on a blanket of clouds

moonsbreath @ 2007-03-25T17:38:00

2007-03-25T15:38:53Z

I wrote this last night after an especially frustrating study group meeting, so it's rather short.
The idea came from a meme in which I was given the title and fandom of a fanfic I had not written. So, I blame jaydenrioblue and corrrvid for sending this plotbunny my way.

Now, on to the story.

Title: Gravity only dictates how fast we're falling
Universe: "Stand By Me"/"The Body"
Disclaimer: Chris and Gordie (c) Stephen King. Laws of gravitation (c) Isaac Newton.
Rating: G ... it's slash but that doesn't earn it a higher rating ;)
Summary: Gordie tries to help Chris understand Newton's laws of gravitation.

Gravity only dictates how fast we're falling

Lex I

Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.

“I’m hopeless.” He threw down his pencil and pressed his hands to his eyes.
“No, you are not, it just takes some time.”
“It takes you ages to make me understand this. Time you should use for reading and studying for yourself.”
I could not help the sigh that escaped my lips. “We have been through this. I want to help you, man. So let me do this.”
“This is stuff we covered … when, last year? Fuck, how am I supposed to catch up if I take this long to understand even these basic things?”
“Chris.” I reached over and pulled the hands from his face. He looked at me, his eyes so red and tired I felt sorry for having to make him study. At times like this, I often wished I could allow him to rest. To sleep and forget for a while how hard he had to struggle every day, facing teachers and kids who mocked him, and every night facing books containing an abundance of knowledge he felt no hope of ever getting into his head. But then I remembered what he had said one night in the woods, when we were camping and the two of us the only ones awake: “I wish I could go someplace where nobody knows me.” To leave Castle Rock, to get out of the mill’s shadow, he had to be set into motion by an external force, just like the object at rest in Newton’s first law. Once set into motion, he’d move on and it would hopefully carry him far away from mean teachers, his abusive father and his bad boy reputation. It was all I could do to give him this impuls. I hoped it would be enough.
“Let’s not waste time discussing that you think you can’t do this. Let’s just try it again, ok?”
He took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes briefly and turned back to the book and his notepad.

Lex II

Mutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressae, et fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimitur.

“If you draw a line parallel to the first vector, like this,” I drew the line, “and one parallel to the second vector, like this,” I drew a second line, “and then connect the point that represents the object with where the two lines meet, you get the resulting force.”
He stared blankly at the drawing. I was worried he had dozed off with open eyes. “Umh, can you imagine why that is?”
He sighed. “Because the laws of nature have decided to torture me by following rules featuring little arrows?”
I suppressed a smile, stood up and took a step away from the desk.. “Come on, stand up and give me your hands.”
He looked confused but did as I asked him to. “If I pull at your right arm in this direction and at your left arm in that direction,” he made a step towards me in order not to stumble, “in which direction did your body just move?”
“Towards you?”
“Exactly, because that is the direction of the resulting force. And the length of the arrow, representing that resulting force, tells you how strong it is.”
A smile crossed his lips. He still stood very close and it amazed me every time anew how a smile could light up his face, no matter how worn out he was. It was mesmerizing.
“Why couldn’t you be my physics teacher of the last two years?”
“I think as your teacher, I could have gotten into trouble for demonstrating Newton’s second law on a student.”
“Probably. But you would have made physics a hell of a lot more fun than Mr. Nolan did.”
“Well, I might become a teacher one day … I dunno.” I turned away, suddenly feeling giddy from the proximity. “Here, let me show you how you can calculate-“
A hand on my arm pulled me back around.

Lex III

Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.

There are moments of such utter awareness that it’s like you have walked through life needing glasses without knowing, and suddenly, when the lenses slide into place, you see everything so much clearer than you ever imagined they could be.
That was one of these moments, when Chris pulled me back around to him, standing so close his face was out of focus and I felt the need to close my eyes. At that moment, I was aware of a thousand little things. Of my feet and my weight on them while they were almost touching Chris’ at the toes. Of my rumpled shirt, too big for my skinny body I had begged for years to grow and finally shed its fragility that had made me a target for bullies since first grade. Of a cool night breeze ghosting over my face through the half-open window. Of Chris’ hands on my upper arms, holding me carefully as if he was afraid I would run but didn’t dare to really hold me fast in case I did want out of this.
I could feel the warmth seeping out of him and into me as I was breathing in the same air that had just passed his lips, letting it out only to mix with the air flooding back into him, like an ocean wave trapped between us. Until the space was closed.
It felt like stepping off a cliff and allowing gravity to work its way, like taking the sweet, sweet fall into the bottomless unknown.
All forces occur in pairs… yeah, as a teacher, I would definitely have gotten into trouble for this demonstration of Newton’s third law.

***

1. An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force. An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force.
2. The rate of change of momentum of a body is proportional to the resultant force acting on the body and is in the same direction.
3. All forces occur in pairs, and these two forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.

Stand By Me fanfiction

2007-01-21T21:34:36Z

Title: In A Savage Land
Universe: "Stand By Me"/"The Body"
Disclaimer: It all belongs to the genius of Stephen King.
Rating: PG-13 for language and some violence, to be on the safe side, but nothing too graphic
Author’s Note: This turned out to be closer to the novella “The Body”, but still understandable if you only know the movie “Stand By Me”. Just keep in mind that there are some small differences between movie and book. And knowledge of the first part isn't bad either.
Summary: Sequel to “Of Sinking or Swimming”, Gordie’s POV

In A Savage Land

Have gun will travel, reads the card of a man
A knight without armor in a savage land
His fast gun hire, heeds the calling wind
A soldier of fortune, is a man called Paladin

Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam
Paladin, Paladin, far, far from home

I

It was about a year after we left Castle Rock when the past caught up with us.

He stood there, in his leather jacket, cigarette stump between his fingers, a worn out expression on his pale features. It had been a year since I last saw him. Half a life-time, it seemed. Like a ghost from a former life.
He didn’t talk much. I think he couldn’t really believe it himself or refused to let it sink in completely. The four of us and the trip down the tracks, that had always been sacred, sealed and protected inside our minds, and even though we had drifted apart, that had been a link, an untouchable truth, maybe one of the many anchors of our souls that still connected us.
He told me with long pauses and like he had to get every word from somewhere he’d like to have left it for good. There had been a fire. A large drunken party. Someone had fallen asleep with a cigarette still burning in their hand. It had cost the life of five people.
Vernon Tessio was dead. He had not turned twenty and Vern was dead.
I felt like I had been dropped into ice-cold water, going numb within seconds.
You think after having lost a brother and a father and after having seen a dead kid when you were twelve, you should be used to this kind of news.
Let me tell you this: you never get used to it.
After he left, I kept wondering if he had really been there. It seemed unlikely, that ghost from the past, sitting on a chair in my dorm room in Orono, talking about the death of a friend…
The only proof that it had not been a dream was a piece of paper with a date and a time, written in Teddy’s shaky handwriting.

A week later, I stepped off the train at Castle Rock station. The wind blew dust and dirt around my shoes while I made my way to the house I grew up in.
My mom had not found it in her to sell it after I moved away. She said it was her only connection to dad and Denny, the only touchable memory she had of happier times. To me, the house would always be a reminder of death. I guess everyone deals with their grief in their own way.
She must have waited behind the window for she opened the door before I had crossed the front lawn. We hugged on the porch for a long time. Her hand on the back of my head brought up so many childhood memories, I almost felt like crying. Her hair was turning grey and there were crow’s feet around her eyes, but the flowery dress, the woollen jacket, that faint smell of lavender soap … that was so … home, I felt like a little boy again. Like it had been before Denny died and everything turned darker.
We sat in the kitchen and talked for a long time. When I went to my room, the sun was deep in the sky.

