Going to post some of my stories here

Outside the Window

Clara couldn’t remember a time before the Corridor. Surely, she hadn’t always been here, and yet its impermeable stone walls seemed more familiar to her than the back of her hand. Yes, if a world other than this had ever existed, she did not know of it.

She wasn’t even sure how long she had been here. Days? Years? Centuries? The Corridor was impervious to change, its grey walls never showing any signs of weathering or decay. Even she never seemed to change; she had not aged an hour since she arrived. Oh, time was fickle here, and every minute felt like an eternity!

The only thing that ever seemed to change was the Window. Yes, the Window! At the end of the hall was a pristine, ornately framed Window. It never seemed to show the same thing—constantly moving, constantly shifting—always different from one moment to the next. Even staring at it for a minute, she felt like she had seen entire worlds!

It was a mystery that fascinated her to no end. She would spend hours—had it been hours, or days?—looking, staring, never blinking. While the Corridor remained dull and tedious, the same as ever, the Window never ceased to amaze her. Had she seen the entire universe already? Was there anything left to see? Yes, planets! Galaxies! Infinity was directly beyond her windowsill…

...and yet she could never touch it.

Clara traced the shapes and figures forming beyond the glass longingly. The Window had shown her everything—love, hate, hope, despair—but she could have none of it. This Corridor had many doors—dull, drab stone doors, just like the rest of the place—but she could never open them. Locked, locked, those cursed doors were all locked!

She searched every nook and cranny for a key and found nothing. She scratched against the doors until her nails were chipped and bloodied, and still nothing! Nothing! Nothing!

It was clear that nothing in her power could free her from this blasted place. The walls of her stone prison practically mocked her. She had seen faces beyond the Window, heard voices that offered to help, but she couldn’t reach them. She could see outstretched hands from beyond the glass, but by God, she couldn’t take them!

Who had built this place? Who had brought her here? She returned to the Window. The Window could give her answers, right? It had shown her everything so far...right?

As if responding to her unspoken question, the shapes beyond the Window melted and shifted, showing her the identity of her jailor. The one responsible for all of this, for ALL of this, was—

—her? Not possible!

Still, the memories flooded back to her. This prison was of her own making, and nothing could undo it now.

Lies, lies! They had to be lies! Why would the Window lie to her? Why would her own mind lie to her? She couldn’t have done this to herself...could she? Had she?

She ripped the ornate frame from the wall and smashed the cursed Window, reducing what had once given her hours of immense pleasure to pieces. Glass scattered across the floor, and now there was a hungry, insatiable Void where the Window had once been.

Then the Corridor began to collapse. Stones of her own making began to crush her, crush the life out of her, and then—

Nothing.

[ Edited Sep 3, 2016 ]

[ Edited Sep 3, 2016 ]

[ Edited Sep 3, 2016 ]

Dancer

I met the love of my life Saturday night.

My love haunted me day and night. Sleep? For me, it was more elusive than the wind. A shadow made it impossible to rest, the memory of a moment greater than any other.

Her name? I’m not sure. She was known to me only as the Dancer. That is the only name I will ever need to know her by, and the only name I ever will.

Last week, I found a mysterious envelope at my doorstep containing an invitation to a peculiar establishment called the Midnight Hour. It was a theater, and the invitation claimed it to be the host of the “greatest creative minds of the modern world.” At first, I wrote it off as fancy. Many such claims were made daily but few of them were actually true.

Still, as if possessed, I went. What was the worst that could happen?

The show was, unsurprisingly, a washout. It was made up of stuffy paintings, bland poems and terrible actors. The most creative minds of their time? Please! They wouldn’t know creativity if it bit them on the ankle! Despite this, I was glued to my seat. Had someone cast a spell on me?

My patience soon paid off. She—the Dancer—was the very last act. Almost immediately, she had me ensnared. There was just something about her—something alluring, something captivating—and I knew she would remain with me forever.

Her routine took my breath away. She moved with ephemeral grace, sucking me in and consuming me. Her moves bore the promise of something forbidden, something impossible to place.

Time seemed to be frozen still. I wanted nothing more than for her dance to never end. When it did, I was hungry for more, as insatiable as an addict without a fix. Her dance was a drug, and it would plague my mind and memory until my very last breath.

As I turned to leave, she approached me. I couldn’t remember her leaving the stage, yet there she was. Her lips curved in a tempting yet mysterious smile, her eyes seeming to peer straight through me, seeing something invisible to everyone but her. At first, I thought she would pass me, but she stopped as soon as she was within arm’s reach.

Her eyes locked with mine for only a second. Though no words were spoken between us, I felt her peer into the depths of my soul. If only I could see into hers as well. What, then, would I see?

I would never know. As she left, I felt a piece of me leave with her, a fragment of myself I knew I would never regain until I found her again. I tried to follow her, but the night had whisked her away, and just like that, she was gone.

