The Fissure

 We were walking down the street when the world fractured.

It seemed to be a normal summer day, bright and shining. Chris, Jen and I walking toward the bookstore across from the green in our quiet town. The morning had been full of card games and TV, we were enjoying the last few days of summer vacation. The leaves fluttered in the wind, birds dashed from branch to branch, and the bricks in the old buildings of town were warm and rough to the touch. It was hard to tell anything was wrong at first, but then a car blew out two tires, slid over the curb into a tree, and came to rest smashed on the sidewalk in front of us. 

Jen screamed, and stumbled into me. I would have appreciated it more if I wasn’t so surprised myself; the blasts of the tires had torn a hole in my mind, muddled with the summer heat. I quickly tensed, the electricity of adrenaline spreading from my heart to my limbs, my senses sharpening, and at once I felt her soft body pressed into mine, and I put an arm around her. 

Chris, who had simply leapt sideways and muttered “Jesus!” stepped toward the car inquisitively. He blinked and wiped his black hair from his eyes, his face was starting to show the first sheen of sweat. It was odd; the tires had been blown to shreds, the hubcaps both had broken strangely, but still were bolted to the wheels. Chris jumped when the driver struggled to kick open the passenger side door, the other one still crumpled against the tree. The man clambered out clutching a red hand crisscrossed with cuts, his suit rumpled and bloody.

Chris started towards him to help, calling out “Are you alright-“

Then another car blew all four of its tires at once in a screaming cacophony, and we all turned to watch it. I clutched Jen’s shoulder closer as the car slid across the centerline into a frightened Honda Civic, its wheels bent out at odd angles, metal twisted, and both of them screeched to a crumpled stop in the road. That’s when we noticed the rupture.

It was odd, like a fissure in the air, a line that had no dimensions. It was there, but it looked almost like a crack through glass, immaterial, and it disappeared at odd angles. But it existed, hanging over the road as if the air itself was flawed.

I blinked and rubbed my eyes. It was a one-dimensional line, twisting through the air. Chris saw it too, blinked.

“What is it?” he asked.

“That doesn’t make sense!” said Jen, leaning into me. Her hair smelled like summer roses. “Chris, call nine one one!” she said hesitantly.

Chris turned towards me, made eye contact. His green eyes were wide with fear, his face blank with nervousness. He shook his head as if he didn’t believe this moment could exist. 

“I…” I started. Jen looked up into my face, her body wonderfully positioned into mine. I blinked trying to clear my mind; my vision blurring one instant and then becoming wonderfully crisp the next. “I don’t know. Yeah, we should call.”

“I’ve got it,” the man from the first car said in a strained voice. He had taken off his jacket and wrapped some sort of handkerchief around his bleeding hand.

Chris stepped forward to look at the Fissure. Jen tensed. “Careful!” she said, stepping away from me towards the man with the phone. The two cars in the road were steaming and still, people inside them beginning to move around.

The man from the first car was blinking in the sunlight, leaning against the wall of the bookstore. He had pulled out a Blackberry and was punching in numbers, and Chris stepped into the street towards the cars.

Then, with a bang, the fissure spread. It spiderwebbed through the air, splitting and branching through nothingness. It seemed that nothing had changed and yet the impossible lines shot through the air like bullets. Oddly, I saw a tendril split through the window of the Civic first, and the person behind the window struggled strangely, something threateningly wrong. The reflection from the sun made it impossible to see through the window, but my stomach dropped. 

Then Jen stumbled back into me and gasped, and I noticed the tendril that had gone through Chris.

He stood still, his back too us, his pose awkward. Then he shuddered, convulsed oddly, and turned, and red blood blossomed through his yellow t-shirt at a frightening rate, and he collapsed.

I stood perfectly still, watching him, my mind refusing to panic. I didn’t understand what was going on, I couldn’t comprehend what had happened to him. My limbs went slack and I stared, and it was Jen who stumbled away. I realized then that the fissure had nearly cut him in half.