A knock on my door brought me out of a light doze.
As I opened the door, I briefly wondered how Teddy had managed to find him and pass the bad news. It wasn’t easy to track Chris Chambers down. He had moved a couple of times since he went to Portland, from dorm to dorm, from flat to flat, never staying too long in one place. In a way, he had always been on the run, even as a kid, only that he could not really get away when we still lived in Castle Rock. Wherever he went, his bad reputation had followed him, into every new class, with every new teacher. Now, he enjoyed not being recognized, enjoyed being the new guy who just moved in and who nobody knew much about. I think even his family didn’t quite know where he was living at the moment.
He leaned on the window frame, looking outside at the darkening sky, while I stretched out on my bed again.
He didn’t say anything, just took out his pack of cigarettes and offered it to me. I took one, absentmindedly turning it between my fingers while he opened the window. The chilly air hit my arms and made me shiver slightly.
We smoked in silence. Like we had done when my brother died and when my father died. That was what Chris did: never trying to find words to express consolation. Accepting the fact that there simply are no words for such occasions.
I watched him sitting in the open window frame. The hands holding the cigarette. The shoulders that always looked a little stiff as if he was in constant defence mode. He probably had to be while being in one town with his brother and father.
The familiar face, so closed up all the time, apart from very rare occasions. When we were kids, he hid behind a quick smile and a joke. I don’t think many people looked close enough to see the shadow of worries behind his eyes.
I had visited him once in Portland. He lived in a rat hole then and worked night shifts at a ‘Drive In’ but his smile was back. A real smile, not the one he used to hide behind. He looked happier than he ever had in Castle Rock.
“Have you been to your folk’s yet?” I asked quietly.
He flicked the ashes of his cigarette out of the window and looked down at his knees drawn up against the window frame.
“I came here first.”
I rose onto my elbows. “Heard anything?”
He looked out the window. “Called ahead. Mom said, dad would be at the bar tonight.“
“Wanna stay here?”
The edges of his mouth twitched into a smile, probably remembering the offer from countless occasions in the past. “Thanks, man, but my mom made me promise to at least stop by today. Should be going soon.”
“Want me to walk you there? Bit of fresh air would do me good.”
He hesitated for a second, then nodded.
I threw the remains of my cigarette out the window, got my jacket and waited for him to get into motion. He did reluctantly.

We walked the streets of Castle Rock, side by side, like we had never been away. Small towns seem to lead an existence of their own, one that doesn’t follow the rules of time of the outside world.
The last time we had been out on these streets at night together was after our prom. After we had taken our dates home and handed them back to their over-protective parents, we had strolled through the quiet town. Not breaking the silence with many words. We had known that this was goodbye. Memories had flooded both our minds and when one of us chuckled at the thought of a spectacular prank we had committed, we shared a short “Do you remember …?” before falling back into relaxed silence.
A mile outside of town, we had sat down in a field and watched the stars.
“Do you remember Ray Brower?” never passed our lips. Of course we remembered. And we always would. The summer that marked the end of our childhood, the day we had seen the dead body of a kid our age, his unseeing eyes, his pale face in the undergrowth.

A few days later, we had taken the train out of Castle Rock, to separate cities. We had both been accepted to the University of Maine, but he went to Portland campus, while I headed for Orono.
I had woken from nightmares almost every night for several weeks. We talked on the phone every other week, but it took me some time to get used to not being able to keep an eye on him, to check if he was okay.
But whenever we talked on the phone, he sounded so happy I managed to not worry for a few days. We talked about our College courses, our professors, other students, jobs… but not so much about Castle Rock.

We reached the corner where we had parted every day on our way home. He looked down the street towards the house of his family. Sometimes, the words “I don’t wanna go home” had been written all over his face when we had said goodbye for the day. And I always wished I could say “You don’t have to.” but we were children then. He had not been welcome in my parents’ house as long as my father lived. And it would have made things worse for his mother and younger siblings, to have to deal with a drunken husband and father without Chris taking the blows to defend them.
We stopped in front of the Chambers’ house. It lay quiet in the night, just a few lights on behind the windows.
Most of the time, Chris didn’t let show how much it got to him. But now he stood there on the pavement, looking windswept and beaten as if all the memories of past hidings were coming back and threatened to choke him.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “See you later?”
He gave me a forced smile. “Yeah, if my mom ever lets go of me again.” Then he started walking up to the porch.
I watched him walk away and couldn’t help thinking that he looked smaller in this town than he actually was.

He showed up only an hour later. The clicking sound of pebbles against my window was so familiar that I half-expected to see his twelve year old self when I looked out.
He climbed up the tree as if he really was twelve again, swung his legs through the window and landed safely on his feet.
“How was it?” I asked, carefully scanning his face and arms for injuries.
“Dad wasn’t home yet.”
“And your family?”
“Mom has sent the others to sleep-over at some friends’.”
“And what about her?”
Chris shook his head, looking so defeated I wanted nothing more than to say or do something helpful, but my mind came up with nothing appropriate.
“It was strange to see Teddy again.” he said.
It took me a second to pick up on the subject change. “Yeah. I think it really got to him.”
Chris shrugged and sat down on my bed. “I guess it’s bound to do so. Just sucks … losing your best friend to a fire… Man!” He shook his head.
I sat down next to him and watched him from the side.
“Falling asleep with your cigarette still burning… sounds so much like Vern. He really wasn’t the brightest kid in town, was he?” He made a pause. “You know … I really liked him.”
“Yeah, me too.” I said quietly.
“Think he ever found out about his pennies?”
The thought of the pennies made me smile. I shook my head.
A comfortable silence settled over us, both going through memories of the time when the four of us had been a gang.
We stretched out on my bed and I started to drift off to sleep, lulled by the familiar warmth next to me that I had missed for a long time.
“Gordie?” Chris asked softly.
“Hm?”
“Promise you won’t fall asleep while smoking? Ever?”
“Hmhm.”
“Good.”

The funeral was small and simple. The priest said a few words, the coffin was lowered into the grave, then everyone dropped a shovel of earth down on it and expressed their condolences to the family.
Teddy was there, wearing what was probably his finest suit. His thick glasses couldn’t hide the fact that he was blinking away tears.
When it was his turn to stand at the grave and say his last goodbye, he lifted his hand and dropped something else. Something that made a metallic “clink” when it hit the coffin’s surface.
I made a fist around the penny in my pocket.

After the ceremony, Teddy came over to us, his shoulders slumped and his feet barely lifting while he walked. The wind ruffled his hair and revealed the hearing aid that had been his companion since childhood.
“Thanks for coming, guys. I know Vern would have appreciated it.”
He turned and looked at the slowly scattering guests. The Tessios were still standing at the open grave, incapable of letting go just yet.
“He never got why we didn’t last.”
I turned to him, frowning.
Teddy continued. “The four of us, I mean. He thought we’d last forever. You know, he never was the brightest kid of Castle Rock.”
“What are you talking about, man?” asked Chris.
Teddy turned to him with an unreadable expression. “You got out of here. Lucky Chambers and Smart-Ass Lachance.”’
Without a further word, he walked away.
My mouth suddenly felt very dry.

That night I jerked awake from an all too vivid dream featuring Vern, engulfed in flames, smoking a cigarette like nothing was wrong, and Teddy asking me why I had let the two of them drown. I pressed my hands to my face, trying to shut out the images.
I got up, careful not to wake Chris, and opened the window, breathing the fresh air to wash away the strange feeling in my stomach. Too awake to go back to sleep, I sat in my open window for a while, letting my thoughts drift through the night.
Being here always made me feel closer to my childhood. All those summers under starry skies, a bottle of coke in hand, fooling around with my friends. Fooling around with Chris…
I watched him sleep on my bed, one arm under his head, one across his stomach. Tomorrow, we’d go back to our separate cities, to our separate lives. We would let go again.
Yes, I made my choice. And I would not regret it in a thousand years.
Everything would have been perfect if there had not been the image of Teddy and Vern in my head, looking sadly at me while they silently slipped under water and out of sight.
Teddy’s words had uncovered the seed of doubt in my mind and now that it was revealed, it was growing. The doubt if I really had had to choose. If it had not been possible to save all of them.
Reason reminded me how much of an effort it had been to get Chris through the College courses. Could I have done the same for Teddy and Vern? Reason said no. But it wasn’t able to shut out the nagging feeling of guilt that was slowly building.

