Aaaaand.....GO!
ETA: One of the Tom's has just informed me that there may be a word limit on the comments--which does not bode well for stories. So if anyone has problems posting, email me your story and I'll add it into the body of this post. storyadaymod@gmail.com
I'm so very new at this. :)
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Roscoe Falls’ Reflections
Why do I have to fall so far? It hurts when I hit the bottom. Of course, only a little and then I’m on my merry way again, but still… Why fall at all? Why couldn’t I be one of those sedate rivers that doesn’t fall at all, or perhaps a little stream where I burble instead of rush? And I’m not even a cool falls. People rarely ever come to look at me. I’m not small enough to be cute… I’m not large enough to be impressive… I don’t have enough rocks at the bottom to cause a swirling mist that causes rainbows when the sun hits me just right… I’m so boring.
Ah, well… thinking like that will get me nowhere. Maybe I should focus on positive thoughts. Like… I have a lot of fish! And sometimes I get to throw them down the falls with me… but they’re pretty strong swimmers and usually get away. But still, there are a lot of them, and everyone likes fish! The bears eat them; people eat them; people catch them without eating them; birds eat them…
Oooh, my bird collection is quite nice, too. I do occasionally attract those birdwatchers. Of course, they’re not here to watch me, but without me, they wouldn’t have the birds either, so I think it’s a draw there…
Hmmmmmm… It’s a nice day today. I feel like I am just the right temperature. I bet some kids will come down later to swim at the bottom of the falls. Is that wide enough to call a pool? Maybe not… But still, who could it hurt? Kids come to swim in my pool…
Ugh… looks like my pool needs a cleaning. There’s a lot of garbage down there. Stupid people always throwing stuff in me. They just assume that since I’m a river, their junk magically disappears. Well, you know what? It doesn’t!! I either drag it out to the ocean (unwillingly!) or it sinks and gets stuck in my bed. It’s there to stay, then, baby! Oh, those people… they’re just – they make me --- OH! I could just steam up, they make me so angry!
Whatever! Happy thoughts, Roscoe, happy thoughts. Ummmmm… Remember Roscoe? Yeah, happy thoughts… There we go. Roscoe was a good guy. Roscoe liked you well enough to give you his name, didn’t he? I am named after Roscoe. Roscoe. ROS-coe. Ros-COE. Yup. That’s a good solid name. Sure, people may make fun of it nowadays, but back when he was here, it was a popular name. It made me popular, that name did… for a bit anyway. Lots of picnics on my shores back then…. Ah, Roscoe, Roscoe, Roscoe…
I hope it rains soon. I feel a little low. Of course, that might cool me down for a bit, but at least my pool – Hah!—will be deep enough for the older kids to swim in, too. Now it’s more like a wading pool. A place to catch crawfish and frogs and tadpoles, not take out your scuba gear… But that’s a decent life, right? Home to crawfish and frogs… and mosquito larvae. Ick. I hate those things. They chase off the people… but they do feed the fish. Ah, well. Life cycle and all that. At least people invented bug spray now. If they REMEMBERED to WEAR it when they came out, they wouldn’t have to leave so soon!
Bah, maybe it’s better that I’m not bigger or smaller or cuter or whatever. I hate people. They pollute. They abuse. They’re pretty dumb all around. Planning to spend a day on the bank of the river without bug repellent or without a swimsuit… how much foresight does that take?! Yeah, I’m way better of being ignored like this...
I posted my story over at my blog here.
In a city as big as this, you are lucky to get a direct look at the sun - save for that elusive window between midday and 2pm, when the sun was overhead. During Winter, the city streets don't see the sun at all. The buildings tower above you wherever you look. The other day, I met a kid who didn't know what the word "horizon" means - it's become one of those things that only exists in a magazine. Here we have to live in the real world, not a magazine.
That's not to say that the city is dark. As soon as sunrise touches the tallest tower it sends a hundred reflections from the mirrored glass, and the lesser towers crowding the city are more than ready to catch them and pass them on. By the time the day has dragged the sun to a respectable height, the streets are bathed in light. Hell, I know a girl who got sunburnt the other day - she hasn't seen the sun in a week.
I always laugh when I hear people talking about the city getting them down - those well-meaning back-to-basics types, who want to get away from it all, back to the beauty of nature. Right here, this is the beauty of nature. Don't tell me bears and monkeys can begin to compare to these temples of light.