Then the world shattered.

The man leaning against the bookstore dropped his phone and turned and ran, but was caught and fell to pieces. A scream from the Civic and someone opened a door only to have the glass shatter and the door skewer itself on the crack. 

“Come on!” Jen screamed, starting to run, but she stopped as the cracks split around in front of her, and she cried and backed away into me. She sobbed in fear and when I saw her wide eyes my mind finally caught up with itself, and I ducked down, holding her face to my chest. The splinters of the world were separating, my vision was splitting and we crouched down as the world was destroyed around us. The cracks spread like clutching fingers around and around us and we held each other, and Jen cried and held on to me as if I could help her.

And so here we are, and I feel the odd pain of the first fissure passing through my chest, digging it’s way through me inextricably, and for some reason all I can think about is how damned good her hair smells.

By Ben Chamberlain
Written February 5, 2010, 9:20 PM
Revised March 9, 2010, 11:15 PM

School!

So not only am I moving into school and starting training to be a Residential Assistant, they took us on a surprise two day camp retreat the day after we got here. I'll put something up next weekend!

Shuttles

I have a dream where I am burning.

The lights on the terminal are flashing, warning klaxons in screaming agony, and the world is shaking itself to pieces. I'm strapped to the chair in my suit, and the acceleration is causing my vision to go red, and the noise is a horrible screeching explosion. Andrew is in his suit next to me yelling, strapped into his chair, shaking like a rag doll. I can't tell what he is saying because the shaking is snapping my head back and forth and I can't focus my eyes on anything. I want to close my spacesuit visor, I know what is about to happen but my arm is pinned to the back of the chair by the force of the rocket and I try to lift it, I try and try and I almost reach my helmet when the screen in front of me peels open and the air rushes in and then fills with fire, burning a horrid red. I see it engulf Andrew and he screams, being shaken apart and burning, and I need to close my visor but I can't and then the fire pours into my suit through the exposed glass over my face and stains the backs of my eyelids as I close them and feel the flesh scorching away off my face!

Then I wake up, sweating. In my bed, in my house, in Florida.

Not in the rocket.

Not in my spacesuit.

Not flying. Not on fire. Not being pressed down by the G-forces. Intact. 

But my NASA flight suit is in the closet, the picture of me and my team in our pressurized suits is on the table next to my bed. The launch pad is a few miles away, the banks of computers with flashing lights and dials and numbers and somewhere, one of them flashes in my mind the bright red words “system failure”, and no one is there to notice it.

I run my hands through my cropped hair, I feel my face, my body, make sure it is there, intact. Only then does my heart begin to slow beating, only then does my breath even out. 

I don't know what it means. I don't know why, but I've had the same dream the past three nights. Each time I wake up and can't go back to sleep. Visions of it haunt me, images of the warning lights, of flames rushing in through a gaping hole in the material of the ship.

I make myself coffee, sip it slowly. The heat slowly fills me up, giving my body substance. The lights of my kitchen are hash, white. They are the same fluorescents as the control room at the station.

The station is in the middle of the plains, dry, flat, and sticks up like smashed bones from the monotony. The scaffolding propping up the shuttle is a dull red, muted by the flames that have poured over it in the past. The checkpoint at the front clears all the cars that go into the station, checks IDs, runs license plates. My dusty civic pulls slowly up the the lonely checkpoint, brakes whining to a stop.

“Hello, James” Bill, the security guard says.

“Hey, Bill.” I hand him my NASA identification, and my drivers license. He laughs. 

“You know, I wonder” he says, drumming his fingers on the metal windowsill. “I run your ID every morning, it's always the same. I wonder why I can't just let you on.” He smiles. “Well, I'll do it anyway. Just a bit funny I guess.”

“Protocol, Bill,” I respond.

“Protocol!” He laughs. “Yeah, they're watching you in there,” he says, gesturing to the security camera pointing at my civic. “Smile for NASA James!”

