A Year of Stories: March Story

(Disclaimer: I'll try to make this short . . .

I feel I must have a disclaimer to tell everyone what my idea for this blog is. It's getting to the point where there are a lot of posts and I fear the idea of the blog is getting lost. I am a young writer and I'm still trying to learn this art. Like any art I love to hear constructive criticism about my work, which is why I am posting my earliest drafts of my writing. Some of these drafts I have only looked over once or twice at best, and they may not be the very best I can do, but nevertheless, I want to show them off.

I'm looking for constructive criticism while I'm working. I am also trying to show everyone my progress as I grow as an artist. Being an artist of any kind takes a lot of work and time to make your craft perfect. And I want to show everyone that a man with a learning disability and dyslexia can be a writer. I may not be the greatest writer in the world and I'm alright with that, but I can be a writer who inspires people to create. Even if I only inspire one person to become an artist, I want to inspire them because my friends and family have done that for me. They have never given up on me and I want to show them the gifts that God has given me.

So with that said, I hope you enjoy my work. I would love to hear your ideas on what you would do to make the writing better. Also, if a draft get removed it's because I'm working on it or I feel like it doesn't need to be on my blog anymore. Thank you for your time, I know reading can take a while. So I thank you again.

With a handshake,

Chase L. Currie)

A Calm Wait

Draft_3

By: Chase L. Currie

Jonah sits in the booth in Denny's, right near Concord Mills with me. His eyes narrow while he watches everyone come and go. He sit in the right spot to watch the door and it was a habit he always had, watching people. He keeps his back to the wall and his eyes open, as if waiting for a storm to come rushing into the restaurant. A storm of rage and death. A storm Jonah knows very well. Lucky, for him it was late. There was only a few people on staff and a few people sitting in the restaurant. The air outside was calm from the summer night, no sign of a storm, no hint of any trouble.

He taps his finger against the table, just lightly, not loud enough to bring any kind of attention to himself. He eye anyone walking by, not looking over at me, as I read the menu. “What do you normally get here, Jonah?”

“Just a burger,” Jonah said, keeping his voice calm.

“You get anything on it?” I asked, setting the menu down, trying to catch his eyes.

“Nah,” Jonah said, moving from tapping his finger to playing with his fork. He spins the fork around his hand, every so lightly, trying not to bring attention to himself. Which ironic because the more he try to melt into the shadows the more people seem to notice him. I couldn't help but grin every time someone would stop and whisper about him or eye him as they left.

“What do you want, Poet?” Jonah ask, leaning in over the table.

“Dinner,” I told him.

“You don't just,” Jonah started to say but he stop as the young waitress came up to our table. She was a young thing with bright brown eye with a tinged of gold in them. She smile as I order my burger plain, and then she just stroll away. Her eyes whispering, she didn't like her job much but she did need the money. After all being in college meant you took the awful jobs and meant you were poor. She knew how the game was play, and to her is was paying her dues, like we all have too. Even Jonah.

“Meet with people,” Jonah said picking up where he left off. “When you're around something bad happen.”

“Oh, that hurts,” I said, holding my chest. “I'm not allow to have any friends?”

“Not what I meant,” he quickly counter my question. “But I know who you are and what you do for a living.”

“Where as of right now,” I told him, “I'm sitting down having a meal with my friend. If you are still my friend?” I ask rising an eye brow.

“I am, I am,” Jonah said, taking a drink of his sweet tea, sitting back. He looked around again, trying to be quick about it and I wounder what he was waiting for. I could see his mind going from one horrible act of death to another. What if the building fell in on it's self? What if there was gas leak and the cook didn't smell it in time? What if someone put rat poison in his food? What if . . .

“Stop looking so worried, my friend. Enjoy your time with me.”

“It's kind of hard,” Jonah replies, “when you are, who you are.”

“It saddening me to think,” I said as the young woman place my food down in front of me. I wink at her. It made her feel a little uncomfortable which was part of my plan. I didn't want her to come back for a while. “You can’t enjoy my company.”

He tried to lighten up but his eyes and his finger still watch everyone. He moves his fork around. He wasn't planning on me being here. I saw him through the window and found my seat across from him before he could react. He looked up and the shock mix with fear screamed across his face. “Did I do something wrong?” he ask. “Is that why you are here?”

