NEON LIGHTSA Chapter by M. L. F. JUST A PROLOGUE AND FIRST TWO OR THREE PAGES / OPENING OF THE NOVEL. LOOKING GLASS LAKE looking glass noun noun: looking glass; plural noun: looking glasses a mirror. "She stared at her reflection in the looking glass lake"
CHAPTER ONE NEON LIGHTS Some people's scars are the color of wine, some people's - shadows - white, but not mine; my scars were neon lights. I stood and watched him cross the little space that separates in less than two steps, closing the gap until the gap was no longer, and we were no longer estranged. His nose grazed my nose. I drew in a air, and with it the sweetness of the coconut oil he rinsed with, warm on my lips like sugared wind. I breathed it. In. Out. In. His face one foot away, his gun, the only thing between us now. I was prepared for this, after all, prepared for this to happen for so, so long. He was the type they warned us about in training, and clearly I hadn't heed the warnings. Here I was, clearly in love.
Outside a cold winter storm thundered. I could hear the winds screaming through the naked trees. I could see the drops clinging to the glass walls over his shoulder; gold Christmas lights glittering on the droplets that slid down the cold glass. I watched the droplets light and crawl on the glass like the lightning bugs I caught on humid summer nights as a little girl. And as I stared past the gun, passed his hand, it was suddenly all that I could see, my father and I catching moonbeams, caging lightning in jars the summer of eighty seven, the last summer I would see his hands grasp the lightning, or anything ever again. I gazed ahead and thought, What a glorious way to go. Even in Hell’s grasp, I couldn’t help seeing the gorgeous landscape of Holland; the springtime version where I met him, a version lost in time. I saw us walking our dogs that day in the lush green panorama that pushed at Heaven without asking God, with no guilt. I could smell the cool air that stunk of pine and cedar wood, see the heavy leaves that hung in loose strands, and the looking glass lake that cast the setting sun’s light back up to Heaven. Contrasts of apocalyptic orange and green that I would never see again. One year later and here I stood. The same landscape coaxing me again, it whispered, goading the tear that was caged in my lashes, thick and wet, and I’ll never erase the words that escaped next. "Say it”, I whispered. “Say what?” “That you want to see them?” “See what?” He said. But I knew he knew. His hand was shaking, the nose of the gun quivered too as though it were vibrating. The sadness in his eyes was palpable. I could read him in a dark room, peruse his heart like braille. I could hear his thoughts - and he knew it. He had been asking for over a year to learn all that had happened to me, and now, like this, near death, I was suddenly freed to tell him. Everything. We stared, eye to eye, stone cold, as the tip of his gun, touched the tip of my nose, and that lone tear unleashed and sped past my nose too quickly to stop. Though I wished I could rewind time, and siphon both the tear and the words back up and in like breath so it wouldn’t be the very last thing he heard and saw. My weakness. And suddenly, staring at my own tangible end, after learning him, studying him for an entire year of my life, it was my job, after all, I realized that I was in love with “the subject”. This was taught early on in training, to avoid this scenario at all costs. Standing here now, hoping not to die, I understood precisely why. How could I have been so stupid? And yet it didn’t stop me from wanting to show him everything I had been hiding, even more still, even as I stared at the death. I let the rest of the tears I had caged spill down like the storm that pelted the glass walls of the spectacular house we now called home. His eyes never left mine, they were locked. And I knew he knew, I was finally going to show him what he wanted to see more than anything. My neon scars… Still wearing the slip I’d slept in, I noticed the strap on the left shoulder starting to slide down. I saw his eyes cut to his right to watch it slowly descending. When he did, I took a chance, a split second instinct from training took over and I swiveled left and down, swatting the gun to the right. It flew across the study and landed on the hardwood floor with a thud, then slid into the north facing wall of glass, beaded with heavy rain. He whipped around and grasped me by my wrists and began to walk me backward until my backside touched the desk and he continued his momentum until my back bent in an arch, my feet still touching the floor. His nose was now one inch from mine. He hovered there as if he were frozen. Time crept backward again in my mind and I closed my eyes to smell the sweet coconut again for the first time, remembering that first sugared kiss. The heat between us was nothing short of electrical. I remember thinking I was going to short circuit as his lips hovered over mine, tracing side to side. The tease… My head was exploding, that much I recalled, just as it was now. It was almost too intense to endure and I actually felt a chill rising up from my toes that made me shudder as though I was sitting outside in the snow in nothing but shorts and a t-shirt… I looked in his eyes. I could see he was waiting, waiting for me to start talking. I knew what he wanted to hear and I knew what I needed so badly to tell. My mouth opened suddenly and the voice that came out was both calm and ferocious all at the same time… “When I was ten years old my father ran away for the first time”, I forced my mouth to say, teeth slightly grit, eyes tearing up. “Running?” He asked. "Tell me, Gabrielle, what was he running from?" “Ghosts” He pressed against me harder and his lips began to trace over mine again as he had that very first kiss. He knew this act literally hypnotized me, and with it, he could have me. With it, he would bend me, he, the archer, I - the bow. I would answer anything like this…. “What sort of ghosts?” He asked, pressing me harder against the wood grain top. I was trying to wiggle loose when the second wave of coconut wind escaped his lips and floated into my nostrils with his words; those fumes, his lips still hovering, lusting, wet, leaving me helpless, or at least making me wish I was. I let my eyes slip closed again as the trance-like state ensued, and I fused his questions and answers together in my head like axons welding telegrams to neurotransmitters.. © 2017 M. L. F.Featured Review
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M. L. F.American writer in the Netherlands....About"True suspense, true... terror, doesn't jump in your face with a hockey mask. No, no...It starts very, very slowly, creeping up your spine and into the space where your hair trickles onto your neck.".. more..Writing
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