Weekly Prompt Story: Stars

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=32085

The Lovers

By Christopher Munroe

They were star-crossed; but no matter what tragedy the world threw at them their love persevered.

When he asked for her hand she wept, when he saw her in her gown he did, for he knew in that moment that no force in heaven or earth could tear them asunder.

Then the sun went nova.

Both were slain, as was every other thing on the planet. The sterile, charred world hurtled through space, tomb and testament to a simple lesion that’s just as true today as it was back then.

Don’t cross the stars.

Stars, once crossed, will ruin you...

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

…and then came Valentine’s Day, and across the land a certain type of couple rejoiced.

Specifically: Loveless couples.

The type of couple who can’t be bothered to take the few seconds thought and few minutes effort required to tell the person they most care about that yes, they do still care the other three hundred sixty four days of the year. The type who put it off until the one appointed day and try to make up for a year of neglect and disinterest with one grand, misguided gesture.

The type of couple who, in the last dying years of what once was a beautiful and vibrant relationship, can only bring themselves to make the sort of token effort at romance that seems to come naturally to those who’ve forgotten that love is a beautiful, living thing, one that needs to be tended and nurtured every day.

You touch your partner’s body every day.

You tell her she’s beautiful.

You tell her you’re happy to be with her, and that you’re lucky and grateful to have her.

Every.

Single.

Day.

Or, if you can’t be bothered to do that, and many couples can’t, you buy some shitty chocolate and make a reservation at a middlebrow family restaurant.

Some couples convince themselves that this is what love is, that what they have is not a pale imitation of the real thing, an unfunny joke at the expense of their lifetime of loneliness even in the midst of what they call “Love”.

And those fuckers love Valentine’s Day.

For the record, yes, this has always been my position on the holiday, regardless of whether I’m in a relationship or not.

My own romantic life does not affect my opinion of the holiday one iota, nor should it.

When I am in love, I am in love and love is the center of my world. When I am not, I am not and it is not.

And either way, I have nothing but contempt for the whole concept of Valentine’s Day.

I wait tables, you see.

And I see them there, those couples. Sitting, impatient, each in turn thinking that their unique, perfect love is more unique, more perfect, than the love of the people sitting around them, and that it entitles them to special treatment.

Their unique, perfect love, which they could not be bothered to celebrate yesterday. And will not tomorrow. Or any other day of the year.

So unique that they have to celebrate out among the millions of other couples celebrating in the exact same, equally unique way.

So perfect that their food being delayed ten minutes due to the volume of food the kitchen has to cook might spoil it forever.

Those couples, you know the ones. You’ve seen them, though if you’re lucky not closely.

I will spend the day smiling, and nodding, and helping them celebrate love. Because that is what I do, and because I am a professional person.

So yes, happy Valentine’s Day if you must.

...another short story about love.

It would never work between them, could never work. As their parents tried to tell them, they were from two different worlds…

He was a centaur, she a mermaid. But they didn’t let this stand in the way of their love, preferring to focus instead on the things, and there were many, that they did have in common rather than those things that made them different.

Oh, their parents didn’t approve, but it was the twenty-first century and they weren’t about to allow stodgy family traditions to keep them from a lifetime of happiness together. Ultimatums were made, elopements threatened, and in the end their engagement was, if not embraced, accepted.

It was a beautiful ceremony, the two of them making their way down the aisle, him along the beach and her through the surf. Even the most traditional among their family had to admit that much, at least.

And yes, their life together would bring it’s own challenges. However much they loved one another, they could never be together for long without one or the other suffocating, and children, for obvious reasons, would remain forever beyond the realm of possibility. Yet still, knowing all this as they did, they pledged themselves to one another for a lifetime.

Because that’s what love is.

It’s the willingness to see the problems the life you wish to spend together may yet cause, but still prefer them to being without that one person who completes you.

And so, hand in hand in shoulder-depth water, they were wed. Centaur and Mermaid, husband and wife.

And if they can make love work, maybe we can still hope not to fuck it up in our own lives…

No Heroic Measures

The fire rages within the building, and alarms sound around me as I make my way, coughing into my sleeve, out into the street.

She’s still in there.

I couldn’t find her, the smoke had been too thick, and as I scan the street in front of the apartment that we share, that we shared, the dark premonition I’d had while staggering down the stairs is proven to be true. She hadn’t made her own way out, she is still somewhere within the building.

Maybe she’s passed out on the floor of our apartment, maybe in the hall, maybe she made it as far as the stairwell, but at some point the smoke in the air must’ve overcome her, because she never made it to the exit, and never will. Not under her own power, at least.

For a moment, I’m close to being overcome myself. The love I’ve felt for her in the years we’ve been together, the laughter and the tears of a lifetime, the infatuation I felt the moment I met her years before, infatuation I to this day haven’t gotten all the way over, nearly prove too strong, and I’m tempted to rush back inside. To find her. To bring her to safety.

But then I remember.

I remember the meetings we’d had with lawyers, after hearing the horror stories about the people in comas, hooked to machines that do their breathing for them, never to think again in a way anyone would understand the term, kept as vegetables for years, for decades, against their will long after “will” ceased to be a meaningful phrase with regard to them.

I remember the two of us, writing our living wills together, discussing what sort of care we’d want in the event that the worst should happen to either one of us.

And I remember how adamant she was, that no heroic measures be taken to revive her, or to prolong her life.

No heroic measures.

What measure, I wonder, could be more heroic than rushing back into a burning building to bring her, unconscious but alive, out into the safety of the street?

