Flash Fiction Friday: Nothing

I'm standing on the edge of something white.  Something immense and white.  I can't tell how long my eyes have been open.  I don't remember when I might have gotten here.  Or anything else.

I can at least turn my head.  Still all white.  Actually, there's some off white, almost gray.  Kinda floating there in patches, like little islands.  I look down.

Where the fuck are my feet?!  Oh what the hell.  Why.  Why do I not know how long I've been here and why do I not have feet.  There is, however, some of that off-white stuff.  I try walking.  That, I can still do.  Even though I can't see my feet, I can feel them move, and I step on more of that off-white stuff.  It feels, uh... like air?  But air that I can walk on.  Like dense air.  Feels nice.  I feel like my feet are... clean.  Strangely.

I look up, and look around.  There's a silver glint, far away.  Maybe a block away, a few people down.  Weird how I can still make those kinds of relations while I'm in here.  Especially because I can't remember anything.  This should really piss me off.  But that silver thing is... entrancing.  And moving?

It turns.  Turns to me.  Because it's a person, kind of.  Or a silver shadow of one.  Part of it waves, just a small ripple at its top.  It's becoming less formless (more formed, whatever) by the second.  Shaped like a woman.  That's looking at me.  That's cool?  Part of the glint changes, close to where she (it? I don't know anymore) rippled for a second.  Right before it's too late and it turns out I'm just staring like a jackass, I realize she's smiling.  She's standing with her hands behind her back, one leg poised in front of another, hair rippling in a breeze that isn't there, and smiling at me.  There's a slight singing in my ears, like one of the invisible sounds of a computer operating.  I raise my hand and wave back, bobbing my fingers slightly.  I try to smile too.  I can feel myself smile, even though I'm not sure if I have a face.

I can see myself wave!  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement - I look, and there it is, there's a hand!  I don't remember if my hand always looked like that.  It's broad and flat and strong, but it's also shimmery.  And pink.  I'm like this silver woman that's smiling at me, but pink.  I bring my other hands up under my face and-  Oh damn, she's walking away.  What a sight though.  Even if she is silver and not all there... still got hips, and she knows how to use em.  I sigh.  I can feel air come out from somewhere inside of me.  I might still have lungs.

I look back at my suspended hands.  Pink shadows.  I don't know if they're shaped like my real body, however it looked before.  I turn them this way and that.  I may not be "all there", but I'm more there than the woman is.  Denser color, more than a bunch of outlines.  I can still feel the woman there.  I look up again.  She's further away now, standing and looking at me again.  The silver ripples of her hair twist.  She's no longer smiling, but she's looking at me.  I twiddle my fingers again, hands still suspended, in another wave.  Her head shakes and she turns around to walk away again.

I turn around.  I cry out in surprise.  That's definitely my voice.  I don't know whose voice, because though it's mine, I don't know the name I once owned... besides "Me".  Hovering maybe thirty feet away is a square, a colorful square.  There's more of the off-white stuff leading to the bottom of it in a path.  It looks like strokes from a great big paintbrush, with ill-defined edges.  I walk forward.  I don't know how this big white space works, but the off-white feels solid enough.  I don't think it'll drop out from beneath my feet.

I'm at the square now.  It's bright.  Strange how anything that exists in a giant, maybe endless field of white, can be bright.  I guess it's not a bright white.  Just a white, like the color of a chicken egg.  I place my hands on either side of this square.  It feels like a doorframe.  Speaking of doorframes, this square's big enough for me to jump through, no problem.

There's a warm breeze from this square.  There's lots of green.  I hear the swells of string players warming up.  Maybe there's an orchestra, far on the other side.  There's the caw of a few seagulls.  I can see a great structure like an opera house, crowned with curving points and sun-catching sides, an unusual piece of architecture.  Further on, against a blue sky, there's a white ferris wheel.

I stand against the square, this window, thumbs hooked into it, squinting my eyes against the warm breeze.  My thumbs... I can see them on the other side of this square.  I cry out in surprise again, and I almost fall back from the window.  They're normal!  They're like any other thumbs on any other person that isn't a pink shadow!  I take my hands away from the colored, floating square and look at them.  Pink and simple again.  I look at the square and gulp.  So warm.  So different.  I raise my hand, pointed like a shadow puppet.  Not ready for anything, I dip it in, past this ethereal wall and into the colored world beyond.  I let out breath that wasn't there.  As I thought: my pink shadow hand becomes a hand like any other man's.  I jerk it back through, lest something happen by leaving my hand in the colored world too long.  I stare at my shadow hand, flex it, see the mortal hand with lines and nails fade inside it.  I look up, through the colored window.  So warm, that breeze.

I almost take a step forward.  But...

I look back.  There's the silver woman.  Girl, female, whatever.  I don't know what she is, besides a she.  She's walking alone, sticking to the off-white islands and trails and floating villas.  I look back at the colored window.  There's one last fan of warm wind, a sting of orchestral strings.  Even the sound of a child laughing.  Or maybe it was a gull, I don't know.  But this is the last bid I hear from the world out there.

Farewell, window.

I turn and run forward, crying "Hey!" into the white beyond.  I don't know what I'm doing.

Flash Fiction Friday the First: The I Hate Myself And Want To Die Club

Hola, muzzafuckas!  New feature today!