II

In 1967, I saved up enough money to buy an old Buick and drove down to Portland for Chris’ birthday.
You should have seen his face when he walked out of the lecture hall and saw me standing there. Like Christmas was a few months early.
We went out with a few of his friends, having a few beers at a bar and playing pool.
Chris never touched beer when he was a kid, even when we hawked a few bottles from one kid’s old man. He ignored the jokes and being called a pussy. And he still did while he took a sip from his coke, waiting for his turn at the pool table.
He drove on the way back. The four bottles I had emptied were enough to leave me in a warm and fuzzy state I called slightly tipsy and he called something else. He led the way down the stairs to the pisshole someone had rented him as a flat, one hand always ready to steady me when I swooned, making me lean on the wall while he got out the keys and opened the door.
My head hit a naked light bulb that was hanging from the ceiling and made it swing wildly, which I found incredibly fascinating at the time. Chris had to guide me to his bed like a child, making me sit down and crouching before me to take off my shoes.
Breaking through the alcohol-induced haze, a déjà vu hit me.
“This happened before,” I said, careful to not slur the words.
“What?”
“Only with places reversed.”
He pulled off my second shoe and pulled back the blanket for me.
“You should sleep, Gordie.”
I reached out and touched his shoulder. “Your arm was dislodged.”
He took my hand and held it for a second, smiling. “You took care of me and I’m returning the favour. Sleep well.”
He turned to go for the couch as his bed didn’t have room for two, but stopped when I didn’t let go of his hand.
“What is it, Gordie?”
“No one’s called me Gordie in years. Not even mom. Only you.”
He smiled and ruffled my hair, slung an arm around my head and half-wrestled me down onto the bed. “Sleep now, you drunk moron!”
I started missing the warmth of his body the instant he drew back. From beneath heavy lids, I watched him walk around his flat before he settled down on the couch.
“Chris?”
“Hm?”
“Happy Birthday.”

In 1968, I pointed a gun at a living person to save my best friend.

Eyeball joined his older brother in prison for stabbing a guy in a bar fight. The night the news came out, Chris showed up out of the blue in front of my door, looking like a beaten dog.
The next morning, we went to Castle Rock. Chris feared his mom was losing it and his dad was making it worse than ever. I saw the thoughts of his father flutter over his face in light shades of green, manifesting themselves in physical sickness.
I stopped the car in front of the Chambers’ house.
“Want me to come with you?”
Chris shook his head. “It’s okay, really. Just wanna check on them. See you later at your place.”
I tried to tell myself that he was older now, that he could handle this now.
I watched him walk towards the house and vanish behind the door before I started the engine and drove to my mom’s house.

Three hours I managed to wait before I got nervous and went to check on Chris. The house looked quiet but I decided to wait for him nonetheless.
My mind came up with a lot of explanations for his long stay at his parents’ place. He had always been good at putting things back together when they fell apart. Especially people.
None of the explanations seemed to suffice. My heart kept beating hard and slowly in my chest that felt all too tight for comfort.

When I heard something smash, I was out of the car, up the porch and through the front door before I could stop to think.
Mr. Chambers was standing in the kitchen, bent over his son, kicking and beating the living crap out of him, screaming at the top of his lungs if Chris thought he was something better, that he’d beat the College attitude out of him, that they should have sent Chris to jail, not his brothers…
The words bore themselves into my mind. Everything that had ever caused Chris pain seemed to ball up and concentrate in that one person beating him now.
I could never remember later on how I managed to find the gun. It cannot have taken me more than a minute to get it, load it and be back in the kitchen, all the time hearing the verbal humiliations that were raining down on Chris alongside the blows.
I only remember standing there, screaming at Mr. Chambers to stop, though he would not until I gave a warning shot into the wall.
The silence that followed was deafening.
“Move away from him.”
Either the bullet or my suddenly calm voice must have been very convincing, for Mr. Chambers backed away, his face still contorted in anger.
Then I was dragging Chris to the car. I went back for his mother and sisters who had locked themselves in a room upstairs. Mrs. Chambers took her husband’s car, the girls silently crying in the backseat.
I waited until they were gone before getting into the driver’s seat and turning the key.
I tried to talk to Chris on the way to the hospital but didn’t get much out of him. He mostly stared back at me like he didn’t know me which scared the shit out of me.
When I stopped in front of the ER entrance, he buried his bruised face in his hands and didn’t move until the paramedics almost lifted him out of the seat and wheeled him off.
I parked the car, then stood there, feeling lost for a second. A mother with her child walked past me and quickened her step, while the little boy was openly staring at me. It took me a moment to realize that my shirt was splattered with Chris’ blood. A wave of nausea hit me and I went in search for the men’s room.

After an hour of not being able to decide between senseless pacing and sitting on a hard plastic chair, I was searched out by one of the nurses.
“Mr. Lachance, Sir? Some men from the police would like to talk to you.”

Over a cup of watery coffee from the vending machine, they took my statement. Routine, they said. The neighbour had heard screaming and a gunshot and called the police.
I briefly wondered if Mr. Chambers would press charges. Then I decided that I really did not care at the moment.
They asked my name, my address, what had happened … then suddenly, it was over.
“We need you to come down to the station within the next few days to sign your statement.”
I nodded, shook hands and sank back into the plastic chair, closing my eyes.

They kept Chris in over night for further observation. He had a concussion, two broken ribs and countless bruises all over him.
They let me see him briefly, telling me to keep it short as he was on a dose of painkillers that would make him fall asleep any second.
I didn’t manage more than a “Hey.” and squeezing his hand.
His eyes were glazed over from the drugs, he just looked at me and there was something so incredibly sad in his gaze, I couldn’t say another word. Half a minute later, he was out.

They let me take him home the next day after the police had interviewed him.
He didn’t say a word when he slowly made his way to the car and got in, not even when we left Castle Rock behind and headed for Portland. He just stared out of the window at the landscape passing by.
I tried talking to him a few times without success.
Chris had always been the one to guide and make decisions, self-assured and reliable. It was creeping me out to see him like this. Not questioning what was going on, not really reacting to his surroundings. I think I could have driven us down to Mexico and he wouldn’t have questioned it.
He let me help him out of the car and down the stairs to his flat. He didn’t protest when I took off his jacket and made him sit on the bed. When I pulled off his shoes, I looked up at his face, hoping to see some reaction, but his expression was blank. Trying to tell myself that his silence was probably due to the painkillers and nothing to worry about, I got him a glass of water from the kitchenette. He took his pills and closed his eyes.

