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shadows_gallery ([personal profile] shadows_gallery) wrote2010-11-01 12:52 pm
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Story-- Will O' the Wisp

I thought for my "revisited writing" post today, I'd share a short story. :) It's still quite rough, as I've never really gone back and edited, but I hope you all enjoy all the same!
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You see, the love of my life was waiting for me. Oh, I'm not certain she knew she was the love of my life… hell, I didn't even know she was the love of my life until now. In fact, this night she was rather mortally pissed at me. The gods and my girlfriend both. Yes, I was definitely on a roll.

I'd been out of town on business. What kind of business am I in, you may ask? Does it matter, really? It was the kind of business where one puts on a suit and a tie and pretends to be above the animal kingdom while simultaneously doing everything in one's power to tear the throat in one blood-spattered jerk out of the Competition, all while freezing one's face in a winning yet sinister smile. That kind of business.

Anyway, I had been called away unexpectedly, on Linda's birthday. A come-or-die kind of call, or at least, a come-or-starve-because-you'll-never-find-decent-work-again kind of call. I had to go. Linda didn't quite understand that. I think she was suspicious that I was meeting up with my blonde co-worker Jane that Linda had unfortunately met during the company's annual Christmas party one year. It was jealousy at first sight, despite my consistent heartfelt affirmations of my eternal faithfulness to her. Yes, the first words out of her lips (which were full and always held a subtle pout even when she smiled) when I told her I was going to Portland on business were, "Will Jane be there?"

I should say something about Linda. She was, in a word, beautiful. She had sleek brown hair, which she was always trying to puff up somehow with every big-hair product available, but, thankfully because I thought her silken hair was beautiful the way it was, none of the products ever held for more than a few minutes. Usually all I had to do was touch her hair, and it would re-assume its natural shape and condition. She could never keep it dyed properly either, which also was fine by me, because I loved her hair color as well. She always said I had some sort of mystical hair-wrecking power. She was pale, such a stark contrast to the sun-darkened women who populated the world these days, with a lush, curvy body and the brown eyes of a doe, which would slip almost unnoticeably in the spectrum between the shades of a luminous amber and an endless depth of black. I've even seen her eyes take on a distinct burgundy hue. She was… primal… that night. She'd let down her guards, and became, for a short time, the person that I knew she hid behind her prim, proper, and often bitchy exterior. It was a night to remember. I never understood why she stayed with me. I was in my early thirties, rather odd looking to my eyes. Black hair, teeth that were a little too pointed, green eyes that were a little too far apart. Pretty normal otherwise. Painfully normal. I told myself it must have been the money I made at my job that kept her at my side, but something always told me that was not the case.

Ah, where was I? Oh, yes. The business trip. Linda had tossed her sleek brown hair, then pouted slightly at me, a flash in her eyes. I'd had to tell her about Jane accompanying me on the business trip, and then we'd fought for about an hour, and I drank a few beers while she called up one of her girlfriends to have a night on the town or something, and finally I passed out in front of our seventy-two inch flatscreen t.v. with a half-finished bottle of Guinness on the end table, where I had laid it beside the coaster with the words "Guinness goes HERE" emblazoned in big black letters across its surface. I think Linda did one of those make-your-own-online-store things at Carpe Diem Press or whatever it was called, and special-ordered a custom coaster.

That was Friday. Saturday, I was on a plane to Portland. I won't bore you (my fair reader) with a play-by-play of the plane trip. It was long and cramped and… had peanuts.

I also won't give a tired retelling of our business-shark adventures, because this is not a story of abject horror and freely flowing blood and hope-all-lost.

No, I'll start telling the tale in the moment that I was on a quiet back road, headed back to my hotel. I'd been tipped that it was a shortcut to the Hilton, but maybe I should have thought twice about following the tip, since it had come from one of the Competition (quite the odd looking fellow, now that I think about it. His teeth were a bit too pointy, his eyes a little too far apart).

So, there I was, driving down a rather densely wooded one-way road somewhere in the middle of Portland. Once I'd turned on it, there hadn't been any turnoffs. None. I drove, and drove, and the hum of the car motor began to sound like something soothing and mesmerizing, like the purr of a cat. Still, there were no turnoffs. I checked myself, making certain I was still awake (it had been a long day), and then pulled to the side of the road.

I looked at the glowing LCD bearing the digital clock numbers on the panel of my BMW rental. It read 11:59. I could not quite believe that… I'd not been on the road for four hours, had I?

I pulled to the roadside, fighting a sense of breathless disorientation that swept over me. I should have come across some sign of civilization after four solid hours of driving in a single direction. Shouldn't I have? I'd not even seen another car on the road, behind or before.

I began to feel suspiciously like a hamster on a wheel.

I thought carefully. How was it that four hours could have passed? I haven't got the best internal clock known to man, it is true, but I didn't think I'd been driving that long. Though, at the same time, it almost seemed longer somehow.

I scoffed to myself, and spoke aloud because it was far too quiet for my nerves. "You dolt. The car clock is wrong. You have the observation skills of a…" I couldn't come up with anything right away that was known for having poor observation skills, and wasn't particularly interested in lapsing into hours of contemplation of the less-observant occurrences in nature in order to finish the metaphor (or was it a simile? I can never remember the difference), so I hit the light on my watch, still chuckling and shaking my head at the absurdity of my own imaginings.

The little digital numbers read 12:01.

"Fuck," I said.

