you're too young & eager to love

Just some snippets I was working on about a new character.
Nothing special.






“Same one?” He asks, soft as a shadow in the three o’clock morning darkness.
Claire smokes a cigarette at the kitchen table. She loves this table, the worn antique wood, the patterns that intersect the grain, how she traces them with her nails. She smiles, and the tiredness shows around her eyes. She clears her throat before speaking, snubbing the half-smoked cigarette out in a quick, hurried gesture. Like a puppy caught digging up the petunias. “Yeah. All bright light leading into blackness and loud percussions. Distorted shapes. Like a Tchaikovsky piece.”
Her husband nods with a noncommittal sound. He touches the back of her neck in passing, removing a bottle of water from the refrigerator. “Third time this month.” He has the type of voice that is soothing tinged with an undercurrent of steel. His mind works in numbers, mathematical equations; he is limited by his inability to fathom a nightmare as dark as obsidian.



He holds her hips. Steady. They dance in a spacious dining room. The floor is planks of oak, easily glided over. There are two bottles of wine on the table, both empty, and her fingers smell like shiraz. He is taller than her, but they move comfortably, at ease and familiar with the shape of their bodies. Not distinctly fitting, not matching puzzle pieces, but it’s close enough.
A man she wants like falling.



Hope fluttering like a bird in her hands.
The applicator looks innocent. Such a tiny thing, holding such potential promise. Claire does not pace the bathroom. She does not watch the clock, tirelessly counting seconds. She drinks from a glass of raspberry flavored tea and taps her fingers on the sink. Makes a mental reminder to clean the mirror. Thinks about changing her nail polish. Remembers that she has to pick up a new bundle of tulips for the vase on the downstairs mantle.
After sixty seconds, there is no pink cross. A definitive blue line shows up instead.
Well, she thinks, that’s that and throws the test in the trash.