This is a place where you can let yourself free.
You can submit your stories here, and they will be posted for everyone to see. This is a place where we want your ideas to have the chance to be read.
There will also be monthly writing contests, featured writers, reading lists, and other nerdy-type-things.
So Enjoy!
-Sunsetsandsunrises & Toxicmachine
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July 28, 2009
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It’s like this.
Anna Loren had flitted like a ghost through the first eighteen years of her life, and when she left home she skittered like a cat always afraid of those bigger than her, cautious of those who could take away from her. The city was a machine and Anna wanted to avoid the cogs lest she get caught underneath them.
She did things in a measure and precise way - tied up her hair, slid her feet into shoes one-half size too small, pulled her jacket tighter around her moderate and soft frame. As if she could package herself up and leave not one split thread showing, no opaque pearl of glue nor a stray jagged edge of tape. Anna was an average girl in most every way. A height that wasn’t too short or too tall, not too thin nor too weighted. She existed in the same way that trees grew and clouds drifted and oceans sighed on shores - they just did.
Anna found that living on her own was, in more ways than she could count, exactly like living with her family but less crowded and when she gets up to use the bathroom she realizes it will always be empty and ready for her. She leaves Funny Face paused for a minute as she soaks this in. These walls - this very small square footage - had been paid for with her own money. Every appliance in that kitchen is hers and she can leave every light on in the house if she deems so necessary, with no mother present to tell her that she couldn’t be in every room at once.
On mere principle Anna tells herself - while she was brushing her teeth the next morning, every light in the entire apartment turned off - that she’ll finish that half gallon of Haagendaas in the freezer with an abandoned plastic spoon sticking straight up for breakfast, simply because she can. It was every kid’s dream, ice cream when you desired it, kicking off your shoes wherever you wanted, leaving your jacket on the couch, not putting the remote back, deciding when you wanted to do the dishes.
Anna slides the half gallon onto her kitchen table, scooting it back and forth between her open hands as she watches the white breath of frost creaping up the sides of the carton. She realizes that yes, she’s still very young, but she isn’t a nine year old anymore. She isn’t that nine year old, and she had never been that nine year old. The extent of her quiet rebellion went as far as leaving her plate sitting on the table instead of putting it in the sink and leaving her bed unmade, sheets frozen in her sleeping position.
Leaving the ice cream on the table Anna snatches for her purse and slides her feet into her shoes, bright ugly chartuese pumps that her sister said would show Anna’s “flare of fun.” Anna hated green and she could barely limp around in heels, but grown women wore heels, right? Maybe it was time to learn.
At the door she pauses to look back and this new feeling hits her. Anna’s been through most of the spectrum of emotions, the dial most often landing on “fine” or “infinite sadness,” but this one was a nameless region that settles under her ribs uncomfortably, making her clear her throat and stretching upward as if she could dislodge it. It’s not until she’s swiping her card for the El that Anna realizes the feeling growing in her side is fed by her new independence. She listens closely and can hear her body whispering “alone, alone, alone” as she takes her seat, and it shudders her to the bone.
