Category: Fiction

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Kittenish – A Character Study; Plus an Aside on Time and Ideas…

Posted on by jennrae

She is laying down, curled into a tight ball. Her sleepy almond shaped eyes open gradually taking in the aqua colored walls. Her tiny trim body is contained within the small chair. She jumps up suddenly in one swift graceful motion when a car drives by noisily. Her breathing slows as she realizes she is not in danger.

She walks casually to the door, cautiously opening it. She slinks through the hallway at complete ease by outward appearance. Ready to attack anything within internally.

She seems off guard, but upon a closer inspection, her lithe form is waiting like a tightly coiled spring. Her eyes glance passively about the room. She notices herself in the mirror. Her hair is frizzled and misshapen from sleeping on it. She promptly pats her hair until not one strand remains freakish.

She quickly examines her clothes and studies herself to ensure that her appearance is neat. She looks herself in the eye awhile, appearing to daydream. After she is through, she goes outside into the night. The chill air and dark sky make her feel alive and free. The sounds of the crickets chirping and the owls hooting release the tension in her slow stride.

She continues to walk until she reaches her vehicle. She enters quickly because she begins to feel droplets of rain dampening her hair. She has no plan in mind, nowhere to go. But she doesn’t care. Anywhere will do. She starts up the engine, and curses at it violently because she is impatient. She looks about her noticing the empty soda can, and some cigarette butts in the ashtray.  She slams the glove box in frustration, and gets up and decides to go for a walk instead.

She kicks the car door of the ancient Toyota Corolla and begins to walk aimlessly down the road. Suddenly, she feels lonely, and she wishes he’d stuck around for dinner. Then she thinks again, and is glad he didn’t bother.

She decides she doesn’t need anybody, and no one needs her. She looks up and sees the stars with all their sparkle and glimmer. It annoys her eyes. She is bored with her walk after a matter of yards. She begins to shiver as the cold seeps into her bones. She forgot to put on her coat.

She has had a hectic day between her husband leaving her, and her mother’s visit shortly afterwards. She walked back to her car after one more glance at the night sky.

*Note: This particular writing was from my 7th grade creative writing class. I do not know where my ideas come from, but I do believe time isn’t what we think it is. I think it is possible that my subconscious may be able to pull ideas or fragments from the distant past or the future, or from random writings I may glance at without thinking about.

I am not sure, but sometimes things have come to pass in the future, that I seem to write about years before they happen. This piece has been tweaked a few times since then, but the basic idea is from back then. I wouldn’t get divorced myself until 2002 or 2003. Also, I never was a smoker, but for some reason characters that smoke are interesting to me. Maybe it is all the old movies I watch. Although I hadn’t watched any back then, and that is from the original copy.

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Transition– An Experiment with Stream of Conciousness

Posted on by jennrae

I dream of the sea, green noisy, coming in furiously, pounding the shore with a force that could knock a grown  man onto the ground and pull him under.

I dream of a love so strong that the one in love dies of a heart attack, but is blissful at the last possible second of life. I dream of the craziness of a nuthouse turned loose on the empty streets to vandalize the dreary storefronts.

My dreams are nightmares in the shapes of children’s building blocks gone horribly wrong. I find myself in a maze of my own making, only I forgot to  make myself a way out. I scream, but no one can hear, because I am not awake. The alarm resounds with buzzer like clarity, a dream within a dream, a labyrinth of eternity on a small scale. The scream turns inside out to show a display of a red interior that transforms into the interior of an ancient car that is on the edge of a precipice just like in the movies.

One move, and over we go to a glorious technicolor death down below.

And then I wake, and I scream, because it isn’t a dream, but a distorted reality, grinning at me from all angles in mock triumph. I am insane, I decide one day after witnessing the death of thousands before my very eyes. Or maybe, I never woke up, only thought I did, and am now tumbling down an earthen rabbit hole that is also a bottomless pit leading to a black hole where not even a beam of light can escape. An alarm sounds, do I hear it? Am I awake now?

I fear I am, and experience the total whiteness of nothingness, where every object is a foreign one, and I am floating to a remote island with seas of intense blue, but there are sharks waiting for me, to make me into a fine meal. At least there will be an end to it, the madness I mean, the crazy multi colored flashiness of existence.