During the night, I woke up from retching noises coming from the bathroom. I left the couch and knocked on the bathroom door. When I didn’t get an answer, I entered.
Chris was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall next to the toilet. I tried to ignore the pungent smell, opened the small window that was high up in the wall, then wetted a towel in the sink and handed it to Chris.
He was still shaking from the sickness, but he took the towel and pressed it to his face.
I leaned against the wall and slid down until I sat next to him.
“It’s just the concussion. Last time was the same.”
It was muffled by the towel, but it were the first words he had spoken to me since the incident.
The silence stretched out again. I took a breath.
“Are you mad at me?”
He let the towel sink and looked at me. “Am I mad at you?” His voice broke a little at the last two words. “You point a gun at a man, after invading his home, even fire a shot. If my father decides to press charges, you’ll need a damn good lawyer. Damn, Gordie, we’re not twelve anymore, this wasn’t a game!” He didn’t sound angry, just very tired. Maybe it would have been easier if he had been mad at me because then I wouldn’t have felt bad for my own rage.
“No, we are not twelve anymore. For once I was not standing by and watching you being the punching bag for your abusive father.”
“The courts don’t like setting foot in family affairs. It won’t be about abuse or defence or whatever you think this was about, it will be about you, the gun and the bullet in the wall.”
“It was a warning shot.”
“Oh yeah? And how do you plan to prove that?”
“You were there.”
“God, Gordie, I was barely aware you were even there. For all I know, the two of you could have been dancing around the room.”
“So? It would be his word against mine. The word of a known alcoholic who abuses his wife and children against the word of a student without a single black mark on his record. Who do you think a jury would believe?” I nudged him very gently with my shoulder. “Who of us was studying law again?”
I knew I had gotten through to him. Whatever irrational thoughts had led him to believe that he had caused the mess I was in – if I was really in it – I must have cracked them. But it didn’t make him look happier.
He drew up his legs and wrapped his arms around himself protectively.
“You always get into trouble because of me.”
I put an arm around his shoulders. “And has that ever stopped me?”
“No. That’s what worries me.”

The concussion was gone after two weeks, his ribs and the bruises took longer. I stuck around as long as my studies would allow it. When I set off back to Orono, Chris walked me to the car and kept standing on the sidewalk when I drove away. In the rear view mirror, he got smaller and smaller until I had to turn a corner.

III

The day Chris and I met had been in early spring. I remember the mud on his shoes as he walked up to pull a kid off me that was taller and stronger and was trying to squeeze the air out of me. The bully went sailing to the floor a few feet away, then a hand appeared in my line of view.
I blinked.
“You wanna stay down there?”
I blinked again, then pulled myself together, took the offered hand and was brought back to my feet.
Being faced with two opponents, one of them not as scrawny as he usually liked his victims, the bully walked away. But not without insulting us and our mothers first.
I got one of Chris’ trademark half-smiles. The first of a lot more.

I watched Chris walk into class covered in bruises countless times. And he never stopped smiling at me, he never let it bring him down, but how I wished I had been tall and strong enough to pull his father off him like he had pulled the bully off me. All I had been able to do was help him to get out of his father’s reach. It had taken a lot of time and effort. And apparently, it had not been enough.
I wish I could say I regret doing something as horrible as threatening someone’s life. But truth is, when I pointed the gun at Chris’ father, it felt like I should have done that a long time ago. It caused a lot of trouble and I had to attend a hearing to explain myself, but as I had predicted, the judge dismissed the case. The ER staff at the hospital gave a written report on the injuries Chris sported when I brought him in. The neighbour who had called the police made a statement on the way Mr. Chambers seemed to run his family.

Chris tried to persuade his mother to file divorce and move to Portland with him. He would have given up his studies to work and provide for the family.
She didn’t leave her husband. I think she knew she would have ruined her only decent son’s life if she took his offer. Or maybe the official reason she gave Chris - that she still loved his father - was true. Strange, how much you are willing to endure for love, isn’t it?

When I walked out of the hearing, Chris was waiting for me, leaning against the side of my Buick.
“You okay?” he asked when I walked up to him.
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
Chris’ smile suddenly froze and I turned to look.
Mr. Chambers and his wife came down the steps of the courthouse. He looked red in the face and she was trying to calm him.
He spotted us. “You!”
He advanced on me and before I knew what was happening, Chris had stepped in front of me.
“Dad, stop! Now!”
“Threatening me in my own house! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, YOU LITTLE FAG!!” he was screaming at me now.
“Please, Bill!” Mrs. Chambers was almost crying, trying to pull him away from us.
“Oh, I know what you are! Tryin’ to turn my son into a goddamn fag!!” Spit flew from his mouth.
“Dad, if you don’t walk away now, I’ll go right in and file a case against you.” Chris voice was so calm there was no doubt he was dead serious.
His father took several deep breaths but in the end, he obviously figured it wouldn’t be wise to beat up his son in front of the courthouse. Mrs. Chambers finally managed to pull him away and to their car.
Only when they were gone did Chris turn to me. I opened the car door for him, then got into the driver’s seat next to him. It was then that I noticed that he was shaking.
I reached out and took his hand to squeeze it.
It had been ‘sink or swim’ for so many years. I thought we had managed to reach the shore when we got out of Castle Rock but only to walk out into a savage land, knights without armour, without any means to defend ourselves except each other.
The past has the habit of following you, and no matter what you do, you cannot cut your roots completely. They can still nourish or poison you, even after years and across great distances.
It’s like you never really stop swimming all your life. You can drown any second, be pulled under water by people taking advantage of you or even people who only want your best. On the way, you might see your friends drown and have to decide to swim on or sink with them, to try to save them or let them drown. You might regret your choices later on but it’s those decisions that rule your life. All you can hope for is someone who risks drowning to pull you back up when all your strength leaves you and you are about to sink.
He looked up and managed a smile. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever for?”
He made a sound as if he wanted to laugh but didn’t have the strength to. “You’re unbelievable, man!”
“I’m trying to be.”
Chris shook his head. “Gordie?”
“Yeah?”
And then he did something that felt just like the moment you solve a complicated math problem and can underline the result. Or like stepping out of a crowded place and being able to breathe again. Or like standing out in the rain and getting soaking wet but not being able to stop laughing because you suddenly realize you haven’t felt so alive in years. And maybe all of them and none of them.

The End

moonsbreath @ 2006-12-03T15:39:00

2006-12-03T13:39:49Z

original short story

2006-11-01T13:34:36Z

Hey everyone. I found the beginning of a short story in between a bunch of older files last night and just couldn't stop writing. This is not beta-ed (if you volunteer, I'd be very grateful) and I'm not sure if I am 100% happy with it but I'd like to hear your opinion.