My heart sank, and I returned home. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep. I craved for something I could never have, and I was unable to rid my mind of it.

I returned to the theater the next day, hoping to find the Dancer there once again. Instead, it appeared that the Midnight Hour itself was gone without a trace. In its place was an empty lot, with no sign that there had ever been anything there to begin with.

I knew I would never rest until I found her. I would wander the earth until her riddle was solved and my search was complete. The Dancer had become a ghost, and until I could make the phantom flesh, I would never be whole.

Great stories.^^
I really like " Outside the Window " and " Dancer "

Thanks Aoi!

Eye Contact
Day 6

The eyes are a funny thing. Some claim them to be the windows to the soul. There are those that leave their windows wide open for everyone to see, and also those who chose to keep them tightly locked.

I belonged to that first group; Emilina, for as long as I can remember, belonged to the latter. She kept her heart isolated from the world around it, hidden behind walls that no one was ever allowed to pass through.

I remember the day I first saw those eyes, dark and mysterious, deep grey and unrevealing. It was a rainy evening about four years ago, back in the days of my college apartment. Back then, I preferred to sit on my balcony, watching raindrop after raindrop plunge to the earth below. I almost missed her—her presence was quiet, so faint you could sit in a room with her for hours and not even know she was there—but there she was, as real as the earth around her.

She sat in the yard of the house next door, her back to me, letting the rain fall on her unhampered. My first instinct was to leave her be. I was a perfect stranger to her, after all—I didn’t even know her name—but concern eventually got the best of me. I tiptoed over to where she was softly, so I wouldn’t startle her, and knelt down beside her.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” I asked gently.

She lifted her head from her knees. I thought she had been crying, but her eyes were not red or wet with tears. Her soft grey eyes were distant: maybe the reason I had overlooked her was because she wasn’t really there. Slowly, she came to the realization that I was talking to her. Our eyes met for the very first time.

“I’m fine,” she replied, so quietly that I had to lean in to understand her. “Really.”

Silence fell between us. We both just sat there, watching the rain together. Every once in a while I would look back at her, hoping to find some reason why this strange, beautiful girl had been sitting alone in the downpour. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see past her dripping raven locks, her youthful, pale face empty of answers.

“I’m Adrien,” I supplied awkwardly, unsure of what to say next.

“Oh,” she answered blandly. “Emilina. My name’s Emilina.”

With that, she rose to her feet and padded back to the steps of her house. She paused at the door, as if she were going to turn around and say something, but eventually she opened it and disappeared inside. With a sigh, I returned to my balcony, but I was no longer watching the rain. I was thinking about her.

The next day was the beginning of my college semester. Much to my surprise, Emilina was in all of my classes. Most of the time she sat in the back of the room, her eyes bearing the same distance as the day before. She was always writing. I couldn’t remember a day when she was without her notebook or pen.

History was the only time I saw her come alive.

She loved listening to stories of the past. When the professor told tales about ancient battles, she would sit erect in her chair, eyes sharp and focused. Then, when he was done speaking and it was time to open our textbooks, she read so intensely I thought her gaze would burn through the pages!

I moved from my seat and sat next to her. I didn’t even think she knew I was there, she was so focused on her book.

“Hey,” I said. “You sure like history, huh?”

She jumped, startled. At first, I didn’t think she would answer, but then she smiled ever so slightly, her eyes glittering.

“I love stories,” she replied. “History is full of stories.”

I had an idea.

“Hey, do you want to hear another story?” I asked.

She did, so I told her one. The next four years went on in that manner. I told her stories, and she hung on my every word. Sometimes, she would even tell me some of hers. Stories always made her come alive, and I loved it.

That is, until she stopped listening.

Around the end of my fourth and last year at college, she began distancing herself from me again. She no longer spent hours scribbling in the margins of her notebook. She didn’t even pay attention in history, staring off into space when she would usually be captivated by the goings-on of the professor. Eventually, she stopped coming to school altogether.

Driving home from my last day of college, she was on my mind. I realized I knew nothing about her. She had always listened to my stories and eagerly supplied some of her own, but she was a woman of walls, and whenever I tried to push past them she would make them thicker.

In the middle of those thoughts, I saw something that made me slam on the breaks.

In the rain I found her, and in the rain I lost her. Now, just like before, she stood alone in the rain: only this time, she was standing on the edge of a bridge. I thrust the car door open and bolted towards the railing.

I didn’t get there in time. She jumped, falling like rain to the water below. I never even heard a splash; I was too busy screaming her name. I screamed it for hours until the police dragged me away.

Her body was never found. It was like she had jumped off of the bridge and into another world. From that day on, I told stories, just like I had done with her. My favorites were the ones about her: the rain that gave her to me and the rain that took her away. I was determined to keep Emilina’s soft gray eyes alive in the memory of all those who heard.