With all the glass around here, you always see things you don't expect: the broken-down truck around the corner and a block away causing the traffic jam; unwary executives and receptionists forgetting that glass is not nearly so reflective at night; Roscoe.
I think everyone in the city saw Roscoe. They didn't all know it was him - I did - but to most he was just a black speck drifting down across the broken reflections of a mid-morning sun. Even the people right in front of the building he fell off (some say he jumped) didn't know if they were looking at the real thing or a reflection in the building next door.
I always laugh when I hear someone say the city is getting them down, they need to get back to nature. I'm packing my bags right now, but if someone told me that, I'd still laugh. This is the most beautiful place in the world, and it's not some misguided notion of so-called natural beauty that lures me away - I'm being chased from paradise by the ghost of a fall. Every day I see a black speck against a shattered sun. It's not Roscoe, not again - that's impossible now - just a bird, or a dollar bill. Every day. This might be paradise, but those bears are looking mighty good right now.
Tonya: poor Roscoe Falls! I laughed at it throwing the fish over the falls, though. Has it ever tried to hit the kids swimming in the pool with a fish? That's what I'd do if I was a waterfall.
Thanks, Logan! You're right, if I were a waterfall, I too would throw fish at the swimmers...
Your story is great! Sort of depressing, but good... It makes me want more background (what was Roscoe to the main character?)
To be honest, I'm not sure what Roscoe was to the main character. I use the act of writing to figure these things out, and since I didn't write that part, well, you'll just have to make it up yourself!
Audrey was surprised at how vivid everything was. From this new perspective she'd found, she looked at the water, sparkling as it fell, each perfect drop catching the sunlight in its facets. She remembered the diamonds she used to dream about when she was a teenager. Curtis Mays had been the first to promise her diamonds. He was 16 but earnest and she’d believed him when he said no jewel could capture the sparkle in her eyes. By the time he was 17, he was driving Lacey Timmons around in his daddy’s car, promising to sit beside her forever, leaving all thoughts of Audrey behind. By the time she was 20, Audrey had left fairy-tale diamonds behind in an abandoned belief system. Too many guys had gone from “I love you” to “Never mind.”
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The constancy of the falls amazed her, if you could call something in perpetual motion constant. There wasn’t much in her life she could count on following through, other than misery. But the water sliding over Roscoe Falls never stopped plummeting, flinging itself over and down, as if it feared someone or something might otherwise stop its heady tumble to the feathery roil 70 feet below. No matter how much spilled over the edge, it seemed more would always follow behind. Or maybe, she thought, it was all an illusion. The water that seemed to be moving so determinedly from the river above to the falls bottom to the calmer waters downstream…maybe it was always right where it was in this instant and it was only perception that moved. Maybe it was only if you became a part of the motion that you were able to see the stillness.
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She had always wanted to see water stilled. She remembered the sprinklers she’d played under when she was a child. Her skinny body shivering as the sun slid down in the sky, she’d dashed in and out of the water over and over again. She would play for hours, long after her friends lost interest and went on to other games. Audrey had been certain if she ran fast enough, figured out the right pattern, she could make it all the way through without a single drop landing on her. Sometimes, though, she would just lie on the ground and let the water fall on her, not caring how wet she got, not caring if she took root in the mud beneath her, just content to exist under the downpour.
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There were birds all around her here, invisible in the treetops. None of them seemed startled by her. They were too distracted, each one fighting to be the dominant harbinger of happiness. Audrey envied them. If she was loud enough, she wondered, would she find happiness waiting to meet her at top decibel? Maybe that was the key she’d never found. Maybe she just needed to scream until her eardrums shattered and the world would right itself. But for once she didn’t feel like screaming.
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Her skirt billowed up in the wind, fluttering around her knees. She pictured herself as one of the leaves on the trees lining the sides of the river. It was early October and the leaves had just begun to lift their own green skirts to reveal the reds and yellows and oranges of their inner garb. Only a few had fallen to the ground. The rest were still showing off, dancing in the wind that wriggled saucily through the branches. The time of the patchwork of bare branches and limp leaves wouldn’t arrive for a few more weeks. Audrey hated that. She didn’t need to watch this glory sliding toward the death of winter. Nature’s reflection of her own wasted life was not the image she wanted to see when she closed her eyes on this moment.
