Forever lasts too long for those in love

Story I wrote while participating in the Ceramic DM writing contest on Enworld.org

Forever lasts too long for those in love

CDM Fall 06  Round 1b
© 2006 CW Kelson III (Tad) All Rights Reserved

http://www.myspace.com/ludorock
www.ludorock.com


Openings:
Look at these people hiding from the red raindrops
while earthquakes shake the broken timber of this burning town.
There's poison in the water, the ocean's blood that's turned to slime and gotten hard
All the fish and whales are corpses on the scab
In the darkness soldiers gnaw their tongues in pain, you see
So help me God, at the end of time they're screaming on their knees!
Oh let them die! Oh let them die!

“Broken Bride Part III: The Lamb and the Dragon”
 Ludo
Words by Andrew Volpe Music by Andrew Volpe and Tim Ferrell


Up on the stage, solo spot trained on her face, the lead singer of the small house style band that was playing that night, sits down gratefully in the stool someone had put up there. She sat down, put her feet up on a speaker pointing back towards her and started to sing another song. It had been a long set and odds are this was the last song in it.


"There is no end to misery
No end to pain, sorrow, suffering, death and devastation
There is no end to the torments we inflict upon ourselves and each other
Unless we are touching
Then it can all go away
Slowly, gently, easily
Drift away slowly into no where
The dance is made
Dancers taking their time
Wafting slowly from love to love
Drifting on the tides of right now
Endless weeping of two to one to three to one to two all back over again"

The two guys up there with her, lead and percussion, joined in with the chorus,

"There is no tomorrow, there is no yesterday, there is no now, there is only you and I and the what could be, There is no past, there is no future, there is no present, there is only the you and I and the right this second. There is nothing unconnected, all is tied together, with knots and lives, With knots and lives."

 Then she takes back over again, tears almost streaming down her face in the harsh actinic lighting,

 "What ever is left to hope for, lies in your hands and in my very own ones, wrapped up all together into a series, Gordian is always right, but not right now,
Knots and lives are the glue, holding you and I together
Knots and lives are all we really have
To tie us one to the other together, together, together."

 

A small little riff and the song is over. Sad, haunting, the fragile echoes die away in the nearly silent establishment.

"Ok that was almost a let down, new song off the next CD we make. Drop a note leaving your thoughts on it." She paused once more, since the song was over, and continued once more,
"Thank you again, we are taking a break now, feel free to leave change in the guitar case. We are Pyrrhic Muses and after wetting our whistles, will be back on stage."


The lovely lithe woman, her voice husky like a NYC Siren gone folk with a flogged background, all decked out in black jeans, lavender muscle-shirt with the head of a canid emblazoned on it leaves the stage. Her band mates follow, guitarist and drummer, heading to the restrooms and bar while canned crud for pop is blared out of dj sounding speakers. The lights come up and Vik takes a long slow look around. Rumor had it these were the latest bomb, but they sounded like they had been playing together longer than they had been alive.

There were three CDs for sale on a stand to the side, the lead singer heading over there with water and lemon in hand, to take cash only the little hand calligraphied sign said.

"That last track is off the next cd, did you like it?" She holds out her hand,

"Cat A Strophe, like catastrophe but cuter."


"Hi my name is Vik, really digging the set so far." What a dork comment to make, even if she is young enough to be your daughter damn near.

"Digging the set, what an odd turn, not heard that in like forever. So you like our style, a little retro for lots of folks."
"Nope not heard a thing like it before, that one song sleeping dogs or something, that really about teared me up," Vik admits while the two of them wander to the bar.
"Yeah one of our oldest songs, been with the three of us since the start. Sometimes it brings the house down, sometimes not."
She pauses, "Ice water with lemon please."
The bartender hands it over to her, she slugs some of it down,
"Well almost time to head back up there, I got a solitary question for you though hun."
Looking her over once more, Vik grunts, "Sure fire away."
 "Like the man says, the endless search for self, has it led you to here or this just a place to kick back a few whiskeys?" The perky lady with eyes that look a lot older than her shape would suggest, asks in all seriousness while the guitarist works to check the tuning of his rig.
"I am pretty comfortable with me, but I am looking for the right one, wanna be the right now to find out if you are the right one or not?"
Gotta take a stab at it, short, cute, quick and creative, all fine elements in a relationship.
"Gonna think on it while we play, stick around, you might be surprised." She leans in and pecks his cheek, reaching up on toes and almost against him but not quite, but the impression on the fabric of life carries her image across the remaining distance to his sense of touch.
Then she wanders back up to the small stage, dwarfed with the sheer energy of the trio of a band.

Couple of hours later, when it is the next day and the second set is over, not a single cover song that he can tell, they have material for at least a marathon session, the lady comes down to him as he sat there nursing the final drink, past last call, while Pyrrhic Muses broke down their gear.

