600 Creative Words 04/08/18

I slid the glass door open as mouse-like as I could, deciding to leave it open behind me for a quicker getaway.  Creeping up the back staircase, I paused near the top, peeping over the last stair to make sure the coast is the clear.  I made my way past my brother’s room to my door, my sisters’ rooms are the two doors at the other end of the hall.  I froze up for a moment, thinking about what I was actually up there doing.  Had I lost my mind?  Then I felt the dagger, almost vibrating, in my pocket.  This snapped me back to my apparent reality, and I pushed my door open, rushing to close it behind me. 

I walked around with a somber energy.  The posters and skateboards, my video games and rock climbing gear, all the things that I had loved for so many years, I was preparing to leave behind.  My eyes made their way over to my nightstand and I spotted the necklace Piccolo was talking about, its gem glowing like a lighthouse on the shore. 

“Hurry up, Adam.  I feel a presence coming and it isn’t good,” Piccolo shouted in my head.  I snatched the necklace, stuffed it in my jacket’s breast pocket, and made my way to my door.  Flooded by emotions, something that had become foreign to me, I froze up again and took one final look around my bedroom.  The thought of not knowing what the hell was going on, and the fact that I was not about to see this place for who knows how long overwhelmed me.  I went back to my nightstand and grabbed an old school Polaroid of me and my family.  It was from one of our awesome family vacations to the beach seven years ago.  Back then, reading Harry Potter books growing up, I hoped and prayed so many times for magic to be real.  Maybe those wishes were coming back to haunt me right now.  I opened my door and almost went into shock from my younger sister standing there surprising me.

“Jeez Alice, what the hell are you doing just standing there like that?” I asked trying to catch my breath.  Alice didn’t reply.  She was looking down at the floor, some of her hair hiding her face.  She sort of sounded like she was crying, but I wasn’t sure.

“Where are you going, big brother?” a voice from Alice’s body asked. 

“Alice, are you ok? What’s wrong?”  Ice filled my veins again.

“Adam, get out of there right now! She’s possessed by a Naki soldier,” Piccolo shouted in my head.  As if she could hear my internal conversation, Alice looked up at me.  Her eyes black, just like in my dream, my nightmare.  I was puzzled how until my mind flashed back to downstairs.  We must have made eye contact in the brief second before I came inside.  She lunged forward at me knocking me back to my bed.  God this is insane.  What the hell is going on here?  She’s stronger than anybody I’ve ever faced on the wrestling mat in my life.  Can this really be happening right now?

“Bahn-ti!  Time freeze,” Piccolo says, this time from inside the room.  Blue sparks filled the air, like snowflakes falling in the middle of a blizzard, in a complete frenzy, but still somehow patient in their landing.  Alice had ceased moving, frozen in place like a gargoyle.  It was then that I noticed how her teeth had become razor sharp, like a monster’s from one of those horror movies.

600 Words Creative 04/01/18 Happy Easter!

It was a grey Monday, just like every other Monday had been before it.  The only difference was that by all accounts, especially listening to my mother crying over the phone about it to my Aunt Tracy, it was a miracle that I was alive to see this one.  It was three months ago when my accident happened, if I can even call it that.  It was more like fate.  Fate that I missed my school bus, fate that I almost died and ended up here, wherever here is, in a scene straight out of the pages of a comic book.  Scratch that, not even Stan Lee’s imagination could have come up with something like this.  To be honest with you, I’m still not even sure if I really haven’t gone crazy.  In the dreams, or rather nightmares, since the accident, according to my Guardian Angel who looked just like my pet cat, Piccolo, I’m now actually seeing the worlds for what they truly are.  Who am I to disagree with a talking cat?  There’s more that happened, but that’s the only part I cared to remember.  The rest of my dreams made it hard to sleep at night.  

I tried counting all the light poles on my side of the road on the way home from the hospital.  It’s a longer ride than you’d expect, all the rain in Seattle slows things down more times than not. The entire car ride was the embodiment of how it looked outside and how I had been feeling inside, numb.  Not because when you slip stepping out of the shower, crack your head on the toilet on the way down, and almost end up dying on your own bathroom floor they give you a lot of pain killers to deal with all the trauma and surgeries.  No, it wasn’t that at all.  It was the head injury, the damage to my prefrontal cortex from what the doctors say, that left me feeling like this.  It took away everything that made me who I am, at least who I used to be, Adam Carter.  Before the accident, I was a eighteen year old state-bound collegiate wrestler who was always on the honor roll and the proud vice president of his senior class.  Now, I can’t find an ounce of care for any of those things.  It just all seems kind of pointless.  Doesn’t anybody else see how false all this feels?  The little snippets of my dreams feel more real than what’s supposedly reality.  My mom keeps trying her best to get me to talk, or at least smile, going on and on about how everything is going to back to normal before I know it, how the doctors say injuries like this take time to heal and that I need to be patient.  She also uses this as the opportunity to inform me that we are going to have a “small” celebration dinner with all the family for my homecoming.  Small is my mom’s way of saying, “Seating for one hundred, please.”  And what is normal anymore?  If I told anyone the dreams I’ve been having, that’s the last thing they’d say I was.  I just kept staring out the window counting the light poles. Eighty-seven, that’s how many I counted on the car ride.

            We pulled into our driveway and I could already see shadows dancing against the curtains, too many for my liking.  I started feeling tense, burying my clinching fists deep into my Columbia jacket pockets, shielding them from my mother's eyesight.

            “Mom, you said this was supposed to be a small dinner thing. Why is half the block lined up with cars?”

            My mom looked at me with tears in her eyes.  “I know, and I’m sorry.  Everyone just loves you so much and we came so close to losing you. Please don’t be mad at me.”

