Secret Revealed

"Tell me a secret," Hannah whispered, nudging me in the side.

I looked up at her, "what kind of secret? There are so many different kinds and different levels of secrets. There are everyday secrets, and there are deeper secrets, secrets that you don't mind people knowing, and secrets that you would guard with your life," I said.

She blinked at me, clearly at a loss for words.

I smiled, "alright, here's a secret for you. One that few people know," I said, drawing out the suspense.

Hannah leaned in close to me, "tell me."

"I'm colorblind," I said.

(short but to the point. lol)

Know what they say...

"Can you keep a secret Mark?"

I looked up from where I was studying my textbook. I pulled off my glasses and wiped them slowly on a piece of soft cloth, "of course I can," I said, "but you do know what they say."

"I have to tell someone or I'll go crazy," Sam said and leaned in closer.

I placed a marker in my text and turned my full attention towards Sam. He was practically jumping up and down. Sam was a journalist for a local newspaper.

"I heard about something big that is going down. I was looking into the recent death of Brock Tharen, the one that died of a heart attack, and I found a whole host of other unsolved, or mysterious deaths within the same two hundred mile radius," he said in a whisper, looking around briefly to see if we were being overheard. "I think that there is some sort of organization that is taking out these people. I figure it can't be one man," he said, 'too many deaths in too short a time.

I took off my glasses again and gave them another brief swipe with the cloth, "have you told anyone else about your suspicions?" I asked.

"No, I thought I could rely on your opinion," he said.

"Just as you should," I said with a smile and beckoned him to follow me, 'though you never did answer my question about secrets. Do you know what they say about them?"

"Not really," Sam said with a laugh.

"Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead," I said. I wasn't laughing as a slipped a knife between his ribs.

Change Everything

“I need you to keep a secret for me,” Asia said, apropos of nothing.

Riley blinked. “Me?” He didn’t usually get a sword, so the fact that he was in Asia’s stunt cave of all manliness was a rare event.

Asia nodded without looking at him - she was trying to fix a stray piece of armor. Riley thought that was the costume department’s job, but Asia was filled to the brim with odd skills like that.

“Okay.” Riley set down the stunt sword very carefully, lest she say something utterly shocking and he dropped the sword on his foot. “What’s your secret?”

“It’s for James,” Asia said.

Riley felt himself light up, and it took the best of his actor discipline to smooth his face into a calm, half-interested mien. This was the sort of gossip Fiona and Serena would kill for. “For him? As in I should tell him?”

“As in it’s for his benefit, but I hope for your sake you never have to tell him,” Asia said.

That was downright cryptic and, Riley suspected, not really all that romantic. But he stepped closer and lowered his voice, adopting the demeanor of one both interested and sincere. And he was interested and sincere. But he was also dying of curiosity.

“You can tell me your secret,” he said.

“If something should ever happen to me,” Asia said, “and James ever gets the feeling that he’s being...watched. Or followed. Or whatever. He’s not being paranoid. He needs to get in touch with Tobias immediately and tell him what’s going on, and Tobias will keep him safe.”

Riley raised his eyebrows. “Will something ever happen to you?”

Asia glanced up from her armor-smithing. “These are perilous times, friend.”

“Why would people start following James around if something happened to you?” What could have been immensely romantic was now just confusing. Riley resisted the urge to sigh.

“Because today I’m going to let James kiss me, and that’s going to change everything.”

(334 words)

Spilling the Beans

He was sitting alone on a bench in the park, watching boys kick a football around a field. They had more enthusiasm than skill. James couldn’t remember when he’d been that enthusiastic - about anything, but he was an actor, and he could get by at work without prying questions.

“I’m surprised you’re not out there playing.”

James looked up, saw a stranger standing beside his bench. The stranger was about his age, slender, pale but dark-haired. He had shadows around his eyes and looked tired - or possibly ill.

As if he’d read James’s mind, the man tucked a lock of hair behind one ear and said, “Leukemia. It comes and goes. Makes me look like a zombie.”

“I’m sorry,” James said automatically, British at heart, and then, “Can I help you?”

“Not really.” The man smiled wryly. “I can help you, though.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell you a secret.” The man sat down on the bench beside James, leaned in and lowered his voice. “She’s still alive.”

James felt like he’d been dropped into the middle of an episode of Spooks. Was this a hidden camera prank? “She who?”

The man reached into his jacket. James tensed. They always had weapons in their jackets. He glimpsed dark steel, and his pulse skyrocketed - but then the man handed him a crumpled photograph.

“See the newspaper in the background? This was taken two days ago.”

