Everything Fragile, Everything Glass (1067 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 2 on 36 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Zampano (View user info) at 2007-09-19 13:05:48 EDT
Everything Fragile, Everything Glass
I will make it hurt to breathe.
It's almost impossible to tell which pain is the worst. The acid-gurgle in the stomach is sharply gilt, but then so are the silver spikes driven into my temples, and there is no point in mentioning the way my calves quiver. I am machinery, rusty and derelict, coming apart with an oily grind.
Don't even dare slow down.
A variety of liquors complain inside me. I let them out, across my front. Splatter my shoes, feather my winged heels in flight. There are so many to release. I should be drowning.
It was just one liquor at first. A harmless shot at the insistence of the pretty young thing across the room. 'I know what you need,' she said in introduction, and handed me the glass.
'You're teasing me.'
Lungs burning. Shins splintering away. Don't stop now.
'I wouldn't dream of it.' Jesus, but that glint of humor in her eye.
The music is too loud, but that is always the case with these parties. My friend likes shitty music, and makes sure that his guests—and neighbors—know it. Bodies shuffle in the currents between more bodies, and we are all in transit. We are all just other bodies, moving from one room to another with drink in hand. This is an all-night game of musical chairs, with the occasional groped breast. We are beasts to the drink.
'Why haven't I met you before?'
Feet abuse the pavement. Blind, panicked. A run to nowhere.
'Because our mutual friend is a terrible matchmaker. Plus this is the first party he's invited me too.' She laughs a little too much, drinks a little too much. Gives me another to wash down the first. For that laugh, I drink.
Upstairs, another guest has found my friend's piano. Off-key tinkles seep through the walls and shoot through the music coming out of the speakers. For a moment, it's a bastardized musical of sorts. A burlesque, or a vaudeville act. It's so many things, all of them absurd. She must know it too, because she laughs again at the butchered scales. She stumbles and I support her for a moment. Lovely hair in my face. The phantom pianist, whether deliberately or by sheer luck, strikes a particularly melancholy chord. I think I would die for this girl.
No, it's to the lake. A run to the lake.
I will make it hurt to breathe.
'Would you accompany a poor, lonely girl outside so that she might enjoy the stars?' She extends a hand, bent with an airy sort of grace.
'Isn't it a little cold for that?'
'Winter stars are the clearest.'
We lay back, head to head, in half-formed snow angels, shivering despite our jackets. It's a distant sort of cold, belonging to bodies that are not our own. Moonset is an hour away, and that lunar sickle hovers just over the horizon. Everything is glass. Fragile. A tossed pebble, and we would shatter.
The return to the house is a scattered series of still images, perhaps related. Icicles and porch lights. Smoke from the chimney. Wine-lip smile.
Oh Lord.
'I hope you'll excuse me a moment.' (She's so mannered.) 'I'm going to go upstairs to freshen up, if I can.'
The house has emptied partially, enough so that my friend might make his way over to me and exchange our first words tonight. He looks taken aback. 'I'm surprised you could make it,' he says. 'Glad, but surprised.'
'Why wouldn't I come?'
It hurts to breathe, as it should. Frozen lake. I keep running. Shatter. Swallow me whole.
'Some people were really hit hard by the news. Friends, mostly. I figured it would be especially hard for you.' My friend trails off. I haven't the slightest clue as to what he's talking about.
'You...you don't...oh, Christ. Don't make me be the one to...oh, fuck.'
'Tell me.'
'I can't be the one to tell you.'
'Tell me.'
'Not here, and definitely not now.'
'Tell me.'
Sighs. He looks hurt, or moments before it. 'I...listen, your ex-lover is dead.'
Somebody is on that damned piano again. He or she has gotten good, because now it is just one melancholy chord after another. A symphony of sorrowful songs. Henryk Gorecki might be jealous.
'Zampano...' says my friend as he puts a hand on my shoulder.
'That's not my name,' I say, and so many more liquors go into me. Make me forget. Make it hurt to breathe. I don't want to remember that he actually said 'ex-lover' instead of her name. My pocket buzzes all the while, and it isn't until I'm nose-down on the floor that I bother to take my phone out of my pocket. A new message.
I found an empty bedroom upstairs. We don't have to do anything, but I'd like it if you joined me anyway.