Is that what I want? An end to it? To be thrown away like the core of an apple? Awh, but the seed hits the ground, and one day grows to be an apple tree. Is there never an end to it then? If there is a beginning, there must be an end, that is symmetry.

Two perfect halves waiting to be reunited on the beaches of bliss and ignorance. Hands touch, and collide, and the fragments shatter like broken glass in a cheap hotel, going every which way, and in a hurry like a bus without brakes. Slow down, we don’t want to die after all, only too scared to really live, but even more afraid to die.

So that’s it. Life. I must be dreaming because no life is as ridiculous and nonsensical as this one. Or is it my ego, in the foolishness of thinking that I am unique? No, I am unique, and so it the man in the trench coat on the park bench over there, you know, the one reading the newspaper so intently, brow furrowed with concern and worry. He’s looking at the NASDAQ,or could it be the comics?

He’s gone, but there is an old lady with a poodle approaching. She sniffs the air suspiciously. What is it that she smells? The urine of a homeless man who slept on the park bench all night, with the stars as his own personal tableau? Or is it the city trashcan filled with half eaten fast food that apparently was not fast enough.

The lady with the poodle is gone now, and so is the bench and the trashcan. Where am I now? In bed, with the sheets pulled up tight around my chin which I hate. I hate being constricted. I feel so helpless.  Like I am going insane. Going,  as if it is a destination, a plot point, a physical locale one can visit, and then leave.

My eyes examine the ceiling and I know I am awake. I can count the tiny dots on each panel. It is the type of ceiling one finds in an institution, or a school. Only I am in a sterile bed, made of a mattress and metal, counting the dots. A hospital, my mind tells me. I am in the hospital.

What for? I ask myself, but no one answers. What was I expecting? Another personality? One named Susan with one and a half kids, and a beagle with a pink collar? Or an old lady named Gertrude with a fat cat on her lap, mewing. Whatever, there is no one here but me, and I can’t think straight.

I slowly lift my arm to touch my temple, and it feels funny. Soft like rotten fruit that’s been in the fridge way too long. I am all tied down, as if I tried to get out of bed earlier. Maybe I did, I can’t remember. I recall pain, white hot pain, on the beach, and then nothing. Who am I? What beach?

I am blank, nothing, nada. But I am alive, and awake and here in a hospital with a window overlooking a large parking lot.

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Forever, –A Poem

Posted on by jennrae

Forever did he dream of her with the raven black hair streaming into the

sunlight glistening with a luster that could rival the diamonds of a treasure trove.

Her eyes flashed a brilliant blue like that of the water of the great sea, sometimes green, other times azure.

He dreamt while he worked, and when he slept, and never did the dream stop,

Sometimes it would leave him cold for she had a sadness about her as if she were not among the living, but yearned for a life long gone,

So many years past that her own town and his were unreachable by land or sea.

They never spoke, but he knew she would be the end of him, thoughts of the mundane or earthly matters meant nothing to him anymore,

And he ceased to remember to eat, ceased to go to work even, and one day, he didn’t get up at all. Still, he dreamt of her, and her raven hair in the sun glistened like a thousand diamonds while the calming sound of the ocean upon a distant shore echoed in the background.

Posted in Fiction, Life, Uncategorized, Writing

What in the Short Stories is Happening Around Here…

Posted on by jennrae

Figured I should explain why I am posting so many short stories. I had a booklet of short stories that I had been sitting on for a long time that I had wanted to publish. But, I figured since I also write newer material, I may as well self publish them here.

I did a sequel of sorts for Between the Cliffs on here,  the original which I had published in a  literary journal in college as Jennifer Rae, and I was looking for the first part since it has been over ten years I figured it would be harmless to put it out there now.

Instead, I found a treasure trove of other stories that I am editing slightly and posting here. Eventually, I will find Between the Cliffs as I kept the issue that it appeared in for my records.

So, as a disclaimer, a lot of these I must have written when I was in a sad mood. So many of them are tragedies, I am getting depressed re-writing them. I am not sad currently. I am not suicidal, or depressed. There is a ton of things to live for, not sure what I was processing at the time. But I am not in that frame of mind currently.