What James saw in the photo robbed him of breath faster than a gunshot. “Asia.”

“Like I said, she’s still alive. And you can find her.” The man cast a glance over his shoulder. The only person James saw nearby was a skinny girl stretching out for a jog. “I should go. But I thought you should know their little secret.”

“Whose secret?”

The man nodded at the photo. “Theirs. Good luck, James Mallory.”

“Wait - who are you? Will you contact me again?”

“I’m Bob. And probably not.” He ducked his chin into his collar, jammed his hands into his pockets, and walked away.

James studied the photo, and he realized he recognized the others.

Asia’s brothers.

(350 words)

Never Will

I don't think I ever told him about that night. The night I first kissed him. We had talked many times since then, but I don't think he ever knew that it was my first kiss. He never knew how long I had waited to find someone special, someone that I could love enough to give that special moment to.

I don't think he knew how important he was to me, how much I had come to love him in such a short time. He probably didn't know how much it hurt to lose him, because I never told him that I loved him.

And now I never will.

Eavesdropping

“What about him?”

Riley lifted his head, surprised at hearing anyone else’s voice round his corner of the set this early in the morning. He picked it because it was quiet, secluded, and he could study his lines in peace.

It took him a moment, but then he recognized the voice - Asia, the new stunt girl.

Riley wasn’t sexist, but that they had a stunt girl blew his mind.

“Yes, he’s as handsome and golden and glorious as ever,” Asia said. She sounded neither dreamy nor sarcastic; without seeing her face, Riley was hard pressed to gauge her emotion.

“No, I’m not going to say anything to him that isn’t perfectly polite or strictly professional,” Asia said. Now there was a touch of impatience to her voice. “I can’t begin to understand why you - or any of the others - would encourage me to engage in such unethical behavior.”

Golden and handsome - she had to be talking about James. To whom? Riley felt guilty for listening in, but Asia was such a cypher, and he was curious. And what could she possibly do with James that would be unethical, besides the obvious? Only maybe that wasn’t unethical, exactly, because she wasn’t James’s boss or his subordinate.

“I’m not in love with him,” Asia snapped. “It doesn’t work that way. Look, I have work to do. If you breathe a word of this to any of the others, I swear I’ll kill you.”

Riley swallowed hard. She sounded serious.

“Can this be the end of the discussion, please? I - no. I won’t say it. Don’t even - don’t you dare! Fine. I am not in love with James Mallory. Are you happy? Well, that’s the truth.” There was a long pause, and then Asia said, softly, “You never stop loving someone, not when you loved them the way I loved him. I really have to go now, Angel. Good luck.”

Riley hunched over his script when he heard her start to move. His heart was pounding. Asia was in love with James. James was mad for her. What could he do with that?

(350 words)

His Voice

I squirmed with a tiny bit of guilt whenever Joyce asked me about the tapes. I know I was supposed to turn the tapes back in. After all it's only fair. Eventually I knew that another blind student may need them, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't give up his voice.

I smiled as I moved about the kitchen, preparing a little bit of light lunch for myself and Chris, Diane following me around. He was coming over soon to read an additional supplement from class.

My thoughts turned back to Chris. He had volunteered to help me any time that I needed it. I'm sure I had blushed when he told me that. Even now I could feel my face getting warm from thinking of him. He didn't know that I had kept the tapes.

When we were together, it wasn't just his voice that drew me in, it was him. His voice, his personality, his warmth. I knew that if I just reached out that I could touch him, he was never far away when we were together. That always comforted me.

There was another reason that I kept the tapes. What if one day he wasn't there? What was going to happen when he graduated, or I did? We would go our separate ways and that would be that.

I heard the doorbell ring and the sound to Diane's nails on the floor as she trotted to the front hall. I followed quickly, movements sure in my own home.

"Hi," he said, and I could tell he was smiling.

"Hi Chris," I said and patted Diane on the head, "come on in. I have things set up on the table.

"Sounds good," he said and followed me down the short hallway into the kitchen.

You're on

When I sing, I sing only for her. I know that other women come to listen to me, stare at me in rapt attention, dreamy looks floating across their faces. They never see more than my smile, I make sure of that.

It doesn't seem to matter if it's in English, Italian or French; all my songs call to her. I can see it in her eyes, the puzzled look that creases her brow as of she is trying to puzzle something together.

I look out from the side of the stage, from that slight part between the curtain and the wall. I look out at her. Alastrina, sitting so poised and beautiful near the bar. I take in her figure from afar, her green dress swirling just perfectly about her knees. I can also feel the butterflies building in my stomach. Each time I sing to her it's as if it's the first time.