I look at the camera briefly, it's dull, round lens staring back. Watching. Checking for weakness.

Bill keeps talking. “You know, they take security real serious here. Gave me a gun and all, I've never used it. Why would I need to? It's not like this is the Cold War any more!”

“Sure isn't,” I offer. Russian missiles come to mind, targeting our satellites, our rockets. They don't have those any more, I think. All old, obsolete. Mostly forgotten.

“I can't think of anyone who'd want to do anything here. A terrorist- maybe. But why do anything at NASA when there are all these nuclear power plants all over?” He scratches his head.

“Hey Bill,” I say, rolling my tongue through a parched mouth. “How long you worked here? At this booth?”

“Lemme think,” Bill says, sliding the card in the machine. “It's been... eight, no, nine years now. All in this booth, running the same cards over and over.” He chuckles. “Over and over.”

“Bill, how many times, since you've worked here, has one of these things- you know, the rockets- how many times has one blown up?”

Bill leans down out the window, and frowns. “Now, James, what kind of talk is that? You know as well as I do these things don't blow. Haven't had an issue since the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, and that was over in Houston anyway, just around when I was starting over here.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I know.”

Bill drums his fingers against the windowsill. “You alright James? You look tired.”

“Oh, yeah, I'm fine,” I say.

“Good, good.” He smiles, and hands me my identification with a bandaged hand. “Guess what? You're clear.”

“Thanks Bill,” I say. I put my hands on the wheel to drive away. “Hey Bill?”

Bill turns back to me. “Yeah James?”

“What'd you do to your hand?”

Bill smiles, thumbs his bandage. “Stupid, you know? So simple. I grabbed the coffee pot in the wrong place, burned my hand pretty bad.” He shakes his head. “Could've avoided it.”

I nod. “Be more careful, alright Bill?”

“Hey, you too James,” he says, as I pull away into the heat.

Administrator Rogers has a bored look on his face as he reviews the readout. He sighs, tugs his mustache. “Alright,” he says. “What happened?”

Nick, the engineer leans forward. “The, uh,” he coughs. “There was a warning readout on the pre-launch sequence- an oxygen tank blew a gasket, ah... put a small hole in the framing, caused a small fire... all under control of course.”

Everyone at the table is silent. I can't remember the last time we had a problem with pre-flight- it always goes smoothly. The fluorescents burn a slow white light.

“Repairs?” Administrator Rogers asks.

“Oh, ah, of course! We've run another pre-flight, a clean sweep. We're set to launch on schedule.” Nick pushes up his glasses. I look left to Andrew, who was leaning over to whisper something to Amanda, one of the computer people. I can see the oxygen tank rupturing, shrapnel punching a neat hole in the side of the shuttle, flames boiling out of the side of the ship.

“So,” Administrator Rogers said, shuffling to sit up. “Why'd this happen?”

Julie, one of the other engineers, clears her throat. “We usually put these through heavy testing. The failure was a... surprise, and was damaging. We're lucky to catch this now, it could have caused a catastrophic failure during launch.”

I know what catastrophic failure means. It means a botched launch. It means an explosion. It means a crashed rocket. It means me dead. This catches Andrew's attention, he sits up.

Administrator Rogers grunts. “You didn't answer my question. Why did the tank fail? I want a direct reason.”

Julie frowns. “We're... not actually sure. It could have failed for any number of reasons, unnoticed damage, faulty equipment, installation problems-”

“Sabotage?”

I said it before I meant to, and I regretted it already.

Julie seems surprised, and Administrator Rogers manages a distinct croak of the word, “what?”

Julie coughs. “Unlikely- there is no reason or evidence of any sabotage for any-”

“Why would anyone sabotage the shuttle?” Administrator Rogers stands, cutting off Julie.

“They wouldn't,” Nick says quietly.

“No!” Administrator Rogers quips sternly. “Let him answer. Why would anyone sabotage the shuttle?” His eyes burn into mine, angry.

