Fournament! (April)
22 posts in this topic.
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Considering I'm still waiting on some entries, I'll give you guys 48 hours to get the entries finished/written and sent in. Please don't take too long!
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Finally, we can get to the good stuff. Entries forthcoming! I'll be posting them one at a time and in no particular order. Prompts are included, so enjoy!
Remember, please Site PM me or another staff member your votes.
Voting is done through points. 4 for the one you liked best, 3 for the one you like next, 2 for the one after and 1 for the one you liked least. I'm sure you'll figure it out. Don't forget to include which entry gets what points!
Entry One
Prompt: midnight.
Title: What Pawns DoSpoiler
Wireless Sight + Sound, says the sign above the door.
What does it mean? Hell if you know. You've seen it every day for a month as you walk past the shopping plaza on your way to work—as a legal assistant or maybe a financial advisor; you've lost track of your job description after five years of being tossed around the firm like a bouncy ball.
Hey, Zimmerman, you need Blake for a week?
Sure, Gold, toss 'im over!—Hey, Ivey, you need Blake for something?
Oh, yeah, I could use an extra hand or two, thanks.
It's like they forgot you were a founding partner, too. But that's how business was, you guessed. No matter how close of friends you were, they were still the people with their names on the building, and you were just that guy who had the idea in the first place.
You shrug the thoughts away. It's not like it matters now. All that matters now is this shop you've been staring at for the last five minutes.
It's Saturday, you don't have work, and there's nothing stopping you from swinging open the midnight-black glass door right now, storming in there, and demanding to know exactly what service they provide. It's probably a radio shop or something, judging by the name, maybe some guys who work in computer repair, but it's been annoying you for five weeks, and—
—and every time you raise your hand to pull the door open, your fingers stop an inch above the handle. You growl at yourself now and puff up as big as you can, even though it's nowhere as big as Ivey can get with his history in football. There is nothing stopping you from stepping into this shop. You work for a law firm. You are the law. You are...
"Blake!" Gold wraps his arm around your shoulder and pulls you away down the shopping plaza. "Glad you showed up, bud, let's grab lunch!"
- - -
It's taunting you.
You still walk past that shopping plaza, every morning, every evening. And every morning and every evening, that shop's name stares out at you like some heavenly accuser, forcing you to confront the fact that you have absolutely no clue what they do behind that black-tinted glass.
You hate not knowing things. You hate that black-tinted glass and that innocent white number 100 centered perfectly above the door.
It's Sunday, and you just finished going to church. You don't go to church because you believe in God, necessarily, but because that's what you were raised to do, and that's what all folks do, you think. You go to church because your parents went to church because their parents went to church way back in the technological Dark Ages. It makes you feel guilty, sometimes, because of the smartphone weighing down your pocket as you sit in the very back pew and think about texting your ex-girlfriend.
You adjust your Sunday Best, which is really just one of your work shirts combined with a pair of slacks that isn't too dirty after a week of running around doing errands for people who used to be your friends, and take a bite of your fast-food burger. It doesn't taste anything like a real burger, but you don't care; you need the calorie count more than the flavor when you weigh a hundred fifty pounds sopping wet.
And, burger in hand and fast food grease on your least-nice dress shirt, you step up to that shop and look at your reflection in the door. You're spindly, but you've always been spindly. Your hair's sticking out in all sorts of wild directions that would make that ex-girlfriend shake her head at you. The most notable thing about you is the yellow in your eyes, a weird color you try not to pay too much attention to after everyone and their mother points it out—how odd—like you haven't heard that before.
"Hey, Jaundice!" Like you haven't heard that before, either. You roll your eyes as Zimmerman leans against the column nearest you and smirks. "C'mon, John, we've got a game to catch, right?"
A game. Right.
- - -
Maybe it's all a game.
Life, the universe, everything—some massive multiplayer online RPG, and you were just the avatar of some unlucky guy who didn't know what he was getting into when he made his character a secretarial class.
Or maybe it was all like chess, and you didn't even have a name. The person moving you around didn't care who you are, just what purpose you served.
You imagine you must be a pawn. Ivey, he's a knight or something, completely brainless and just doing what he's told—Zimmerman and Gold are castles—but in this analogy, you guess, everyone's really brainless. It's not like a pawn has a choice whether or not it wants to move forward.
Moving forward is just what pawns do—
—and standing in front of this shop is just what you do.