The Visit

The light a tad too bright for comfort. Gloved hands stuffed into your pockets, the ends of your scarf whipping about, moved by a wind so cold it feels like a knife. Eyes turned to the ground, following traces others left. You blink.
It’s been almost eight months since you left. Everything looks even smaller than you remember. The snow covered trees try to hide the buildings from view without success. Dark windows stare out into a sleeping world.
If he sat there by the river, hunched over on the bench beneath the now barren willow tree … if you had the luck of meeting him alone just once ...
The river carries some broken shards of ice. It’s too thin yet to carry anyone. Maybe it will be that way for the rest of the winter.
You turn and look at me, smiling. You say that the snowflakes chasing each other in the air always reminded you of dancers in the sky. Or butterflies fighting to stay airborne, fighting to stay alive. I like the image of dancers better.
I wonder if you had chosen to stay if things had come different. If not so many bad memories attached themselves to this place. This town always seemed a bit too small for you. Too many familiar faces, too many rumours ... yes, far too much talking.
How do you go on living in a town where everybody knows your greatest sin?
Well, you just didn’t. You were out of here the moment they handed over the graduation papers. I remember how you stood in front of my house, the car with all your stuff and your father behind the wheel waiting, the motor running. You said something about moving to your grandparents for a while, at least until you found something to do with your life. You didn’t even wait until after the big party. I guess not many people expected you to be there anyway. You have not been much of a party person ever since.
You look different as we walk down the riverside to the station. Hair much shorter, different colour. Not enough to fool anyone. I can tell that you feel the looks. You once asked me if I knew the feeling of wanting to take off your face like a shirt spotted with dirt, and just put on a new one. I couldn’t say I did.
You ask if I ever went back to our old school or met some folks from our grade and I realize that I haven’t. Strange, isn’t it? That you think you will miss something before you actually lose it. But when it’s gone you find that it didn’t mean so much to you after all. I’ve never been one of those who think those times were a blast, but all in all, they didn’t seem half bad. Now that they are well behind me, I cannot say I care much for the good old times. I cannot tell how you must feel about it. I guess you have made your peace with not being able to go back. What’s gone is gone, however painful the loss might have been.
We come across a few frozen puddles and start sliding. For a few minutes, we are back in 1994, when life was still okay and sliding over puddles could keep us occupied for ages. Back then, there were three of us. Now it’s down to two little Indians. And within the hour, I’ll be walking home on my own.
He doesn’t talk to me much either anymore. I guess because I refused to turn my back on you. Sometimes, I meet him at the gas station. He works there now. Kinda ironic, really.
I admit, I considered taking you there. Just for a second. Just to see how he’d react. If after all this time, he’d finally come to his senses. But I guess shock therapy cannot be relied on. And the additional damage it might cause you keeps me from doing anything stupid. It’s enough to live with your past without having your face rubbed into it.
Didn’t I just say I didn’t care much for the good old times? Well, I guess that’s not as true as I wished it to be. I still regret the end of our good old times. Deep down, I guess I always thought we’d celebrate the end of school together, party all night and on the height of blissful drunkenness promise each other to always stay in touch. Strange how you see your friends grow up next to you, know who they had crushes on, know who they couldn’t stand, and how you start believing that it will always be like this. I guess, I always saw us still hanging out together with thirty and way beyond. Until the day when everything changed. Didn’t see that one coming, I admit.
Oh, I hated you for it. Everyone hated you for it.
We turn into the street to the station. Some cars rush by, turning the snow more and more into mud. You say you hope the snow will last a few more days, how you love the fact that it covers everything and makes it almost unrecognizable. And you pull the scarf a little tighter around your neck.
I ask when you will come to visit again. You just shrug your shoulders as we enter the station. Suddenly, I doubt you will ever come back here again. Maybe this visit just derived from your wish to say a proper goodbye. Not like on that day in late April. I guess you felt that you owed me that much.
A few days after the incident, you called me. When I heard your voice, almost breaking when you said your name, like you didn’t believe I’d recognize your voice anymore, I just couldn’t hate you. I didn’t hang up on you like he did every single time you tried to talk.
We head for your platform. I notice how you look around as though you hope to see his face in the crowd. Maybe you still long for that little bit of absolution before you leave this place for good.
Your train arrives. You say we’ll keep in touch. I doubt we will. But I return your hug nonetheless, silently wishing you all the best. The doors bang shut, the wheels start turning. You are gone.
I turn to leave and for a moment, I think I see him standing on the other side of the tracks, waiting in a crowd of other travelers. I shake my head and start down the stairs. What difference would it make? Even if he was there, he would never have given you what you needed.
The day you left town, you tried to talk to him one last time. When he wouldn’t open the door, you left a note. He told me about it, raging on about how you seemed to think that the words “I’m sorry” were enough. I let him rage and kept my tongue.
But really, what do you say when you killed your best friend’s sister in a car crash?

moonsbreath @ 2006-07-27T03:24:00

2006-07-27T01:28:46Z

Ich stell mir vor
und denk es nur,
dass du und ich
an diesem Tag
’nen Funken Licht,
’nen kleinen nur
schüren könnten zur Feuersbrunst,
auf dass er wärmt
und strahlt
und brennt,
zu Asche das
was quält und dröhnt
in unserm Kopf.
Zum Schweigen bringt
das kleine Wort,
das keiner von uns hören will.
Doch ist es dort
es klingt und lacht
und spottet uns.
Du siehst mich an,
du kennst es auch,
das Wort verhallt,
du schließt den Mund.
Vergessen ist
der Funke bald.

moonsbreath @ 2006-01-21T16:43:00

2006-01-21T15:58:39Z

Title: "Of Sinking or Swimming"
Universe: "Stand By Me"/"The Body" by Stephen King
Rating: PG (I think)
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Stephen King. Especially the sentences you recognize from the book or the movie.
Summary: I wouldn’t let him drown. I wanted him to swim with me in this dark water.

Of Sinking or Swimming

I

I was twelve when I saw my best friend cry for the first time.

It was end of summer 1959, the last summer that we could really feel like children, with camp outs and sleepovers and talking about stuff you consider important before you discover girls.
Something changed the moment I saw Ray Brower’s shoe hang from a branch. A slight shift of reality that made everything stand out clearer than it had ever before. There could have been miles between the dead boy and his shoe, never to be reunited. That’s when I became aware of the finality of that kid’s fate, aware of what his death meant: never again. Never again would he walk home, wearing that shoe. I remember the thought that hit me when I saw him: he had been knocked out of his Keds like the train had knocked the life out of his body.
My brother had died in an accident a few months before. And he would never come back. A person who had tackled me, a person I had fought and laughed with. That handsome, talented boy everybody loved, the promise of a good life edged into his smile. And he never had it. He was gone.

We could all feel the change when we returned to Castle Rock, but none of us spoke about it. It was too big for words. Too big for the small town we lived in. We said goodbye like it was forever. And in a way, it was. It always is when you say goodbye to your friends after such an adventure. We were closer that moment than we would ever be. The next morning would bring us back to school, back to a normal life. The trip down the tracks would soon be just a memory, a shadow that marked the end of innocence. We would drift apart and each of us would go on with their own life. It happens.

But Chris and I clung to each other from that day on, even more than we had before. Maybe because I was the only one who knew that Chris had had an innocence to lose on that trip.

I was twelve when I found my best friend with a broken arm in our tree house.

His brother had broken it in two places. I had heard it from my dad shortly after Ace Merrill’s gang had got me and as soon as I could walk more than a dozen steps without being in too much pain, I made my way first to his house, then – as he hadn’t been there – to the tree house.
He looked up from his comic book and gave me a half-smile.
“You look like a sunrise”, he told me.
“Gee, thanks. At least I got Fuzzy Bracowicz in the calf.”
“What did you do?”
“Bit him.”
Chris laughed, but broke off, his face showing that he was in pain.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Only hurts when I laugh,” he said and shrugged with his good shoulder. “But it was worth it.”
“Yeah.”
He shut the comic book and put it aside.
“You heard of Vern and Teddy?” Chris asked.
“Vern was knocked out cold, I heard. Don’t know about Teddy. Guess we’ll see him tomorrow at school.”
“Yeah.” Chris got out his pack of cigarettes and offered me one. We smoked in silence for a while.
“Your parents asked where you got that from?” Chris asked, gesturing towards my abused face. My swollen eye just started to get a little better and I could open it a slit if I tried really hard.
“’Course. It’s not like I show up like this every day.” I bit my tongue for saying this to Chris who – unlike me – did show up at school quite often with cuts and bruises all over him, telling everyone that he had fallen down a tree or tripped over something. If he talked to his friends of the real cause of his injuries at all, he tried to play it down. ‘My dad’s on a mean streak again, ya know. He’s drinkin’ a lot these days.’
I had always accepted the way he dealt with it although it made me sick to think of him living in one house with a father and an older brother who both used him as a punching bag. I felt for him, tried to help him by inviting him for sleepovers as often as possible, but standing up and trying to get an adult to do something about it was out of question. Chris didn’t want to leave his mother and younger siblings to his father’s mercy. And what it meant to have a father up in Togis, he could easily see in Teddy.
He took the punches and wore his bruises with a kind of silent dignity, grateful that they had not been aimed at his mother.
Chris’ face had gone blank. “I covered up for Eyeball.” The smoke from his forgotten cigarette was stirring in a soft breeze from outside. “I told them I had fallen down the cellar stairs in the dark. The doctor called the police. I called Mrs. McGinn and made her tell my mom to take the lightbulb out of the socket in the cellar, if she didn’t want to see her second oldest son in jail.”
I let him take his time. He was sticking up to a brother who was becoming more and more like his father every day. I guess he wasn’t as sure about his reasons as he would have liked to be.
“I just thought that … well, I didn’t want it to become a family tradition.”
I knew what he meant. His oldest brother Frank was in jail doing a long stretch for rape and criminal assault. Saving Eyeball was like saving himself, as weird as that might sound. Strangely enough, I always got even his weirdest way of thinking of himself and his family.
His cigarette had burned down and he flicked the cold ashes out of the window.
We heard the noise of people coming towards us, other kids who frequented the tree house.
We exchanged a look, silently agreeing on not wanting any company at the moment. Ever since we had come back from our trip down the tracks, we had started avoiding the other kids. Too much had happened. Guys we had hung out with before seemed to be miles away now, living in a different world. A world in which boys were not knocked out of their shoes.
We climbed down the ladder, Chris following me slowly, having to work with only one arm to steady himself. The noise had come closer, but the kids had not come into view yet. We walked away into the opposite direction, not wanting to meet them and be pestered about our bruises.
Cutting through a row of bushes, we soon got onto the road leading out of Castle Rock. Without any particular aim, we kept walking, soon leaving the houses behind and turning into a path parallel to the last row of houses, but hidden from them by a line of trees.
We went in silence. We didn’t need to talk about what had happened or what would happen. We just enjoyed the peace.