“They wouldn't,” I can only echo Nick. My throat is a desert. “I- it was just a theory.”

Administrator Rogers leans back, and regards me with a frightening intensity. “You've repaired the damage and replaced the part?” 

“Yes,” Julie answers.

“And you've run the test again? The shuttle passed?”

Julie nods again.

“Then I see no problem proceeding with launch.”

Everyone is getting up to leave, but I stay seated. The walls seem closer, and I can feel a pressing heat- I feel a fire, somewhere. That rocket must have dozens of tanks of oxygen, each with a fragile o-ring gasket, one which seems fine down here but when the rocket is being shaken apart during launch, thrust into space with inhuman intensity...

I can feel flames licking at the walls, I can feel a slow bead of sweat tracing down my jaw. I can see images of the old Russian warehouses, missiles and explosives stockpiled quiescent, and one of them suddenly lights up, active, preparing to shoot me down...

“What the fuck, man?” Andrew whispers in my ear. “It's fine. Routine. Bringing up sabotage doesn't do anything, just pisses off Rogers.” I don't answer.

“Whatever. Just figure out your shit before we climb on that rocket.”

My mother's house is small, modest. My father died when I was young, but he was an astronaut in the golden age of space travel. My mother's shelves are filled with photos of him in the old suits, sown-on american flags, smiling faces, posing in front of the old rockets. She keeps the house neat, still has my room arranged as it used to be. There is still a picture on the wall of me when I was five, gripping a toy shuttle as my father smiled with me in front of the life-size toy, the real rocket. That was one year before he died of cancer.

“Your father would have loved to see you now,” my mother says over my shoulder, mixing batter for cupcakes. She always makes me cupcakes before a launch.

“I know,” I reply. My father would have loved to see his son in his shoes. But the dread is creeping on me, it's beginning to consume me. I can see men loosening bolts, prying away panels. I can see loose tanks, frayed wires. I can smell fire.

“He told me he knew you'd be an astronaut, you know,” my mother says, wandering down the hall back to the kitchen.

“I know mom,” I say. “You told me.”

“Did I?” she says. 

She did, several times. I walk slowly out of the living room, floorboards creaking loose underneath me.

“Well,” she says. “No matter. I love the idea of the two of you, up there, exploring the stars. Get the oven, would you?”

I open the oven door and heat billows out, and I flinch before I can control it. She slides in the pan of fresh batter. “Oh, careful!” my mother says as I close the door. The glow of the heating coils leaves an imprint on my vision, the hot air leaves a slight burning feeling on my arm.

“Well,” she says, taking off her oven mitts and looking at me. “Are you alright dear? You look worried.”

I close my eyes, and take a breath. I can see the flames from the engines, I can see a crack spreading the length of the shuttle, I can see the explosion, the flames everywhere.

“I'm afraid, mom,” I say. “I'm afraid to go on this mission. Afraid of sabotage, of system failure.” I look at her eyes, and she smiles. She grabs my shoulder.

“Oh, my son the astronaut,” she says, and hugs me. I don't know what to say, but the dread creeps further into my stomach. “I miss your father so much,” she says, and when she pulls back there are tears in her eyes. All of the sudden I can't hear her, and her lips are moving but all I can hear are the flames, the slow crackle of the flames. And there are tears in her eyes, but I don't understand, and I sit down.

“Well,” she says. “Call me when you land again? I don't think we'll be able to eat all of these cupcakes tonight.”

Every step is heavy. 

The gantry clanks, and the suit is massive, it weighs me down. I can't see side to side, and I can hear my own breathing as I approach the rocket. I look at it, trying to see cracks, holes, but it seems fine. The door is open, waiting, a technician standing, waiting for me. 

It's a bomb.

I can feel the thousands of pounds of fuel, the ignitors, the tanks, the compression coils and wired banks of computers. A thousand things to go wrong.

“Sir?” the technician asks.

“Come on, James,” Andrew says, passing me. “Let's get this done with, I want to be in space.” He climbs through the doorway. 