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

The Dagger — A Fantasy Short Story

Posted on by jennrae

Her eyes searched the night sky for answers to questions that she dare not ask aloud. The Gods blew their cruel breath down on her full force, billowing her long dark hair behind her like the flag of some long lost nation. Her eyes moved from the tiny twinkling stars onto the large round luminous moon, noticing the craters of some disaster from the first days while her mind remained numb to the world.

Her love, her one and only in a long lifetime of waiting, was dying somewhere down below her. There was nothing that could be done and the helplessness forced her to retreat into silence while the night continued unabated.

The cruel twist of the dagger could be felt through her own flesh, despite the fact that it hadn’t happened to her at all. It was the bane of her people, this intense empathic connection to others. It was more painful because of who was dying. She made no noise, only listened to the music of the wind as it poured through the nearby trees.

She sat on the grass slowly, and watched the moon. She saw the approach of the others, some heavily bandaged from the recent battle, some unscathed. They nodded at her, but she all ready knew what they were going to say.

He was gone, the Gods had claimed him and she could still feel the dagger being removed. She could feel the last painful breath as it left his lungs. She could feel his eyesight darken, and the cold, cold wind on his skin.

She nodded in return. A kind elder placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You may stay with me tonight. It is cold out here. We will take care of you. It will be all right. There will come a day of vengeance. But, first you must rest.”

“No. My days are done; there is no need for vengeance. I feel nothing. There is no reason to go on. Nothing to live for.”

“Nonsense. There will be others. You will live. It is what he would have wanted for you.”

“No.” She was dragged by a kind wise woman whose strength remained within her old bones despite her fragile appearance. She was rushed past the men who were digging a long trench for the bodies of the dead. There were too many to bury in the proper ritualistic fashion, it had to be a shared grave for all.

She found her knees bending with the old woman’s and she followed, all the time thinking, “no.” None of this could be happening. She was at home, cooking a simple soup when she saw him in her mind. She saw the brute stab him in the heart with a sharp dagger, felt it being twisted in his gut, to make sure the wound would be fatal. She saw his friend kill the enemy while the dagger continued to twist. Agonizing pain swept through her. She felt her feet shift out of underneath her, felt her breath grow faint, and she fell. She fell onto the hard kitchen floor, the sound of her bubbling soup long forgotten.

In a daze she left her home, and walked up the hill, to look at the moon and feel the pain, waiting, as she had waited for many nights. Waiting for news of the most recent battle. News of victory. Now, she needn’t wait. She knew all ready. The morning found her much the same. She said no when the woman spoon fed her oatmeal, but that was all she would say. Everyone expected her to snap out of it, to one day breath life again, to look at the sun instead of the moon.

She found herself being moved with the rest of the village. They lost the battle and had to flee their homes. The information entered her mind and left again. She said nothing. No one talked to her anymore, but they talked around her much like adults do around children who are deemed too young to understand. She knew, but no longer cared. She still felt the dagger, and the twisting, and the pain. She couldn’t sleep, yet she couldn’t awaken. She waited for the Gods to claim her, but they were indeed cruel, and did not.

************************************************************************

The old woman was placing her belongings into a makeshift hut, a temporary home near the fort of an ally tribe. They would be well protected here. Life would continue as it always did. The land may not be the same, but the people were, and the people always managed to make themselves at home.

This wasn’t their first relocation, nor would it be their last, she knew. Her charge lay near the fire, not saying a word. Her eyes remained open to the world and her breathing was regular, but if anything went on inside that head, no one knew of it. The old woman sighed.

It was the next day when she went to feed her and found her lying on her stomach. She gently turned her over and found somehow, a sharp dagger had been shoved hard into her breastbone, and the life was gone from her large vacant eyes.

The wise woman closed them, uttered a prayer and took the pale fingers off the handle grasped so tightly by cold hands. The old woman’s tears fell onto the dirt floor, causing a small puddle of mud to appear. She carefully removed the dagger, and examined it closely. Odd, it was the same style as the one that killed the young woman’s husband. The very same style, the crude bone hilt and the slight curve of the blade.

How could it have gotten here? The old woman certainly hadn’t kept it, and how did she not hear the killer enter? Why would anyone want to kill the silent woman? Nothing made any sense. If the woman had killed herself, how did she come upon this blade?

************

It was over now, the waiting, the wind was no longer cold. It would no longer blow her hair around wildly. And it no longer bothered her at all.