II

I was thirteen when Chris enrolled in the college courses.

He just waltzed in on the first day of the new term, duck-tailed and leather-jacketed, grinning at me like he was giving me a surprise present. For me, it was.
The grin didn’t last long. His friends turned from him one by one, his parents nagged at him for putting on airs, as they thought, his teachers and classmates kept seeing him as an intruder in their own private territory and obviously saw the need to defend it. Most of the teachers gave him a really hard time and it took all my persuation to keep him from quitting. Sometimes, I almost saw him crumble in front of me, leaning back from a book, rubbing his tired eyes and then looking at me with a hopelessness that scared the shit out of me. It was the only way to get him out of Castle Rock, away from his father and older brother. Away from his bad boy reputation.
‘I wish I could go someplace where nobody knows me.’ That sentence had burned itself into my mind and kept me going when we spent night after night hunched over books together, trying to get Chris onto one level with the others. I tried to fill all the blanks for him, all that he had missed out on by playing truant or fooling around with Vern and Teddy. The bill he had to pay was extremely high and I could feel his despair, but I never gave up on him. I wouldn’t let him drown. I wanted him to swim with me in this dark water.

One night, I was drawn from the book I was reading by the clicking noise of pebbles against my window. Chris was standing in our garden, his face unreadable in the dim light coming from behind me. I gestured for him to climb the tree next to my window, a way he had often used when visiting me as he knew my father didn’t like seeing us hang out together.
This time, he shook his head and pointed at our backdoor with his left hand. His right arm hung limply by his side.
My parents were fast asleep so I tiptoed down and entered the kitchen. When I opened the door for him, Chris was already waiting.
“What’s wrong?” I asked in a hushed voice. The fact that something was wrong was evident on his face.
“I need your help. I think my arm is dislodged,” he whispered back.
My heart did a sharp leap. I didn’t need to ask how it had happened. I briefly put a hand on his good shoulder. “Wait a sec, I’ll be right back.”
I silently went up into my room, put on my shoes and rummaged for something to use as a makeshift sling. Then I went into the living room and took the half-empty bottle of brandy my parents kept in a drawer under a stack of official papers. Unlike Mr. Chambers, my father didn’t drink often so chances were slim he’d remember how much had been left in the bottle.
Chris was still standing in a kind of apathy in the open backdoor when I returned. I quietly stirred him outside and away from the house. I had read enough books to know that mending a dislodged arm was very painful and I didn’t want my parents to wake up and question us on what we were doing up in the middle of the night.
Behind my father’s tool shed, I made Chris sit down and lean against the wall. I handed him the scarf I had brought for making a sling.
“Roll one end up and bite on it.” I told him.
While he did that with his left hand, I took his right one and moved his arm a little. It was completely limp in my hands. Like the arm of a dead body. I shuddered inwardly. Carefully, I brushed back the sleeve of his t-shirt and touched his shoulder to find out in which direction I’d have to move the disconnected bones. I had never done this before and prayed it would only take one go to mend this. Later on, I could never remember how I managed to appear so sure about what to do. To be honest, I was scared out of my wits.
“Ready?” I asked. He nodded. Even with the moon being the only source of light, I could see that he was very pale.
“If you are?” He said and stuffed the end of the scarf into his mouth.
I wasn’t. But I had no choice.
“Okay. One … two … three.” With one hand I pulled at his arm as hard as I could, guiding the joint back into its socket with the other. I felt the joint snap back into place with a sickening thud.
He screamed in pain through the muffling scarf, straining his back against the wall of the tool shed. Then it was over. I unscrewed the brandy bottle and closed the fingers of his left hand around them. He tugged the scarf from his mouth and took two large gulps, followed by a sharp intake of breath at the burning in his throat. He was blinking back the tears. Only one had escaped and trailed down his cheek before he quickly wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded. Of course he wasn’t. But he would be.
I unrolled the scarf and made a knot to connect the ends, then offered it to him. He put the bottle down, took the sling, dragged it over his head and carefully put his arm in it.
I picked up the bottle and stood up, offering him a hand. He took it and let me pull him to his feet. For a moment, he was unsteady and I took his left arm to guide him back to the house. After closing the door behind us and putting the bottle back in its place, I led Chris up to my room. He followed me like he was in a trance, still dazed from the pain and the alcohol he wasn’t used to.
Putting up a makeshift bed would have caused too much noise, so I made him sit down on mine and started pulling off his shoes. Looking up at his face, I found him looking back half forlorn, half surprised. It tugged at my heart that he seemed to not be used at all to someone taking care of him.
“Get some sleep,” I told him and nodded towards my bed. I went to lock my door in case my mom would come in the next morning before I woke up. It would be hard to explain why I had locked my door, but better that than having them catch Chris in my room, when they had not seen him come in.
When I turned again, Chris had laid down and moved to one side of the bed to give me room. I brushed off my shoes and stretched out next to him, not caring that I was in my full clothes.
I stared into the darkness above me for a while.
“Gordie?” came Chris voice from beside me.
“Hm?”
“Thanks, man.”
“Sure.”
I listened to Chris breathing for a long time before I drifted off to sleep.

III

I was fifteen when my father died of a heart attack.

It happened at work. His colleagues told us that he suddenly clutched his chest and tipped over onto his desk, spilling a mug of coffee onto the papers he had been working on.
I dream about it sometimes. I see him at his desk, writing something, then suddenly his hand closes on the shirt over his chest, knuckles going white, a gasp from his lips, spit gathering in the corners of his mouth, his eyes going wide, looking at me with a silent accusation. Next thing he is face down in a heap of coffee-stained papers. Sometimes, I only dream of that image. My father, dead at his desk.
The night after I heard the terrible news, Chris was knocking on my window. I opened it for him and let him in. He just looked at me for a long time, then pulled me into a hug and didn’t let go. That was when I broke down.
I had never been as close to my father as I had been to Denny, and still, there I was, crying my heart out on my best friend’s shoulder on the day my father died, while it had taken me months after Denny’s death before I had been able to cry. My mother had cried all day, had hugged me fiercely several times and at some point went into their bedroom and cried some more. I had seen and heard and felt it as if all of it happened to somebody else. Anyone but me. I had been wrapped in an invisible blanket all day, seeing and hearing, but never being touched by what went on. When Chris pulled me into his arms, that blanket slipped off. It was like I had been wearing earplugs all my life and suddenly they were gone and I was drowning in noise. The pain was real and sharp and cutting into me like a knife. I barely noticed that Chris made me sit on my bed, never letting go of me. He didn’t say or do anything apart from holding me and waiting patiently until I calmed down.
When I wiped fiercely at my face to get rid of the tears, he pulled back a little but didn’t break the contact. His hand went up and down my back until the last sobs had ceased.
He offered me a cigarette then and we smoked in silence, sitting in my open bedroom window.
He stayed with me that night, knowing that I needed him as an anchor to stay sane. He slept next to me on my bed and when I woke with a start and tears streaming down my face in the middle of the night, he put his arms around me and held me until pale morning light crept through my bedroom window.
He left when the sun rose, on the same way that he had come. When he jumped the last few feet from a low branch, I stood at the window and watched him go. He looked back at me, shot me one of his trademark half-smiles and lifted a hand, saying ‘See ya later.’ without words.