"You're on Partrick," the stage manager told me as he brushed past me.

I swallowed a bit nervously, and reminded myself why I was doing this. I was doing it for her. Hopefully I wouldn't need to keep secrets from her much longer. I stepped out onto the dark stage and found my place as the opening notes flooded into the room.


Hush now baby don't you cry
Rest your wings my butterfly
Peace will come to you in time
And I will sing this lullaby...

One Day, Until Then

James glanced at Asia out of the corner of his eye while she walked Stephen through his half of the sword routine. She didn’t know, and he would never tell her, that he’d been waiting for her all his life.

When he was eight, he’d started having a dream - the same dream, over and over again - of himself, crying and hungry, tearing through the forest with a bow and arrows, desperate to catch something for supper lest he, someone be angry. Halfway through the chase he ran into a man whose face was fuzzy, just out of focus, and at the man’s side was a cloaked figure, and James knew that underneath the cloak she was Asia.

When he was fifteen, he dreamed again and again of sitting in an ancient little Christian church, staring at the altar in which was buried to the hilt a sword, while a maid sat beside him and told him stories of golden deserts and foreign lands. In the dream he was no longer afraid and hungry, and she was no longer wearing a cloak, and he knew her face.

When he was twenty and getting ready for drama school, he dreamed he was dying, and she was crying as she held him.

And then he walked into his dorm room and met his new roommate’s sister...and she’d looked at him with nothing more than polite blankness.

James had never expected to see her in real life, had thought she was little more than a dream. To her, he was little more than an acquaintance, and every time her indifferent gaze passed over him, it was a solid blow to the chest, so hard he was robbed of breath for just a moment.

One day James would make her smile at him.

One day.

Until then...

“Hey James, you’re wanted on set!”

(309 words)

Project #87: Secrets, Take 2

This year, we're going to re-up an old challenge: Secrets. 100-500 words. Tell a character's secret. Or have a character tell a secret - what secret, and to whom? Or have a character being asked to keep a secret. Or maybe a character accidentally overhears a secret. What does she do with it? Past variations on the 'secret' them include vice and confessions.

Happy writing!

Overview #86: Proverbs

I think I did all right as far as using proverbs. Thing is, I sort of wove them into the dialogue without giving them the weight they deserved. They came off as clever quips or perhaps lines of poetry but without much in the way of real depth. Sometimes that was deliberate, as a given character was unaware of proverbs being used, and other times I think I was too busy doing what I do best - dialogue - and not giving ancient wisdom the respect it deserves.

I missed out on a few days due to sheer exhaustion, and right now I think I'm learning about my writing weaknesses more than anything, but so far I'm surviving. Here's to doing better next week.

Silken Goat

"You look surprised to see me," Andrew said, reclining on a plush chair.

I blinked, still not quite sure what to make of the situation, "what are you doing here?" I finally managed to get out.

"Didn't you hear that I've been reformed?" he asked. He sipped at his cocktail, smirking like that cat that ate the canary. "I paid my debt to society and they let me out for good behavior," he said. "After all, I was wrongfully imprisoned," he put on a look of hurt, "and I was such a model prisoner. They never had any problems with me at all."

But all those people you killed, all the lives you destroyed. How could they let you out?" I asked.

Andrew stood up and walked across the room to the bar, glancing back at me, "come now Benjamin, I never actually killed anyone, and those so called 'lives' were barely worth calling lives anyway. It was a mercy to them."

"You might fool them," I said quietly, "but I know what you are. A monster. A cold blooded killer who will never change."

"But I have changed Ben. Your government even said so," he laughed.

I shook my head and stepped towards the door, "put silk on a goat, and it's still a goat," I said and walked out into the night.

(Not really what I had in mind for this. I think I will try this quote again later at some point. I really do like it.)

Silence and the Sound of Home

“But I –” Topher began.

Adelle cut in. “Do not speak unless you can improve the silence.”

Topher shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked. He raised his eyebrows and made a series of highly expressive and inexplicable gestures that indicated he was very agitated about the situation at hand, but Adelle was pondering a serious problem and ignored him.

A voice broke through Adelle’s brooding, and she spun, ready to deliver a sharp invective to the person who had dared act against a direct order, but it was just George, tall and golden and beautiful and so much a victim, standing in the doorway with a pleasantly passive expression on his face.

“ – Ready for my treatment.”

