stefficus

"Did I ever tell you how I knew Gramma and me was meant to be together?" Gramps poked at the campfire with a stick and peered around at us.

"Tell it again, please! Please?" Tina didn't really answer the question, but we all chimed in. Jim grabbed a beer, I scrambled to get my last s'more ready, and chairs and benches were strategically jockeyed closer to the fire and to Gramps.

The old man lit his pipe with the glowing end of the stick he'd had in the fire, which always amused us, and leaned back. "Well, I was dating your Gramma after I got outta high school. Met her working for her daddy one summer and asked her to church... one thing led to another. We both lived higher up in the mountains then -" he pointed to an old, worn peak over his shoulder that we couldn't see but all knew was there - "only I lived in a hollow on one side and she lived in a hollow on the other side."

"Now, I worked long hours, and then of course I had to see my girl, so it was always pretty late when I got to see her and pretty late when I went home. I could usually get a ride with some logger or someone, but sometimes I had to walk. It's out in the middle of nowhere, and those mountains get darker than you can imagine." Here we all looked at the littlest great grandchild, Michelle Mae, and he sprang forward when he said "you!" and tickled her in the ribs while she squealed and giggled. She ran to her mom and he continued. "There weren't even street lights or houses up there with yard lamps, so if I got caught out after dark I just went the short way, by a trail over the top of the ridge. Wouldn't do to get run down by some crazy driver on the road, and it was three times as far otherwise. Didn't like to do it, because there was always the chance of gettin' lost. Can't see the horizon very good in trees that thick, you know." Everyone nodded even though we could barely see each other.

He paused and took a draw on the pipe and pretended to forget about us. Robert piped up. "Did you ever get lost, Gramps?"

"Well, now, I wouldn't say I got lost, exactly," he replied, winking at Gramma. "But I did have a close call I'll never forget."

"Gramma's biscuits, I'll bet," called out Uncle Leo.

Gramps chuckled, shoulders shaking, and shook his head. "Not saying anything about that. That's another story." Gramma pinched him. "Ow! No, this was a differ'nt kind of close call." He paused again, and looked over his shoulder out into the trees before continuing. We scooted closer.

"One night, I was late coming home and late getting to Peggy's (that's your Gram's name, you 'member) and her mamma (who was a FINE cook - ow!) had made enough food for an army. I stayed late and then I stayed later, sitting on the porch swing with Peg. She wouldn't let me leave. 'Just a few more minutes,' she'd say to me. I always listen to my girl, so I stayed.

"Finally it got proper dark, and the frogs started up and she started to get worried." Right on cue, the frogs in all the ditches and puddles nearby started up with that eerie chirping that heralds night, first one or two, then answering croaks rising to a crescendo of echoing amphibian calls. Some of the younger ones jumped a foot in the air, and I could feel the hairs on the back of even my jaded neck prickle. "She wanted to get her daddy to drive me home, but I said I could find a ride. I'd done it a dozen times before, I said. I'll be careful, I said.

"Well, Peg kissed me goodnight. I still remember that kiss." We all pitched in with "AWWWW!" and smooching noises while Gramma blushed. "Then I headed off into the night. I was whistling. It had been a good time, I got a kiss, I was full of pot roast. I just wanted to go home and smile myself to sleep. I set off down the road a ways, keeping my eyes peeled for any cars heading over the ridge.

"It was a darker night than I thought. It was a dark moon and a little cloudy. Once I got away from your Gramma's house with its porchlight and lit up windows, I could look up and see some stars, but when I looked all around me it was black as coal. I walked that road all the time, but I gotta admit, it was unsettlin'. I walked faster. Hoped for a ride.

"Before too long I got to where the trail branched off the main road to go over top of the ridge instead of kind of around it, and I had to decide - strike off through the woods and get home to my bed, or take the long way on the chance of a car coming by. It was later than I was used to being out, and I didn't see much chance of someone picking me up. Besides, it couldn't be much darker in the woods than it was anyway, I thought.

"I was wrong. It wasn't just darker in there, you could feel the dark. Like to smother me. But, here I was, young and foolish, and I wasn't about to admit that a little nighttime scared me. The frogs got louder and I started whistling again. Sounded different this time, though. Whistling in the dark."

I swear Gramps had those frogs around the campfire on his payroll, because they got louder just as he got quieter, so we had to hang on his every word.

"What's the worst that could happen, I thought. Maybe a racoon'll scare me, or I'll get scratched up by thorns or ate by mosquitoes. Heck, even if I step on a snake, none of 'em are poisonous around here. I'll be fine. I kept telling myself that. 'I can handle anything that happens, and I'll get home safe and then I'll laugh about it.' Pretty soon I believed it.

"'Bout that time, just as I was almost to the top of the hill, something dropped out of a tree just in front of me, almost on the trail. Something big. Real big, size of me but heavier sounding. I froze, but I couldn't see a dang thing.

"Then the thing I couldn't see screamed at me. Started kinda low and rumbly and then just screamed! Like this..." Gramps suddenly threw his head back and let out a high-pitched shriek that sounded just like a woman in a horror movie. This time everyone jumped, and Gramps jumped and we jumped again and he kept right on going. "...and I hollered back, tryin' to sound meaner and bigger than I was," and he yelled and we all jumped again, "and it snarled at me and I heard twigs a'snappin' and then it screamed again!"

This time Gramma got in on the act from where she'd snuck around behind us and let out a scream even bigger than the one Gramps had just let loose. Shrieks and giggles and gasps erupted around the family, and the little ones ran for cover, their eyes moon big and about to pop from their skulls. I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my skull, and I'd heard the story a hundred times.