You have to go inside. You can't delay it any longer. All of your friends could appear and drag you out of the way, everyone you know could be swamping you and trying to pull you away from this door, and it wouldn't make a difference. You will go inside. You have to.
Before you can even reach for the door, it opens into your hand, and a familiar shape walks out in a familiar pair of bright red stilettos. Rissa smiles at you blankly and says, "Oh, hey, John." Like she couldn't see you through the door, standing right there, right in the way when she came outside.
You didn't come here to talk to ex-girlfriends. But you find yourself asking, "Uh, Rissa...d'you know what they do here?"
She looks over her shoulder, then back at you, and raises an eyebrow. "I...I don't know, John. I don't know."
Then she's gone, and every regret you've ever had is walking after her.
- - -
One of your regrets is never opening that door yourself. One month turns into two, two months turns into a year, and before you know it Ivey and Gold got into a bad tussle and they're splitting, and Ivey wants you to come with him to the new firm, even though he knows that Ivey & Blake will never be the same as Ivey, Gold, & Zimmerman.
You stay up until midnight trying to brush up on your law knowledge, just in case Ivey ever actually needs you to do something.
You don't walk past the shopping plaza any more when you go to the new office, and there's no one to toss you around like a bouncy ball, just your bachelor's degree coming in clutch with the administrative work and a blushing junior secretary who doubles as a receptionist. You guess you should ask him out sometime, but you don't really know when's the best. Or if you're even in the right frame of mind for dating anyone.
After all, you still think about texting your ex-girlfriend in the back row at church. You're pretty sure God wouldn't like you more if you were thinking about texting your boyfriend instead.
And since you don't walk past that shopping plaza any more, the words Wireless Sight + Sound fall away to the back of your mind, as dim a memory as the game you watched with Zimmerman, or that one time you tried to ask out the captain of the football team and he laughed at you. Annoying, yes; embarrassing, definitely; life-changing, not in the least.
- - -
It's years later before you even think about it again—you're walking past the old shopping plaza on your way to a dinner with the guys, a make-up thing that Zimmerman put together so Ivey and Gold could be friends again, you guess. You're dressed in your Sunday Best, even though it's a Thursday evening, since you figured the guys would want to keep it looking nice if they're going to a four-star restaurant.
As you walk by the plaza, you wonder if that store was ever there, the one you could never muster up the courage to walk into. It looks like everything else stayed constant, after all, the arts and crafts store, the liquor joint, the pet shop... So why not that creepy little place?
You pace down the row of shops, but the last one is the old fireworks shop that closed down last year after the new ordinances came into effect. It's dusty, a For Lease sign propped up in the inside corner of the window, but it's not like you'd have a business to put there. There's no sense in feeling guilty about it.
You reach the end and frown at the patch of grass next to Suite 101.
- - -
It's midnight. You're out at a bar with the guys—you've never been so tipsy you'd call yourself drunk, but this might be as close as it gets.
"Guys," you say, stealing their attention away from the bartender and the flatscreen TVs in the corner, "guys, do you remember...that one store?"
Gold says something taunting about how eloquent you are. You take another swig of your drink—the hell is it even, it tastes like piss—and say, "No, no, I'm serious, that one store... Wireless? Wireless Sight, Wireless...?"
Verizon Wireless? the bartender quips. He's not real, you decide, pushing him out of your head as easily as anything else, and he vanishes into the blackness behind the bar that reminds you of how the sky looks during a new moon. You wonder if the moon is new now, maybe that's why your mind's so dark. Why you can't remember. After all, the new moon sets at sunset, so it only makes sense that you can't see it at midnight.
"Wireless Sight and Sound," you say triumphantly after a minute, only to find that the guys have moved on to discussing the Rangers' playoffs performance. "Do you...d'you remember?"
"Is this like that chick you dreamed up, John?" Gold elbows you and grins. "What's her name, Nessa?"
"Rissa," you correct patiently, "her name's Rissa. And I didn't dream her up—"
"Right," says Zimmerman, "because most guys try to introduce you to thin air."
"Come on, she was busy, it's not my fault. Toldja she could run in heels, didn't I?"
The guys laugh at you. You laugh at yourself, for different reasons. It doesn't matter anyway.
You'll go look in the morning, you decide, when you're sober. Maybe it'll be back then.
Maybe you still have a chance to open the door. -
Entry Two
Prompt: dusk/sunset.
Title: Sunset, MoonriseSpoiler
In the death of a day, simple and clear,
the sun fades in the midst of the skyline.