Topher, very deliberately not saying a word, gestured for George to cross the room and seat himself in The Chair. Adelle studied George, and remembered when she’d first seen him, a broken runaway who’d ended up past the other side of the tracks and almost drowned himself in the river of humanity that was Los Angeles. In his doll state, he didn’t have the accent that reminded Adelle fiercely of home.

Six more months on his contract, and his very wealthy parents would be pleased at the sane, healthy, confident young man who returned their vast estates in the Southeast.

Topher was distracted from his mime act by pulling up The Pipepline and parameters of the engagement. He’d done the work beforehand, but once Ivy, sleep-deprived and too afraid to confess it, had mixed up the imprints and the dolls, and Topher was one for leaning from mistakes.

He lowered the chair, and the light flared blue. Adelle didn’t even flinch anymore when George hissed, arched his back in pain, but then Topher was raising the chair, and George was no more.

George’s handler, Perry, was a slender slip of a thing, and underestimated by everyone who looked at him.

“Are you ready?” Perry asked.

“Of course,” George said, only he was someone else now, someone who sounded like home, and Adelle wished, for one moment, he could stay for a chat.

(350 words)

Lies and Truth

“You know what they say.” Gabriel perched on the edge of the railing like a giant eagle, muscles tense, wings quivering with anticipation.

“Depends on who they are and what they’re saying it about.” Kyle watched the rioting mob, the puffs of tear gas and the flailing police batons. He thought it fitting, that the government agents wore black like the demons with whom they’d formed an unholy alliance. He’d been kept awake all night dreading even a glimpse of those shadows in the crowd.

“Lies hurt.”

“Yes.” Kyle slewed a glance at Gabriel, alarmed at his flat tone. Gabriel was never one for stating the obvious.

“Truth kills,” Gabriel said.

Kyle blinked. “Are you allowed to say things like that?”

Gabriel drew a shining steel sword from thin air and hoisted it high. It flashed, like lightning, in the sun. “I wield the Sword of Truth.” And he plummeted from the sky.

Kyle closed his eyes, murmured the same letters he sketched on the railing, and then he flickered from existence. He reappeared on the ground at the edge of the mob, and he began to sing.

(188 words)

Cursed

The blisters on the bottom of my feet seared with pain, each step a fresh agony, every mile a torment. Remote hills marched ponderously closer and receded into the distance behind me.

I didn't know where I was going anymore. Didn't know where I had been or what the next rise would show me; I only knew that I had to keep moving forward. Forever wandering. This was my curse and my punishment.

It all seemed so long ago now. A curse placed upon me for an innocent mistake. I thought back on how I had come to be on this long road.

Nadya was as beautiful as the sunrise and as fair as the spring wind and I had made the mistake of falling in love with her. She was of the wandering people. The Romani, the gypsies. They were an old people. With old traditions and old magic. Nadya had been promised to another, but I didn't care. I foolishly persuaded her to run away with me. I was sure we would be happy together.

That was before her mother had found us out. I remember the coldness in her eyes, deep, fathomless eyes that seemed to burn even as they froze. She simply stepped between us. She looked me in they eye and said, "Poate tu rătăcească pe faţa pământului pentru totdeauna, niciodată de două ori dorm in acelasi pat, nu bea apă de două ori din acelaşi bine, şi niciodată nu cruce de două ori acelaşi râu într-un an."

From that moment on I have continuously wandered. Never resting more than a day and never in the same place. It was a long time before I found anyone that could translate the words that had been burned into my memory. And when I did, I finally understood.



May you wander over the face of the earth forever, never sleep twice in the same bed, never drink water twice from the same well, and never cross the same river twice in a year.

Speech in Silence

It was a long time before I realized why David was so different from other men, and people in general.

It wasn't the fact that he was gentle, I knew a few men who were just as gentle. It wasn't that he was extremely handsome, though he certainly was. It was simply the fact that he said nothing at all. Ever.

I realized it the day that I ran right into him. The boss had just bawled me out for turning in a project late and I was hurrying back to my desk to finalize the plans for the new high rise that our firm was building in the heart of the city. I wasn't looking where I was going, furiously making notes on my hand held about the specs that needed to be updated and the building codes that had to be checked, when I slammed right into someone, knocking the both of us down amid a flurry of papers.

"I am so sorry!" I exclaimed. I made a grab for some papers that were floating within reach. "I wasn't watching where I was going. It's all my fault," I said.

I finally looked up after gathering the papers and my eyes met Davids.

"David!" I gasped, "I... I didn't know it was you."

He smiled at me and made a calming gesture.

"Are you alright?" I asked, "Is anything missing." I reached out to take his offered hand and stood up straight. David nodded and handed me back my hand held. I could feel my brow furrowing in confusion, "David?"