“You have done many things wrong,” I told him with a grin on my face, “but none of them warrants me visiting you tonight.”

Jonah took a long drink of his tea, studying me to see if I was lying. I wasn't. He stop playing with his fork, stop watching the door. I guess, the deeds of his actions tonight finally made him understand what was going on. He was a killer. A hit man for the mob, what does he have to fear? Other than me.

The fear wash from his face, as my grin cracked into a smile. “Who did you kill tonight?” I ask him.

“You already know ,” he replies.

“I do,” I told him taking a bite of my food. “But do you? Do you know their names? Their fears? Their loves? Or why you were sent to their house tonight?”

“It's not a part the job to know,” he said. Then something else ringed in his eyes. It wasn't fear. It was a quit understanding of why I came here tonight. He could see it. I lied a little. I wasn't the one who was going to end his life but he knew he wasn't going to walk out of here alive. And somehow, and somewhere he understood it and was thankful.

“You know my friend,” he said, as I took another bite, “I think, I'm tired of this job. I don't sleep anymore. It would be nice to get some rest, you know?”

“Yes, I do think you need some rest.”

“Tell me,” he said, “is Hell real?”

“As much as I am,” I reply.

“I was hoping it's wasn't,” he said with his words being carried by solace. “Do you know if I'll end up there?”

“It is not my job to know those things,” I said to him. Then there was person beside us. At first he thought it was the waitress but when he looked he knew it wasn't her. It was a man, with a long face, hidden beneath a black hat.

The man said something but I didn't hear it. I was watching Jonah. He turn back to me, blink his eyes, smiled and sighted. I wonder what was the last thought going through his head before the bullet did. I wonder what he regret before his life blinked away. I wonder if he would have change the job he had. Would he have got married? Would had kids? I wonder these things but none them seem to matter. This was the end of his life as he knew it.

The shot should have been loud but it wasn't. I sat there eating my burger as Jonah's body fell to the side. The people in the restaurant screams seem to be louder than the blast. The wall was painted in a deep red, with bits of skull and brain mixed in. Almost like an expressionist vision of a bloody rose.

The man ran away and the whole place blew up in cries and screams. While I sat there eating my food. The body lied lifeless beside the soul of Jonah. He looked at his corpse and then ask, “When do we leave?”

“After I finish my food,” I told him. “Now, enjoy your time with me.”

 A Talk During the Night

Arcane and Silent

Part_1

Draft_2

By: Chase L. Currie

“Can't sleep either?” Arcane ask the assassin sitting in the kitchen, her child like voice bring his head up from his book.

Silent looks up to see Arcane standing in the door way, she smiles at him heading for the table, as he close his journal. She pretend not notice the book under his hands. She pulls the chair out sitting down in front of him. His dark brown eyes smiling at her while his lips stay flat, almost frowning. She can’t tell if he's happy or sad or upset she interpreted him.

“Why are you wearing a dress, Aisling?” Silent ask, his voice hard, like someone who has a cough or something catch his throat.

She looks down at the yellow summer dress, grinning and then asking him, “You don't think I look good in it?”

“You look find,” he said. And of course she does. She is the perfect image of beauty. She is a goddess of desire walking around in a underground castle. She would look good in clothes made from bags and rags. “But it is winter . . .not summer.”

“I know,” she pouts. “I just thought wearing the dress would bright this place up a little.”

“Well, don't get sick,” he tells her, picking up his book with his hand. The hand cover by an old golden gauntlet with metal rings running up his arm. The hard yellow almost looking like Arcane's yellow dress but only if the dress had been fade and wash to many time. She wonders if the gauntlet, called a Cleric, get cold down in the depth of the Sanctuary.

“Does it get cold?” She asks, eyeing the metal.

Silent looks down at his hand as he stands up, “Not really. It feel like any other part of your body when it's cold.” He heads for the door, but is stop by her reaching out and touching him. He freeze in the moment. The warmth of her hand against the cold metal and his arm, sending the kind of joy only a loving touch could give him. A joy he so longs for . . .but not from her.

“Stay, please,” she said.

“Why?” He ask. “Isn't David up?” David, the leader of the group. Who also happens to be called Divine because of his powerful mind reading ability. He is also the man whom Arcane is in love with. And she normally end up in his room when she can't sleep. They spent hours talking, reading, or holding each other when they are not fighting. David hasn't and won’t say he loves her, out of fear of what that would mean. The mission, the one they are fighting, the quest against evils comes before things like love. Divine fights for the greater good. So that mean his relationship along with his heart must be put a side. Love to his foe can be used against him and he can't afford such a weakest.

“I just want someone to talk to is all,” she tells him, looking away and letting go. “You and I haven't talked in awhile.”

Silent sit back down, holding the book tight under his hands. “Why are you up so late?”

“Ah,” Arcane explain, yawning and stretching a little, “I was studying some new spells, and I need a break from it.” Silent nods his head in unsure understanding. He's not sure how magic works but knows she has to remember how to cast spells. So Arcane spent a lot of time in her room studying, going over and over how spells works. Something he never has to worry about. His power of teleporting and healing comes from the Cleric, all he has to keep up is his assassin's training.

They sit at the table for a long moment without saying a word. Silent just looking at her and then down at his book. Arcane smiling at him, enjoying the company, even if it should be awkward in the cold stillness of the room. But the silents isn't awkward, it's expected from a man named Silent.

“What you reading?” She ask, nodding at the book.

“Nothing, really,” he replies, wishing he could hide the book.

“Come on,” she said, “who's book is it?”

“I don't wish to talk about,” he firmly said.

“Is it yours?” She ask, rising an eye brow, smiling and leaning in a little. The hard looks on Silent's face tell her, it is his. She gasp, “I didn't know you kept a journal!”

When she came in and was eyeing the book he slides his pen into his pocket without her noticing. He hope with the pen out of sight she wouldn't think he was writing. He was also hoping he would be in his room by now, crawling into bed and not thinking about the stupid words on the page he wrote moments ago.

“Please, don't tell anyone.” he ask, lowing his head a little.

“Yea, sure . . .why don't you want anyone to know?”

“It's a little embarrassing, is all.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Arcane tells him, smiling, almost giggling. “What do you write about?” She ask, her eyes big with excitement.

“Stuff,” he replies, “I feel so stupid you found out. I should have never start this thing!”

“Why? It's good to write, to get all your emotions out. I was sure you never let anything out.”

“I'm not letting my emotions out, I'm trying to understand them,” Silent tells her looking away.

“Really?” She ask. “What are you trying to understand about them?”

“How to use them,” he quietly said. “In the Clan we were taught to block out our emotions but I was always bad at it. My emotions seem to get the better of me and yet, I don't understand how to use them. I could never cut them off or blocked them out. I just push them down and try not to react to them, but it never work. Soon or later my emotions come back to me in a raging storm.”

“I don't think anyone understand their emotions, Silent.”

“I know,” he replies, looking dead into her green eyes, “but why should everyone else feeling like me, make me feel any better? It doesn't change the fact I'm still lost in the storm.”

“Yeah,” She said, narrowing her eyes, “I guess it doesn't make you feel any better knowing we are all just as lost. After all, aren't we all looking for a way out?”

“Not so sure we are looking for a way out but shelter from the storm would be nice, from time to time.”

“You could not have been more profound,” she smiles. “What emotion are you having a hard with?”

“I guess saying all of them would be cliché of me.” Silent grins. “I don't know, it isn't one emotions but situations with the emotions I get in. I'm in them and then all these emotions start running around in my head and I don't know what to do. I feel like a child starring at trigonometry and having no idea where to start.”

“I can relate,” Arcane said. “What was the situation you were just writing about then?”

“I don't care to talk about it.”

Arcane leans in, telling him with her look, if he doesn't talk about it, you are not leaving. “Talking about it well help you understand it.”

“But it won't make me feel any better,” he confesses.

“You're not looking to feel better but to understand.”

He moves around in his chair, tapping his finger on his books and then he sights. “I was walking down the street a couple of weeks ago and their was this women walking beside me. She was heading in the same direction. She was beautiful, I couldn't help be notice. I told myself to not talk to her, nothing could come from it. Nothing could work out between us. But I didn't listen to myself. I started to talk to her, I started to flirt with her. And she flirted back. We ended up talking for a few hours outside of her house, then she gave me her number and we went out separate ways.”

“Whoa,” Arcane said, smiling from ear to ear, “I am shock you talked to someone else other than us.”

“It happen more then I tell you guys.”

“I'm sure it does,” she mockingly said. “But what was so bad about this situation? It sounded like everything went well.”

“Oh,” Silent replies, looking around the room, “it did . . .”

“But?”

“We continued to talk,” Silent mumbles. “And I was sure everything was going great. She was opening up to me, about things I wasn't sure she should be telling me. All kind of things about her ex-boyfriend and their relationship. Things about her past few people knew and I wasn't sure what to do.”

He flicks at the book's pages with his finger, something Arcane imagine an nervous child would do when telling a story, they are not sure about. “There was a part of me wanting to open up as well. Tell her about everything, the Clan, my family, all the people I killed and why but I couldn't. So I didn't. But the feeling wouldn't go away. I had to say something to her, not because we could fall love. Love would be out of the question but to know I could. I had to know I could connect to someone . . . someone new. So I open up about trivial things. I told her about how I felt my life was going nowhere and how I felt lost. Lost like everyone else or so I believed.” He lower his head as if he did something wrong telling Arcane about what he's feeling. Then he moves his eyes to the table top, not looking up at her, readying himself relive the next step in his story.

“But it turns out, I can't connect to people.”

“Silent - - -” Arcane said, reaching out to hold his hand but he moves away from her.

“I don't think you understand, Aisling,” he said. “All the problems I have, I thought was just in my mind. It was something the Clan did to me. And then there all the horrible events in my life, all the death, all the pain, left their scars. And I was sure, I could over come them. I was facing them . . .but now, to know everything I thought was fucked up about me is true. Well, hard to take. But now, I understand . . . I just don't care to connect to anyone, anymore.”

Arcane sit back in the chair trying to hide her sorrowful eyes and telling him, “It's not you, it was this women. She the one with the problem.” She couldn't remember the last time he has open up to her. Now that she thinks about it, it must have been years. They talked since then but never about him or what was going inside of his mind. Sometimes she tried to get him to open up but he wouldn't. So after awhile she gave up and stop. Now she wishes she came trying to get him to talk more.

“She has nothing to do with it,” Silent tells her, wishing she could understand. He wasn't hoping for an relationship out the women. He just wanted to know he could open up to someone and most of all have that person welcome it. Not tell him he was opening up too fast or to say the so called friendship was too much.

It was a test. A test to see if all the scars he require over the years have done any real damage. Now he knows the damage is real and deeper than he every thought. He come to the conclusion, he has to face, fix and understand the damage, alone. “I don't care to talk about this anymore. Thank you for listening, it was nice of you. But I think I can handle his on my own.” Silent said, shooting up to rush for the door.

Arcane jumps from her chair, wrapping her arms around him, giving him the biggest hug ever. Then pulling back from him, but not letting go. “I want you to understand something,” she said, “you can connect to us. The people in this house are your family and we will listen and try to understand what every emotion you have. Silent, we are here for you, just like you are here for us. I know, it hard to open up. I know, you don't like to open up but if you need to then we, I am here for you. I just want to know you are not alone.”

Silent pulls away from her. “Thank you,” he said. “And if I need someone to talk then I'll come and find you.” In a flash Arcane sits back down alone in the room. She puts her hand under her chin thinking about what happen. How the man she known for years just showed her a side of himself, she didn't think he had. Now, she doesn’t know what to think about him. Maybe there was more to him than the killer and the weapon for Divine. Maybe . . .    

Standing in Line

Draft_1

By: Chase L. Currie

“Please keep moving!”

The thundering voice said from the clouds above my head. Above all of our heads. The voice shaking my eyes balls as it yelled for us to keep walking, to keep moving down the line. We did as we told. Not out of fear, we were not marching to our deaths. For everyone in this line was already dead. No, we move forward out of joy, excitement, out of giddiness like a child waiting to open a gift on Christmas day. We all step forward, all of us smiling, whispering to each other. All of us but me.

I was five people deep in the line and the line was quickly fading. I soon was going to be four people, then three and so on until I was at door, waiting. The small golden door leading into the small wooden house. The place we were told that all the answer to all the question lie. The place where God lives in Heaven. And I was about to step into his home.

I bite at my finger nails. I tap my foot as the line became smaller and smaller. I watch people come and go. I watch myself move close. I study the angels leaning against the wall beside the door. Their halos not floating about their heads but hanging around the wrists. I study their perfect face and found myself at a lost for words. How do you describe the perfect image of a perfect person with unbelievable hair, nose, and body?

One of them ate an apple as people went into the house. I wonder where he got that apple from? I move closer, now only three people deep. I bite at my nails, eying them both. One of them had to see my nervous ticks. My eye start to blink uncontrollable and a river of sweat wash over my face. I was now two people deep.

Without thinking or maybe I was thinking. Maybe, I told myself I couldn't do it. I don't know. All I do know is I step out of line, rush up to one of the angels, and found a place beside him. He didn’t bat an eye at me. He didn’t look over to me or even stop eating his apple. I stood there and the weight around my shoulder fell to the ground. My eye stopped blinking and the rive dried up. I breathe feeling the knocking in my chest stopping. The whole overwhelming nervous feeling, as if I was about to walk into the principal's office, was gone. What more could I ask for?

“Please keep moving!” I heard from the clouds above. The angel taking the last bite of his apple, looking over at me, smiling.

“I bet you are wondering why I am here?” I ask him.

“You can tell me if you want,” He reply.

The line move forward. “I don't know what to ask him.”

“You know you could ask him anything.”

Sure, the angel was right. Sure, I could go in there and ask him the first thing that came to my mind but why would I? “What question hasn't already been asked that he hasn't heard before? I mean look,” I said, holding my hands out to the line that went as far as the eye could see. “Anything I wish to know has already been asked. I can ask someone out there in Heaven. If I want to know the meaning of life? Someone out there knows it. If I want to know why there is evil in the world? Guess what, someone out there has already asked that. So what do I ask?”

“Good question,” The angel said, not really caring about my dilemma. “You could always ask him what to ask.”

“What? No! What an awful question.” I told him. I can't ask God what I should ask him. I can't go to the Father that created everything, knows all and ask him what question should fall from my lips. I can't be that unsure of myself. And yet I am.

I stood there watching a few more people enter and leave the house. There no time in the realm of the dead. So the moment someone enter, someone can leave and then enter again. As if they had only been in the house for a second but could have talked with God for hours. It was odd thing to think about but after being in Heaven for a few days or years, you really didn't give it much thought. Time was dead and you kind of left it in the grave.

“I could ask him what happen to my grand father's knife? Where it ended up?” I thought to myself out loud.

“Yeah, you could do that,” The angel said, wishing I would go or that is how I felt.

“No, no, that is a stupid question!” I groan. What a madding thing this quandary I am in. How unfair it all seem to be. Here I am in Heaven and yet, I can't go in to see God. I can't go see the person I spent all my life loving and having faith in because I can’t think of a good question. Is there a good question to ask God?

They do say no question is a stupid question. Unless you are talking to someone who knows everything! Then again, he knows I'm out here fighting over what to ask. As if this question is somewhere deep in mind like the Holy Grail and all I have to do is find it. Which won't be a big problem because I have the rest of forever to look for it. But how I wish I was in there.

I bite at my finger nails as the line moves forward again.

“Please keep moving!”

“I could ask him . . .what my life would be like if I did get brunt that night,” I tell the angel.

“Uh-huh,” The angel said.

“No, no, I can't ask that,” I reply to myself, “because it doesn't matter. The fire is a part of who I am. It's an event that shaped my life. Now that I really thinking about it, I don't want to know how my life would be different. I might hate the answer.”

“Uh-huh.”

There is another problem! What if the question you ask God, you later find out you didn't want to know. What if the truth is too painful to bear? What do you do then?

I looked over at the angel who kept his eyes on the line and then I ask him, “What would you ask him?”

The angel turn his perfect head, giving me an questioning look and an odd smile. He didn't say anything for a moment and then finally told me, “I wouldn't ask him anything. I would just enjoy sitting at the table with him.”

“God has a table?”

“Yes, he has to put his dinner somewhere.”

“God eat?!” I yelp. The angel just smiled, shaking his head.

I stood there for a bit longer in silent, letting my brain grow still and then it hit me. I step forward heading for the back of the line. I found the question I was going to ask. I found the thing I wanted to know from God.

The angel place a warm hand on my shoulder, I turn as he ask, “What are you going to ask him?”

“Something simple,” I said. “I just want to know how he's day was.”

The angel smile, telling me I could go a head and go in.