I’ve had a bout of ADD and other internet related psychosomatic disorders
I know I haven’t been keeping up with the posts lately… I’ve recently been having my soul devoured by the likes of the “hot” page on 9GAG, scrolling and clicking next into infinity. I’ve literally wasted away a good 8 hours of scrolling and looking at posts there. BUT! On the other hand, I have updated one of my stories that I posted here some time ago. I’ve more than doubled the text in length, and also edited a few things to clarify some of the plot a little further into the new part.
Addition to Prose - 3 December 2010 (last edited 4 February 2012)
I shaded the sight of him with the brim of my cap. There was no way I could look him in the eyes after such a confession. The guilt bubbled up in my chest and frothed over the brim of my conscience. I could feel his stare on the side of my face, looking down past the cap, boring his solid gaze past any obstruction. I felt naked.
“So, how do you feel about me?” came the dreaded question, the sound of his voice denoting a hopeful smile on his lips.
Beneath the shade of my cap, I forced a bright smile on my face and turned to him, unable to bring myself to lie while looking him in the eyes. “Yeah, I like you, too, Edan,” I replied as my stomach threw itself into a tantrum inside of my torso. It wasn’t a lie, but a ‘No!’ resounded in my thoughts; however, I squashed them into my dark subconscious and let Edan take me into his arms. The embrace felt so nice in the cool weather of autumn dragging itself into winter. I let my head loll against his warm chest, selfishly absorbing his body heat.
Edan brushed my tight curls back from my forehead tenderly and kissed it with his dry, yet soft lips. My eyes were squeezed shut tight enough that pin-lights sprang forth behind the eyelids. His chuckle drew them open. I didn’t want to look at him, but I ended up doing one more thing against my better sense of judgment. I instantly regretted it.
The sight of him was oddly breathtaking. I never really found him attractive in the all the classes that I’ve had with him in the past few years, but everything in that moment made every single imperfection of his face brilliantly and humanly flawless. The slightly crooked teeth in the front made his smile boyish, yet the fine lines around his smoky grey eyes when he smiled made him wise beyond his years. His ears, which looked pointed from my shorter vantage, gave him a look of mischief, especially the way the locks of ink black hair framed his face with wisps of hair escaping with glee. My brain wanted to tear my eyes away from the sight, but something inside was greedily drinking every bit of information they processed.
Suddenly, a startlingly cold drop of water hit my nose, forcing me to instinctively look up at the dark clouds covering the even fire colored sunset. Another drop splashed into my eye, then more followed in a light shower. Edan opened his jacket and protectively covered me as we jogged and searched for the nearest form of protection from the rain, which was becoming heavier by the moment. Eventually we stumbled across a small cave and pressed our damp backs against the smooth rock wall. A few moments later the shower turned into a sheet of rain splattering across the dirt road, which, in turn, became clay like in the water.
Edan turned his attention over to me and gave me a smug look that made me curse silently to myself. I looked away, thinking of all the excuses I could think of to get myself out of the now extremely awkward situation, but with the combination of the sudden change in weather and my lack of preparation, left me none that would suffice. Strong fingers curled their way around my chin and brought my face back towards him, dragging reluctant eyes back to focus on his features. Instead of trying to fight my way out of a situation I was already deadlocked into, I decided to play my role – a shy twenty-year-old college student. I took my cap off and let my hair shake free from the shape that formed underneath it.
“I’m glad I wore this cap cause I had no idea it was supposed to rain today,” I said, trying to warm up my social skills as I wrung out water from the hat.
Edan slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone, tapping the screen a few times. “Odd. There’s no reception out here when there usually is,” he said and lifted his phone, waving it around to catch the imaginary bubbles of service, “and there was no indication of rain supposed to be occurring today anywhere in this district.” The clap of thunder followed his words. “Or a thunder storm for that matter.”
I checked my pockets and sigh, remembering that I left my cell phone in my messenger bag back in the recreation locker before we decided to take our ‘romantic walk’ to talk to each other. I suppressed a sigh and smile. “At least I get to be stuck with you,” I reassured him and leaned my head against his shoulder and held onto his arm like I’ve observed other females of my age behave with the guys they like.
