empness
She was in her prime. Black shining hair, long, statuesque legs, a brain as sharp and wrinkled as the famed afro'd german himself. She was truly a catch. She thought of this, walking up the marble steps of the investment firm, repeating her pre-interview mantra in her mind over and over and over and over and over and over again. "You don't need them. They need you."
There he was again: the sk8r boi. Coming in at 11 a.m., Starbucks in hand, flip flops flipping and flopping a processional to his arrival. He'd stay for about 45 minutes before taking a lunch "hour" of at least 90 minutes before peace-ing out at 4:30 for a meeting across town. He was the boss's son, of course--such a cliché. But somewhere between the surfing stories punctuated by drawn-out drahls of "brah" and the frat-esque tales of blonde bimbo conquest, there was a glimmer of value, a sparkling shine that backed up his very (seriously) expensive price tag that not even I, Brian, hipster king of all things bearded, old-timey and ironic, could say "no" to. Because this "brah," this blond bimbo in his own right, was fucking h-o-t-t hot. And while I'd gladly bend him over the copier after hours in the most hackneyed way possible, I'll be damned if I ever admit it.
He traced around her edges with the tip of his finger, the soft grooves of her ribs a sensuous braille, a language he was hungry to learn. Her skin prickled under his touch, the tiny, blonde hairs bristling at the tip of small goosebumps that freckled her back. There was an electricity, an organic magnetism that drew them closer--and that produced a reaction when they touched.
ZZZZAAAP! Horatio convulsed against the wall, a puff of skin-smelling smoke wafting from the electrical outlet. With mere sections of electrical pulses, involuntary teeth chattering and heart-stopping shocks, the young man slumped down to the ground, his body expelling a burping gurgle. And that's how Lacy found him, a heap of barely alive, singed meat.
"You're off your rocker!" I exclaimed. And he truly was. He looked at me with poisonous daggers--the look of a man betrayed. As we stood there in front of the committee, I knew those daggers had simply been returned to me--from the ones I had just planted deep in his back.
You're not the boss of me. I'm my own person. You can't tell me how I'm supposed to act or when it is OK to feel. I don't run on your timetable--I exist on my own plane. A plane that I need to explore myself before I can return to this land. And the lack of support is disheartening. You don't believe. If I'm not doing, acting, saying, feeling, thinking what you want, you don't believe in me or my success.
So, instead, I get the cold shoulder, the hushed whispers, the half-eyed, glazed look out of the corner of your eye as you try not to look at me. Because, to you, I must be a huge disappointment.
Nobody seems to be hearing me. Ever. I scream and scream, but my words never matter. Why, you ask? Simple. Age. Experience. Moxie. Feminism. Pick your poison, it doesn't wont matter. All that matters is that no amount of my yelling and flustering and waving of arms will ever amount to anything. Time to get out.
She heard his footsteps coming up the stairs. They were hard and harsh and full of mud in the soles--she remembered them well. Why they were here, she found it hard to muster. It had been forty-seven years since their departure. Since those boots ran out and scrubbed their mud off on someone else's doorstep.
She had built bricks around it. It was understandable, after what it had been through. Pain inflicted, inerasable memories created unwillingly--it was only natural to protect what had once been pure from further harm. But within it grew something bright and hopeful. A small speck of life, protected for the time being. Until it would arise one day, trusting and naive, and try to fill in its missing pieces.