 

 

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Doomsday — A Character Study

Posted on by jennrae

The end was near. Fifteen minutes till doomsday. She glanced at her watch casually, feeling a sense of detachment from the forthcoming event. She smoothed out the wrinkles in her short lilac dress. If one must die, one might as well do it a New Year’s party.

Things used to be so simple, blindingly simple with a white hot clarity. She couldn’t save the world, and in the end nothing else mattered. She wouldn’t go on, but the massive green and blue globe would continue to dance among the stars.

It would be more accurate to say that she wanted to save herself, and a few chosen people that still entered her mind on occasion. Her mother, her ex, her former best friend, and the kind co-worker. She wasn’t one for attachments or longevity of friendships.

Her pale grey eyes again looked at her simple watch. The band was almost wore out, but there would be no need to replace it now. She sighed, and tapped her fingers on the tabletop with a rhythmic energy she did not feel. It wasn’t like she was nervous. She wasn’t nervous at all. She had been waiting for this moment for years. The ultimate ‘I told you so.’

The people around her were oblivious to her presence and carried glasses of champagne and various concoctions of mixed liqueur. No matter, when the explosion came they would take notice. By then it would be too late.  So why did she remain, casually glancing at her watch? Well, she had no definable reason to go on living. No one to share the pain, the burden of foreknowledge of death and impending destruction.

She sipped at a delicate glass of vodka near her. She felt so tired. She had been up all night, panicking, trying to get someone, anyone, to believe her.To believe in her. To listen to her, love her, cry for her. But to no avail.

Someone looked outside the window and then the people in the large room screamed in unison, and she vaguely thought to herself how odd things quickly fell apart. It wasn’t like the movies where such a scene would be shown in slow motion.

 

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Indecision –A Short Story

Posted on by jennrae

She pulled the knife out slowly, wiping the blade on the nearest kitchen towel with gentle, precise strokes. The dead man stared at the ceiling with a look of frozen mock wonder and amazement.

She sighed, carefully carrying the knife and the towel to the back sink, making a futile attempt to rinse the blood out. What would her mother-in-law say when Christmas came without a call from her dear boy? Would she just chalk it up to the growing distance that had been progressing between them? Or would she take it as a sign for an overdue visit?

Either way Carol would have to do something with this corpse on the floor, staring above imploring God to intervene on his behalf. Too late, Darlin,’ she said quietly, still holding the crumpled red rag in one hand, the knife remaining balanced on the sink ledge, forgotten for a moment.

What do do now? She was not a pro at this sort of thing, but she knew from the TV shows that keeping blood soaked items was a no-no. They test for DNA traces in the carpet fibers, hair, and even use bugs. So many things can be traced, and there was always that one guy who never gives up on the case. And the spouse is always the number one suspect. Always.

She started to worry, sweat began to pour slowly from her anxious brow. She knew she couldn’t leave him laying here.  She did know that much. Her stomach started to turn uneasy. She glanced back toward the sink in the backroom. No, she couldn’t bring herself to cut him up. But she had to do something.

She urgently looked around the kitchen. Maybe she could just disappear.  Get a plane ticket to nowhere. Who would think to look for her in some small town in Arizona? Or better yet, she could flee to Canada, or Sri Lanka, or anywhere.

She drew the curtains closed in the small kitchen window, eyeing the outdoors with renewed suspicion. What if a  neighbor had heard him yell? What if someone had called the police all ready? What if they were on their way right now? What if, indeed.

She tried to breathe normally, but found it difficult. She had to make a decision now. But he had always made all the decisions for her. She found herself paralyzed and unable to act. There were too  many details, too many choices. She knelt down next to him, and began to cry.

“Tell me what to do, oh please, do get up, and tell me what I am supposed to do now?” This wasn’t how she pictured it in her head. This whole situation was all wrong and mixed up. She reached for his hand, and held it tenderly despite the fact it was now cold and offered her no comfort or solution. She knew then that she was truly alone.

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Timed Write—Between the Cliffs of Venus Part 2

Posted on by jennrae

Adi woke up, her head aching and pounding. The hulking giant beast man leered at her in the copter. Was she dead? Was this some messed up after life? She patted herself down, the plans were gone, as was her lasgun. Damn. Of course they would have stripped her clean. She was a goner for sure.

