No one’s really posted anything here in a while… sorry :<
This isn’t a short story; these are some lyrics I just wrote a short while ago. I figured it’d be okay to post them here anyways haha. I can’t play any instruments or sing really, so maybe read it like a poem? Idk. Whatevs.
Once Upon A Time
Once upon a time,
I made a plane and watched it fly,
Watched it move across the sky,
And felt I was alive,
But now I’m not.
My breathing suddenly seems to have stopped.
Once upon a time,
As my little plane flew high,
I saw you watching from a tree,
And you were watching me,
But you turned away.
I think you were scared of what I’d say.
We can never change the past,
Our next memory can be better than our last,
And though I’m… hesitating… patiently waiting…
Waiting for the future to be here,
I’m paralyzed when the moment’s drawing near.
Once upon a time,
My life was splendidly sublime,
When you were at my side,
And when we kissed,
That’s probably the greatest thing I’ll miss,
And once upon a time,
You told me that things were fine,
And I always knew you lied,
But went along,
And maybe that was the beginning of this song.
Somehow my heart is drowning in regret,
Of what you did, of what you said when we last met,
Of my mistakes I hoped that you’d forget,
And I’m… done with lying… slowly dying…
Couldn’t you have given me a chance?
Our next memory’ll be better than our last.
Once upon a time,
You fooled me into crying,
Now I’ve stopped and wiped away my tears.
I’ve come to terms with what I’ve known for years.
Although we tried to run away,
Live a different way,
Both of us, we’re certainly the same,
We’re terrible, just in different ways.
By Lucas Vasas
Basic: serving as a base or starting point
Mom always said basic is best. When in doubt, go back to what you know. Go back to what you learned. In math, that’s easy. One plus one equals two, two plus two equals four, nine multiplied by seven is always 63. In science, it’s easier still. Everything falls because of gravity. With every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. E is equal to MC squared. Simple things. They don’t change.
But people aren’t so basic. Do you know that? One plus one won’t always equal two. Sometimes one plus one leaves you with nothing. Nine months and seven days together doesn’t mean sixty three years of your life. Time invested in something doesn’t always work out for the best. Everything falls, but everything falls apart, not just down. It is still true, however, that with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You were angry, I was angry- we are equal; the difference is I left and you tried to stay. That is our opposite reaction.
Everything changes, even though it is true that living is a form of basic math. You add a person, you take away a person. In the end, you make the most of how many numbers you have left. It’s the most basic form of survival you have, watching and learning how to move on, how to grow, how to reach, how to live.
Someday, what I’ve learned will be basic, too. Someday, this will get easier.
sam chong
Post with 3 notes
There are moments when it seems that you can physically feel the material of time slipping irretrievably through your fingers, instances where the pumping of your heart coincides with the rhythm of all life around you. It is generally agreed that these occasions are rare and few between, and that when they do happen they are missed or mistaken for something else. It is also agreed, among those who study such things, that the most common setting in which to experience this is when one is alone.
It is in such surroundings that we find a small boy, age nine. His pupils are dilated and his breathing is short and shallow. His surroundings consist of the grass he is sitting on and the tree his back is resting against. He doesn’t know what he is feeling, has never heard of anything like this, and he is scared. The moment ends, his eyes refocus and his breathing steadies, and still he doesn’t know what just happened. With shaky hands he pushes himself off the ground and looks around. The light has changed, betraying that time has passed quite dramatically while the boy was in his stupor. He rushes home, and the moment soon slides out of his mind to make room for boyish pranks and pastimes.
Years go by, and the memory of the moment fades from the boy’s mind. He reaches adolescence and, like many at that troubled age, found himself in love for the first time. The relationship was of the usual kind, of usual length, and yet the boy found it the most extraordinary thing to have happened to him. Months went by, and despite his unwillingness for such a thing, the inevitable happened; he and his love parted ways. With much youthful sorrow in his heart, the boy retreated to his room to brood. It is in such vulnerable circumstances that the moment once again possessed him. His heartbeat slowed to a point where there was hardly any pulse to speak of, his breathing quieted to a mere whisper, yet his mind was more conscious than it had ever been before. In this heightened state of awareness he explored the world around him, brushing through the carpet and seeing it through an ant’s point of view, and then racing up past the sky to look down on the planet. A calmness permeated his soul as he did these things. Just a few minutes ago the waters of his spirit had been stormy and turbulent, but were now so calm he could see his own reflection in them. He took a good long look at himself in that mirror, at his soul reflected back at himself, and also took a study of the environment his physical self occupied. It is there he found the calmness, and it is with calmness that he exited the moment and returned to his own body. His heart pumped back to normal speed, his breathing resumed, and he determinedly planted the memory of the moment in his mind. This time, he recognized its significance, and he would not let it escape.
