How about a by weekly round up of the Flash Fictions currently available for “A Year Before Harbinger”?

Please note: These are unedited, non-proofed first drafts.

The three entries so far are:

– September 30, 2011 – Peace of Mind?

– October 14, 2011 – Meaning to the madness?

– October 28, 2011 – Not helpful

I will be posting, every 2nd friday, a series of short flash fiction that detail the year before the events that take place in my next novel, Harbinger. I will most likely sprinkle in a few short stories about specific characters, and, once I am ready to release the novel, I will combine these stories, do a proper edit, and make them available as a companion anthology. I hope you enjoy getting a glimpse into Olive’s life before Harbinger. As always feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

Please note: These are unedited, non-proofed first drafts.

________________

October 28, 2011

Something terrible, terrifying, had happened today on her way to lunch…she’d tried to stop it, really she had, but her brain overrode her, declared her irrational and stopped up her warning cry. And now she was pretty sure someone was dead.

At first she’d frozen, just staring at the boy, man really, walking up the sidewalk on the other side of the street and heading opposite to her. She knew she shouldn’t just stop and stare at random people, that that wouldn’t help with the weirdo vibe she was sure she already put off, but she felt involuntarily rooted and the nagging feeling of impending doom rose up from it’s constant presence on her chest into her throat. She almost choked, even though there was physically nothing to choke on. It became hard to breathe, laborious. And her vision momentarily swam and then suddenly snapped into focus and seemed to almost zoom, like a camera, in on the guy striding towards her. His flip flops slapped almost in time with the bob of his curly, brown head. He was wearing black shorts and a droopy navy hoodie, and his ear bud wires disappeared into his pocket. She thought he might have just come back from the gym…the was one a block up and over on 4^th Avenue, they lined their elliptical trainers along their front windows and often strung banners off the edge of the roof that declare their membership fees. It looked like —

Pain shot across her jaw and she realized she was clenching it, but even the realization didn’t allow her to relax.

Stop staring. Stop staring. Stop staring, she chanted inside her head — the initially firm command turned to almost pleading. She couldn’t keep doing this…this was just crazy behaviour.

But her head wouldn’t turn, nor would her feet move.

Some thing bad was going to happen. Some thing bad was going to happen. Something really, really bad was going to happen. Now. Now. Now.

She gave in, stopped fighting the feeling, and suddenly her head was free to swivel and look around. So she did.

There was nothing on the street other than cars parked on either side. No other pedestrians or moving vehicles of any kind. There was nothing in the guy’s path. Unless he was going to drop dead of an aneurism, with which she couldn’t help him anyway, there was nothing threatening in the vicinity of the guy. But the feeling didn’t ease at this observation.

Maybe he was a threat to her? Maybe that was what all this impeding doom shit was? Something was going to happen to her?

He was close enough, though still on the opposite side of the street, that she could see that he did indeed have a gym bag over one shoulder, and that the bits of hair touching his face were damp with sweat.

She didn’t feel like running or hiding. He wasn’t a threat to her. She glanced around again, softly swivelling her body to track him as he passed by. He was completely absorbed in his music. She wondered what he was thinking of, what job he had that he could workout at lunchtime on a Friday, and whether or not he had someone who loved him waiting for his return.

He suddenly turned to cross through the middle of the street and she involuntarily threw up her hands, palms outward. Her brain actually screamed an incoherent warning. She fought the gesture. She fought the painful, chest and neck piercing, panic. There was nothing here. Nothing was going to happen. She couldn’t pull down her arms, like they weren’t hers to command anymore, and she was glad the guy didn’t seem to use his peripheral vision otherwise she’d look like total idiot — arms outstretched in warning, jaw clenched to fight the screamed warning threatening to rip out of her throat.

There were cobblestones here, mixed in with the asphalt and she’d always wondered what road stood here 50 or a 100 years before and why the city had only enough concern to partially preserve it.