             “I know, I love you too.”

600 Words pt. 2 for 03/25/18

“If this smells like what I think it smells like, we’re gonna wish we were running up on a wild elephant,” Piccolo said.  I could tell just how concerned Piccolo was about whatever was coming out way.  There wasn’t an ounce of lightheartedness in his voice like there would be any other time.  All of the grey hairs on his back and tail made him look almost like a hedgehog, standing at full attention ready for a general’s command.  In an instant, sky blue flames erupted from Piccolo’s body, consuming him into a cocoon of swirling fire.  The fireball exploded outward in all directions, engulfing everything in its path, including me.  The fire wasn’t hot though, it wasn’t any temperature as weird as it may seem.  These flames were byproducts of what I would call Piccolo’s spiritual pressure; it’s what would be called ki or chi in the Far East back home. 

After several seconds, blinded and confused, the raging blue vortex shattered like a rock through a glass window pane.  The remnants lit the tree trunks, brush, and vines it touched, burning like a candle.  Before me stood a transformed Piccolo, a new form I had just seen for the first time three days ago during one of our training exercises.  He had been reborn as an ice blue crystalline lion, with his mane and paws made of the same flames that once spun around us.  He was bigger than a normal lion would be, about three times as much, and steam spout forth from his nostril with every breath.  In that moment, and to this day, I am still rendered speechless anytime I have the privilege of witnessing one of my friend’s most majestic forms.

My awe was broken much like the trees in front of us had started to bend and snap by the force that was approaching us.  It sounded like a bulldozer was trying to make its way through the forest when suddenly everything fell hushed.  Both Piccolo and I darted our eyes from floor to canopy and all around trying to figure out where this force might pop out at.  Just then, we heard a tiniest bell jingle and one of the most high pitched meows I’ve ever heard.  We looked down to the path ahead and there to our surprise stood a baby kitten, no bigger than the palm of my hand.  It was all white, with a pink nose, black tipped ears, and stone cold blue eyes that I felt like could read my soul.  It let out another one of its high pitched whining meows and I felt at peace all at once.

“Aww, it’s just a baby kitten!  It’s not going to hurt us,” I said.  Without even thinking about it, I started my way toward the little adorable fluff ball, arms outstretched like a mummy straight out of an Egyptian crypt.

“No, Adam! Don’t fall for it, it’s not real!” Piccolo shouted, this time not in telepathy.

I don’t know what happened, and it’s hard for me to explain it, but when I started moving towards that little kitten was not my doing.  I was “compelled,” as I would later find out, by this thing.  With Piccolo’s words I paused in my tracks, like a gear getting stuck in a machine.  At that same time, the little kitten let out another meow, but this time it was much deeper and distorted.  It’s eyes had become a full on black and this black vapor looked like it was spilling out of where the cat stood. 

I started backtracking, slowly taking one step after the other trying not to disturb the cat when it exploded in a cloud of black vapors, much like what Piccolo had just gone through with the blue fire. 

600 Words Short Story 03/25/18

The path laid out before us was like one I had seen in the comic books I used to read, far more often back in those younger years.  The jungle had a damp heat at all times, and there was sharpness to the air that took me the longest to put my finger on.  The air felt like when a dog is busy panting away in your face, their breath all musty and excited.  With every step we took the air always backhanding us along our way.  Ducking and dodging all the underbrush, I understood then why Piccolo had reverted back to a smaller form.  We stumbled our way onto a somewhat worn path through the belly of the jungle, a clear indication that someone, or better yet, something, had made its way through here a few times before.  In all my years of comic book reading, adventures that have foreshadowing like this usually never disappoint.

            “Maybe we should turn back.  It looks like whatever cleared out this path was at least the size of an elephant,” I said, trying not to let my nervousness crack through my voice.

            “How do you know how big an elephant is?  Have you ever actually stood next to one?” Piccolo chimed telepathically.  Whenever Piccolo was in his house cat form he always used telepathy even though he could very well use his vocal cords like any other human in that state.  I’ve only heard him talk that way a few times, stories for another day, but trust me, it can be done.

            “Yes, I have as a matter of fact.  When I was in first grade we took a field trip to the zoo and they had elephants there.  I remember feeling like they were somehow taller than the building that we were inside of.  They were gigantic,” I replied.

            “Well, I guess this time around the cat didn’t get your tongue,” Piccolo chuckled.  His laugh and voice in general whenever he was that size were higher pitched than normal.  It was always funny to hear.

The trees around us shot up from the dirt like they were in defiance of the Earth, refusing to ever go back to being held prisoner in their tiny shell seed casings for another day of their lives.  Their branches, long and darting, protruded out in all sorts of broken angles and directions.  It was as if these branches were trying to elude the trunks that bore them the same way the trees seemed to be denying the dirt their roots were home to.  Draped from the wooden bones above our heads was a thick moss, the kind you’d imagine a soldier cloak himself with as he’s moving through the swamp on a reconnaissance mission.  The sunlight broke through the gaps of the treetop canopy, scattering across the forest floor like tiny stars twinkling.  It was a gift from the skies above for not being able to see the twilight of the night sky. 

We had just stepped onto the semi-cleared path when we felt a strong jolt from the ground beneath us, and then another one followed by yet another.  Like a bass drum in a marching band, each thunderous pound of the mallet commanding attention and respect from all those listening around it.  The fourth jolt without a doubt confirmed these were loud stomps, as it rattled the trees, scaring all the birds, or what could best be described as such, out of their nests into flight.  To me, they looked more like frogs that had evolved to have a bat’s wings.  No Prince Charming hiding here though.