He stayed with me the next night and the night after that. I cannot put my finger on when it stopped being for my comfort and when it started being for his as well. After hours of learning, when we could both not suppress our yawns anymore, we stretched out next to each other on my bed and talked until we drifted off to sleep.
Sometimes, when I heard the usual knock on my window after sundown and turned to it, he looked at me as if he wanted to ask if it was okay with me. And I just opened my bedroom window a little wider to let him in.
One night, he had a fresh gash across his cheek. I reached out to turn his face and get a better view but he backed away. We didn’t talk about it. He didn’t want to. But he unconsciously snuggled closer to me after he had fallen asleep that night. I put an arm around him and watched him sleep until I, too, sank into a dreamless slumber.
He always left in the early morning hours, before he could be missed at home. Sometimes I wonder how he managed to steal away almost every night without any of his family members noticing his absence. Maybe they did and thought he was going to see some girl. As long as he wasn’t caught and kept from seeing me, we both didn’t care.

I was eighteen when Chris and I left Castle Rock for good.

We stood at the small train station of Castle Rock, luggage piled around us. The morning sun was beating down on us. Chris was kicking pebbles onto the tracks while I stood with my hands in my pockets, looking in the direction from which the train would be coming.
We had reached the shore. It had been sink or swim for the last five years and I had dreamed more than once of the dark water and Chris swimming beside me, then suddenly going under, his head disappearing beneath the surface, his flailing hands following the next second. I dived after him, but couldn’t find him. I never could.
I always woke up from these dreams bathed in sweat, gasping for air. One night, it woke Chris and he rose onto one elbow, looking at me with concern. He reached out and touched my cheek to make me look at him. I didn’t tell him about the dream then. I just moved closer to him, needing to feel his presence to reassure me that he was still there, that he had not drowned. He held me patiently until I had gone back to sleep.

The air above the tracks was shimmering in the heat. It was almost as hot as it had been on the day we set off to look for the dead body. Such a long time ago.
‘I wish I could go someplace where nobody knows me.’
And I was there with him as he got his wish. In a few minutes, we would board the train that would carry him into a new life, away from his abusive father, away from his family’s bad reputation, away from all the people who remembered that he had been suspended for stealing the milk money.
University of Maine, Portland-campus. Pre-law. Even more Latin, one of the subjects he had struggled with the most. I was prouder of him coming out nineteenth of our grade than I was of my own standing seventh. We had dragged ourselves out of the water and onto shore and now he was standing tall on the pavement, a few feet away from me, blinking into the sun.
A car came rolling up on the other side of the fence that separated the platform from the parking lot. It was Billy Tessio and Eyeball Chambers with a pair of chicks. Five years had passed them without making any difference.
“Hey Chris, you here to help your girlfriend with her oversized handbag?” Billy yelled and broke into laughter.
Eyeball stood up in his seat, held one hand to his chest and the other out towards Chris. “I will so miss you, baby brother. You little fag!”
“You and your girlfriend finally moving in together?” Billy again.
“Fuck off!” Chris yelled back. He had unconsciously stepped between me and the car.
“You shouldn’t use swear words in front of your girlfriend, Christopher. Didn’t mom tell you that?”
The girls in the car looked uncomfortable.
I saw Chris clench his fists so hard the knuckles stood out white. I put a hand on his shoulder.
“Chris.”
He looked back at me. The trail had started humming. The train would arrive in less than a minute.
He turned completely to me, the edge of his mouth curving up into a smile. I saw it all in his eyes then. The sadness to have to leave behind his mother and younger siblings with his abusive father and older brother, the gratitude to finally be able to leave those two behind himself, the pain of years and years … and the love.
I took his hand and held it until the train stopped. Neither of us heard any more of what Billy and Eyeball had to say.
We picked up our luggage and boarded the train. As we left Castle Rock behind us, memories of a tree house and railroad tracks in the summer heat flooded my mind. Of a campfire and sleeping under the stars, of a doe in the early hours of morning, of a dead boy who had lost his shoe forever, of swimming in a pool full of bloodsuckers, of my best friend’s face hovering over me after I fainted, gently shaking me back to consciousness, of mending his dislodged arm in the middle of the night behind my father’s tool shed, of my best friend’s arms around me when I cried, of my best friend sleeping next to me for the last three years.
Chris turned from the window behind which the last houses of Castle Rock had vanished minutes before. He turned and looked at me with one of his trademark half-smiles.
The promise of a good life edged into it.

* * *

moonsbreath @ 2006-01-19T17:30:00

2006-01-19T16:33:42Z

More of a test than anything else, I recorded "Superman" by "Five for Fighting" and worked on it with Nero Audio Wave. I still haven't found out how to make it louder without getting metalic crackling noises all over the file.

Please let me know if that's better or worse than the usual sound quality:

Superman (1,4MB)

moonsbreath @ 2004-09-23T23:46:00

2004-09-23T21:59:19Z

Der Geruch regennasser Kleidung
in einem überfüllten Bus
Erinnerung an Sonne auf dem Fluss
und kalten Wind auf dem Gesicht
Ein Lied aus glücklicheren Tagen
so dass man das Radio aufdreht
Das bist du ...

moonsbreath @ 2004-05-09T00:30:00

2004-05-08T22:30:47Z

Universe: X-Men - The Movie
Genre: Angst/Romance (Wolverine/Rogue)
Rating: PG-13
Description: Wolverine dreams about a dance with Rogue.
Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men. Neither the comics, nor the movie.

Dance with the Untouched

One of the most typical human flaws is to long for something you can’t have. That’s the only way I can explain this feeling. This almost irresistible urge to reach out to her. She is so young but carries a burden others would have been broken by: staying untouched forever. But this burden makes her wise beyond her years, makes her seem ageless ... just like me.

The only time I held her it almost tore me apart to think that she will probably never again be so close to anyone in her whole life. She walks this world, not being capable of physical contact. There will always be a barrier between her and the world that surrounds her. She’ll never be held by a lover, never be able to hold her child in her arms. I don’t know how she can live with that knowledge, but she does and I’m glad of it.

But there are those dreams I’m having. Not those nightmares of the experiments I got my metal skeleton from, but almost as scary, even though they are of a completely different nature.

In those dreams we stand facing each other, so close we almost touch. Almost. Her gloves are gone as is her scarf. Nothing about her reminds of her mutation. Our faces are only inches apart, and I look at her closed eyes, at her features that hold such a sadness that I wish for nothing more than to reach out and touch her to make her feel better. But I can’t and I hate it.

She suddenly opens her eyes and I’m sucked into their clear depth. It’s amazing how she can touch my soul with a simple look.