An egg yolk slips down the orange sky,
and a silver jewel ascends.
Sun’s setting, just like life,
returning again to see the light.
One more chance, one more day
to accept:
nothing will last forever,
but everything will return
In the death of a day, simple and clear,
the moon rises in the midst of the clouds.
A silver jewel beginning their ascent,
and an egg yolk slips down the orange sky.
Moon’s rising, just like life,
we accept the difference brought upon us.
One more change, one more night
to realize:
everything will be okay,
but nothing will be the same -
Entry Three
Prompt: noon/midday.
Title: Apples & OrangesSpoiler
The boy who had climbed up the tree was, at that moment, enjoying the abundance of apples in his arms, languidly munching away as the morning sun stretched into the noon. He was wearing relatively thing clothing, his plaid shirt and ripped overalls reminiscent to Cantor of Tom Sawyer.
“Hey,” Cantor called out to the boy, standing by the brown fence that separated his house from the neighbors. The blond was no older than twelve, his smile missing a tooth as he looked up at the branches. “Hey, you aren’t supposed to be up there.
The boy ate away.
“Those are my family’s apples,” Cantor continued, scowling at the newcomer’s audacity. “You aren’t supposed to be eating them.”
The blond hummed a song, standing up on one branch to pick another apple.
Cantor groaned, opening his mouth to scream harder. It was then that an apple hurtled downwards, inconveniently striking him in the nose. Cantor cried out, rubbing his face lightly. “You deaf, indifferent lout--”
“Oh dear,” the boy on the tree turned to him, then, as if he just noticed his presence. “Why, I’ll be a crop of corn in a Biblical swarm o’ locusts, would you look at that. That’ll leave a mark, I reckon. Not a pretty one, either.”
Cantor turned a shade of red, hurling an apple the visitor’s way. “Get off my tree!”
The boy caught the apple in his hand like a baseball, a self-contented but not necessarily smug grin on his face. “Ya’ll Northerners ain’t got good aim, do ya’ll?” he said, chewing on the fruit. “Back in Houston no boy would be caught dead missing their mark, whether they’re throwing an item of consumption back to its proper disposal basket, or shooting an antelope right between the eyes.”
The boy on the ground raged. In a fit, he rushed to a pile of leaves near the tree, stealing his fathers’ rake. He turned to the boy, then, striking the rake against the tree.
The boy on the tree shook, but remained in place, clutching at a branch. Apples fell. “Nice try, pal,” he laughed, “But it takes a little more than just--”
He winced, then, as Cantor threw an apple between his eyes, sending the boy hurtling down. The blond moaned in pain. Cantor approached him, then, another apple in hand, prepared to meet his enemy face to face. “You owe my mum at least ten apples.”
The blond opened his eyes, staring at Cantor. He seemed to have just woken up from a dream, before cracking a smile, immersing himself into reality. “Shucks, Chuck,” he said, “I don’t owe you nothing.”
Before Cantor could reply, the boy kicked his knee, dragging him down. Cantor swore as the boy rushed up before he could, laughing as he ran to the fence. He climbed over them, then, disappearing as quickly as he came.
Cantor threw an apple at the fence, hoping he heard the rattling of wood from the other side.
…
He came every noon since then, and Cantor was always prepared for his presence.
When the boy would climb up the branch through the top of the fence, Cantor would bring a catapult and a basket of apples, hiding behind a bush. He would’ve launched three or four apples at his enemy, up until the boy fell over, laughing. Before Cantor could do anything with him, however, he would jump up and return to his safe haven.
It was a strange game they played. Even though it always ended the same, the blond with a strange accent would always return. At first, Cantor assumed it was out of stupidity. Then, sheer hunger. It was only after several months had passed that Cantor realized what the boy was really doing.
“You know,” Cantor hollered, then, an apple still in hand, “If you wanted a friend, you could’ve asked politely.”
The boy, who was forced by autumn winds to wear several thin cardigans over one another along with a pair of Wellington boots, laughed. “Well, I’d be willing to, but I reckon you ain’t fixin’ to rush into a companionship, taking account the first time we met you shot an apple my way,” he said, teasingly. “An admirable shot, really, but a hostile one nonetheless.”
“Why do you talk like that?” Charles called out, yet again. “You sound like you’re chewing bubblegum while reading a dictionary.”
“And you sound like one o’ them royal folk across the Atlantic,” the boy climbed down from the tree, leaning against the bark, “Is it an attained accent or were you born a prince?”
