Abandoned Stories (Part 3/6)
In case you somehow missed last weeks post, I am tackling old abandoned short stories of mine in an attempt to feel more accomplished as a writer…despite most of these being from 2018. I’d like to think that means I completed the ideas I thought of from 2020 onward (since I was in short story courses, it is highly probable).
Here are several short stories that I came up with at various times, whether it be the first paragraph or the first page, I want to finish them. So this will be part 1 in a continued series. These are taken from my laptop, but there will be some from my phone as well because I am a devil-may-care writer with very little self-discipline.
The original portions of the stories I will make purple (or #7600FF) and the new additions will be traditional black. I will also put notes at the top and bottom in bold and bracketed off.
“Flashback of Sinners”
(This one is almost finished, it appears at first glance, so who knows how I’ll try to finished this bad boy.)
“When I first met your grandpa he was working for his father’s mine. He was covered head-to-toe in soot, I spent along while washing it out of his dressings before I could even start on the large gash in his leg,” a withered woman recounted.
“Did you know who he was at the time?” A tailored man asked.
“No, not at first. I was a war nurse, it was part of the job to put together the mangled and bloodied, no questions asked. Though I suppose If I looked back hard enough I could have seen the signs earlier.”
Twisting the shackles that rested on her wrists, she raised her tired eyes to meet his.
The reporter hummed, scribbling down with hurried strokes, “tell me more about the day you first met him.”
Judith sighed, “Soldiers brought him in, as I said, bloodied and broken. He was unconscious for most of the week really, fighting off a nasty infection, but then he opened his eyes.” She rose her hands to her necklace, out of habit, before opening it for her grandson to see.
The smiling face of a salt-and-pepper haired man looked back at him. It could almost mask the fact that this smiling man was the murderer of thousands of Revolution soldiers. “But why was he in the field of war? If he was working at his father’s mine?” Her grandson prodded.
Judith put a hand to her forehead, “Memory is a fragile thing, David. Years slowly take what was once so solid away from you,” her eyes clouded for a minute, lost in thought before snapping back, “I meant only that I patched him up twice for the same wound. Once at his father’s mine and then during the war, before you start to accuse me further, no I had not put together during the war that it was the same man. He had grown so hollow and haunted looking during the war, not the bright and happy soul I once knew.”
Again, David hummed silently asking Judith to continue.
“the man I knew made sure to bring me flowers fresh evrey morning before heading to the mine. Hung the washed clothes on Sundays to dry, giving me time to sleep in. The man I knew held his daughter in arms and sang to her tales of magic and love,” she smiled sadly, “this man you want me to describe didn’t exist until his father died and the war started.”
“If you knew him to be gentle and caring then why did he kill thousands of innocent people?”
“As if you don’t already know?” Judith halfheartedly accused, “war is never easy, it takes and takes until you have nothing left to give except the very soul within your body,” she shakes her head, “Trauma. Fear. Death. It circles your heart, chokes the air out of your lungs, isolates people. It’s ugly and incurable. The only thought you have is to keep you going is to survive. Load one more bullet, crawl through one more trench, close your eyes one last time. It ruins a person, and if they can manage to survive, everything is strange and paranoia settles underneath the skin waiting to strike.”
“Her eyes again clouded over, “I think that is all for today, David, I’m suddenly feeling very faint.”
David sighed, frustrated to be shut out after finally getting answers, “Alright.” And the guards pulled her back to her cell.
“Wait,” his grandmother says before the metal door closes, the grandson walks up to her cell, “I do remember a…bunker of sorts. He never told me much about his childhood, but he did talk about Summerfield Bunkers—perhaps that will help?” He writes the name down on a scrap of paper. “I’m sorry I cannot be more helpful. Come back tomorrow, dear, A grandmother needs to see her grandchild.”
“Gran, they think you are an accomplice. They tried you for obstruction of justice and failure to comply with authority. The faster you tell me about what happened, I might be able to get you out of here!”
The grandmother smiles and rubs her forehead, “I wish you would’ve asked me this story years ago…dementia runs in the family and with how scattered and fragile my memories are, I doubt I will be able to string much together in a couple years.”
They were silent. The grandson knew at the rate they were going his gran would deteriorate far before he got the answers he needed, and with how the grandmother put her hand out of the bars to touch her grandchild’s face, she knew it too. “It’s hard for me to come here everyday, I have to transcribe our tapes and file the paperwork.”
“I know.” The grandmother’s eyes tear up, “Why don’t you hand me a stack of paper and I’ll do my best to write down everything I remember about him. I can’t make promises but my handwriting is very neat since I was a young girl and calligraphy was mandatory.”
The grandson nods, hands her quite a large stack of paper from his file-folder, and turns toward the guard. “It’s time, Gran. I’ll be back in a couple of days, try not to push yourself too hard.”
The grandmother knew she had mere weeks before her memory and body broke down, she had a feeling—it started small and grew the moment she walked into this damp cell—and with the way her fingers shook trying to take the paper, the feeling was right. She grabs his hand. “Okay, I’ll see you in a couple of days. I love you.” She didn’t have the heart to tell him she would be long gone before then. As he left, she wrote the letter she should’ve when this whole thing starts. “Your grandfather never told me about his job or personal details of his life, I know you want someone to blame and I was the person left behind; but I truly did not know the man your grandfather was, call me blinded or made stupid by love. I assumed he was embarrassed about where he worked or who is family was, I’m sad to find out that was not the case and instead your grandfather used me as insurance and a placeholder for his normal life. Had I known he was a war criminal, I would not have tied myself to him and I fear with time I might forget to compare the man I loved to the criminal who ruined thousands of lives. I should’ve told you before you left that I was not going to be here when you returned but I did not want you to worry anymore. Summerfield was the only name he mentioned, and I know you will wonder why I did not ask him before/after we married…I do not have an answer. I fooled myself into believing this man I loved and lived with was not someone who could do such evil things. I lied to protect myself, because if he was, would his ‘love’ save me? I doubt it, considering he hurt so many others for love. After I’m gone you will receive my will’ it contains a key to a storage unit with things I took during our 20 years together—I do not know if they will be helpful or sentimental things I kept to elongate the lie. I hope my death has value and you do not blame me anymore… I love you.”
(and that’s that, I hope you enjoy the weird and wonder ideas that I put into words)
“Love Just Shouldn’t Happen”
Lori never thought she would fall in love.
Lori knew, yes, it was a possibility, but she never thought love would actually happen in her life time.
The problem? He doesn’t notice her, a classic set-up. Not in that high-school-movie kind of way, more in, she-has-never-said-a-word-to-him-and-probably-never-will-so-there-is-no-way-he-would-ever-see-her-as-a-person kind of way. His name is Daniel (or rather that’s the name Lori came up with for him) and he lives across the street from the diner Lori works at, well not in the store across the street but above it. It wasn’t like she tried to watch him move in either, it was a slow afternoon shift and she usually stared at the shop window across the street for a couple hours anyway.
It used to be every time she was free or things slowed down, but then he started to come into the diner so it became every time he walked in. Small glances, since she refused to served him, for a few minutes. She rarely made her way to the front with the customers, being a chef she only had a small window from the kitchen to see into the seating area. Benny, the other chef, and Lori are often swamped with the regulars’ orders to even see most of them, though they hear quite a bit.
Daniel came to the diner a few times in the weeks to come, along with him a slew of women, none of which Lori saw twice.
Lori often complained to Benny about this mystery man who Lori named Daniel. “It’s like seeing a celebrity from afar and imagining they will be kind and when you meet them, they are complete assholes; but that small part of my brain says ‘but what if…’ and it keeps me hooked,” Lori stirred the eyes to scramble and started toasting the biscuit.
“Lori, you walked yourself through your own denial. He looks and sounds like a dickwad,” Benny replied, flipping the flapjacks.
“I guess.”
“Remember last week? He came in late to a date, the poor girl waited a full hour in tears before he showed up and he didn’t apologize, just said he was ‘busy' and we agreed he didn’t deserve that girl.”
Lori had forgotten about that. “Right, he’s a dick.”
“Say it loud, say it proud!”
“HE’S A DIIIIICK!” They screamed together, luckily the food they were making was for themselves and they hadn’t quite opened yet but the manager shook her head.
“If y’all are done, I’m going to open.”
“‘kay~!” Lori said, plating her food and devouring hers along with Benny.
Some things are meant to be imagined and it’s a lot harder when you have evidence of the contrary. Daniel, or whoever he was, was not meant to be her love of the summer—nor would anyone for that matter, Lori would later find. Lori would quit her job at the diner and move to a coastal town where her newly-purchased cottage would be filled with animals and she would spend most of her time lounging on her small deck facing the water sipping her tea and sighing at the life she is living.
(Haha, I did not know where to take this, I originally wanted to make it longer—but this sounded like a hallmark movie, and to avoid the cringe that I could definitely write, I cut it into a flash-fiction or micro-fiction piece)
“To be a God”
(I think I had watched The Lightning Thief and thought there must have been a different way to be named god or demi-god. I came to the conclusion that if you have a god, you would want them to be the right fit. It’s not just about training but feeling what’s right…I think)
This was it. The moment that Jack was waiting for, the Choosing Ceremony. He trained for 15 years, constant combat training, studying laws and rights around the world, he even was given an opportunity to judge the morals of wrongdoers—High Judge Joan gave him glowing recommendations for his work—and it all came down to this. One little screening process would determine his future. Would he be a God?
Fortune had favoured Jack early on; physically flawless, more than enough intellect to be benevolent, and the heart of twenty.
Jack stepped up to the marble pedestal, a simple pressure plate that activated the intrusive bio-metric scan that read his moral alignments and his integrity for leadership, and held his breath.
for the next five minutes Jack barely moved, afraid to jar the scan’s judgement, “Scan complete, please step aside and wait for results.”
Jack barely stepped off the pedestal when he heard, “Results conceded you are not fit for Godship, have a nice day.”
Not fit for Godship? He deserved this right, he had trained and put endless hours into perfecting himself. He was perfect. Jack walked slowly back to the front of the hall, passing a heavier woman. Jack didn’t give a lingering glance, no way she would get it. Though confident in his judgement, he hesitated when he heard: “Congratulations! You have been selected for Goddesship!”
“You’ve got to be kidding me…” Jack started to rant as he paced. The heavier woman walked out and her face looked pale. Jack rolled his eyes.
“Excuse me…” the woman asked. Jack looked over her shoulder. “I—do you think you could help me?”
“Help you what? What could I help you with as a lowly human? I don’t think you need my help.”
“I have no idea what I’m doing, what goes into being a Goddess? Do I take people’s prayers or demand they build me a temple?”
Jack stared at her, trying to judge what her angle was—did she mean to humiliate him or was she genuine? “You really don’t know? Why did you come here then?”
“I come here every year, I always get rejected, but it keeps my village off my back. My parents died when I was young but everyone says they would’ve been Gods. I’m only 24, how is that enough life experience to do the God thing?”
“The test knows best, it doesn’t just see your age, it sees your potential. did no one tell you?”
“No, the school is very far from my house and my aunt is very sick.”
Jack sighed, he hated this woman and her luck, but this would also be the closest thing he would get to Godship… “Okay, I’ll help. I think it will be easier once we find out what you control. And people do pray to you, but you can choose to send a familiar to aid them or go yourself.”
She inhaled deeply, “Okay, I’m Clover by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Clover. I’m Jack.” Clover, Jack thought, maybe her power is luck. Then something occurred to Jack, I’m meant to be her familiar.
(This one I cut very short—the problem with any idea is it can become a full novel idea if you let it go one for too long, I think stopping at their alliance still works. Any further and I would need to start world-building and developing character—frankly, I don’t have that kind of time.)