My gloves are lined with sweat. I look back down the long gantry to the station, but the distance seems to extend to infinity. I slowly step through the doorway, and turn to climb the ladder. The technician closes the door, and I hear the locking mechanisms slide into place.

My fate is sealed.

I strap in in the cockpit, go numbly through pre-flight checklists. Andrew calls out the sequences, and I stare at the bank of green lights in front of me. 

“We are green on all systems, clear for take off,” Andrew says. “Wait- hold on control, I've got a system failure on the oxygen tanks again.”

My attention focuses in like a razor on the tiny, burning red light above “oxygen” on the control panel. The radio is silent for a moment. 

“We read, shuttle,” it crackles. “Try toggling the power, it's probably just a bug in the system.”

“I got you,” Andrew says, flipping a switch back and forth. The light above oxygen winks out and then back on, green this time. “Roger control, shuttle reading green on all systems, including oxygen. I repeat, green for takeoff.”

“Roger, shuttle,” the radio crackles. “Takeoff sequence beginning.”

“No,” I whisper. “No, no.” The light is red again. The oxygen light is red again, it's loose screws, a broken valve- enough to kill us. “It's red!” I say to the radio.

“Engines, preparing to engage,” the radio crackles.

“No!” I yell. “No, no, we've got a system failure on oxygen! I repeat, a system failure on oxygen!” 

 

“James, what the hell are you doing?” yells Andrew. “The light is green! Look at your fucking panel! Control, we are green for launch, confirm no system failure.”

“Confirmed,” the radio says. “Engaging engines.”

“No!” I scream, undoing the latches that pin me to the chair. The whole rocket is about to blow!

“James, what the fuck are you doing? Get back in, stay down, the engines are about to-”

And them the world starts shaking, and I'm half out of my chair, and Andrew's head snaps back as the rocket lurches.

And red lights blossom across the panel, and warning alarms go off. “No!” I scream, as the roar of the rocket engulfs my voice. Andrew's head lolls to the side, his visor still up, and the rocket shakes, air rushing past, gravity pushing in against us. And the screen in front of us begins to warp, and it's the dream, and I've got to get to Andrew before the fire burns him, and I'm halfway to him when the screen explodes and fire pours in and I remember that I never closed my visor either and then the flames turn my vision white and all I can hear is the roar of the rocket.

Bill sits on his chair at the security station, waiting. Another morning. More cards, more coffee.
 

A black Corolla winds it's way towards the station, pulls up to the window. The man inside hands Bill his identification. Andrew Higgins, NASA employee. Bill runs the cards, which come up clear, and hands them back to the man. 

“Thanks,” Andrew says and starts to pull away.

“Ah, excuse me Mr. Higgins?” Bill calls. The car stops.

“I'm sorry, sir,” Bill says. “I haven't seen James in today. He's usually in by now- and I checked, his identification is no longer valid for the station. Why, he's worked here for years, and that usually only happens when someone gets fired...”

Andrew frowns. “James won't be in any more,” he says. “He broke down last launch. Before the engines even engaged, just started screaming, yelling that he was on fire.”

“Oh,” Bill says.

“Yeah,” Andrew says. “He washed out of the space program, I hear Administrator Rogers has him transferred to a desk job somewhere. Said he wasn't cut out for space.”

“Oh, I'm sorry to hear that,” Bill says.

“Yeah, me too.” 
 

The car slowly crawls away towards the station. Bill thumbs the burn on his hand thoughtfully.

By Ben Chamberlain

Written 2/20/11

Finished 2/23/11 2:45 AM

Windshield Wipers

I'm lying on my bed with the lights out at 11 p.m. on a hazy Wednesday night, music filtering through my headphones. I close my eyes, trying to blot out the slow sound of the cars going by outside my window, and I focus on every note and chord. The drums pound a slow background, and the piano keys clink a small tune at the top of my spine. Each chord rings, each spoken word registers carefully in my blank mind. I try to cleanse my thought, let everything drain out the back of my skull, let each mechanical sound of the music grate like a metal pole scraping slowly across the inside of brain. And yet I still can't get the sound of the car wipers out of my head.