His toe caught on one of the raised edges of the uneven surface. He stumbled, and instinctively flung his other foot forward to catch himself. His flip flop flew off that foot and he landed half barefoot, but upright. He chuckled to himself. He had a nice laugh, deep and sincere. He laughed like he didn’t know anyone was watching. He laughed like he could handle anything anyone threw at him.

Her arms fell to her side, limp. That was it?

He leaned down to reach for his flip flop — it was tucked beside the tire of a parked car.

She turned away.

A car flashed by her going way too fast.

The tires didn’t even squeal. The driver probably never saw the man leaning down between the cars, but still she was driving way too fast for single lane traffic. Any child could be playing with any type of ball in any of these front lawns, whether or not they were apartment buildings or duplexes or —

She heard a sickening thump — which wasn’t an accurate description, but, even though it was all she could hear repeating over and over in her head, she couldn’t actually articulate the sound. Which was okay, seeing as the 911 operator seem to think she needed to move on from this part of her phone call, and the nice policeman didn’t seem to think that the exact noise reverberating in her head was terribly relevant when he was taking her statement.

“I thought something might happen and I didn’t say anything. I saw him lose his shoe and I turned away because he was laughing and I didn’t want to be staring,” she babbled to the policeman, who didn’t seem to be very much older than herself, but was much more steady and, obviously, more stable. She thought it might be the uniform, but it was probably just him.

“I don’t think you could have done much more than you did, Miss, you called 911 and us. Now you just have to let the paramedics and doctors do their jobs,” he answered, kindly enough.

She’d never been called ‘Miss” before, the title seemed almost otherworldly, and it was on the tip of her tongue to correct him, but that wasn’t what was actually important. What was important was that he didn’t know. Didn’t know that she’d known. She’d known ahead of time, hadn’t she?

The police officer offered to drive her home, but she still needed to get to lunch. She was late and it was starting to hurt, like it had hurt before. The officer seemed to concerned to let her go alone, but she insisted that the restaurant was around the corner. She even mentioned how good the black bean cod was, and then felt terrible for saying so with the blood still wetly splattered on the cobblestones only feet away. She felt the heat of her embarrassment rushing through her face, but he didn’t seem to notice and just thanked for her “recommendation”, because he was always looking for good lunch place.”

She practically ran to the restaurant, Connie’s Cookhouse — again, of course — and slammed herself into her usual table. She couldn’t get the sight of them loading the guy into the ambulance out of her head. This visual was scored with the thudding sound of his body smashing against the speeding vehicle and the parked car, practically in the same spilt second. Mixed in there somewhere was the drivers gut wrenching sobs as she sat, practically foetal, on the side of the road.

Two lives ruined today.

She didn’t order the cod. She didn’t deserve in. Though the chicken in mixed vegetable was almost as tasty, so it wasn’t much of a punishment.

But it was all just a coincidence.

Wasn’t it?

She’d just been wandering around under her typical doom cloud, saw this guy and tried to make him part of her daily-sought solution — if only for a few seconds. The shoe, the car, and the killing where all coincidence.

She asked for her fortune cookie before she finished her lunch…actually she could barely eat and had them pack it up only a couple of minutes after they placed it in front of her. No point in wasting good food.

She thought she just needed something, something clarifying, so she eagerly ripped open the cookie they brought her and practically gobbled the fortune it held:

There will be a change of plans this weekend.

Huh, now that was illuminating. And so so comforting.

Right.

So totally not helpful.

______________

Other Harbinger stories:

– September 30, 2011 – Peace of Mind?
– October 14, 2011 – Meaning to the madness?

I will be posting, every 2nd friday, a series of short flash fiction that detail the year before the events that take place in my next novel, Harbinger. I will most likely sprinkle in a few short stories about specific characters, and, once I am ready to release the novel, I will combine these stories, do a proper edit, and make them available as a companion anthology. I hope you enjoy getting a glimpse into Olive’s life before Harbinger. As always feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

Please note: These are unedited, non-proofed first drafts.

