Layered Fiction

PROLOGUE
[The desk was littered with coffee cups and coffee stains, old manuals for various electronic toys and tangled headphones. I sat and marveled at the punchy beats and longing voices tearing at me from the speakers attempting to override the hearty laughter of my sister's boyfriend below. My green cap pushed to the back of my head I wrinkled my nose in concentration and squinted at the screen, my fingers tap dancing on a white stage. My vanilla t-shirt gave little protection against the winds chilled and pulled from an open window and pushed gustily around the room by an overhead fan. My mood switched dramatically as iTunes randomly chose a song of acoustic and woeful origin. The focus of this story subconsciously turned, creating yet another piece of nicotine despair. ]

The day was bright and crisp, with a clear overhead sky and an optimistic sun that gave in light what it lacked in heat. Brambles came alive and wrapped themselves around his legs, gleefully ripping at the pale flesh between canvas shoe and jeans. Instinctively he dropped to a crouch and slung his large backpack to the ground as the sound of an automobile betrayed its approach- a tearing of atmosphere as it rumbled and burst through continuous walls of oxygen. He had just crossed a two- lane road, obviously ignored by the county for too long, pot-holed and faded. The rattling Ford came around one corner, gasping and choking, straining to meet the heavy demands required by a heavy foot. Then it was gone. Cautiously rising, he was momentarily refused his vertical goal by the successive annoyances of thorns. Angered and frustrated by yet another defeat, no matter of how little consequence, he helplessly dropped to the ground and rummaged through his great-grandfathers army issued knapsack. Out came a wrinkled cigarette, pitiful and torn, and soon followed by a plain, black Bic lighter. Cupping his hand lightly in protection against the mild wind drifting through the highest tree-branches, he gained flame, the initial rise of smoke and gasping choke, then was set. Dropping the lighter back into the pack, he explored its depths and triumphantly removed a letter as wrinkled and pitifully treated as the cigarette. He placed it against his thigh, and tightening his lips firmly around his cigarette [each was precious and valuable] he smoothed the blotched and inky page, starting at his favorite bit and reading through the rest with a rueful, mutually embittered and humorous half-smile.



PT. ONE
[Sitting back, I grinned at my own ridiculous over-use of adjectives, took a regretful drink of lukewarm water, and wished for a cigarette of my own. Caffeine, thick and black, will serve for now, I rationed with myself.
"Now, how to fit in The Girl?"
I had promised her a story, and so far it was only an attempt at historical fiction, of past actions and future hopes, a narcissist's tale to give readers a falsified testimony of my life. I rotated my knit cap to a position absurd and comically unadjusted; and began blindly stabbing at the keys in an equally blind hope that I would open my eyes and ?'Behold! A Masterpiece!' ]



The door did NOT bang behind her, in fact it did a marvelous job of quietly sliding to a close with only the meekest murmur of a click. Angrily she glared at its inoffensive wood grains as she shrugged into her jacket and fumbled with its stubborn zipper. Looking over her shoulder, she could see through the transparent reflection of herself against the glass her mother grabbing a fat-free Yoplait smoothie as if it were a reviving shot of vodka or the comforting inch of scotch left in a bottle. The girl turned and strode, freely and with dignity, across an open yard to the nearby woods that clumped at the backend of this weak Land of Suburbia she called home. The woods had always been an aggravation to the residents of the motley one- story houses that clung to the farthest corners of the farthest edges of an active city. They sat and aged, unattended by children too busy with Playstations and malls to worry about leaves and mud and bark and rivulets of drainage and runoffs. They sat and pondered, massacred in wide swaths for new roads or straight gashes for future pipes to be buried. They sat and kept to themselves, skinny and quiet, dying. The girl felt they were her woods, hers alone, and felt a particular fondness to their relative solitude and mystery. They were comfortable to her, the favorite chair you always choose to read in, the odd corner of the couch that never hurts your back or deadens your limbs no matter HOW long you sit. She turned to them now, with the bright day's wind whipping hair into her face, trying to confuse and halt her by means of chaos. She kept on, moving at her own speed, defying all, clutching her torn notebook to her chest like a private holding his rifle as he turns his back to the front lines. She made her way over root and tangle, wandering aimlessly. Unsatisfied with her customary nooks, her eyes remained fixed on the hill and dip and ridge along the edges of her eyesight, and she remained on the move. The fall leaves crunched and munched and splintered under her feet, every step - no matter how lightly she tried to place her thin shoe- broke a thousand thin decanters, destroyed and mangled until she felt that every movement was an offense against Nature itself. She grabbed an outreaching branch of a flexible willow and used it to gain the top of a knoll. Standing in her elevated position, she could see the scattered rock and rusty ties of railroad tracks not thirty yards from her. And beyond that? She had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing out loud, for only a couple of meters beyond the tracks sat one of the most comical figures she had ever seen. A scarecrow of a boy was plopped amongst a wreckage of undergrowth; legs thrown out in front of him like discarded toothpicks and his back hunched as he scanned a scrap of paper in his lap. Unkempt brown hair stuck out at all angles from under a knit green cap, scrawny wrists poked from the ?'long' sleeves of his stained thermal shirt, and there was at three inches of ankle between the end of his thin jeans to the tops of his ripped canvas shoes. She debated whether to make her presence known or simply retreat- however the decision was made for her through the means of a tricky acorn rolling her left foot from under her, creating a roll of noise which she watched move towards and envelop the boy. He glanced up quickly, hand dropping protectively over the page resting on his thigh as ash fell from the last breath of his cigarette. [code][/code]