Whump. Whump. Whump.

They were the first sign of the past, their steady, methodical, beating. A kind of music really, a coarse, basic beat, always playing, always repeating. It was an overcast day, the rain slowly pooling on the windshield, being swiped clean by the ever-working wipers. It was always the rainy days that got to me the most.

Whump. Whump. Whump.

The shrapnel of our life is still embedded around my room. Somewhere in my desk there is a picture of you, I put it there a few days after it happened and haven't looked at it since. I still have some of your books on my shelves, your Thoreau, your Emerson. Somewhere in my dark closet your grey and purple hooded sweatshirt you always wore is hanging on one of those blue plastic hangers. The gold necklace I gave you that you left the last time on accident is curled up like a cat on my bedside table. I let the beat of the music fill my ears, seep through my brain, filter out the sediment, but underneath that beat those wipers keep just

Whump, whump, whump

Through my mind. The slow rattle of my car filled the space in between, its heartbeat that is soggy from the laboring rain that has been falling all day. The landscape was decidedly soaked, water dripped like sweat from the leaves of tired trees onto a saturated shoulder. My car was pulled over to the side and the headlights still left a yellowed path through the air, igniting each drop of water into fire. The sky was grey, hardly a trace of direction to notice the sun.

The drops beat themselves across the window, the wipers sweeping them away without a glance. They kept beating a steady

Whump, whump, whump

You used to lie with me here. I still have the same sheets, if that matters. I remember the feel of your body, and your warmth. I remember you, your face, your smile. But the card you made me for my birthday last year is forgotten in the file folders under my bed. The mix CD you made for me is still in the last slot in my CD case, and that is sitting not far from your copy of Walden. I hardly even find it useful to remember what is mine, I only know what was yours. The music is calming, flowing, sweeping through my mind, wiping across it without a second thought but a

Whump, whump, whump

And in the rain I was looking for that old booklet I used to keep all my expenses in, tabulating cost and benefit, the scale and size of my bank account. I don't know why I was looking for it, something in the rain and the grey but I was rummaging through the glove compartment. I hadn't opened that glove box in a while, and now for some reason driving through these old Maine pines on a rainy day I just felt like I needed to.

And the rain keeps beating, the car rattles softly, and the wipers just go back and forth with their

Whump, whump, whump

And I can't seem to cry anymore. I only think. The darkness is satisfying, and it seems to give me air, give me space. I do this every once and a while, when I remember, when I feel bad, when I give in most to the depression. Forgotten also are those meds you wanted me to take. I think I left them in that carved wooden box you made me. The room crouches with the music, it fills my body and leaves me with no physical person, but with sense, with feeling, with a

Whump, whump, whump

And I hadn't opened the glove compartment in so long. Pens, pencils, tissues, my registration, and there was the book, and I grasped it in my hands, felt the green leather and the stenciling, the gold trim. I recalled how proud I was of it so long ago, a symbol of my financial capability and independence, and I was about to crack it open when I looked back in the glove box and remembered. 
 

There was an old picture of us, your brown hair curling in the way it always did, hanging elegantly in the air, and your slender arms curled around my neck. You were trying to kiss me, but I was looking at the camera, and your face was in my hair, I was smiling because just then you whispered in my ear and I heard the

Whump, whump, whump

Sound before I saw you, and I remembered that day, three weeks after the picture was taken. You had gone away for a week, told me you were seeing some family members in Massachusetts, you wanted me to come but I said I wanted to get a surprise for you when you came back. The sky was dark and sullen, and the rain was falling, there was no hint as to the direction of the sun. But I was happy despite it, I was waiting for you at that overlook on coast road, with the sound of the wipers and my car engine eclipsed by the slow pulse of the waves down the cliffside. I didn't care that the rain was eagerly soaking into my jacket, I just thought about you following suit, soaking into my clothes and into me and I would hold you and say that I missed you. And I saw your car come around the corner, and I was elated, and in a momentary lull of the waves the