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What would it be like to be one of those floating leaves already released by the trees, buoyed up by the wind? She raised her arms and lifted her chin, feeling the wind flow across her exposed neck. It caressed the fading bruises there, a far gentler touch than she’d felt from any human hand in the last several years. She felt weightless, as if the air was lifting her, as if gravity had slowed down just for her.
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Audrey felt like she had all the time in the world — had since she’d taken the first step — but she knew this was a gift and it was almost over. She closed her eyes, every facet of the rich autumnal beauty around her etched in glowing relief on the back of her eyelids. She had wanted to create a perfect moment, just one, some flawless setting she could immerse herself in. She pushed out the moments of her life trying to crowd into her mind. She gathered into her soul all that she could, the trilling birds, the wind that sang past her, the trees in all their joyful majesty, and the water sparkling around her as she fell. And now, suddenly, finally, she could feel it beneath her feet as well.
She smiled.
She sank.
Sarah shuffled through the leaves. She imagined that, in a big city, someone would have swept them up by now. But Roscoe Falls was no big city. It didn't even meet the criteria for a small town, in her opinion. Small towns were tidy, bustling places, with curio shops and candy shops and shops where shopowners bought things for their shops.
But Roscoe Falls was...just Roscoe Falls. It had never been all that big, to begin with, just an artists' colony after the Civil War. The falls it had been named after had disappeared ages ago when the river they dropped from had been sidetracked for some commercial purpose or another. The freeway was a few miles of single-lane roads outside of town, so mainly this was a bedroom community for the larger cities, but without many amenities, and it seemed not many people chose to sleep that far from Walmart and the Super K these days, so it had gotten quieter over the years.
Sarah crunched a few brown oak leaves under her boot. She wouldn't be here, herself, if it weren't for the house. She would rather be in New York or Boston or anyplace with a movie theater that didn't double as a bowling alley. But the house was her own, her own shelter and her own burden to bear, her own family legacy. There was no shunting it off on some poor unsuspecting buyer, and it could not be left alone...not as long as Milo was there...Milo, who had been her family's legacy for as long as the falls had been gone.
Roscoe sits like stone
The human is still falling
The kitteh reflects
Run, he thought, Keep moving.
A man stumbled through the trees down a valley in the darkness of the night. From tree to tree he flitted down the steep slope, gravity assisted him a little too well at times and he fell suddenly then skidded on the slick pine needles before coming to rest tangled in a small pine tree. Cocking his head to one side he suddenly held his breath and listen.
After a moment a low, almost inhuman sound escaped between his pursed lips. The man grabbed a low hanging branch from a larger pine nearby and pulled himself up, glancing upwards into the darkness. The trees obscured his view beyond a few yards, the light from the many stars not withstanding. All sound seemed to be drowned out by the creek he was rapidly approaching at the bottom of the valley. Still he paused again, as if to listen for pursuit. The man stood up straight and gently put one foot forward, tested his weight and then leaned forward to continue his journey. As he lifted his other foot off the ground his leg collapsed from underneath him and he stifled a scream of pain.
Not the ankle, please God, not the ankle!
But it was the ankle as further, fast experimentation confirmed. First he pulled the offending member into his lap, the heel of his tennis shoe bumped gently into the revolver barrel where it was tucked into the band of his pants. His fingers gently prodded and poked, finding the source of pain. He seemed familiar with this exercise, as if he had done it before.
That's it then, no more running.
He pushed his ankle back down roughly, grinning at the pain. Pulling the gun from his belt he reloaded it with bullets from his front shirt pocket. The pocket clinked as he drew each round out and carefully put it into place. Patting his pocket he gyrated the bullets through the cloth.
More than I will ever need. They won't let me reload.
Looking about he spotted a clear area just below where he was at, possibly a trail or an old logging road, he half slid, half crawled down the slope until he was on the path. This was no logging road, no ruts marred its surface, it was a trail a maintained trail, smooth enough for a wheelchair if need be. The man's face lit up with a grin as he realized where he was. Just below the path a merry brook rushed down the steep stream bed into the night. He turned upstream and using the metal railing for support made good progress.
Lets see its only one mile from the trail head and I came into the trail what? Maybe halfway?
High behind him on the ridge above a loud snap sounded, then another, of wood being broken by someone or something that didn't care if its presence was known. The man's head rose sharply and he peered into the night, whatever was there was lost in the trees.