David simply smiled at me and reached into his pocket for a small pad of paper and a pen. "I'm alright. Are you okay?" he jotted down in a neat hand.

"I... I'm sorry. I didn't know. I didn't realized," I stumbled over an apology, embarrassed that I didn't know that he was mute. I felt my face grow red.

"It's alright," I read from his paper, "sometimes silence is also speech.”

A Bird In Hand

“Does anyone else think this is unnecessarily cruel?” Sylvia asked.

Sam curled her hand toward her gun; she noticed Dunham do the same. The three seraph-voice with them stood at the mouth of the tunnel, heads cocked, listening to what only they could hear. And then Damien stepped out into the sunlight.

“You know what they say,” he said.

“What do they say?” Jimmy was always distant, hollow-eyed, lost in his own little world.

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Damien knelt, sketched invisible letters on the cement. Then he drew a knife, and Dunham flinched.

“Wait just a moment, kid,” Dunham began, and who was he to call anyone kid?

“Let him alone,” Sam said, but she flinched too when Damien sliced open his own palm, squeezed, shook his hand to spatter the blood across his invisible letters. And then he murmured under his breath, sounds from a language humans never knew and maybe were never supposed to know.

“So why aren’t we catching him?” Sylvia asked.

“Like the man said, two in the bush,” Jimmy said. He turned to Sam and smiled, and for the first time Sam saw horrifying lucidity in his eyes. “Why catch the one when he can lead us to more?”

Blood and feathers exploded overhead.

(219 words)

Devil or Angel

"Time was when angels walked the earth. Now they are not even in heaven," Cody whispered. He rocked back and forth, hands wrapped around his knees. 

Agent Dunham stood on the other side of the one-way mirror and watched him intently. "He's crazier than one who flew over the cuckoo's nest."

Sam shook her head.  "No, I don't think so."

Dunham raised his eyebrows. Sam could admit his skepticism was warranted; Cody was disheveled and unkempt, his hair and beard greasy and tangled, his clothes torn and stained. He looked like he'd been sleeping in a dumpster. Local PD had picked him up in an alley on the wrong side of town. 

"He's a complete and utter nutball," Dunham said.

Sam wouldn't tell Dunham that she'd heard the voice of the angel who accompanied Nicodemus Cohen, that she'd known deep down in the space between her heartbeats that she'd heard the voice of death.  But she couldn't hear its voice now.

"He's hiding something," Sam said. "I want to find out what it is."  She pushed open the door and laid a file down on the table. "Cody Cohen, we have to talk."

He lifted his head sharply, blinked at her like she'd flipped a light on in a dark room. "A young angel, an old devil," he said. 

"Where are the angels now?" Sam asked. 

"Gone with the wind," Cody said, and smiled faintly, as if at a distant, happy memory.

"Are they here?" Sam asked. 

Cody shook his head. "You know what they used to say?"

"What?" Sam asked patiently. 

"When the angels present themselves, the devils abscond."  Cody shook his head and laughed. "It's not true anymore."

"Oh? Why not?"

"Because you brought them here," Cody said. "You brought the devils and gave them voices, and now they won't go away." He lifted his head and gazed up at her with hollow eyes. "Have you ever seen a person inside out?"

(325 words)

A Garden in My Pocket

"Found one!" I called out in excitement.

I pounced in glee when my eyes fell on a pocket version of my favorite book, The Count of Monte Cristo. Ann and I were following our usual Saturday ritual of combing through old book stores for rare finds.

I thumbed through the slightly wrinkled pages, noting the slight water damage to the edges. The print was excruciatingly small, but I didn't mind too much. Not when I had the opportunity to carry it with me anywhere.

"Susan, are you finished?" Ann called out to me from the front of the store. I smiled in response to my friend, though she couldn't see me at the moment. I could always count on Ann to join me in a book hunt.

I stepped around the end of a shelf and spotted my friend. She was petite, with red hair and bright blue eyes. She had a smattering of freckles across her nose.

"What did you find?" Ann asked.

"A copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. And it's small enough to carry anywhere," I said with excitement.

"But you have at least four copies of that book already," Ann laughed. We quickly payed for our purchases.

"But this one I can take anywhere. After all a book is like a garden carried in the pocket," I said.

Project Assignment #86 - Proverbs

Sorry for this one coming in so late in the day. But this week is Proverbs.

Have fun let's keep it to 350 words.

Posting may be light from me. It's coming up on the end of the semester, but I will try to post as often as I can.