But it is the nature of such things to slip away, and the boy once again found himself pulled into the turbulence that is life. He learned and studied, but always there would be a vision in the back of his head of looking down on the world and seeing himself, of feeling calm. He longed for the calmness, and sought ways to gain it back.
After a long search he stumbled onto the only thing that brought him close, and with the help of a few friends he submerged himself into the lifestyle. It was a summer evening during his nineteenth year when he first stuck a needle into his own arm.
The rest of the boy’s story is of not much consequence to this narrative, and a brief summary will suffice. Like many who have lived through the moment, he was trapped in his yearning for the calm. During those long years of injection, intoxication replaced all other desires and became an obsession as large as the original. The surprise and distress of those around him can not be properly exhibited in this article.
The moment would visit him once more in his lifetime. He was unconscious in a hospital bed , but immediately awoke when it came to him. Once more he swung out into the world beyond his body, flying among the nebula and crawling through the dirt. Again, he looked into the mirror of his own soul, and the image that looked back at was a boy sitting in the grass, leaning against a tree. The boy’s pupils were dilated, his breathing shallow and ragged. The boy looked scared and uncomfortable and stayed there for quite a while, staring into space. Finally the boy took a dry, coughing breath, clutching at his chest and looking around him in shock. The disembodied consciousness of the young man in the hospital bed stared at his younger self, wondering what had gone wrong. Then the calm enveloped him completely, and he let it into himself. His body stopped breathing and his pulse ended, and the moment swept him into eternity like a broom sweeps dust.
Post reblogged from Not Your Average Short Story Blog with 2 notes
I walked into the chapel with my music sheets grasped tightly in my eager hands. Upon my arrival, I spotted immediately a young boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, sitting on the piano bench with his back facing me playing the piano. I thought to myself, “Maybe if I wait long enough, he’ll grow tired of her and leave,” So I set down my music and my purse and sat down and waited on the chairs provided. To my amazement, he kept playing song after song after song. He was quite talented as he would pause for a short five seconds or less after each song to collect himself only to slide smoothly into another of a similar genre.
I must have waited for twenty-five minutes before my I even brushed my fingertips on the keys, but it was, nonetheless, twenty-five beautiful minutes of pure musical talent. I wasn’t nearly as blessed musically as he was. When he ended his final song with the last notes mirroring a fifties trill, he arose slowly and said to no one in particular, “I have to go.” As he turned, I was quite shocked to realize tht he could have easily been sixteen or seventeen years of age. From behind, his hair made him seem like a thirteen-year-old. He was neither attractive nor ugly. He seemed to me to be a shy gentleman of sorts and I smiled.
His brown hair was slicked back by some sort of gel and his face was clean shaven and cut. It wasn’t a defined cut; it was more like the face of your average sixteen or seventeen-year-old athletic young man. He was taller than I thought he would be. His black coat hid his torso and I couldn’t tell if he was short or not, but when he stood it became evident that he was quite a bit taller than me. When he turned from the piano, his brown eyes burned into mine with surprise almost to say, “How long have you been here?” But he didn’t wait for a response. The meeting was cut short as he turned and walked briskly out of the room. He didn’t leave without closing the lid of the piano. I found it quite humorous that the only other thing that kept him company was the tissue box that sat on the piano bench beside him.
I do hope that someday I will learn his name and that we will become friends. He seemed like a very interesting young man that harbored many secrets. I cannot lie when I say that I am intrigued by his mysterious personality that fades quickly from my memory by the second. I wonder what his name is.
I never did get to play my music that day. I only hit a few notes and left.
- Florence Carolyn, 20 February 2011
Post reblogged from Not Your Average Short Story Blog with 1 note
Walking down that empty hallway, Lucas silently arrived at his locker after swim practice. Usually the star of the swim team, Lucas swam a whole minute slower than his record breaking time. His coach was threatening to kick him off of the team if he didn’t get his act together. The coach wouldn’t be saying that, however, if he knew what was really going on inside the mind of that star swimmer.