I reached for my ever-present Blackberry, but found that evidently it didn't pick up a signal in the Twilight Zone. Damn Verizon.

The radio didn't work either. I wondered briefly if I was about to be abducted by aliens.

Finally, I made a decision. Keep going straight. If I'd been driving for four hours in one direction, the distance between myself and human civilization was bound to be shorter ahead than behind.

So, I drove. More. This time, I kept a close eye on that panel clock. So close, in fact, that I didn't see the deer dart in front of me. A big buck, six prong, would have made a great trophy if I'd ever had the stomach to kill a deer. Something always lurched within me whenever my office buddies asked me if I wanted to go on a hunting trip with them. I always stuttered up some kind of excuse while trying to ignore mental images of revenant deer, hides spattered with blood, taking their vengeance on their human persecutors. Maybe killing deer wasn't wrong for them, but it sure as hell was wrong for me, except in certain circumstances which I had never quite defined in my mind. Something about a willing sacrifice and kingship. Yeah, never made much sense to me either.

This deer had definitely sacrificed itself on my car.

Damn, I thought. This business trip was a nightmare. I got out of the crumpled vehicle, wincing as I caught sight of a coil of smoke in the headlight beams.

The car was totaled.

So was the deer.

"Damn," I said, aloud this time, examining the twisted, once graceful form lying on the side of the road.

I got back in the car and tried my phone again, with no luck. Then I tried to start the car engine. It coughed, sputtered, and hacked, but didn't come to life.

I got out of the car because I was beginning to feel claustrophobic, and paced slowly beside it, thinking. Should I keep walking in the direction I'd been heading? Should I try to walk back where I'd come from? Should I wait for help? None of these options were particularly appealing to me, as I had no idea how far I'd have to walk ahead to find civilization, and I certainly didn't want to walk a four hour's drive behind me, and the only sign of life other than myself on this road had been the suicidal deer. And, lucky me, I'd killed him. Or maybe he just killed himself. I examined the carcass again critically. I supposed I could live off of venison for a while if need be, while waiting for a rescue party.

I began at that point to think about Linda. Something about being out in the middle of nowhere, in that silence which is truly never silent, always seems to bring forward hidden thoughts. I saw that brown hair like a silken scarf flowing around her shoulders, her eyes glinting burgundy in ecstacy, her luscious mouth curved in her Linda-patented smile-pout, the life within her shining through. I loved her. I did truly love her, and I would tell her when next I saw her. Her anger reached me even out here, piercing my soul, but I loved her. All of my life seemed to coalesce into that one point, from the dim and almost fanciful rememberings of my childhood, to the Corporate Life that I wore like an ill-fitting coat, to the wealth that I had little regard for in all honesty, to the business trip, and the rich but sterile hotel room, and the hidden violence of the Business Meeting, and the advice of the odd-looking Competition Man, and the very strange drive on this neverending country road… the deer… and now… Linda.

At that point, in such deep contemplation, was when I saw the headlights through the trees. I may have almost missed it, perhaps, but I don't know that I would have been allowed to not see it. Another road! I thought. And… people! Without thinking further, I took off on foot into the woods.

No, I never said I was smart.

I could, strangely, still see the headlights. For a surreal moment it almost looked as if the car was moving backwards, but I told myself it was an illusion created by distance and movement, trying to remember something I'd read in a Stephen Hawking book once (in an attempt to feel intelligent), about time and motion and relativity. I kept running, lashed on all sides by angry branches and twigs. The trees whispered harshly to me, spitting thorny wood and briar. Yes, they were angry. I was disturbing their world, showing no respect for their home. I'd forgotten how to do so, forgotten there was a need to do so. I should know better, I heard in the irritated rustle of the leaves.

The headlights kept moving in the illusion of backwards, making odd turns and seeming intermittently closer and then further away. I kept running, here catching my sleeve on a bramble that tore my skin, there splashing through a puddle of something wet that I was not entirely certain was water. The headlights… they were my hope. The fact that I could still see them kept me pressing on, ignoring the sheer improbability of my keeping a moving car in sight for so long, even at a distance.

Suddenly, I froze, as I saw the headlights stop. Some optical illusion seemed to be occurring, because the headlights, which seemed to have been some distance away a few seconds ago, appeared now to be only fifty or so yards directly in front of me. I could see nothing but the headlights, twin orbs hovering in the woods, no outline of a car. I swallowed, the realization that what I had been pursuing was no car slowly and ominously descending upon me.

That was when the headlights broke apart and began to swarm like a legion of fireflies…

Yes, that was a night to remember. No car, indeed. It was them.

Evidently, they got tired of the little human child they had stolen when they put me in its place, bearing the illusion of being identical. A few centuries ago, surrounded by human belief and (in many cases wisely held) fear of faeries and changelings, I would have not forgotten so easily what I was, but this age is different. Our kind have been forgotten and relegated to fantasy and pretty watercolors (We are beautiful… oh, yes, beautiful, but not pretty, and most certainly not cute), and so I forgot as well.

The child they had stolen evidently had turned into quite the brat, even as an adult, and simply became too much to handle. So they switched us back, stealing me away as they had stolen him away.

The one thing I miss is Linda. I am assured that she has seen the difference in my doppleganger. Perhaps on the Solstice of Summer, I will take her. I look somewhat different now… more feral, more fae, more myself. But she will recognize me. I will steal her away. Certainly I can arrange a will-o'-the-whisp or something of the sort.

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