Cantor scowled. “Are you one of those ignorant Southerners I keep hearing about?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, chuckling. “Well, I’d like to think that I might be a lil’ less ignorant.”
“I’m not a member of the nobility, never mind royalty.”
The boy smiled. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Well, not all people with vaguely British accents are the Queen’s bastard son,” he said, clutching at the apple dangerously, “The whole of England’s too big and there aren’t enough men to prevent incest.”
The blond laughed. He reached into a satchel slung over his shoulder, pulling out something. An orange. “My ma sends these up every so often. I ain’t particularly fond of ‘em, especially with these apples as substitutes. Thought it’d pay the debt.”
Cantor stared down at the orange. “You know, apples and oranges aren’t exactly equivalent to each other.”
“And why ain’t?”
“They just aren’t.” He replied. “One’s red, one is obviously orange. They’re both different sizes. They both taste differently. They’re both just different, is all.”
“Well, they both come from a tree,” the other boy argued, “They both have seeds in ‘em, they’re both healthy on the long run, and they’re both flavorsome. They ain’t too far off from each other.”
“I’m arguing with a complete stranger over fruit.”
“Now, we don’t have to be complete strangers.”
“I don’t even know your name.”
He smiled. “It’s Herman,” he said, “Herman Melville.”
Cantor paused. He gripped the apple and the orange tightly, stashing them both in his jacket pocket. “Georg Cantor,” he said. “And you’ll need about eighty more of these to pay back all the apples you’ve stolen.”
Melville laughed. “If you say so, your Majesty.”
…
Herman Melville’s father was a mathematician, and his mother was an engineer at NASA. The two of them had recently divorced, in surprisingly amicable terms, and Melville chose to go with his father on a Northern adventure. In the eight months he’d been in the lonely sidelines of Rochester, he’d somehow fallen for three things: tree climbing, logarithms, and Georg Cantor.
It was all a game to him, a breath of air fresher than the rocky mountain ranges his uncles used to bring him to. His schooldays were too short, the amount of time his mind remained idle too long. He wanted to stumble and fall and scrape a knee, spend the afternoon with his father solving college equations, and listening to Cantor’s curling accent like his mother once listened to the remnants of the Big Bang echoing across the universe.
After discovering each other in their school day, it seemed almost inevitable that they would spend the rest of their lunch breaks on one lone table in a crowd of other juniors. Cantor was, initially, irritated by the other boy’s presence, despite the daily offering of oranges. Or perhaps it was because of them. “You know, just because you steal my apples doesn’t mean you need to sit next to me at lunch.”
“Well, perhaps I’d like to,” Melville replied, peeling open his orange. “I haven’t made any companions other than yourself, anyway. It’s only rational.”
“I prefer to be alone.”
Melville smiled. “You know, my father once told me a story about a girl who liked being alone.”
Cantor pulled out a notebook from his satchel, laying it on the table. The lunchroom pumped with life around them, children their age and seniors rushing to avoid the inevitable waiting line. “I’m sure he did,” he said, clicking his pen. “What happened to her, then?”
“He married her.”
There was a sudden silence between them. Cantor stared up at him, arching a brow. “That isn’t the best story to tell to someone you barely know.”
“Well, it’s on-topic, at the very least.”
Cantor rolled his eyes, then, scribbling something in his notebook. Melville leaned forward, peeking into the pages. He couldn’t read them upside down, but it looked too long to be lesson notes, and too organized to be diary entries of any kind. “What are you writing?”
“Leave me alone, Melville.”
“Melville? Strange name to give to a friend,” Melville inspected the pages a little closer, not bothering to match the other boy’s glare. “Is that a story?”
“Firstly, I’m not entirely certain if I’d like to call you my friend,” Cantor started, slamming his notebook closed and setting his pen down. “Secondly, it’s not any of your business.”
“I ain’t claiming it to be mine,” he said, smiling. “I’d just like to know, is all.”
Cantor groaned. His blue eyes glanced down at the notebook, almost in shame. “It’s an English assignment,” he picked out the orange from Melville’s hands, throwing a slice in his mouth. “It’s nothing to worry about. Go back to eating.”
Melville eyed him, curiously. “May I read it?”
The boy with platinum hair and pale blue eyes spewed out the orange he was chewing, then, slamming his hand on the table. “Over my dilapidated grave,” he shot back, shoving his notebook back into his satchel, “God, Melville, I don’t know if you could be more ignorant towards social calls if you tried.”