“Hey, where are you taking me? I don’t suppose there is any use trying to make a deal with you, is there?”

The creature’s face remained the same weird leer, no recognition seemed to enter the thing’s eyes. The person driving the copter remained silent. Was it Harris? Or did she imagine that? This could be her chance to take out the mastermind behind her people’s destruction. This could be it, the only chance to get so close to the villain of her generation.

But, they had removed her weapon, and her head pulsed in agony. She remembered being shot. It seemed ages ago. Her arms were painfully tied behind her back with thick cords. “Okay, you got me, so what now?”

“The silent treatment? Are you Harris, then? Kinda impressive that you came out here to Venus on my account.”

“The silence really gets to you doesn’t it? Must’ve been very lonely out here on your own.”

She heard the voice from the front of the small airborne vehicle. He didn’t turn around. She couldn’t verify for sure that it was him. It would seem strange that someone so important would come in person. But, she could have sworn she saw his face.

“Your father was once a friend of mine, many years ago.”

“You knew my father?”

“Sure. I knew a lot of folks in the early days when we just started to develop this place. I modified that lasgun to stun only. I didn’t want to kill you. Not yet anyhow. I would like to know, what exactly you know. Where the Blue Rim is hiding out, for starters. Or, how about how you survived out here, all by your lonesome.  That is quite impressive.”

“So, you rescued me, to disarm me, and torture me?”

“It doesn’t have to be torture, does it? You gotta be lonely. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a friendly chat, you know, for once?”

She couldn’t gauge whether he was serious or joking. His voice was muffled by the whirring noise of the machine and the wind whipping around them. She would never give up the rebel’s location. She would rather throw herself out of the copter and fall into eternity. The hulking man beast was blocking her path to the door with its crooked smile. Glassy eyes staring at her, not seeming to understand beyond its orders of watching her.

“While we are just chatting, friendly like, why don’t you tell me where we are going?”

“All in good time, Adi. We are almost there.” She felt the copter shudder to a still and land with a plume of dust rising to cover the windows. She squirmed attempting to free herself from the cords, feeling her skin painfully being scraped away in the process.  The pilot got out of the copter, the door shutting behind him. Another man beast yanked the door near her open and roughly grabbed one of her arms, dragging her forcefully from the vehicle into a dusty area that served as some kind of landing pad.

The man she assumed was Harris walked in front of her with an escort of beasts with lasguns. Her beast man dragged her along while her boots scuffed a dust trail behind her. Her mind was trying to figure out where she was. If she could get free perhaps she could tell the others of this place.

“Bring her in, and shut the door.” The man said without turning around. The floor was made out of some sort of smooth laminate. It was smooth and white and a large machine was in the middle of the room with a chair in the middle of it. She dug her heels in.

“Come on, Adi. It is almost time for our little chat.” The man removed his helmet gently, handing it off to a person who seemed to come out of nowhere to take it for him. “Oh you don’t like my little chair. I just wanted you to be comfortable, and in a place where we wouldn’t need to argue or fight, or waste needless time. This handy device records thoughts, and thoughts don’t lie. Oh, they can at first, but after a while, the truth will out. You can’t run forever. I assure you, it is comfortable. And you won’t remember a thing. You will wake up refreshed and be on your way.”

“You are Harris. Why are you doing this?”

“The burden of keeping secrets and of people trying to undermine what I am trying to do here is getting tiresome. Don’t you see, that I am trying to do the best for everyone? Why can’t you appreciate that? That information you were going to smuggle out? Yeah, it just would have sabotaged everything. Set me back a long long way if your little group blows this facility up. Earth is on its way out, the future is here, but it is my future. The future I envisioned. I won’t let you ruin it for everyone else.”

Another man entered with a tray of tools for the machine. He left quickly but not before she caught a glimpse of his face. “Wait, what? That is Harris too? How can there be more than one of you?”

“Same technology as the beast men. All about cloning and technology. It is how and why I, Harris, can personally get you from the sky, all the while another Harris is still running things on Earth, and another Harris is running another laboratory far from here. You cannot stop us. There is, fortunately, only one of you.”

Was it all truly hopeless? Her head hurt, her arms were chafed and raw and bleeding on the white floor.  She had to free her hands. She had to get out of here so she could warn the others.