I run. Out the door, down the steps, and down the street. A blind, naked run. 'Zampano!' echoes somewhere behind me. Oh, fuck it. Fuck it all.
I run until I stumble and fall, spread-eagle, on the ice. It hurts to breathe.
Here?
Yeah, probably right about here. A year ago, more or less. Under winter stars, so clear, so much like pinpricks in the curtains of night. Head to head, we were. Just watching. A bright bit of cosmic flotsam goes streaking between the constellations. 'Make a wish.' A chill, an icy hush in the air that left us shivering, but a distant kind of shivering. It belonged to bodies other than our own. It was just us, a year ago on that ice, and though we didn't speak, this girl and me, this ex-lover and myself, we understood that it was because everything was so fragile. The night, and the ice beneath us. Glass, or something like it. A tossed pebble, or one misspoken word, and everything would shatter. We would plunge into the water, and sleep for an eternity. It was better to left things unsaid, under those clear stars.
A year later, and my moist eyes are freezing at the corners. Frosty trails running down my cheeks. It hurts to breathe, and that is probably the worst pain. It shouldn't be, but it is.
My pocket starts to buzz.
One by one, the stars begin to fall across my face.
User Reviews
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2009-08-12 16:27:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2008-08-23 19:05:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hello. Nice to see your nom de plume around the place, are you keeping well? You will post now, yes?
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2009-03-24 09:53:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Come back to us.
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2008-08-23 19:05:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hello. Nice to see your nom de plume around the place, are you keeping well? You will post now, yes?
Submitted by Gravity_Purple (user info) at 2008-01-28 02:55:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Sad and lovely...
On a slightly unrelated note, is your name from the book House of Leaves?
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2007-12-13 13:31:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
THANKS FOR YOUR VALUABLE INPUT! :) Nice story.
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2007-11-25 14:54:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by c1ndy (user info) at 2007-11-25 14:29:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
pretty.
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2007-11-25 14:11:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Love to know who you are, but good that your an alter whose just trying new stories.
Submitted by Blinkish (user info) at 2007-09-23 18:54:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-09-23 17:49:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Fact or fiction? Either way, my sympathies.
Submitted by Merlina (user info) at 2007-09-21 01:28:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2007-09-21 00:46:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
She's so...heeeavvvyyyyyy
Submitted by DancingOtter (user info) at 2007-09-20 07:52:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Wonder who'll drop the -2 bomb...
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2007-09-20 05:25:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Liked it.
Submitted by darkwulffe (user info) at 2007-09-20 02:54:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2007-09-19 13:33:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is too long for me to read but you like Shlongy's Uber game so this is probably pretty good or something.
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Is this Shlongy's way of saying he liked something? Nice out, shlongster.
Submitted by ilikesteak (user info) at 2007-09-20 01:39:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Fantastic.
Submitted by steph (user info) at 2007-09-20 00:59:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Words can't express...
Submitted by beeltea (user info) at 2007-09-20 00:38:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
nice
Submitted by triangle_man (user info) at 2007-09-19 18:53:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
it does
Submitted by EatMeCompletely (user info) at 2007-09-19 17:54:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2007-09-19 17:02:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Utterly fantastic.
Submitted by TechnoRatty (user info) at 2007-09-19 16:33:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Yep very nice
Good One!!
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-09-19 15:57:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Yay! Someone else likes them too!
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-09-19 15:31:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by mikethescottish (user info) at 2007-09-19 15:25:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-09-19 14:36:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This made me think of a song I really like.
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If it was "Your ex lover is dead" by Stars then you are officially fucking ace.
Good post.
Submitted by genericIntent (user info) at 2007-09-19 14:51:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-09-19 14:36:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This made me think of a song I really like.
Submitted by MANICMOTHER (user info) at 2007-09-19 14:35:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by cuberat (user info) at 2007-09-19 14:12:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-09-19 13:40:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2007-09-19 13:33:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is too long for me to read but you like Shlongy's Uber game so this is probably pretty good or something.
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2007-09-19 13:18:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2007-09-19 13:17:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-09-19 13:15:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
while it seems a little heavy handed at times I really liked this.
Submitted by The_Yellow_Dart (user info) at 2007-09-19 13:12:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice one, Hoss.
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2007-09-19 13:08:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment