New Story - July 14

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so here is a story based on TBBT instead.

1.

…Watching Leonard going to the altar, where Priya is waiting for him, Penny expects her to burst into flames for some reason. Naturally, this does not happen, so Penny just pours herself another glass. She pauses. Should she drink so much? Isn’t she at a wedding? Did she drink so much? Does she love her booze so much? She looks around and realizes that she has no idea whom those people are, and why is she here – aside from the free booze, so she freely imbibes it and enjoys the buzz. She loves her booze.

“Penny. Penny. Penny.” It is Sheldon. Sheldon Cooper. Penny knows Sheldon. Sheldon is real. “I know that you’re hurting, but you shouldn’t drink so much-“

Is Sheldon for real? Penny drinks because booze is her only love; she jabs her long, pointed fingernail at Sheldon and the rubber doll deflates from the puncture, collapsing at Penny’s feet with a shriek and a stink of rubber. Penny blinks and looks around. No one noticed this; all are watching the bride and the groom.

Penny crumples the deflated rubber doll and throws it into a garbage bin, closing the lid. So much for Sheldon. He was real, a real doll, but it is time for Penny to move on.

Penny rides away to her apartment, unnoticed by anyone else.

 

2.

People across the hall are arguing. Penny’s head is hurting from the booze again. What are they arguing about? One man – Howard – is yelling at the other – Raj – that Raj does not love this Lakshmi woman, he is a free man, and Raj is yelling back that is none of Howard’s business, precisely, and then Raj’s sister joins the conversation…

Penny blinks and thinks that she is so happy that she is happy with – what? She looks at her bottle collection and thinks that either it should be bigger or there should not be one at all or that she is confused…

There is someone else in her apartment. Penny blinks and turns to face them. “Hi!” says a young woman her age. “I’m Lakshmi. Your ad said that you need a roommate-?”

“Yes please!” Penny asks nicely and does her best to win Lakshmi over without sounding too desperate.

Somehow it works. Lakshmi stays.

 

3.

Penny and Lakshmi are holding hands and giggling. Penny is so happy! In addition, sober! She is sober by default, of course, but she does not care. Her life is going places as her career takes off beyond bartender and waiter – into managerial position.

Some random thought about acting tries to flick across her mind, when who should sit next to them, but Farrah ‘call me Amy’ Fowler and her partner, What’s-Her-Name (it’s either Bernadette or Tubbo, and Penny just doesn’t care).

“…And so, lasses, we agreed,” Farrah Fowler says in that grand manner of hers. “Lakshmi and Bernadette will get pregnant first and Penelope with me – the next time!”

Penny opens her mouth to comment, when her brain realizes that it all makes perfect sense and so she agrees. She is so happy to have both a partner and friends! Squee!

 

4.

It’s Penelope ‘call me Penny’ (no one does) and Lakshmi, Farrah ‘call me Amy’ (no one does) and Bernadette ‘don’t call me Tubby’ (everyone does), and Priya and Leonard as a designated straight couple and they’re all talking about something or other, their mouths are making noises, their ears are hearing noises, everyone is buzzed, and Lakshmi is pregnant, and Bernadette is pregnant, and Priya is pregnant, and they’re talking about something or other, and-

There is a knock on the door.

“I’ll get it!” Penelope says airily, and bestrides like a colossus that she is to the door before Priya can.

The door opens. “Hi,” the man says on the other side. “I’m Stuart. I’m looking for Sheldon?”

Penelope blinks. “Excuse me?” The funny man does not make any sense. “Who are you looking for? Never mind, they are not there. Good-bye.” She closes the door.

The knocking continues.

Penelope and the others ignore it.

The knocking intensifies.

Penelope and the others still ignore the knocking.

The knocking becomes so loud that it cannot be ignored.

Penelope opens the door before anyone can stop her. She opens the door and she stands in their backyard looking up a tree where a bunch of woodpeckers is knocking on the tree trunk and other birds are waiting for scraps. It is annoying, but it is life.

“Problem?” someone asks; Penelope just points at the scene. “Just Stuart and his flock,” she elaborates and blinks. “Stuart is the local bird, not the tree.”

“No, the tree is Sheldon,” Lakshmi agrees.

A disposed deflated rubber doll comes to mind, but Penelope does not know what to think about it, and so she forgets.

The tree has a shapely trunk, anyhow.

 

5.

Penelope is lying on her bed, listening to her family sleep. The snores are musical, (in a manner of speaking), the noises outside – the cicadas and the crickets – also. The stars are twinkling, the suburbs are quiet, and Penelope is content.

The Fowlers’ house is to the left, the Hofstadters’ is to the right, and the sky is up above. Penelope tries to remember California rather than this place, and fails.

Or rather, she does succeed, for this, after all, is California – their California.

End

Comments? Criticisms?

New story - June 6

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, hence why I've been so quiet lately. Ah well, for a change, here's a new story of mine.

It was morning, the sky was clearing up, but the wind was blowing hard and strong and cold, even for early summer. John watched the mourning doves at his birdfeeder with a familiar, simmering irritation – why did he invest into this contraption anyhow? He did not want to remember right now, as the doves cooed and pecked at the scattered birdseed with an almost offensive leisure, their plump bodies almost an affront to his own taut nerves as they stored birdseed in their crops.

As a particularly corpulent bird hopped closer to the window, John turned away. Bloated, self-satisfied creatures, he thought, projecting all his irrational irritation onto their feathery forms. Where’s a hawk when you needed one? He got onto his feet and walked outside. Maybe elsewhere something better was going on?

 

 “Honestly, Rebecca, those tattoos are just… a lot,” Donna said, her voice dripping with an elegant disapproval that always grated. Rebecca, her arm a canvas of vibrant, swirling blues and greens, merely arched an eyebrow. Donna, emboldened, continued, “I mean, there’s subtle art, and then there’s… that.” She gestured vaguely at Rebecca’s forearm. Rebecca just smiled a slow, knowing curve of her lips. Then, with a theatrical flourish, Rebecca pushed up the sleeve of Donna’s own silk blouse. Beneath, a magnificent, intricate serpent-dragon, its scales shimmering with metallic thread, snaked from her shoulder to her wrist, each detail a testament to hours of meticulous, painful artistry, was connected to other tattoos, still hidden beneath Donna’s blouse. Rebecca’s earlier ink looked like a child’s crayon drawing next to Donna’s masterpiece. Donna’s face, usually so composed, went slack with panic. “Where, where did they come from?” she twitched as she turned to Rebecca, because the latter was the closest. “Rebecca, this isn’t me, this isn’t me, and you know it!” Rebecca, who carefully covered her own arm with her own sleeve, said nothing. To be honest, she felt rather jealous of the older woman’s tattoos, now that she saw them.

Across the room, Anna, a friend of Donna’ began her own verbal assault, thinly disguised as a concerned speech. The bohemian lifestyle of Jenna, (Donna’s daughter), her endless backpacking trips, her "spiritual journeys" – it was all just so pointless, according to Anna. Jenna was not a child or even a teen anymore; she had to settle down; whether here, in her hometown, or elsewhere was another story. Clearly, Jenna seemed happier abroad, so perhaps it was time to move on and stop giving her mother more grey hairs?

However, as she began to speak, Jenna carefully inserted herself into the rant, recounting a story of how Anna helped people in the past, and what a shame that people started to ignore Anna now that the latter has aged a bit and no longer looked as flamboyant as before. Looking into Jenna’s eyes shining with a genuine compassion, Anna’s planned words crumbled. Jenna’s empathy was a force, a warmth that Anna, with her cold judgments, was missing lately. Anna found herself not criticizing, but asking questions, truly listening for the first time, as the two women sat down and talked. They had their differences, mental and physical, yes, but there were similarities too – both women shared a lean body plan of those who exercise a lot and do plenty of physical activities, and their faces showed the same tan – of those who spent a lot of time outdoors; honestly, Anna looked quite good for her age, as Jenna pointed out…

Anna ended up hiring Jenna as her receptionist, and never regretted it. Donna never really realized it – her own friendship with Anna rather faded, but her own hairdo now sparkled to match her tattoos.