So I turn my back on the whole horrific scene, blink back tears and leave her behind to burn.

It’s difficult, to be sure. Doing it damn near kills me, but in my heart I know it’s the right thing to do.

It’s what she would have wanted, after all.

I won’t go back inside for her. And when the firefighters finally arrive, I’ll do my best to stop them from going in too.

It’s the least I can do to honor her wishes, and do justice to her memory…

Weekly Prompt Story: How to Respect a Woman

Odd story this week, by which I mean "one that really has to be read out loud to work in context." Even if you don't normally listen to the 100 Words Weekly Challenge, and are content to merely read my story on this blog, I strongly recommend that you make an exception. Here's the link...

http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2012/07/22/weekly-challenge-326-power/

...and for those of you who absolutely insist on merely reading the text, here it is.

How To Respect a Woman

By Chris Munroe

To love a woman, you must first learn how to properly respect a woman.

And to respect a woman, you must first connect with her.

Connect through eye contact, or physically. Touch her arm as you speak, brush hair out of her eyes. That’s a very real source of connection.

Connect intellectually. Ask her questions about herself, get to know everything about her.

But most importantly, connect on a deep, spiritual level. Like so…

I wanna know what love is, and I want you to show me!

I wanna feel what love is, and I know you can show me!

Growing Old Together

She’s the perfect woman. Beautiful, bright, with a smile that lights a room and a wit that guarantees I laugh out loud every single day of our life together.

And what’s better, I managed at some point along the line to trick her into thinking she can’t do any better than me.

Nobody tell her she can, okay?

I love her.

I want us to grow old together.

Fortunately, we both have a theater background, and know enough people who know enough about stage makeup that we don’t have to wait for that to happen naturally.

Instead, we’re walking down the street, me with a cane, her with a walker, enjoying the looks on our neighbor’s faces as they struggle to figure out where they’ve seen us before.

We look to be about eighty. White hair, deep lines across our faces, a stoop to our slow, shuffling walks.

I’ve got a bit of a hunch, under my shirt. Padding, to simulate the real hunch I’ll have after fifty years of leaning in to kiss her. She’s got a boil on the side of her neck. No reason, she just thought a boil would be hilarious.

We were in the makeup chairs for close to three hours. Totally worth it.

I was going to scream at the passing kids to get off my lawn, but she rightly pointed out that this is us after fifty years of happiness, and I might not have that sort of anger in me.

So instead, we’re taking a slow walk around the block. Her hands on her walker, one of mine on my cane, the other on the small of her back, enjoying a warm, summer day and the prospect of a lifetime together. Happy, and temporarily old, and still very much in love. Enjoying each other’s company and the pained expressions we get as our neighbours pass and try to fit what they see into their worldview.

“Hello, sonny,” she says to one of them as his eyes go wide and he suddenly realizes who we are, “would you like a Werther’s?”

She holds out the caramel to him and he has no idea what to do. He just stares as we walk by, laughing.

I hadn’t known she’d brought some along. She’s not eating sugar and I never much liked them. She must have bought them for this bit, and this bit alone.

Such careful attention to detail.

Christ, I love her.

Making Love

I’m here at my forge, making love.

Hot sparks fly up into my protective mask as I bring the hammer down, again and again, onto the anvil, shaping my love into what I hope will be perfection. I won’t rest until my love is perfect.

You’re worth nothing less.

You’re waiting for me at home, and I imagine you miss me terribly. I miss you too. I’d dearly love to return to you, I’ve barely seen you in weeks.

But I can’t go home yet.

Not until I’ve made love that I know is worthy of one such as you...

The Haunting

She loved him. He killed her.

Worse, he got away scot-free.

Every year on the anniversary of her death, her spirit returns to plague her killer. But every year she stops short, unable to face the man she’d so loved in life. Without fail, she turns away.

Instead she winds up visiting me, ethereal, weeping. Saying it’s unfair, how she loved him and how betrayed she feels...

And every year I’m there, listening, wishing I could hold her, wishing she had a body to hold.

I’ll always be there for her.

Because I loved her, and she died on me.

Sacrifices Made For Love

He loved her, truly and deeply.

She was growing older, more noticeably each day, but he couldn’t imagine life without her.

So year after year he made excuses not to go.

A little longer, surely, couldn’t hurt. She was his life, and nobody would notice.

But eventually, inevitably, somebody did.

And men came to escort him to the hospital, for a test or two to figure out why he didn’t seem to age.

And two tests became five, ten, hundreds.

And days became decades.

He knows he’ll never be free. He hates what his life’s become.

But he regrets nothing.

The Power of Love

Building the army of giant robots was surprisingly easy. The trouble came when I tried to power them up.

My neighbourhood was blacked out for three weeks, the grid couldn’t handle my power requirements. It was time to go back to the drawing board.

I brainstormed energy sources, but anything that’d provide sufficient power’d surely be noticed by my neighbours.

Finally it came to me: Love. Love’s the most powerful force of all…

…anyway, enough about that. Are you coming to the pub tonight? I want you to meet Linda, she works with me. You’ll like her, she’s really cool.

True Love

The moment I laid eyes upon you, back in third grade, I was infatuated. I couldn’t drag my gaze away.

I spoke to you the first time that day, and from that moment on we were inseparable, like two peas in a pod.

Joined at the hip, we rarely strayed from each others side. I took the desk next to you, we spent our recesses and our lunches together, and after school I walked you home.

Eventually, obviously, we fell in love.

Not with each other, but wherever you are, my wife and I wish you nothing but the best.