He laughed. “Well, it was just a request.”
“You don’t just—request people to read their notes out on the open,” Cantor opened his arms, gesturing towards the world, “You’re only allowed to ask if you at the very least know their birthdays, their life story, their miseries and their many contradictions, otherwise none of their drabbles would make sense. It’d be a puzzle piece to a picture you haven’t even seen.”
Melville tossed another orange slice in his mouth. “Prince, you said it was just an English assignment.”
Cantor narrowed his brows in protest, turning a shade of red. Instead of talking back, he simply stole the orange from Melville’s hands, munching on them angrily. He would never complain about Melville’s presence again.
…
“I don’t understand your love for that number.”
Melville kept writing on his separate mathematics notebook, burning two pages with graphite to lengthen out the root of two. “It’s fun,” he said, “It stretches into infinity, but with the simple task of multiplying it with itself, it becomes the number of two.”
Cantor arched a brow, peeling an orange at lunchtime. “It’s irrational?”
“It’s beautiful, in its own way,” Melville said, smiling, “I know you wouldn’t understand it, but it is.”
He paused. “Now that I think about it, yes. You are right.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t understand.”
It was one of the few moments that Melville thought he and Cantor would never be together. The two fifteen year olds were too different from one another, their thoughts too conflicting to warrant the amount of time they spent together. Cantor, fitting to Melville’s initial predictions, was a writer on the romantic scale—despite his bitter and often callous demeanor, his poetry had been famous across the halls of the school and the mouths of English teachers. Melville was a darling of the head mathematics teacher, Mrs. Jackson, who was often described as ‘the crassest, most inhuman person thriving in the teaching industry’. Cantor loved his words. Melville loved his numbers.
But they never did break away. Melville convinced himself they eventually would, reminded himself constantly that speaking to Cantor would be like speaking to a person of a different language, but they had only ever grown closer to each other.
“Little prince,” he once asked, while they were in English class. The teacher had divided the class into groups of two, where each of them had to write a poem about their partners. Cantor and Melville, naturally seated together, were sent away to the corner of the class where they would brainstorm for a little while. “Why don’t you hate me?”
Cantor, hard at work, glared up at the other boy. “Who says I don’t?”
“I mean, why don’t you avoid me if you disagree with me so?”
The other boy intensified his glare. “Who says I do ?”
“You’re contradicting yourself, Georg,” he said, laughing, “If you agree with me, why would you hate me?”
“If I dislike myself, what reason should I give that I don’t dislike you, too?”
“You are missing the point of this conversation.”
“You are missing the point of our relationship, Melville,” Cantor shot back, looking to his poem. “Get back to your poem before the teacher catches you idling about.”
“But what is the point of our relationship?”
“Melville.”
Melville shook his head, turning to his sheet of paper. He looked at the blankness in front of him, realizing suddenly that there were no words in his brain. Only digits.
He sighed, and instead turned to write in binary.
Later on in that same class, the teacher gathered all the papers, frowning when Melville submitted two pages of zeros and ones. Mr. Orville read through all of the poems, picking out several of them to read out in class. “If you could guess which people these poems are talking of, you will be dismissed from the class early,” he told everybody, and in a fit of excitement for a break that would last longer than twenty minutes, the contest began.
The first one was relatively simple, as the amount of food involved pointed to the resident all-consuming portly monstrosity called Big Bill. The second one, slightly more metaphorical, alluded to Janet Annelid and her almost perverse admiration for worms. The third one was the hardest, despite being relatively cohesive and well-written, as it seemed that it was talking more about a paradox than a person.
“To him, I am a transcendental number,
To me, he is some sort of metaphor
The only thing we understand
is that we can’t understand each other.
I wouldn’t want to live on an Earth
where I would never meet him
Because it would not be
a world worth hating.”
While the rest of the class guessed their way into it, it was only after they ran out of names to list out when they finally hit Melville’s name. Melville, who had figured it out from the mention of a transcendental number, stared at Cantor in confusion as one lucky person left the room.
…
“Cantor?”
“Yes?”
“I think I may love you.”
Cantor looked to the other man, cynically. They were both eighteen. He had managed to apply in the Brooklyn College, and would’ve left in three or four weeks from then, leaving the town he had grown up in. Melville, unsurprisingly, got a scholarship to MIT. They wouldn’t meet each other for some time, but it didn’t matter as much. Letters existed. There was a newfangled thing called the internet coming along, as well, and if the legends were true it would’ve made the world a much smaller place. And if all else fails, Cantor would always have his oranges and Melville would always have his apples.