I remember this place, he thought as he continued working his way upwards, Roscoe Falls. Marie, the kids. Tears started down his cheeks as he thought of his family, gone now, like so many others. The kids played right there in the creek, I told them not to get wet and then Marie pushed me into the water. He envisioned a tan woman in shorts walking beside him, two kids scrambling between the adults like planets around dual suns. The night seemed brighter with the apparitions and he paused to take them in.
The kids didn't think they could walk a whole mile, then back again, not even with the granola bars and bottled water to see them through, plus it was uphill. Of course the complaining was all just something to do and once we started playing in the water it all became play and we were at the falls in what seemed like no time at all.
The last segment of the path was before him now, it was a straight shot from where he was to the landing crafted to give sightseers the best view of one of nature's wonders, formed steps led into the pool at the waterfalls base. The falls themselves were impressive enough, not the highest in the world, but topping thirty feet with a constant stream of water.
I can get there, he told himself, there are worse places for this to end.
Ahead of him his ghostly family ran and teetered on the edge of the pool. For a moment they looked back at him, then grinned, waved and plunged in. Under his hands the metal railing of the fence thrummed and vibrated, a sharp sound behind him indicated something had arrived onto the path, and had hit the railing hard when it did so. Hastening his hobbling the man arrived at the pool and watched his family play before him.
I should have been there for you, he cried silently, I should have saved you.
His family stopped and his wife turned towards him slowly and shook her head, she said nothing, but pulled their children closer to her sides, burying their faces in her stomach. The man stood on the pool edge, away from the railing now and on the pebbly sand that made up the shore. His face was streaked with tears and the cascading mist that formed from the falls. The gun was in his hand, loosely held and pointed directly towards the ground. His wife's face grew taunt and white, a pained expression masking the beauty he had always seen there. Even the noise of the falls could not mask his pursuer's approach.
The gun fell with a slight crunch to land on the pebbly sand at the same time his wife's face turned away from his. In the night his pursuer's victory was short and complete.
Dennis let his breath out slowly, silently, counting back from seven and scanning the banks again. He still saw nothing, which meant there was nothing to be seen. But he wasn't worried. He wasn't impatient. The scope swung slowly from side to side, looking for any sign of his target.
This early, he could afford to be patient. It was warm enough. The early morning fog had burned off the river so he had a good view of the tumbling waterfall, the natural focal point of a pleasant nature scene. Dennis had the sun to his back, and this meant both that there would be no flash from his optics (which were carefully shaded anyway, but there was no need to take the risk) and that his eyes didn't become fatigued from the glare. Birds sang, the falls splished, and the pines and thistle combined in a familiar woodsy scent. Yep, he could stay like this for hours. But he knew his best shot by far would be soon, before the sun moved much farther overhead.
Breathe out, count back from seven, breathe in, pull the gun the other way. Gently. It wouldn't do to give himself away, to broadcast his position where he lay prone in the brush and tall grass. A grasshopper landed on him and jumped away again. A cloud of gnats investigated and he closed his eyes and held his breath until they moved on. For all he knew, mice were tying his bootlaces together. It didn't matter. With one part of his mind he took it all in, soaked it all into his awareness in case some of it was useful information, but it was background noise.
He never felt more alive than when he was waiting to make a kill, motionless and looking anything but alive. He knew himself when he stalked a target. He rarely though of himself as Dennis in any other part of his life, but instead thought of himself as others saw him. He was Mr. Keefer to some, "boss" to others, and he felt it was easier to fill the roles if he took them on completely. It was useful to compartmentalize so he used the names when he talked to himself as he was being "dad" or "Buddy".
Out here, though, he didn't have to do that. He let all the little things he knew about himself run together. He didn't catalogue them. He wasn't navel gazing. He didn't think, "I am Dennis, and I enjoy my burgers a little burned even though that isn't fashionable." He hardly thought at all. It was more that he didn't have to ignore himself. There was just Dennis and his prey and the knowing.
There! A glint at the crest of the falls. His quarry was there, as clear as day, giving himself away with a careless flash of light. He keyed in on the movement waited for his moment, and... sqeeze. In his concentration, he didn't even hear the report, muted though it was, and his target didn't either. Dennis slowly disengaged from his hiding place. The pool beneath the falls was small but not turbulent. It wouldn't spit out the remains quickly. He had time to collect the body.
At last he knelt by the side of the pool. He plucked out his dinner and dropped it into a cooler to clean later. It wasn't as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, but shooting them out of the falls was a hell of a lot more fun.
Did you get my story from last night?
No, drat it all, I didn't. Try again?
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