It had been three days since he had gotten the call. Lucas was slipping deeper and deeper into the darkness of his subconscious
After about a week, Lucas acted more like an empty shell than a conscious human being. He was unresponsive, and his eyes were about as blank as the stare on his face. His parents began to worry. They wanted to know what was wrong, but every day after school he would lock himself in his room. He was all alone.
That weekend, he told his parents that he was going away for a few days, since he was 18 and a legal adult. After a few days with no response, his parents worry began to intensify. The next day, they received a call saying that Lucas’s body was found, he had drowned in a lake right outside of the city. During the mourning process, they were cleaning out his room when they found a note with his handwriting:
“Dear Mom and Dad,
A few weeks ago I received a call saying that my girlfriend and our newborn child were in a fatal collision. There were no survivors. That is the reason why I retreated into the darker realm of my mind, as well as being unresponsive. I’m truly sorry for what I have done, and I am sorry for the grief that you must be dealing with. I decided to learn a lesson from the elephants. I have now literally died because of a broken heart.”
- Ryan
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There you go! Sorry for the angsty first story… and sorry for the spacing difference. Oh well, enjoy!
Post reblogged from Not Your Average Short Story Blog with 3 notes
I didn’t expect to see her there. To be honest, I was avoiding this moment. I was only drawing out the inevitable. I watched her walk into the cafe, taking her sunglasses off her face to reveal her icy blue eyes. She took a seat by the window to the left of the entrance, her back facing me.
She hadn’t noticed me. I was sitting not but 25 feet away from her. Her long brown hair was let down. She ran her hands threw it as a waiter came to her table. She turned and I could see her face. Her icy blue eyes struck me again. She still hadn’t noticed me, she was busy making her usual order of a Latte Macchiato. She loved cafes, and ordering coffee was her “test” of the cafe’s caliber. The waiter left to fetch her order. She turned to watch out the window.
I was only delaying what surely was fate. If I didn’t do it now, it would happen sometime soon. Now was as good a chance as ever. I tried to quell the butterflies in my stomach. I’ll admit, I was nervous. Very nervous.
I walked over to her table. She turned, saw me, and made an expression of surprise. Her lightly freckled face was tanned. Her lipstick a shade of pink. Her most striking feature was still her eyes. I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say.
We stood there for a while. Just staring at each other in an odd bewilderment. Our eyes met and locked. I knew I had to tell her. I couldn’t delay it any longer. I sat across from her at the table.
I told her everything.
- Lucas Vasas
originally off my blog
Our moments together were tiny, but often I suppose that that is for the better. Tiny memories, each one separate in their spheres make for better remembering. One can hold those memories in their hand, savoring each tiny detail as they gather a handful and ponder in wandering thought. It is not that those tiny memories lack detail; in contrast, they are richly ornamented, vibrant in color, texture, shape, smell, sounds- memories of places and people and things that are held dear.
So my many memories of you are tiny, but they are all hidden in my mind somewhere where only I can pull them out to observe.
My memories of you are lush in detail, and every single thing that I see reminds me of you. The bay window where we first had our first kiss, the beach where I spent summer with your family, the humid Florida air where you first told me your story. Sometimes, it seems as though the world is embroidered with my memories- our memories that we made together. Sometimes, I feel like I can never recapture the moments, because memories are like moving photographs- images captured behind a tiny film of paper with no substance to back them up.
Sometimes, I am deceived by these memories. Sometimes, I can smell the coffee that you loved so much- and I can almost hear the spoon as it clinks against the coffee cup, but when I look, there is no one there and I am alone again. It is then that these memories hurt me; they inundate me with too many familiar images and sounds and smells and aches and hurt and grief and then I will withdraw, because you were too good to lose and it all ended too soon.
It’s not like you can hear me- nobody hears me anymore, not since you left- and sometimes they tell me that I should stop because you are no longer here and it makes no sense. But that is why I am here now, why I am sitting in front of a cold gray stone with the words scratched off. It is October now, and it is wonderful in New York City. Your favorite city, your favorite season, your favorite flowers- and it is that time of year where I visit you again.
Somehow, those memories stitch me closer to you, and I am grateful for that. No one will ever come close to what our memories provide- and I suppose that that is for the better; because people are meant to make new memories. Perhaps I have to learn how to live and let go, but we never learned that.
I don’t have a memory of you saying goodbye.
-Sam Chong