“You don’t know what love is, Melville,” he said, finally, putting a book on his shelf to his bag. His room was nearly bare, cleaned out in a preparation for his departure. Melville had come the same morning to help pack and supposedly leave his regards. “Your only contact with love is through the validity of numbers. There is nothing human about your love, only abstract and cumbersome.”
Melville sat on the bed, with an orange in hand, staring at his companion longingly. “Don’t we both work in the matter of abstractions?” he asked, “It would be hypocritical of you to say that, really.”
Cantor stood, staring at the books on the shelves. He sighed. “Don’t ruin it.” He said, turning around. “Just—don’t.”
The mathematician stared at him, then, and stood up. “Tell me something,” he walked towards him, painfully slow in his steps, “When are you going to admit that apples and oranges are more alike than you once told me they were?”
The writer tilted his head, crossing his arms in defiance. “What do you--”
He was cut off, then, by a sudden realization of the mathematician’s towering height and the intensity of his green eyes. Cantor looked up at him, nervously, unlocking his arms and clutching at the desk behind him. “I had considered telling you sometime after I realized it, but I thought the feeling wouldn’t be mutual,” he said, calmly. Cantor edged slightly. “I feel like I can now say with a certainty that it is.”
Cantor bit the inside of his cheek, struggling to keep his glare. “You can’t be certain about anything these days.”
Melville only smiled. He took the other man by the chin, then, as if he knew that Cantor wouldn’t strike him back. “I took a probability class once,” in a mocking gesture, he leaned down, kissing the other man on the forehead. “I can’t be certain about anything, but I can be confident about them.”
There was a silence between the two. Cantor pushed him away, then, wiping his forehead with a look of disgust on his face. “I should’ve eaten more of the apples I gave you,” he said, finally, “Perhaps it would’ve let me grow tall enough to properly pummel you into the ground.”
Melville stared at him, the surprise on his face only barely evident. The calculation was all there in his head, and it appeared to Cantor at least that he knew the stakes—he just wasn’t aware of how low it would go. “Out of my room,” Cantor said, finally.
“Georg--”
“ Out ,” Cantor screamed, “ Now.”
Melville took a step back, then, nearly realizing the full extent of the damage. “Alright,” he said, suddenly dejected, “Alright.”
He left then, leaving an orange on the table. Cantor watched him go, running only to slam the door shut behind him. He leaned back on the door, then, relieving himself of a long held breath.
…
The year was 2016. Melville had turned 43.
It was an eventful era they had lived, an eventful time they would continue living. Melville sat below an apple-less tree, covered in the shade of the noon, scribbling an equation in his notebook. It seemed to calm him, around the usual fuss of a college quad. He looked like he would’ve made a good professor.
Cantor had come, at that day, and that moment, after a brief search on the internet (which he could only barely believe grew as exponentially as it did, but he was sure Melville knew the chances better). His gait was heavy, and his eyes had only sunken as the years passed. He was not the young man he was when they last met, but he was, at the very least, still as cynical.
Conclusions. Eight years into a successful writing career, and that’s the one thing he could never truly achieve. He could hear the book critics now: “The story was good, but it lacked a strong conclusion.” It was understandable. Fiction was only a mirror of reality.
When Melville looked up, he seemed staggered, as if he’d seen his life flash before his eyes. He closed his book, politely. “Georg.”
“Melville.”
Melville paused. “What are you doing here?”
Cantor tilted his head, shrugging. He reached into his satchel, pulling out an apple and tossing it to him. “You left me an orange back in ’92.” He said, smirking. “I owed you an apple, according to your law of the Equivalence of Apples and Oranges.”
Melville caught it without a beat, looking at it slowly. He grinned. “You’re the last person I thought I’d ever see.”
Cantor laughed. It was somewhat bitter in its nature, hinting at the gravity of his age, the strangeness of the situation. “Oh, trust me, I was thinking about coming to visit you on your deathbed,” he said, sardonically, “But from the amount of apples you’ve eaten I doubt you’ve been to the doctor in thirty years.”
The mathematician tried to laugh. It came out as forced, in the end, and ultimately sad. The past permeated the atmosphere between them. “Why?”