She looked around the room, it was circular and there were several doors where the other Harris’s seemed to go. The beast men stayed by the door. She watched as the Harris in front of her loaded a syringe with a clear fluid, getting the straps on the chair like device ready.

She somersaulted backwards suddenly aiming for the lasgun in the hands of one of the beast men behind her. She knocked it out of his surprised hands as he grunted confused. His companion looked on moving slowly toward her.

Harris turned around pointing at her but she didn’t wait to her what he said. She had the lasgun in her mouth and and hopped out through the door which she opened by slamming her shoulder into it, running for the copter.

She used the lasgun to shoot the cords sizzling some of her skin in the process as she clenched her teeth in pain. The hulks were coming up behind her. She fired the lasgun at them both which slowed them down but did not stop them as they felt very little pain.

Luckily for Adi, they were pretty slow. She reached the copter first, yanking open the door and shutting it loudly. She locked the doors. Her com and beacons were removed from her jacket by Harris or his goons. How to get this thing started up without a key. She felt the hulks shaking the copter.

She opened the compartment below the main unit and carefully removed some wires, rewiring them and making new connections. She would need to hurry, she heard a crack in the glass and saw it form like a snowflake from her days on Earth. “Father I need your strength about now. Please, guide me to the Blue Rim.”

The copter powered up, lights a glow, and lifted off the ground. One of the creatures was hanging onto the tail and she spun it around to get him off. She noted the coordinates of this place in her mind, the only tool she had left.

She only had so much fuel she noted looking at the gauge, and she had to get away from here. Where were the others? How could she reach them now? She didn’t have her beacon, besides it alerted Harris to her location.

She might be all that was left of the resistance. But she had to hope. Her life had to have a purpose. She set off in a direction away, seeing other figures on the ground shaking their fists at her as she drifted further from the building.

 

 

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Timed Write…Like a Mouse

Posted on by jennrae

She scribbled fiercely on the scrap of paper while the pounding on the door got louder and more insistent. Bang, bang, bang! She shivered clutching her sweater closer to her tiny frame.

“Come on, Izzy! I just want to talk! I promise I won’t hurt you.” The voice was all too familiar; slurred and stumbling, a half human half drunken snarl. All promises made by such a beast were lies. She had heard this story before. Promises were easy. As soon as she unlocked the door she knew he would be angry and red faced, and he would hurt her.

Her heart beat hard and fast in her chest causing little painful spasms. She found it hard to gulp down air. She was in panic mode, a survival tactic that would not help her now. She called forth the meditation she did in therapy after her parents’ divorce.

The counting to ten breathing. Her mother was also small and meek, and drank enough to become a fish. She drifted away on a magical boat away into the mists never to be seen again. There weren’t enough unicorns in her room to protect her from the were wolf outside the door. She knew her Dad would be back in the morning if she could only hold out that long.

Her handwriting was not the best but she wanted it legible. Her colored pencil broke with a loud snap. The pounding and pleading had stopped. She looked toward the door. This was too simple, too easy. She knew something was wrong. Quiet wasn’t always good. Sometimes quiet meant bad things were about to happen.

She held really still like a mouse. As still as she possibly could, frozen in time and place, light lavender sweater draped around a t shirt and jeans surrounded by friendly stuffed animal faces. Her eyes stayed focused on the door for a minute and then she breathed out.

The window burst into shards of glass forcing her to whirl around.  She left the note on the table, an all too brief note written in red. She ran to the door, tripped over her untied laces and crashed to the floor.

She felt his strong grip on her ankle and he pulled her toward him with a jerk. She reached out an arm toward the door, nails clawing into the wooden floorboards making an eerie screech and leaving tell tale marks. I was here, I existed. I cannot be erased. But I can be snuffed out like a candle flame she thought to herself quietly.

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Writing Prompt — When It All Comes Crashing Down

Posted on by jennrae

Aimee looked out the large picturesque window of trees and vines and rolling hills of grass. It was pretty, it was seemingly solid. But, she knew it was all an illusion. She remembered a boy a long time ago that died jumping off the edge. How much she wanted to follow him even knowing she would not survive. Some days that was all she wanted to do. She was head of the council for the city and they all looked to her for guidance now.

She had no idea how great she had it being a carefree child running about the world without thinking of the future. That boy woke her up.  She recalled all the grown ups whispering in hushed voices. Certain people disappeared and no one would tell her why back then.