________________

October 14, 2011

It wasn’t as if she didn’t understand that fortune cookies were mass produced in some factory somewhere, probably not even in China — a quick wikipedia search on her phone revealed they probably were a Japanese American invention — and that the fortunes contained within were not written by some powerful mystic, though she had no evidence that such a person even existed, but printed out by the thousands via computer. And these fortunes didn’t hold some window to the reader’s destiny and the only guidance, or solace, they provided was self-imposed.

But still, with each cookie she snapped open and savoured, while dissecting the riddle contained within, she hoped. In the moment before she read the red block letters, while she was reading, and in the moments after as she began to interpret — she hoped for a hint. Just a little hint. A shove in the right direction would be welcomed, or even a slap in the face — anything to help with this desperately aching want.

Why? The never ending question perpetually reverberated around in her brain. Why, oh, why?

Yeah sure, she got that everyone asked why, all the time. But she didn’t mean ‘why me’ or even ‘what now’, she meant ‘why is this happening’, why has this always been happening?  She didn’t hear voices or think that the world was secretly inhabited and controlled by aliens. She didn’t get anxiety attacks or suffer from paranoid delusions, though honestly who’d really know? She just felt either completely empty, devote of purpose or even, in her extreme moments, worthless, or she had these absolutely compelling urges to…to…to…what? And, that was the problem. Not that the emptiness wasn’t an issue, but the other, this crushing need to do…what? There was no medication for that, at least none that she’d tried had made any difference.

Something was going to happen.

Something had been threatening to happen from around the time she’d hit puberty and had increased in intensity ever since.

If she could just speak the words, or formulate the thought, then she’d been free — free of the burden of not knowing, at least.

So…breathe, refocus, and read: To reach distant places one has to take the first step.

All right, she could work with that, a weighty prophecy to be sure, but all she had to was take a step. Now, she took the term ‘distant places’ figuratively, not literally, seeing as she’d never had the urge to travel — oh, her parents had dragged her around like all good parents who try to provide a glimpse into the outside world for their children’s education — but personally she was much happier staying put, surrounded by minimalist, but prized possessions. So, what would a ‘first step’ comprise of figuratively? An action? A decision? Or a choice? Hadn’t she been taking action by following the urges with awareness rather than blind devotion? And then dissecting the results, which were, admittedly, usually nothing, with her therapist, or when that failed, as it always did, in the relative anonymity of her online world? Couldn’t that be seen as a first step? Except nothing had changed, no matter how many times she’d tried to move forward, to follow the feeling to some conclusion, usually the compelling need to do something, just, eventually, eased and then disappeared. Some times she found herself still repeating an action, perhaps for weeks, only to realize she didn’t actually feel the urge to do so any longer. The incidences only happened once a year or so, with the remainder of the time spent vacillating between utter unfullfillment or obsessing about her weird, compelled actions. Like the time she became obsessed with spiders — the need to look for them everywhere, to know everything about them, and to try to understand their behaviours and feelings…

Um, yeah, admittedly weird. Unfortunately, this last round of urges had only gotten more intense.

Last week Friday, unable to force herself to remain at home, she attempted to eat at the sushi place a block away from Connie’s Cookhouse. She’d barely been able to remain seated while ordering, so she’d gone to the washroom to calm herself, but, by the time her bento box had been delivered, she could barely function with the relentless pounding in her head. White flashes kept streaking across her eyes and she’d had to hold on to the counter while waiting for the confused, and little bit tentative, waitress to process her debit card. She’d left the perfectly tasty sushi sitting on her table and flung herself out the restaurant’s door. By the time she’d done so, everyone in the restaurant had been staring, not in concern, but in anxiety of her ruining their lunch with her obvious illness. As soon as she stepped outside, she’d actually stumbled in the direction of Connie’s Cookhouse. She took a few steps further and the pounding pain in her temples immediately eased. A few more steps and her vision cleared. She practically got mowed down crossing the cross street against the don’t walk signal in her hurry to further ease the pain. As she settled into her normal table, with it’s view of the street, and wrapped her fingers around the plastic, single sheet menu, she was fully in command of her facilities again. Though the crushing awareness of doom’s approach hadn’t eased, but at least she could see and hear and walk again.

Three days later, in her regular monday appointment, her therapist said it was all psychological. That she inflicted that pain upon herself as some sort of self-punishment.

Um, really?

According to him, because of her directionless nature and general unfullfilledness, she felt she was a bad person, and she punished herself for being unfocused by repeating a chosen patterned behaviour. The ritualized nature of the repetition made her feel like she was in control of her life.

When she pointed out her rather privileged upbringing and fairly perfect childhood — at least  absent of any abuse or violence or other trauma, which were all cited in clinical assessments as reasons for this so-called-need to control — her therapist felt that only reinforced his position that she was punishing herself for simply being her. She was wracked with self-loathing exactly because there was no trauma to blame. Then he chided her, once again, for reading too many psychology books and online articles.

“Haphazard accumulation of knowledge only leads to faulty self-diagnosis,” he said. Some times she wondered why she subjected herself to these weekly chats, because it always came back to the unanswerable ‘why’. Here’s a new angle, why would she be punishing herself — oh, goody, let’s spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours dissecting that. Forgetting that the core problem hadn’t changed, just the current manifestation.

Sometimes, on the days when she wasn’t just tracking her descent into crazy town, she felt like maybe there was something she was supposed to do, some reason she’d even been born. And that is why she collected the fortunes, that is why she wondered about destiny and whether or not it was just utter bullshit. That is why she’d now eaten in the same Chinese Food Restaurant at the exact same time three weeks in a row, not because the food was damn tasty, which it was, but because some part of her believed that these urges where leading her somewhere and she just had to put in the time, and stay as sane as possible, while she waited for the pieces for click together.

Some times she thought there might be meaning to the madness in her head.

______________

Other Harbinger stories:

– September 30, 2011 – Peace of Mind?

 

I will be posting, every 2nd friday, a series of short flash fiction that detail the year before the events that take place in my next novel, Harbinger. I will most likely sprinkle in a few short stories about specific characters, and, once I am ready to release the novel, I will combine these stories, do a proper edit, and make them available as a companion anthology. I hope you enjoy getting a glimpse into Olive’s life before Harbinger. As always feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

Please note: These are unedited, non-proofed first drafts.

________________

September 30, 2011

Fortune cookies were tasty, but they could also be a little condescending and, especially the one she was currently dissecting, more than a little smug.

At the end of the month you will gain more peace of mind.

Oh, yeah? Which month? This month? This month that was about 11 hours and 3 minutes from being over, so…this month? She smoothed the fortune, naturally curved from being in the cookie, on which she was still nibbling, on the table with both forefingers. She glared at the red-typed letters – in their all high and mighty capitals – that were supposed to offer a glimpse into her fate, a bridge to her destiny, but instead mercilessly mocked her.

Some time in the next 11 hours, supposedly, she’d miraculously feel like she wasn’t about to go crazy, any second, at the drop of any hat. The heavy weight, that some days felt like the entire universe crushing her chest, would lift. One minute crushing, and the next…What? Freedom? Better circulation? What?

Now she was just getting angry. She was the angry white girl sitting alone, hunched against the wallpapered wall, getting angry at a fortune cookie – how lame was that?

Even lamer the cookie was from lunch, eaten alone — did that need to be said two times in a row? Obviously Ms. McObvious — in a restaurant just two blocks away from her apartment slash office. She could afford better, in the case of the food and the apartment, but she chose…she chose this life…or rather she chose to try this life and see if it was any less crazy-making than the other life she’d lead up to two years ago out of her parents house, which, upon reflection, wasn’t exactly different — she was still her, wasn’t she?