Edan gave a chuckle and wrapped his arm around my waist, forcing me to press against the side of his body and smell the damp clothes that lingered the scent of expensive cologne. Not unpleasant in the least, especially since the temperature took a sudden nosedive and hovered just below comfortable for the thin autumn jackets we were wearing. A small shudder was enough to get Edan rubbing his large hand up and down my arm, attempting to stimulate heat into my skin as he tapped his phone a few more times. “This is the cave I used to play in whenever my family went to my father’s hunting cabin, which is not too far from here. Maybe about a five minute walk if we take a shortcut through the woods, and a ten minute walk by the road.”
The sound of a random hike in the middle of the woods while it was pouring didn’t sound too pleasing, but neither did walking for ten minutes in mud. I looked up at him and shrugged, placing our decision in his hands.
“We can’t stay here forever, Faye,” he reminded me and pulled me in to kiss my forehead again in what he probably felt was a reassuring gesture. He had a point, but what I really wanted was to be anywhere but in the cave with him, stuck in the rain.
It wasn’t that I disliked Edan. It wasn’t the case at all. Ever since I had my first class with him in political science and heard his intelligent banter with the professor on the policies required of the government to forgo constitutional rights for the overall safety of the nation, he’d had my attention. However, the pretenses in which I had to be with him in the situation were forced – undercover espionage for a rebel organization against the government. It was times like these when I wished I were a normal young adult, enjoying life. I’d be with the man I had affection for, stuck with an opportunity to be with him. Instead, I’m faced with my guilt of having to mislead him into what he believes could be something real.
Snapping back to reality, I avoided the gaze that lingered on my face and looked at the bleak scenery behind the wall of cascading water. The trees sagged underneath the pressure and looked every bit as depressed as I felt at that moment. I sensed that Edan was waiting for me to respond, but I did not want to. Crawling up my legs was the wintry cold of the temperature dropping beyond what either of us would be able to tolerate in these conditions. I had to make a choice. “Visibility would be too low for us to go through the forest, so I suppose sticking to the main road is our best bet from this point forward. Perhaps we could get lucky and run into someone with a car,” I offered. In the next ten minutes of our filthy journey to Edan’s hunting cabin, we did not. Not another soul bothered to venture out into the torrential downpour.
By the time we made our way inside, we were both soaked to the point of misery and our shoes were destroyed by a combination of the clay-like soil and water damage. We might as well have been walking across the ocean floor. The cold seeped into the pores of my skin and numbed my bones, and judging from the way Edan fumbled with his keys for more than a few moments outside, his joints were just as stiff as my own. I stood in the middle of a foyer, which did not suit the theme of what the house was supposed to be. When I think ‘hunting house’, I imagine everything being made out of wood with taxidermy heads of deer mounted on the walls. Instead, we were standing on top of brilliantly polished creamy stone floors, which reflected my miserable form back to me.
Lights snapped on overhead and the hushed hiss of heat escaping the vents circled around the room. Edan walked over, and gave me a warming smile and draped a soggy arm around my shoulder.
“Well, we made it all safe, although,” he said looking at both of our caked up feet and legs, “I would suggest getting out of these clothes.”
In any other circumstance, it could have been taken suggestively, but more than anything at the moment, I wanted to change. Suddenly I found myself steered towards a door. I looked up at Edan and stretched my cramped fingers to open the door, revealing a large bathroom.
“I’m not sure, but I think you’ll be able to fit my sister’s old clothes,” he said to me while taking off his shoes, then pants. I turned away in modesty. He looked up and chuckled a bit. “Well, I don’t want to track mud all over the house. That would be more work than necessary to clean. Let me just get some clothes for the both of us. Go ahead and use the bathroom, in the mean time,” he told me and ventured up the fine polished wooden staircase.
I waited until I couldn’t see him anymore before I went into the bathroom that was larger than any room I could call my own. It was more likely than not made out of a gleaming white cut of marble, accented by obsidian black hardware. The stark contrast of color was contrasted by the splash of furnishing in the room. The vanity chair was a warm mahogany, seated with a plush cushion of red crushed velvet, and the towels casually draped over racks were a rosy pink. I looked at myself in one of the many lit mirrors and suddenly felt like the foreigner I was in the majestic room. Squalid and wet I stood in the middle of the room, leaving a trail of my presence with the footsteps of mud.
It took a few more moments of technical observation before I could get my feet to move towards the chamber where the shower waited for me, and I suddenly craved the feeling of hot water more than anything else, at the moment. My jeans were stubborn to roll off of my legs, as the water acted as a natural adhesive between the fabric and my skin. I kicked my sneakers off as I stepped out of the jeans, and the water-adhesive took my socks along for the ride. Remembering that Edan still existed beyond the room, I made sure to lock the door so there wouldn’t be anymore unwanted exposure between the two of us. With less protest, my cap, shirt, and undergarments joined the soiled articles of clothing on the floor and I stepped into the shower.