"What did you DO, Gramps?" Tim asked breathlessly. He was the only one who hadn't screamed back.

"I ran like the devil was after me, son. I honestly thought he was. It was running along the path right next to me, trying to get an angle. It kept snarlin' and I kept hollerin' and we both ran down the mountain. Some part of my brain worked out that it was a panther, but with it running next to me and me not being able to see, that was just as scary. I don't think my feet touched the ground.

"Didn't even think of zigging or zagging, I just ran until I thought I couldn't run anymore and it was still there so I'd yell and run some more. All of a sudden, I broke out of the woods and into the yard. It was still dark and I couldn't see, but I was almost home. I made it across the yard in two leaps and up on the porch and fell through the door. I leaned against the door, I could still hear the cat prowling outside for a minute before it saw where it was and slunk back into the trees.

"Then I heard an angel's voice say, 'Why, Norman, what are you doing here?' That's when I noticed where I was. It wasn't my house. I was so scared and so confused, I'd run right back to Peggy's house, where she was waiting. She listened to my story and told me how brave I was. She said she never went with a boy who could beat a panther in a race before me. She made me sleep downstairs on the couch that night, but I knew it was an omen. That panther had chased me back to her without me even knowing it. Next day, I asked her to marry me."

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In memory of my Papa, who didn't smoke a pipe and didn't marry the girl he was dating at the time, but DID race a panther across an Ozark mountain one dark night.

First day, and already I'm semi-cheating. *grin* This "story" will actually be a scene for a novella I'm working on called "Jupiter 34" - eventually. Brian is her shrink and closest friend, Harding is the by-the-letter, hard-nosed military type assigned to her (who she's probably sleeping with, but I haven't decided for sure). Everything else you can suss out for yourself.

Gladys can't come today, and though I allow myself to be pleased about that (I suppose I like Gladys, but trying to remember the social conventions of gossip exhausts me), it means I have to do the chores myself. I put them off until after my session with Brian, and then switch my brain into "work" mode, moving around the kitchen counter-clockwise to be sure I don't miss anything.

My kitchen is wonderfully advanced, so I can easily update my shopping list from the fridge with voice commands, set the automop for the floor, and sterilize the counters after I wipe them with UV lights. But the men at ReIntegration did not, in their infinite wisdom, see fit to provide the apartment with a dishwasher, advanced or conventional. I dig under the sink to find where Gladys has stowed the soap and gloves. I use far too much soap. Typical. I amuse myself by squirting a spray of water into the basin so the excess bubbles break free and waft up into my face and above my head.

As I watch the orbs dance and play with the refractive qualities of the afternoon sun, I suddenly remember the plasma storms on a moon I visited three years ago. The lightning strikes would superheat the surface plasma and jolt it into the air in free-floating blobs. They'd coalesce into perfect prismatic spheres, drifting and occasionally combusting into fairy flames as they defied the weak, indifferent gravity of the moon. It was frightening and tranquil and lovely, and I'd sworn I'd remember it always.

I had, of course, forgotten the experience until just now, and the memory of it seizes me and burns a hole in the pit of my stomach, much like I assume most people feel for a childhood home they can never return to. I watch the bubbles and will them to conjure flaming plasma balls in my mind's eye until I start to feel dishwater seeping into my yellow gloves. I sigh and pull them off, draining the sink.

I have to go back out there. I don't care if they say it'll kill me within a few years. I have to go back.

A noise in the bedroom catches my attention, and it takes another half second for me to remember Gladys isn't here today before I'm creeping along the wall toward the door. By the time I get there and peer around the door, the room is deserted. I find myself braced in the doorway, absurdly holding a Very Large Serving Fork as a makeshift weapon and feeling very silly indeed.

The window is open, and I return to feeling less silly and more cautious. Whoever had been there is gone, but they've left me a note. I make a mental note to yell at Harding about security and pick up the scrap of paper.

Numbers. Nothing but numbers, numbers I can't make heads or tails out of, but they seem achingly familiar and yet so out of reach. Just like the stormy moon, out there in the near reaches of space. I curl up on my bed and wish I remembered how to cry. Harding will have to wait for his ass chewing.

I have to go back.

There are three things that keep me (mostly) sane -- driving aimlessly, wandering the streets in the dead of night, and writing. This blog is the new venue for the third thing, and I hope it'll make me more likely to actually write.

The premise was inspired by the story-a-day group over on livejournal, which I have criminally neglected and which was, in turn, inspired by NaNoWriMo. The practice is inspired by the morning pages described in Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way".

Here's how it'll work, until I come up with something better or just feel the need to change it: on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I'll post a story I pulled together in under an hour based on prompts from the story-a-day list, old notes that I have lying around, conversations overheard in diners, or, most notably, user comments. To that end, if you have a story prompt of any kind, leave it for me... that way I'm not just using titles or something randomly generated for story ideas, but might actually hit on something someone else wants to read. Imagine!

Also, if any of YOU have a story to share based on the prompt I use, please feel free to share that in the comments, too. The more the merrier!

I reserve the right to put up old stories that were written under similar half-assed conditions in order to keep to the schedule without violating the improvisational spirit of the exercise. Plus, it'll give you something to read when I slack, and I'm sure I will. I can't do that very often, though, because I don't have as many of those as I think I do, so please, PLEASE keep me supplied with wacky ideas.

(Please note that I'll be trying to use capitalization for this blog for readability. Don't let it throw you (yeah, it's really me) and don't be surprised if I fail to.)

I think that is all. Wish me luck.