”

He cocked his head to look at her. “We had to make you forget, you see. You couldn’t remember everything and still complete this mission well.”

“Mission?” her voice rang with incredulity. “What on earth are you talking about?”

He smiled. “The mission. It’s the reason your head is splitting. Its whole reason I was left here with you on this island. So you can get your life back.”

He stood, gazed briefly at the sun. Flashing her a smile, he offered her his hand. “You ready to go?”

Friend request

Quick introduction: this is a piece of scratch fiction. What I do is take a topic, sit down, and simply write some piece of fiction around that topic. It doesn’t matter how it relates, my entire goal is simply to write whatever comes to mind for 15 minutes. At the end of those fifteen minutes, my piece of fiction is done. I don’t edit, I don’t rewrite. I leave it as it is. I may come back later and write more based on them, but for now all I have are these scraps of fiction. I hope you enjoy.

She did not expect to receive the friend request. Stunned, silently she gazed at the tiny thumbnail, representing a real life person who wanted to get to know her. Or at least as close to it as anyone would come to wanting to know her. Sarah Smith. Even her name was boring, or at least she always thought so. No one at school noticed her. She had always been quiet, shy. She had two friends who had been close with her since kindergarten, but high school had changed all that. Peter had become too obsessed with football’s glory, and Laura had moved away with her military family. So now she walked the halls, quietly unnoticed. Everyone knew her, but no one cared to get to know her. She had her reputation as the quiet, smart student. Her intelligence kept most people at bay. When she had joined Twitter, it had been to follow others’ updates: her favorite movie stars, her favorite bands, her favorite politicians. She had two status updates, because she knew no one cared. No one would look her up. No one would add her.

Until today.

She gazed at the username and slowly, as if in a daze, clicked on it. The person listed their name as simply “A Friend.”

She was the only person they followed.

She swallowed, nervously. That seemed odd. But still, they had chosen to follow her. Immediately her mind shifted through the stories she had heard about stalkers, rapists, serial killers. I should probably be careful, she thought. Do I need to cancel my account? But no, Sarah had all her favorite public figures carefully selected that she followed daily. It would take too long to reconfigure a new account. She considered it for a moment. Well, nothing had happened. No threats, no weird behavior. Except that he had chosen to follow her, and her alone.

She bit her lip. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have one follower. Maybe it would come to nothing. Maybe this person was just getting started on their follow list and had come across her profile randomly. She tapped her fingers feather-light over the keyboard in thought. On impulse, her fingers began tapping on the keys hard enough to type. She hit enter.

Her Twitter status: amazed that anyone would follow me at all.

She stared at the screen; clicked the minus sign on the window; opened it again, hit refresh on the page. Silly, she thought. She pushed away from the desk, picked up her favorite paperback, and fell on her bed. Thirty pages later, she glanced at her computer. She stood up, hesitant, and then rushed over, clicking refresh on the Twitter page. She clicked on her new follower’s profile. They had one status update.

No one’s life should be invisible.

Invisible Children: Child Soldiers

Written after watching The Rescue live in Chicago online. For more info, go to Invisible Children.

I looked through a laptop,
Saw a crowd singing, dancing,
Standing to be rescued
For those who were not there.
A watery-mist glazed my eyes.
I gazed through the screen
Glimpsing into the world
These “abductees” represented:
I saw
hot forests,
damp dirt,
rocks,
brown water,
splintered huts.
Children ran, through the forests,
Over rocky, dirted ground.
You could hear their shouts.
But they did not run in play,
They did not shout in laughter.
They ran with guns,
Shouted with a trained hate.
They followed after foes,
Fellow children,
With educated enmity.
One child tripped, fell,
Crying normal child-tears
At a skinned knee.
Those running after him gathered around,
Eyes emptied,
Arms raising weaponry
In tiny hands….

“Bang!” I heard a child cry.
Outside my window,
In green suburbia with painted houses,
I saw children playing with water guns.

“Bang, you’re dead!”

Words

Flames licking along the page
Tiny, bright, burning, searching,
Consuming along the fuse-lines
That can ignite creativity, destruction.
They smolder in the soul,
Blaze onto the page,
Singe away the dross coatings
Surrounding our lives.
Flames hundreds of years old
Still burn bright today,
Catching new wicks on fire,
Lighting fresh wisdom-trails.
The flames ignited today
Provide light for tomorrow
Burning as long as the world’s minds
Provide fresh kindle.
So I strike a match,
Offer flames to the page,
Praying they catch the wind,
Blow embers into the world.