Whump, whump, whump

Of the wipers could be heard, and I was back in the woods. Under the notebook was the photo, and you whispered into my ear, and I was starting to smile. And I picked up the picture, and then the little box under it, the soft felt box that I remembered feeling in my pocket. And I felt the springs on the box give that slight, perfect resistance, and I looked at the ring. I realized I didn't know why I stopped on the woodland road and why I was looking though the glovebox and all I could hear was the

Whump, whump, whump

And I fingered the felt box in my coat pocket and imagined you slipping your hand in my pocket as you always do when you kiss me and feeling it, and pulling it out. And so I watched your car come around the curve, and I was confused, because you were far enough away that the sound came a second or two after the movement, like a movie that fell out of synch with its audio, and I didn't hear the screech of your brakes until your car was sliding through the wooden fence and over the side of the bluff. Then I heard the crumpling noise of the flimsy wooden fence splintering across the hood of your civic, and I watched in panic as so far away, you plummeted. Then all I heard was the strange

Whump

As your car slid under the waves in the rain. I thought for a second I saw the brown curls of your hair and then I never saw you again.

And so this scene and that noise still plays in my head despite the music as I stare at the white ceiling. And I held that leather book, and remembered, and that photograph, and remembered, and that ring, and remembered that at first I nearly threw it into the water, because you were gone, because I couldn't do anything, and because maybe it would sink beneath the waves like you, and then I thought that I could sink beneath the waves like you too but then I just threw the ring and the box in the glove compartment instead.

And I looked in that leather book and I see that the last thing I wrote before I left it in the glove box was: Ring! It's a lot, but I don't care because I love you. And so I read those words when I was parked on the side of the road in the woods in the rain, and I think it was enough to send me as far deep into missing you that I possibly could. And then I was just sitting in my car in silence and just listened to the

Whump, whump, whump

of the windshield wipers playing through my mind. And so I was lying on my bed and realized the last track stopped a while ago, there is no music but the sound of your brakes, the crash of the wood, and the subtle, ever so subtle splash of you disappearing from the world forever, and the whump, whump, whump of the wipers setting the beat impassively as I watched the waves.

And then, instead of those noises, I feel your face in my ear, Your arms around my neck, your waist in my hands, and I am looking at the camera and your lips are whispering into my ear. And I can't hear the whump, whump, whump of the wipers anymore because all I can hear is you whispering, whispering ever so lightly in my ear, that you love me.

 

Written September 16^th, 2010, 11:15 PM

Revised September 17^th, 2010, 3:30 PM

By Ben Chamberlain

 

The Boy and the Sun

A boy once stood in the desert and looked into the sun.

Or so my people told me. They say he walked through the oppressive sand dunes about the very same Sahara-bound village I grew up in, a young boy of only eight. His father had been lost in a sandstorm two years ago, and his mother dead in childbirth. He spent his days wandering- and then one day, in the village center he stopped, and stood, gazing straight up into that unseeable point of the sun. That single, white-hot drop of flame that splashed and melted into the sky. And he stared at it.

For the first hour or so, the people went on. But then one boy noticed his eyes were watering, he was crying sorrowless tears, running furrows into his warm cheeks. The second boy ran to his father, tugged on his sleeve. And the father came.

“What are you doing, boy?” He said. “Don’t you know looking into the sun is bad for your eyes?”

But the boy’s eyes did not come off the blazing sun for a second. “It’s beautiful,” He said. “It is beautiful.”

The father looked into the sky, to see if he could see what the boy saw. All he saw was the sun. “It’ll ruin your eyes, boy!” he said. His brow furrowed in consternation, and he wondered why the boy was so enraptured.