Shortly later it was off for a night of coffee the two of them all alone with her hand in his.


 Intersections:
"What are you thinking lover?" Cat asked out loud from the kitchenette where they were staying for the night on the road, hitting all of the small towns and smaller cities around the central larger one where Vik had met her.

“Just about tonight, the gig, how we are on the road all the time, learning the ins and outs of the road, without ever learning a real thing.”

“Well dear, we are learning how to live and love and make money the old fashioned way, with hard work.” Cat strolls into the kitchen, snagging her first cup of coffee as dressed as the day she met her mother.
“ Also we are learning all about these lovely hick towns with no clue about good music. I think it will be a snoozer session tonight. Gonna be a slow one here, got the feeling it will be about fifty years before it is a happening town.
“Well get dressed, time to head into town and see if there is a music shop anywhere close and score some indie tracks to get inspiration from.” She walks back into the bed room, to dress and drink her morning coffee.
“You want to get married?” Vik spouts out of the blue.
“Hurricane love, not in this life no I don’t, no matter how perfect a man might seem, never in this life.”
“Ok just wanted to ask, why hurricane though.” He asks back.
“Because you are causing stormy waves in my heart, and the tide is coming in I fear.” With a little black top, jeans and sneakers on her feet, the two of them head out into the daylight.

Death came too swiftly, it came with the speed of a bullet nearly, but none the less lethal for that slight lack. It came with kinetic finality, dropping down from forever to cut short a life made long in retrospect, taken one that should not have ever been lost. Death came falling out of the sky to crush the life from the one man she thought she could ever love, and would never love again. But that does not happen for a few more minutes at least.

“Hey V, look over there, what is that?”
“Don’t know love, not sure about it.” Vik responded back.
It looked like a column of mud, standing there in the sunlight there that early pre-noon morning in a small sleepy town in the almost rural, almost suburban, almost urban part of the country where nothing happens to speak of.
It was just standing there, without moving, nothing happening to it in the slightest bit.

A screeching from the sky came hurting down, heat searing and blasting the area close to where the couple was standing. Something impacted in a small building close by, flames and bricks flying in all directions, scattering shrapnel in all directions. Something had impacted onto the site of this small town, close to where the two lovers had been walking, causing despair and destruction all around it. Bodies suddenly were lying on the ground, already the sound of sirens in the near distance could be heard.

Cat looked down at her body, nothing was hurt, no blood showed, and she looked over at V who she called Hurricane cause he was making a storm of her entire life, and she stared.  Cat stood there, staring at what had just happened. The coating of mud that flowed up and over Vik covering him in a light brown suit from head to toe, watching it harden all over his flesh, somehow tossed or moved in the force of the explosion of the meteor or what ever it was that had destroyed the small office building there so close yet forever away from them both.

“I cant move love.” Vik said with an odd tone in his voice.
“Huhh, what do you mean, other than the mud you look fine love.” Cat wonders out loud in a way.

“All cold inside Cat, all cold inside, and I cant move my body.” The plaintive tone is clear in his voice.

“It is going to be alright V, I know it will be,” But the doubt was there, “Everything will be just fine. We got a gig to play tonight and you need to be there. Tonight and every other night that we play.” Cat cries ever so softly as she can see the light leaving his eyes, standing there encased in a suit of mud thrown up in an impossible situation to murder the only man she might ever have loved.

The fire, police, and ambulances all arrive to take away the inexplicable bodies, along with Vik’s, sealed solid in a casket of mud with a young lady crying on her knees reaching out to hold his hand but not able to hold it.
They arrive to take away all the bodies except for the one she is closest too.
 

Outcome:

The three of them climbed and climbed up the singular lines and fabric, farther and farther towards infinite light. The weight of the wheelchair hindering Cint less and less with each pull of his hands, dragging the belted conveyance higher and higher.
FG's long hair blowing in the winds coming off of the dancing primaries all about them. Higher and higher the three of them climbed, heading towards an uncertain destination. But a place better than where they had just come from filled with death and the end of love for more than one of them.
They climbed the ropes that held all of the past and future together for the sakes of Cat A Strophe, as well has their own selves. They climb these ropes leading towards a future far away from home, for the sake of the children that should have been carried by Cat sired by Vik who were their predecessors.
There was no real reason for it to end this way, three total strangers thrown together at the end of time, climbing literal robes towards light streaming down from thousands of stars all compacted into a single solar system, the ending of all time for this go around of the universe, waiting for the next expansion to occur, the natural contraction having come to an end here in the forever distant future, where two men and one woman is all that remains of a century so far in the past, there is not even a number for it. The time spent in between the eons of eons of eons flicker by in the stress of the climb, towards the light at the end, of this go around at reality.