Now, she was an adult nearing forty and she knew things now she wish she didn’t. Her neighbor cities in the sky had started having little issues at first. Repairs were becoming more frequent now.

She clenched a paper in her hand, wrinkling it, twisting it. She could throw it in the garbage by the table of the conference room. She smoothed it on the table reluctantly. She straightened her suit jacket, adjusted her collar. Aimee breathed in deeply, letting the air out slowly.

People began to file in with their coffee cups and idle chatter. They took their seats carefully, pulling their small black chairs out and pushing them in. She watched them fill the room slowly.

“Mrs. Hailey, I believe we are all here now. You have the chair.” Ben Howard gestured toward her being the last to take his seat, the rest had their memo pads with stylus looking serious but unconcerned. The typical expression of the community.

The world’s problems were left down on the Earth. Their issues were usually simple ones, who would coach the girls volleyball team or who would replace the technician for the lawn maintenance machines. Aimee kept thinking back to that boy and his backpack. He thought he was saving her world but perhaps he was just putting off the inevitable.

“You are all here because I have been informed of a problem that has been occurring more and more often among our neighbor cities. I am sure you all know we do  not want general panic. So, what you share must be minimal.”

“I’ve heard some rumors. Some cities don’t respond to calls anymore. Maybe a technical issue with the screens?”

“Oh yeah, I haven’t reached Cerberus in days.

“Had that trouble with Nova City, too.”

” Yes, there have been a lot of problems. However, I just got word that it isn’t the screens failing. We have confirmation from a survivor. Someone with their own personal aircraft. The system that allows the flotation devices are failing.It has been failing for awhile.”

Everyone grew silent, looking around the room in quick glances and looking at phones and watches and screens.

“Don’t allow this to leave this room. We do not want panic. However, we need a plan. Our neighbors are all gone with their survivors back on Earth which is a wasteland. They need supplies and we do not know when or how much time we have left here. We are getting more isolated all the time and I am not sure how much supplies we will have left.”

“Mrs. Hailey, what is that paper about?” Rita Tollingford asked pointing at the crinkled paper.

Aimee took the paper again and crumpled it up putting it in the trash. “Nothing. I don’t want you to worry. We just need to prepare. We need to figure out what we can spare. And we need to make sure we have an evacuation plan that works.”

“Where are we going to go? What’s the nearest city?”

“There are no longer any cities nearby, the nearest one is New Bakersfield, and it is in the same condition we are in. We would have to head down to the Earth where the other survivors are.”

“How do we know any of this is real? What if it is some scam to get free supplies from us? The ground dwellers have done this sort of thing before.”

Aimee sighed. “Ben, not everything is a big lie. You are just going to have to trust me.”

“Like we trusted your parents? How many people disappeared? All over what some kid claimed? Some kid from down there no less. My father just gone one day because of some crayon scribbles in a backpack. And, now you are telling me some people down there need help, and that we are in danger. The information coming from earth dwellers can’t be trusted.” Ben got up abruptly walking out. Others watched him leave some reluctantly getting up others remained seated nervously tapping their stylus.

“I guess we are done here. I will try to convene another meeting later today on a plan.” She watched the others go. Some were unconcerned walking out the same way they walked in. Others were anxious.

Aimee looked back out the window. Picked up her glass of water and took a sip, setting it back down on the table. She felt the world tilt slightly. That has happened before and it always rights itself. It was fine, she thought to herself, watching the trees and the grass as a slight breeze started to sweep through.

Her water glass slid from the table and crashed into the wall sending shards of glass out violently. Her hand reached out for the table to grip something but the table also slid against the wall pinning her hand in place. She felt a surge of pain in her hand and felt the blood begin to ooze slowly. The bookcases tilted over next spilling discs and covers onto the floor in a cascade of paper and plastic. An alarm began to blare piercing into her brain as she sat with her hand shoved into the wall by the heavy table.

she knew this would be the end of her, but hoped that her family was aboard their ferry going to safety. Don’t wait for me, she cried out quietly, her voice dimming as the lights flickered and went out one at a time.

” Maybe I will see you again, my friend. Perhaps you knew more than I gave you credit for.” She said thinking of the boy who threw himself off the edge of the world.