The boy’s arm suddenly rose, and he pointed at it. “But look!” He cried, pointing straight up as if the heavens had tied a string to his finger and were trying to hoist him away. “Look at it! Look at how beautiful it is!”

By now several passersby had stopped, and they all gazed upward. They shaded their eyes, muttered, and looked at the sun. Their eyes darted round it, but all they saw was the searing light.

“But boy, it is only the sun!” said the father insistently, and worriedly. “It has always been there, it always will! It gives us light; it gives us day! But it hurts to look at!”

But the boy stared into the hole in the sky, the sun melting the very fabric of the sky in which it was anchored, like a phoenix captured somehow in a coin. “But look at how beautiful it is! It burns in such a flame! It has power! It has beauty! It is life! It is death! It glows; it burns brightly, smolders darkly!” He gazed even more intently, as if the strength of his eyes could hold the sun in place. “It has witnessed creation! It will witness destruction! It has seen my father, my father’s father, it has seen me, and now I see it!”

The father looked at the sun one last time. He could not look at it though, despite his best efforts his eyes traced the blue about the hole in the sky, they darted away. He only saw a moving button, a bright yellow button that could not be fixed on.

But nonetheless, the child stared at it unblinking. “See!” He screamed. “It burns to the depths of the sky! It is melting through the world! It will never stop! It is beautiful!”

And indeed, the sun burned beautifully, burning a neat hole into the sky, melting everything it touched. But then the father shouted, for he realized that the child was not crying, that the sun was not burning into the sky. The sun was burning back into the child’s eyes, deep and hot, and the liquid of his eyes was falling away like tears.

The father cried, and covered the child’s eyes, and sobbed in horror.

The child screamed. “No! It is beautiful! Let me see it! I need it, I need it!” He thrashed and writhed. He fought like a drowning man, wriggling in the sand, throwing it in the air, trying to pry the father’s hands off of where his eyes once were. But the father sobbed resignedly, and pressed his strong, cool hands to the child’s face. Eventually he was subdued, and lay still.

The child never saw again, blinded by the sun. But he once told my father that it was better to have seen and been blind then to have never seen at all.

Or so my people told me. The people still mutter, and shake their heads. But they still look at sun bemusedly, and wonder what the child saw that they were blind to. I do too; I gaze into the sun, and look. But I don’t really see it. My eyes dart around it, incapable of fixing directly on that little yellow coin. No matter how much willpower I put into it, I cannot see what he saw. Maybe I do not believe him, and his tale of beauty. I shouldn’t.

Or so my people tell me.

Written 3-31-09, 8:35 PM

Revised 4-10-09 7:30 PM
By Ben Chamberlain

A Purpose

Hello!

I'm Ben. I go to school at Tufts University, live in Vermont when I'm not in Sommerville, and I like writing. However, I have a problem: No matter how much I like writing, I sometimes have trouble finding the time- and getting into a regular pattern I find hard. So I had an idea. It went kind of like this:
I thought to myself "Gee, Ben! You really like writing but don't do enough of it. You should come up with some way to motivate yourself to do more! You should make a promise to someone that you are going to write them something once a week. Even better: you should make that promise to the INTERNET."

Now, I read a lot of webcomics, and I originally had the idea to write a long story- novel length, perhaps- in weekly installments in the same way. However, I want to take a little while to organize my plot and get a full outline before I start- the problem with installments is that I can't go back and change the beginning to line up with the end. Also, I fully aware that the desire to read something on the internet decreases exponentially with regard to length, so I figured I'd start with short stories.

I like writing and I like sharing my writing. Perhaps that makes me a narcissist, as I know a lot of people that hate sharing their writing- but oh well. I'll start with some short stories I have stockpiled, while working on a framework for something larger and writing more. My plan is to post a new story every weekend, and hopefully write a new one every week. We'll see how it works!

Also, the pressure to write increases with readership- so if anyone does end up reading this, let me know- it'll incite me to write more. Criticism, constructive or deconstructive is encouraged! Anyway, this will do for a first post- I'll get to a story.