It helped, in a small way, with her identity crisis.

 

The heat was a living thing in the Balkan Mountains, baking the dry earth to a cracking crisp. An extra-large and powerful Vipera ammodytes, its horn-like snout twitching, slithered across a sun-baked rock, its patterns a perfect camouflage against the speckled stone. Down, down, towards the shade of a fig tree, it moved its intentions purely predatory, and its existence utterly indifferent to human concerns. There, a couple of little owls made their nest in a tree hollow – it was dark and comfortable, but also too close to the ground. The owlets and their parents did not realize this, but the world did not care.

A trio of owlets were in the hollow, warming each other, waiting for their parents to come with their regularly scheduled meal. The noise outside could have told them that that would never happen, but the owlets were too little, and too sleepy to realize this.

…Few hours later, when their calls for food became truly desperate – they were that young anyhow – a couple of park rangers found them and got them out of the hollow into an appropriate holding container. They were given a small mouse each, and immediately relaxed and huddled together, as they did not know much about the world.

The snake was long gone, digesting its own meal in peace.

 

Miles away, off the coast of Turkey, a sleek, grey shadow cut through the turquoise water. A shortfin mako shark, a ghost of the deep, patrolled the ancient currents, its primeval instincts honed over millions of years. A tourist boat, oblivious, chugged towards a picturesque cove, its passengers laughing, their world a million miles from the silent, powerful hunter beneath the waves.

The mako’s nose twitched as some of the tourists made all the right, or wrong, splashes and other noises to attract it. Slowly, circling, it began to surface. Another mako, a younger one, zoomed by, almost hitting the first shark, who began to chase it. Things could have gone in any direction, when a bait ball of sardines or similar fish appeared from the blue. The sharks stopped their confrontation and began to hunt instead, keeping a distance between themselves, but getting along well enough, even though one of them was visibly bigger and older than the other one…

 

John found himself sitting on his couch in the living room, an unfinished bottle of beer in his hand and a bunch of forgotten and faded memories and dreams in his head. He vaguely remembered Jenna, now handling a mid-life crisis by shedding her metaphorical skin, as well as Anna and Donna, who found their home in each other; he remembered the Balkans and the Turkish coast, but could not make heads or tails of those memories.

He looked outside. The doves were gone, the birdfeeder was mostly empty. He will try different birdfeed next time.

 End - and what do you think? Please let me know, because real life sucks.

Herons, a fanfic - Nov 15

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so here's a brief Tolkien-based drabble instead: 

Across the multiverse…

Once upon a time, there was a war of wrath.

And the Valar burned the strongholds of Morgoth in the North to the ground.

And little was left of it, but ashes. …Ok, ashes, and the survivors, fleeing to all the four corners of the Middle-Earth.

And the Valar, the Maiar, and the rest of their allies were about to pursue them, when something else arose from the ashes: a flock of birds, long-necked, long-limbed, long-beaked, with large wings, clad in feathers of ash-grey. The birds circled once, twice, three times over the remnants of Morgoth’s fallen fortress and flew away, across the Middle-Earth, for they were the first herons of this world.

The Valar and the Maiar, (in particular, the Maia who would be later known as Radagast the Brown), just stared at the open-mouthed and open-eyed, for this was the first good news since Morgoth was defeated for good now. And as they stared and discussed among themselves the new development, someone else made good on their escape – Sauron, (of course).

“Well, this was a lark,” he thought to himself, as he made his own way across Middle-Earth, to his own secret hideout, (unknown to anyone else, good or bad). “Now it’s off to execute my next plan – one to take over the world!

End