We start circling each other as though we are going to fight, my eyes never leaving hers. Her bare arm almost brushes my hand. And still we are holding each other’s gaze just like I wish I could hold her. She turns gracefully, her movements turning into those of a dancer. Stopping at an arm’s length distance she stands still for a moment, making eye contact again. Slowly she lifts her arm, reaching out to me. And I mirror the gesture until our hands almost touch. We start dancing then. There is no music, just the silence and the closeness we share, although we never touch. There’s always an inch between her skin and mine. But we move so perfectly together as though I’d really guide her movements through my hands. This must be what telekinesis feels like. Guiding someone by mere thought. And thoughts is all we have, even in a dream.

It’s disturbing to dream about someone I should regard as a child. Although there’s nothing dirty about it, it’s more erotic than any dream I had before. Being so close but being unable to touch ... it’s a kind of self-torture, but there is nothing comparable to the tension between us. I want to touch her. Oh, how I want to. Caress those cheeks, brush my thumb over those soft lips, kiss her closed eyelids while she’s asleep, just hold her without having to fear another breakdown because she involuntarily drains me of my life energy. But not even in my dreams I can show her my affection through those simple gestures. We dance untouched. And her body speaks so eloquently as we mirror each other’s movements, content just to be the other’s opponent in this dance, though I wish for so much more. It has to be enough. For I know she would not forgive herself if she caused me any harm.

But I would spend the rest of my life in a hospital, just for a single kiss. Just for one kiss ...

FIN

moonsbreath @ 2004-05-05T20:55:00

2004-05-05T19:04:13Z

Talk to me over a cup of coffee
I promise I'll pay
Pay for my sins
Bleed for my faults
But what is left of me
if you brush off my flaws?
I'd be nothing at all
without all I did wrong
I know who I am
that I can rock the ground
and if I really want to
I can be a saviour
a hero without a cape
a knight without armour
I know I can save you
if you want me to
See my scratches
See my scars
This is me

moonsbreath @ 2004-04-26T18:52:00

2004-04-26T17:13:40Z

Metamorphosis

You ask me where I'm going
How shall I tell you that?
I don't know anything at all
Have lost huge parts of me
And only when it hurts
I remember my old scars
Drowning in memories
Of battle fields
You've never seen.

You smile and ask me
Why do you leave?
And I say I've been leaving
Since the day I arrived
And before you turn me down
I'll leave you here alone.
Fly away and we will see
Where this will end
Who I will be.

moonsbreath @ 2004-04-21T16:43:00

2004-04-21T14:46:11Z

A collection of photos I named

Rainforest

moonsbreath @ 2004-04-07T23:18:00

2004-04-07T21:58:50Z

song text - not very good and probably a bit cliche, but it wouldn't let me go ...

people like you

sometimes i wonder how two souls
can be of such similar kind
sometimes i wonder how a single word
of yours can speak my mind
i hope and fear you'll always be
an edge that mars my skin
and i will wear this scar with pride
like a sign of my own kin

it seems to me so cruel
it seems to be unfair
it seems to hang above me
that people like you never
love me

with all your heart, so honestly
you were always by my side
the darkest hour of the day
the brightest of the night
i think i shouldn't wish for more
you always give, never take
but i can't help but think that we
both could have been so great

it seems to me so cruel
it seems to be unfair
it seems to hang above me
that people like you never
love me

people like you never ...

*

moonsbreath @ 2004-02-15T01:27:00

2004-02-15T00:40:15Z

sag mir, liebe,
warum sollte ich
dich aussprechen?
was ändert es?
das bloße wort
kann nicht
bewegen
was nicht ist.
wäre der morgen
ohne dich
nicht ebenso
blass
und kalt
und schön?
aber du
warst immer hier
und doch nicht.
das glück lacht
immer
hinter dem horizont

*

moonsbreath @ 2004-02-09T21:14:00

2004-02-09T20:14:59Z

I stand
my back to the wall
hugging myself
silently slipping
to the ground

I have
nothing to say
how could you
ever forgive me
all these things

I am
so sorry, so sorry
this lie I can
neither tell
nor believe

*

moonsbreath @ 2004-02-05T11:38:00

2004-02-05T10:42:46Z

Another photo I took. It's a pretty old-fashioned motif, but I liked it. Unfortunately, I didn't have a macro so I couldn't take a pic of the rose swimming in that dish of water. It looked very pretty because it was mineral water and all those tiny bubbles sparkled around the rose.

moonsbreath @ 2004-01-25T11:50:00

2004-01-25T11:43:09Z

The Journey

I have no name that fits me
No smile that is fully true
I have no grace to fall from
No achievements to review

I walked for miles without finding
That which would mend my heart
I only found the saddest of truth
That the world is falling apart

Now here at journey's end I see
That I don't need anything at all
For there is not a single thing
That could change that we will fall

So let's not worry about tomorrow
There is always a reason to cry
But in the end we can look back
And with a smile say goodbye

*

moonsbreath @ 2004-01-21T23:46:00

2004-01-21T22:58:23Z

A voice singing

broken with tears

A hand reaching

trembling

An eye searching

hopeful, restless

A voice fading

into nothingness

A hand falling

in defeat

An eye closing

forever

moonsbreath @ 2004-01-21T17:05:00

2004-01-21T16:12:45Z

As photos can be art as well, I am going to post some photos I took and which I'd like to share.

The first one shows the old botanic garden of this town. It was taken last autumn and I'm still a little sorry that it is just b/w for the colours were beautiful.
Actually, I only took it because there were still some pictures on the film and I wanted to hand it in that day. So I was surprised myself that it looks so nice.

moonsbreath @ 2004-01-10T00:56:00

2004-01-09T23:57:55Z

Time

I wonder how these days of old
Can hold me so fast in their grasp
All I should never have said and done
Too many dark secrets untold

This heavy curtain may fall some day
And reveal what I have become
My flaws, my fears, my cruelties,
My memories might all fade away

Can you tell what I would be
If the rain could wash me clean
Of everything I’ve seen and done,
Everything but me?

*

moonsbreath @ 2003-12-13T23:53:00

2003-12-13T23:03:30Z

Something lighter than air
Took my hand, held it fast
And a whisper in my ear
On a dark, chilly night
Couldn't have been more real
If it had come from your lips
Instead of out of my mind

And forever these dreams
More real than my life

moonsbreath @ 2003-11-25T20:35:00

2003-11-25T19:36:22Z

What am I
Without you
Nothing but
A silent breath
In an empty room

I turn the world
So it matches your steps
I lift up the sun
So it shines on your face
I shut out the world
So you won't get lost

Please, just be
Everything
You want
We are
The silence
We are
One

moonsbreath @ 2003-10-25T15:53:00

2003-10-25T13:54:21Z

The Final Strike

Wipe away these clouds above me
Wash my hands clean of this blood
Rescue me, my boat is sinking
Get me out of this cold flood

Ask the Night what she's been doing
While the sun was in the sky
Feels like she won't ever leave me
Like she'll always be close by

Salt on my cheeks, salt on my tongue
Do you know what shame tastes like?
I cannot tell you, I close my eyes
Waiting for the final strike

*

moonsbreath @ 2003-09-19T17:21:00

2003-09-19T15:22:21Z

Farewell

When the sun grew dim and shadows came
I could still see your face
Lined with grief and marred by death
But still so full of grace

If I were able to read those lines
I could read our history anew
But darkness swallows the two of us
And you silently slip out of view

Your skin cannot keep the soul inside
Such a mind, such a heart to behold
Though here in my arms, you seem far away
Too small, too fragile, too cold

I feel my time, too, draws to an end
We can't win the battle we fight
There will be no morning ever again
No break of dawn, no light

*

moonsbreath @ 2003-07-07T23:45:00

2003-07-07T21:44:01Z

You keep walking on thin glass
Detached from everything you knew
Your descent as graceful as a star's
Far out of reach and out of view

The stars you're burning in your wake
Shine brighter and then fade away
The world is dying in your eyes
For there it sees its slow decay