Real Life

One Digit Off

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She reached out for the ringing phone. For a moment, her stiff fingers fumbled over the buttons, and she cursed the arthritis that stiffened her joints. She managed to hit the green button, and lifted the handset up to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Hello – I, uh, I just needed to talk to someone. I don’t think I can keep going any longer.”

Another one of them. No matter how many calls she took, there always seemed to be more of them, each with their little problems, so convinced that no one else in the world had ever experienced what they were now going through. Her eyes drifted over to the two piles of stationary on her windowsill.

“Well, you can talk to me, although you best make it quick – I’m 92, so who knows how much time I’ve got left.” She settled back into her chair, trying to find a more comfortable position for the phone against her ear.

“92? Um, is… is this the suicide hotline?”

Ah, one of the faster ones. He’d caught on more quickly than some of the callers. “Afraid not, dear,” she replied. “You’re off by a number.” Continue reading →

Plenty More Fish

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tinder-app-logo

I arrived at the brewery to find him already seated at a four-person table, his head buried in his hands.  From the dent he’d managed to make in the oversized plate of nachos in front of him, I guessed that he’d been here for a while.

“Hey, buddy – I didn’t realize that you got here early,” I remarked, patting him on the back as I stepped around to sit opposite him at the table.

My friend Rich lifted his head up from his hands, blinking at me in confusion.  “Early?  I’ve only been here for a few minutes.”

I opened my mouth, but closed it again without speaking, as Rich reached out and scooped up a literal handful of nachos, cramming them indiscriminately into his mouth.  That answered my next question, then. Continue reading →

Side Effects May Include Superpowers

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The CEO struggled to suppress his yawn as he listened to his Chief Financial Officer drone on.  Sure, the man was a wizard at making numbers jump through hoops – and vanish, when they weren’t exactly necessary to keep around – but good God, his presentation skills were terrible.

The CEO surreptitiously glanced down at his watch, a $45,000 Piaget for which he’d spent six months on a waiting list.  Either he paid all that money for a knockoff, or else the Financial Officer was literally making time itself slow down out of sheer boredom.

“Okay, well, it sounds like that’s going well,” he spoke up, slapping his hand on the conference table and cutting off the Financial Officer mid-sentence.  “Let’s hear from someone else, shall we?”
Continue reading →

Near Disaster

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“Madam President!  We need to get you into the bunker?”

The large, burly member of the Secret Service detail couldn’t help but roll his eyes when Madam Elaine Clifton, the President of the United States – and arguably the most powerful person in the world – finally appeared around the corner.  She looked somewhat out of breath already, and she clutched a large, struggling orange tomcat in her arms.

“Sorry, sorry,” President Clifton panted, trying to adjust her grip on the wriggling animal so that he couldn’t slip out of her determined grasp.  “Little Georgie-kins here just didn’t want to come out from underneath the couch!”

Another eye roll.  Kane, the Secret Service member, offered up a brief but fervent thank-you to whoever decided to include tinted sunglasses in the uniform design for the President’s guards.  Were it not for those shades blocking his eyes, he would have been fired long ago.

Hastily, he pulled himself back to the present.  “In any case, Madam President, we need to move right now to get you to safety.  We don’t know if the threat is-“

“What’s going on, then?” President Clifton demanded, cutting him off in the middle of his explanation.  Obviously, she wasn’t listening to a word he’d been saying.

Thankfully, at least, he got her moving into the elevator that would drop them down into the emergency bunker.  The big orange cat, George (Kane steadfastly refused to even think of the animal as ‘Georgie-kins’) finally managed to squirm and claw his way free, but the elevator doors had already closed, trapping the irate animal in the elevator with them.

“Your code, Madam President?” Kane prompted the woman, pushing her gently towards the control pad that granted the elevator access to the bunker.

“You haven’t answered my question about what’s going on!” Clifton shouted back, although she flipped open the little pad and began keying in her unique sequence.

Kane held back a sigh; the middle-aged woman might notice that sign of disrespect.  “There’s a threat on the White House, Madam President.  We aren’t sure if it’s fully legitimate, but we have enough reason to believe its credibility to move you to a safe location in the bunker until we can fully assess whether there’s a risk.  This shouldn’t take long; agents are running down the message behind the threat right now.”

He really hoped that the woman wouldn’t blow up at him.  President Clifton always put on a soothing, motherly face and attitude for the American people, but off camera she was known to be a firecracker – and not in a good way.  Some of the other Secret Service members had given her the unofficial nickname of ‘grenade.’

But as the elevator dropped down into the depths of the earth, provoking a yowl from George(ie-kins), she smiled.  “Well, this will be a new environment for dear Georgie-kins to explore,” she commented.  “Maybe he’ll find some tasty mice under some of these dusty old tables and chairs down here!”