My first mistake was to assume that the more exposed parts of my body could instantly handle the temperature of warm water. The skin on my hands and feet screamed where the water hit it; however, the rest of my body registered the water temperature accurately at medium warm, at best. My frozen fingers fumbled to adjust the fine knobs that regulated the water temperature and pressure. Soon enough I found a balance that allowed the more sensitive parts to coexist with the rest of my body in the water.
For a moment, within those four walls, I was able to forget about myself. The feeling of warmth and life returning to my body had overridden the terrible feeling that settled in my stomach ever since I was sent on this task. For a few fractions of a moment, I was allowed to be self-absorbed and not care about any organization or political movements that was waiting for the results they expected of me. Really, all I wanted was to be a normal young woman, caring about grades and men, like I’ve been pretending to do for the past year and a half. The fact that I had no way to contact Grant, at the moment, gave me the biggest feeling of relief. There was no way for me to anticipate what was going to happen, right? However, fate had propelled me to the place where everyone wanted me to be. For the organization, I was in a place that allowed me access to possible vital information; though I doubted anything of major importance was in the vacation home. For Edan, I was alone with him for an amount of time – this also worked to the advantage of the organization, as well.
When I turned off the water after washing away the dirt and the cold, I could see the last of my comfort escaping down the drain.
Soon enough I found myself clothed in a hot pink terry cloth tracksuit that displayed the word ‘delicious’ across my rear. By the look in Edan’s eye when he looked at me, I could see he agreed with the statement. He furrowed his eyebrows when he retrieved his phone from his pocket and shook at it. “Water damage?” I asked, eyeing the phone carefully. Edan sighed and half tossed it onto the coffee table, then sank into the couch, sighing.
“At this rate, we’re going to have to wait out the storm. My father cuts the landlines when he’s not staying here for more than a week. Who’d think we’d end up here without both of our phones, huh?” he asked, then chuckled with obvious annoyance at the inconvenience.
Sitting next to him, I resumed my assumed role that everyone wanted me to play, and ran my fingers through his damp hair. “Well, it’s okay. We have each other, right?” I asked and smiled shyly once more. Edan gave me a look of surprise, his grey eyes catching the light of the room as they widened, then smiled brightly. “Yes, of course, beautiful. I shall declare that as the silver lining in these unfortunate events,” he reassured me and pulled me in for a hug. Once more, I selfishly stole away his body heat as I nuzzled into his chest comfortably and wondered if he ever suspected me to be a fraud. Would anyone suspect a small twenty-year-old to be the vital catalyst in a political movement? No, everyone would suspect something one a grander level, targeting not the son of the sector president, but the man himself. It was a more clandestine way of obtaining a sense of security. Despite these beliefs, no one is exactly sure how this would work to the most specific of details. I did work on this for a year and a half to obtain a level of trust in Edan, and now that he’s in what Grant considers the ‘sweet spot’, it will allow me to heighten that trust to levels no one is one-hundred percent sure about – but better than anything that can possibly come from another operation that required force. As opposed to threats and bribery to change the mind of politicians, they decided to use me to plant seeds of ideas into Edan’s head. He was the next in line of presidency, and I was the way into his thoughts. Project Genesis, they called it.
The abrupt gurgle and growl of his stomach disrupted my meandering thoughts and we both looked at one another, suddenly laughing. Standing up, he took my hand and led me to the kitchen, which was possibly even grander than any other part of the house. The countertops shimmered with what looked to be a mixture of recycled glass and carbon-based material. The opposition between the darkness of the carbon and the shimmering of light hitting the fragments of glass dazzled my eyes. All the appliances, where I expected the standard stainless steel, were instead an intense, glossy, hard candy red. Even the massive refrigerator proudly wore the color.
“I can’t imagine anything but condiments to be in here,” Edan mentioned as he swung the door of the fridge open. True enough, it was empty. “Probably some stuff in the cabinet. Less perishable food, I imagine.” Walking over to a panel between the end of the row of glossy black cabinets, he pulled out a slender drawer, revealing a deep rolling shelve, stocked with various glass jars, plastic packages and metallic cans. “Jackpot,” he said and knelt down. I walked over to him and sat on the floor, looking at what the shelf had to offer.
