After all the writing I’ve done in the last week, I’ll be honest and say I’m tired of me. (Trufax) So, what a perfect time to do this and get you guys to come write a bit?
Not sure how the challenge works? I’ll just link you to the writing tag and let you get aquainted if you’re not familiar. And check back to read the responses. I’m always blown away.
Ready?
Starting points are provided below.
You can use one or any combination of the three if you like. Whatever works.
Word: Inversion
Phrase:”Oh…one last thing”
Image: An empty Starbucks coffee cup laying on its side.
You write whatever you like using that starting point and see what comes. (Note, no rules on length, content, whatever. Just see what happens) And please feel free to invite others. ;*
“Oh, one other thing.” He says pointing to the empty Starbucks cup laying on it side where she had dropped it five minutes earlier. “Never eat or drink anything when meeting strangers. I know it’s going to be difficult to parse that in your current state, my guess is you have about a minute of cognitive ability left. Still always remember that line from The Conqueror. “
He leans over and checks her eyes and sees that her gaze appears fixed and the eyes a bit glazed. He traces a hand down the side of her face to where her full red lips are slightly parted and a bit of drool leaks out the left side. He frowns and wipes it away with his finger. He hates it when they drool but the dosage needed to bring down a GES is three times what it would be for a normal human and that level causes drool. It’s all part of the job.
Leaning down he removes the cuff from her right hand, picks it up by the wrist and lets it drop. Her nervous system is all but shut down now and her mind is open to whatever suggestions he might implant. Knowing that her body might metabolize the drug any minute, he gets right to work.
“So the Russians bought you for a large sum of money and that is too bad. We also know they threatened your sister and if that had been the only reason you turned, well that would have been okay. We could have worked with you but you took the money. Sorry we cannot do that.”
Pulling out a small box he places it in her hand.
“This is enough explosive to take you and the section chief who turned you out plus a number of Russkies. You are going to lure him to their new space launch site and you are going to explode the bomb with you and him. Needless to say they are going to kill your sister too or worse, sell her into prostitution. An English country girl who cannot speak a word of Russian walking the streets of Volgagrad is kind of funny.” He removes the cuff from her left hand now. In a more serious tone he erases all memory of their meeting and what he has done.
When he is finished, he steps away and looks at her. “At the end you’ll remember it all but don’t think ill of us. Your candle very brightly but we just cannot have Genetically Enhanced Soldiers walking around and doing whatever it is they want. I say we but really its they, since I am like you. Well not exactly, I have no family and no friends. I have nothing but this job so it makes me less vulnerable. Goodbye. You were a good partner.”
He cleans up, packs his things and leaves out through the front door.
Light … Dark … Light … Dark … Grey. There we go, that is better. The light hurt. The dark had nothing. The grey is blurry, but better. It is something. And as she thinksmore about the grey, she notices that it is becoming less blurry. The grey is separating into something lighter within the darkness. She has no idea how long it took, but eventually she figures out that she is looking at an empty cup under her desk. That realization swiftly brings with it a question: how did she ended up on the floor?
Sky is up.
Sky is down.
Earth is down.
Earth is up.
Don’t quite remember which way it’s supposed to be.
Helena sat at her small computer desk and regarded the empty Starbucks coffee cup laying on its side. The dark pattern the spill had left on the floor was an almost perfect inversion of the sweat marks left on her sheets. Her eyes traced over the pattern there, then slid back over the curves of her lover. Well, her lover tonight, anyway. The view was almost enough to make Helena slide back under the thin blanket and start the whole mess over again.
Almost.
One thing stopping her was that she couldn’t quite remember tonight’s thing’s name. Jillian? Julia? Something with a J, she was sure. Though why she was letting that stop her she really couldn’t say. It’s not like she was planning to start a conversation with her. Jillian/Julia had known exactly what Helena had been bringing her back here for, and she certainly hadn’t complained then. It was even more unlikely that she’d complain about a second go-round.
No, it had to be something else.
“You know exactly what it is,” she heard someone whisper. Helena raised her hands to her ears to block the voice out.
It didn’t do any good. It never did.
“You know that no matter how soft her skin is, no matter how sweet her cries, no matter how good she tastes, she will never, ever, be me.”
Helena stood as quietly as she could and walked to the bathroom. She closed the door and turned on the lights. In the mirror above the sink, she saw herself; hair disheveled, make-up smeared, love marks forming on her neck and her breasts: a poster child for passion fulfilled.
“And I did it for you better than any of them ever have. Ever could.”
Helena closed her eyes and rested her head against the mirror. She didn’t want to open them because she knew what she’d see behind her.
“Oh, my poor, poor little thing, have I ruined another one for you?”
She pressed her head harder against the glass.
“Do you want me to leave you two alone?”
Helena could almost feel arms wrap around her, almost feel the hot breath blowing across her neck as another body pressed firmly against her back. “No,” she whispered.
“But I’m going to. You know that.”
“Yes.”
“Before I go, you’re going to tell me how much you miss me.”
“I miss you. God, I miss you. I’m so fucking empty without you.”
“Good, little girl. Now tell me how much you want me.”
Helena reached down, trying to guide a hand that wasn’t there. “So much that it burns.”
“Good,” the voice cooed, and Helena thought she could feel a tongue trace the edge of her ear. “Oh… one last thing. Tell me how much you love me.”
Helena didn’t say anything.
She opened her eyes and was alone.
The cup lies empty on its side, the breeze lending the illusion of motion. He always brought her Starbucks’ on Friday. The image is crystal-clear and hits her like a fist in the gut. Seeing the turning goddess in the logo is a mnemonic she wishes she could forget. The betrayal of a comfort ritual becoming yet another reminder of the worst week of her year makes her think the universe has undergone a terrifying inversion.
Hours later, the world shifts again, just a little.
The time stamp of the email – right before he boarded the plane.
The message is brief and wrenching, “Oh, one last thing – I love you.”
She’ll save it, it’s the last piece of him she has.
“Oh…one last thing” my melodramatic date said as she pointed to the empty Starbucks cup laying on its side. “I don’t care how cute or charming or rich you are, if you don’t pick that up I will make sure everyone knows what a douche you are.” Seriously? All I could think about was how much of a nut this gal was. It wasn’t even my cup! Geez. I’m never meeting up with someone I met on craigslist again.
She looks at his face, and suddenly she is sixteen again, awkward, somewhere between her baby fat and her adult curves, dressed in too-big jeans and a sweatshirt, and caught staring at the boy she likes in English. That boy’s face is forever tangled with the tropes and twists of Miltonic inversion, and she longs, there in English, for some slithering tongue to tempt her to speech. She takes the burden of consciousness without reward and blushes, dropping her gaze. Or she did, in English, what seems like a long time ago.
Now, this other boy’s face has nothing to do with Milton or his rhetoric, nothing to do with anything so far but the coffee cup that blew off her bench and landed in front of his feet.
She smiles. So does he.
“Oh,” Yorik nonchalantly added over his shoulder from the doorway, “One last thing: The fifth inversion was violet.”
Beatrice fainted dead away with a small squeak at the news. As Yorik let the door swing closed, her green cardboard cup traced lazy circles through a puddle of coffee.