He stopped. He sat down by the other man, then, taking his time with his words. “I hate you. For a variety of reasons.” He said, looking to the man finally. “Firstly, I hate the fact that you genuinely think you can effectively compare apples and oranges. Secondly, I hate the fact that you use equations to pass your time—I mean, only showoffs do that, and you I know that’s true. And thirdly--”
He grabbed the other man by the chin, smashing his mouth on his. He pulled away, then, smiling contentedly. “Kisses on the forehead are for eight year olds.”
Melville eyed the other man in shock, before dissipating into a puddle of laughter. “We’re too old for this,” he chuckled, leaning on the bark, “We are much too old for this.”
“Your bloody fault for being the most passive person in the history of unrequited love,” Cantor laughed, slapping the other man by the shoulder. “I swear, a high school girl would’ve been more confident in their feelings and active in the making of the relationship.”
“Look, I came out and then I was immediately shot down,” he shot back, “I was only being polite in not chasing after you.”
“Oh please, I’m a romantic, the dangerous is what I do,” he said, laughing. “You should’ve known I would’ve liked it.”
Melville smiled. He leaned forward, as if to repay the kiss, only to pull back. “Love’s a young people’s game,” he said. “But there’s no age limit for lunch dates.” -
Entry Four
Prompt: dawn/sunrise.
Title: UntitledSpoiler
For most in the world the sunrise was a warm greeter as families arose from their lodgings. It was a fresh reminder of the beauty of the world. How interesting it is that something so trivial, a fiery globe in the sky swirling around, could evoke such emotions as joy, happiness, determination, and even safety. But to Eiros it was a time of groaning and frustration, a signal to burrow away while the land dwellers went about their daily routines. It meant the chance for them to once again renew their faith in themselves, and in their gods. To build back a fragment of the protection that he had worked to remove.
He hovered among the trees where the sunlight struggled to break through the tree tops. As the small village of O’Sinchie came to life, Eiros focused on one villager in particular. Her name was Mena. She was beautiful. Flowing locks of the brightest, glowing, yellow hair. It seemed to absorb the sunlight and then explode it back into a shiny aura about her head. A halo as it were. And her skin was no different. It was pale and smooth, like a mirror that reflected every ray of light. Her eyes dazzled and sparkled like when the sun glances off a shiny object, or dances on a wave.
“She’ll be mine. She will. Even the strongest fall.”
Eiros wrapped his ebony cloak around his ghostly black form, and with a swish if his massless hand he vanished into nothing but a wisp of black smoke.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Mena was the servant of the village bread maker. And as such that meant that her father was often too busy with his work to do the household chores. Mena usually worked with him at the bakery, but her mother had fallen ill a few days before and so she had had to stay home and watch her two younger siblings, Jeff and Lydia. This morning, when she would usually be firing up the ovens at the break of dawn, she was now heading down to the river to wash clothing. While she would routinely go to the river’s edge where it rushed by the sawmill on the edge of the village, Lydia had insisted on going with her.
“I can’t watch you and wash the clothes at the same time,” Mena said as she struggled with a waste bin overflowing with linens.
Little Lydia, seven years of age, looked up longingly. “Please?” She said, holding her hands up in a begging motion and giving her best toothy grin.
Mena couldn’t help but laugh at the gaping holes where Lydia had recently lost her teeth, and the instant the laughter started, she knew that to a small child like Lydia, laughter meant approval.
“Fine.”
Lydia clapped her hands and reached for a smaller basket of clothes. Mena stepped in front of it.
“But,” she said, giving as stern a face as she could, raising her eyebrow and putting her hand on her hips, “we’ll have to go into the woods past the bridge, and you’ll have to listen to whatever I say.”
Lydia nodded and snatched the basket. She struggled for a moment and giggled. Mena smiled. It was nice to be with her siblings. She was often busy for most of the days, and by the time she would get home Lydia and Jeff would be fast asleep in their beds.
So the two made their way over the sturdy oak bridge and into the waking forest. This part of the country was known for yellow finches, and they were seen constantly on the walk to the creek, flitting among the dappled sunlight and the vibrant leaves of the trees and shrubs. Lydia was surprisingly quiet, content, it seemed to go along with Mena. The two reached the gurgling river where it narrowed and slowed, thanks to a landslide of rocks upstream about a hundred paces.
“There,” Mena pointed, and Lydia followed her finger in the direction of a sandy shoal that jutted about a few feet. There was one large rock in the middle that Lydia promptly rushed to and climbed on.