Why the hell hadn’t she just gotten delivery, just like every single time before, usually for dinner, but still a valid point seeing as she could eat cold Chinese Food for lunch everyday of the week and be quite content. Delivery fortune cookies — she always ordered enough that the restaurant mistakenly assumed she was ordering for two — could be cracked and interpreted alone, in the safety of her home…well, in the office portion with it’s all inspiring view. Some days she wondered if it was the view that kept her climbing out of bed, continually trying to move forward, even imperceptibly. Honestly, the office, and specifically close to the computer, was where she felt most at home…mostly. Even the bedroom that her parents kept pristine, a whole 20 minute walk away, didn’t feel like it belonged to her — though that was nothing new and didn’t have anything to with her parents, who were pretty cool for older people. No, this was her little issue, her ongoing, raging problem, her lack of ability to connect, to feel connected —

Enough.

She knew why she was here, she could admit it — should admit it — if she wanted to try to get beyond it. She’d been fighting it for a couple of weeks now — this compelling need to go out for lunch, specifically to go out for Chinese Food, specifically at this restaurant, Connie’s Cookhouse, and specifically on this day, a Friday. She didn’t like giving in to these irrational urges. Her headshrinker — okay, her therapist — was continually confused whenever she brought up this concern.

“Everyone wants things, Olivia,” he’d say. It still bothered her that he called her by her full name more than a year since she’d started seeing him, instead of Olive. Oh, she knew that that was what was on her chart and she’d never corrected him, but she hadn’t wanted to be further labeled as difficult or picky or OCD — the damning list she was pretty sure he maintained in her file was long enough already.

Anyway, he just couldn’t get it, couldn’t feel it like she did. This wasn’t a I’m-kind-of-craving-black-bean-chicken feeling. This was a horribly suffocating feeling that the world would end unless she sat in this particular restaurant, at this particular time. She could order whatever, eat whatever, but she had to be here, for at least an hour.

Something terrible was coming, It had been coming for awhile now, maybe always…And it was going to consume her.

Though, rather obviously, not today.

She glanced at her watch: 12:58pm.

The pressure to remain rooted in her seat, eyes glued to the front windows, eased just a little bit and she slumped back in her seat. She rolled the bogus fortune between her thumb and middle finger, as if pretending carelessness, even though she knew she’d unroll it and stick it with all the others as soon as she got home. No matter that she currently felt like it was an utter lie. She kept a cork board, framed in an antique gold frame she’d freed from a ghastly meadow scene, filled with such things hanging right by her desk. A quick glance right and thousands of words from fortunes or tarot readings, floated there, suspended, just waiting enlightenment for interpretation. It was a jigsaw puzzle of her destiny, except there was no box picture or straight edge to follow, and she hadn’t managed to piece it all together. Actually, she hadn’t gotten to the piecing part at all, yet. She was a collector, not a creator.

She wondered if the road to crazy was just this slow. Ah, well, she only had another 11 hours until this foretold peacefulness would “gain” her mind – maybe it would happen, maybe it could, she wouldn’t mind a little quiet. It would be even better if someone else could drive for awhile. She was constantly anticipating the bumps and misjudging the terrain. Man, her metaphors were all over the place today.

Was it so bad to need a little guidance? Oh, she knew that people tried to throw her tow ropes all the time…she just couldn’t grasp them.

She got up, paid with debit and left the restaurant. Few people remained picking the remnants of their tasty lunches. Everyone else was probably heading back to work, and she supposed that that was were she should go.

It was a sunny, if brisk, day, but she was glad to have an excuse to pull her hoodie up — she liked the built-in blinders. This new one she’d bought with her birthday money three days ago had a bit of a point on the charcoal wool and cashmere hood. It was lined with soft cotton jersey, but had some patch label on the sleeve that she’d have to pick off. She hadn’t gotten around to yet, what with the sudden onset of world-ending doom.

Three days ago she’d turned 20, and she really had been looking forward to the new decade in her life.

Now, not so much.