I mentioned this I think only once before.  Several posts ago, I mentioned that this blog would be tweaking its format over time; first moving away from just stuff about 90s music, introduce a couple different regular features, some of my silly little hopes and dreams, branching out into different forms/formats/interests, and then way down the line, who knows, maybe finding a new focus.  This right here, Flash Fiction Friday, is one of the new ones I promised.

Premise is, I chain myself to a computer, hop on Blogger, and just write, for a full hour.  Hour's over, wherever I am, I wrap up the story (unless it finds its own ending before then), do a few very small spot-edits, and publish it.  So here's my first attempt; hope you enjoy!

Note: If any of this somehow offends you in any way... I really don't care?

Lights up on The I Hate Myself And Want To Die Club.  Well, only one part of the club.  The stage.  Yes, it's an actual club, not like, some club full of suicidal folks who talk about their feelings and how they wanna off themselves.  Sounds kind of fun, actually.  No, this is a flesh-and-blood, real-live arthouse club, over yonder under Sweden's Bridge.  Naw, it's not made of flesh and blood.  That'd be a little uncomfortable.  FDA would be all over that shit.  Sounds kind of gnarly, actually.  I guess a more accurate description is, a real-live wood-and-steel arthouse club.  Maybe iron instead of steel.  I don't know.  I don't know much about making buildings.

So on, on go the stage lights!  And there's already a sumbitch there, standing at the mic.  He stands mighty straight, like a pole, straighter than the mic stand itself.  Funny.  The types like this guy, they're usually not straight-standers.  Stand-straighters?  Nah, ain't my business.  But he's one of them kids that looks like he could be fifty, skin all junkied out til it's like petrified sap, covered in tattoos, including a buzzard wrapping its way from his shoulder to his neck.  I can see it cuz he's got no shirt on.  Got his nips pierced too.  And his earlobes stretched.

The murmurs begin, up front by the stage.  Buncha loons.  Show hasn't even begun and they're critiquing away.  Buncha hens.  I don't even know who this kid is, what he's doing performing at the I Hate Myself And Want To Die Club.  But I lean myself forward in my chair, and I watch.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." he begins.  He speaks in a croak, like a frog, or a goat.  Depends on the goat, I guess.  Sounds kind of like an alligator, actually.

Kid goes on to divulge the entirety of "A Tale Of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens.  Heartwrenching piece, really.  Very timely, only took about two hours.  Got to take a good look around at the clientele; see all the lonely dreamers, the snobs what look like they're wearing microscopes on their faces, the small-time critics (all these weaselly little fellas with notepads that keep twitching their noses like rabbits), the stuffed-suits.  People drift in and out of this; not like it's boring.  The kid's monotone and his heavy Icelandic accent, it's all very commanding.  It's just a sleepy-ass night is all.  The I Hate Myself And Want To Die Club sometimes tends to do that to ya.  Low light, smoky, all-black interior.  Lots of gothic chandeliers and curlicue furniture and the like.  Lotta red candles too.  Interesting place, interesting place it is.

About halfway through, the owner comes up to me, buys me a drink, just stopping in to say "hello".  He's an old salt, he is; blind in one eye, left hand like a claw.  Left eye's the blind one.  No one's really sure what's the deal.  Sounds kind of grotesque, actually.  But it's not, it's not, it's really not.  You get used to his visage like that.  Finger-snap.  You can't really snap your fingers at someone when you're writing it down, can you?  So there, I wrote "finger-snap".  Now you hear it, don'tcha?  Finger-snap.  So me and Louie, he's the owner see, we catch up.  He takes off his top hat, fans himself cuz it's musty and stale like always (that's the I Hate Myself And Want To Die Club), sits back and watches the show with me, and then takes off.

Then I'm back to watching the show by myself.  Not the pretty girls in red dresses flopping on these little suited punks like dummies, up there in the front, nor the bar and its black liquors.  Just the front, just the kid.  Just his accent and his constant storytelling.  Heartwrenching piece, it really is.  Sounds quite nice, actually.  Something about the kid's voice.  If you could take the sound of breaking kindling and somehow make it rich, that's a pretty good picture.

The piece ends.  We all clap.  Everyone that was asleep wakes up.  No heckles, but no roses either.  I actually stand up.  A few other people stand up too.  It's no ovation, but it's what the kid deserves, at least a little of it.  Not that he notices, anyway.  He walks offstage, soon as he finishes that last word.  Still stiff as a pole.

I had the pleasure of drinking with the kid, the Dickens kid, and some other fellows on the veranda - the one hanging over the river - after the rest of the performances.  Nothing else to speak of.  I made sure to chide old Louie about it for a second after the dust had cleared.  "Rolled out the best for first, eh?" I said.  He laughed and made some kinda growl, mighta been a word.  It don't matter much, he doesn't resent me for it.  He was too busy putting chairs away anyway, and I was on my way out back to have a smoke and a drink.

I asked him why Dickens.  He said because "Dickens hated his wife."  I think it might've been a joke.  I asked him why "A Tale of Two Cities".  He shrugged, spun his beer in his lap for a second, legs up on the aluminum table.  Maybe it's iron instead of aluminum.  I don't know much about making tables.

Then the kid looks up, though he's still not looking at me, and he says it's about love.  I ask him if he's talking about the Dickens or himself; the performance or the material.  He laughs and says "Both," and then mutters "I guess."  He has less of an accent now.  Maybe it was part of the performance.