“Lydia, be careful,” Mena said as she followed at a leisurely pace. The river was slow here, and the danger from Lydia falling in was so minute that it would more likely injure her pride, than body. But sometimes it’s the most innocent things that can do the most harm, and Mena by no means wanted that on her conscious.
She reached the sandy shoal and slipped her shoes off, flicking a foot-full of sand at Lydia who shrieked and jumped off the rock. She dropped the clothes basket and hurled a handful of sand right back at Mena, who despite her best efforts could not dodge it and the sand got in her hair and down her shirt.
She was about to fire back when she heard something. It was like a loud rush of wind escaping a tunnel and all rushing out at once in a great whoosh! Mena spun on her heel. The sunlight in the early morning was fading. Clouds rolled in at an unnatural speed.
“Lydia,” Mena said, grabbing her little sister’s wrist, “stay close. Hold my arm.”
Lydia didn’t need to be told twice as she clutched Mena so hard that she lost the feeling in her hand.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Eiros smiled a ghostly smile. He had her exactly where he wanted. Why not have some fun? As a specter he could move much faster than she could. So he flew by her once, causing the water to rise up violently and splash down on the bank. He hovered above the water, burrowing his gaze into her eyes. They were so vibrant. So bright. But soon they would be a dark hole. An empty remnant of what had once held so much life.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Mena couldn’t believe it. It was real. It was a ghost. Right in front of her! Eater of souls. Monster of the underworld. She’d only heard stories. But Ghosts could only attack in the darkness could they not? And it was dawn. The sun had just risen. It should be burning in the sky for hours. But it was gone.
She leaned down to Lydia. “I want you to run as fast as you can. Tell Papa to bring torches. Lots of them!” She shoved Lydia backward in an attempt to get her to move, but the child’s eyes were so wide with fear that they seemed to be ready to explode. She toppled to the ground shaking back and forth.
Mena twisted back. The ghost – a black vapor of smoke and rags with glowing white eyes and a crooked smile within a sea of darkness – floated closer, bobbing in the air like a buoy does on a rough day at sea. She grabbed Lydia and was on the bank as fast as she could. Her heart felt as if it was bursting at the seams, and just as she could feel Lydia’s shivering and beating pulse, her own body felt like it was about to tear at the seams. The sun was gone. A fine grey mist swirled all about.
Then a hand shoved her to the ground. Her shoulder connected with something hard, yet invisible In the cloud of mist. She screamed in pain and couldn’t help the tears that burst from her eyes. She groped to her feet and looked down where Lydia was. Or had been. But she was gone. Then something flew past, sending her for another dizzy spin. She sank to her knees, trying to not heave her insides. With what little strength she had she looked up and saw the ghost. Holding Lydia.
“No, no please!” She screamed, scrambling to her feet, and rushing at the specter in the mist. But it easily avoided her and dragged Lydia by. Mena bent over, head spinning. Nothing was straight. But something far more sinister was afoot. Her mind was fading. She looked at the specter. Why did he look so familiar? Like a loving father, calling his children home. And in his hand he held … dinner. A young soul, pure and innocent.
She glided over, somewhat aware of the fact that her feet were no longer touching the ground, and grabbed the child by the hair. Her eyes were as big as saucers. So full of life. So bright. It hurt Mena’s eyes. She reached and slammed her palm across the child’s face. Again and again and again. Inside her she felt her power restored. Her bones hurt no longer, there was no burning in her heart. She looked at the specter, who so loving had brought her a meal after such a long time.
“Welcome to the family,” he whispered, and handed Mena her meal.
And she feasted.
And dawn, the time of sunrise, never fully rose that day. And it was still a time of awakenings. For it was a time to feast, to prey on the weak, to douse every light in the world. Until finally, the sun would not peek over the horizon. -
Voting can begin!
Remember, this done through points. 4 to the favourite, 1 to the least favourite. I'm sure you'll figure it out! Don't forget to Site PM me with your votes! -
So, it's been a while and there are still no votes for Fournament, which means it's time to announce the winner and runner-ups!
With four points, the winner is Apples & Oranges.
In second place with three points, we have What Pawns Do.
In third place with two points, we have [b[Untitled[/b].
And lastly, with one point, we have Sunset, Moonrise.
I aplogize for the delay! TGW Staff have been a little busy lately. Perhaps too busy, because I think we almost forgot about TGW! And with one of us disappearing for an undefined period of time soon, we might've taken longer than anticipated. Sorry!Spoiler
I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't get more votes, but oh well.
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