“Er… Madam President, aren’t there some sensitive electronics down here?” Kane asked, wondering how fired he would be if he shot that damn cat.

“Oh, that’s fine.”  President Clifton kept on babbling, but Kane ignored her.  The elevator doors opened, and he hurried over to the phone, praying that the threat had already been resolved.

No such luck, his supervisors told him as he held the phone up to his ear.  In fact, it looked like there might actually be some chatter by enemy combatants confirming-

“Holy shit,” cut off the voice at the other end of the phone.

Kane frowned.  It wasn’t professional to swear on secure channels.  “Come again?  What-“

“Holy shit, no, it can’t be!” the voice repeated.  “What the hell is Madam President doing?  We just got authorization for nuclear missile launch!  What in the name of God is going on in that bunker??”

Kane’s blood went cold as he spun around.  There was Madam President, cooing at that damn cat-

-who was standing on top of a large keyboard, one hind leg resting on a very scary looking red button.

With great satisfaction, probably far more than he ought to feel, Kane grabbed a nearby stapler and chucked it at the damn cat, hitting it in the side and knocking it off of the control panel.

“Oh my god!” gasped out President Clifton, but Kane stormed past her, reaching out and slamming down the plastic cover that belonged over the red button.  He stabbed a finger down at the button, glaring daggers into the eyes of the taken aback President.

“This,” he hissed, “is the nuclear armament button.  This is dangerous.  This is NOT the sort of thing that your goddamn cat should be walking on!”

For a moment, the President just gaped back at him – and then Kane saw a new glint enter her eyes.

“No one’s ever talked to me like that,” she commented, still looking at him intently.  What was that new sound in her voice?  Was that… no, it couldn’t be.  “I could get kind of used to someone telling me off like that.”

Oh god, it was.  Lust.

Kane felt his whole mindset lurch.  On one hand, he might have just prevented a nuclear war from occurring.  But on the other hand, he really, really didn’t like how President Clifton was eyeing him up, looking at him as if he was a sack of meat.

He began to silently count up the number of sick days he could take in his head.

The Tree in the Cave

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Biology is a curious thing.  How does a seed, a tiny little cluster of cells with no eyes or brain or neurons or central control, know which way to grow?

The answer comes down to gravity, and light.

The seed on the ground felt the touch of water, enough water to launch its cells into an explosion of action and motion.  This was the signal for which it had waited, enduring dryness and the tumbling external forces that eventually brought it to its resting place.

The cells grew, pushing out beyond their walls, building copies, subdividing in a flurry of growth and replication.  Proteins spun through cytoplasm in a complex dance, uniting and binding with others, and then tearing away once their function had been completed.  DNA spiraled out, unwinding, duplicating, and then recoiling back up like a spring.

The seed’s hard shell cracked, and a root – thin, pale, fragile, exposed – came snaking out.  It searched, quested, found the soil.  It burrowed in, drinking in the water all around it, soaking up that moisture and converting it into more fuel to push itself deeper.

And on the opposite side of the seed, opposite the emergence of the root, a thin little branch emerged, barely even able to support its own weight.

Once exposed from their prison inside the seed, the cells spread out, unfurling, questing for light.  Inside each little cell, dozens of green factories – the chloroplasts – floated, waiting to absorb that dazzling radiance and convert it into food.  The plant didn’t think, didn’t know anything – but those cells ran a desperate race against their dwindling supply of food.

If the supply of food, of high-energy ATP molecules failed, they would have no other options.  They’d die, and the whole organism would die along with them as it starved.

But no – there, light!  The light wasn’t strong, not direct sunlight, but it was enough.  The cells most exposed to the light leapt into a flurry of joyful production, pumping out food to fuel the growth of the rest of the organism.  They worked as a community, creating far more ATP than they needed, exporting the rest to feed their brothers and sisters.

The plant responded to these most productive of its cells, and the entire structure began to shift.  The plant angled itself, growing faster on the side away from the light, angling itself to reach all that it could.  It had to capture as much light as possible, needed all that food!

Eventually, the initial rapid burst of growth slowed.  The cells that had one split joyously in wild abandon, as fast as they could manage, now proceeded at a slower, more stately rate.  The husk of the seed, no longer needed for protection, fell away.  Its remains would break down, eventually reabsorbed by the plant itself.

The plant didn’t know this, of course.  All it knew was that it had light and water, enough to make food.  Enough to exist.

Its stalk thickened, grew out in concentric rings to add more structure and support.  Ridges formed from slight unevenness in the cells’ walls, and the external proteins stiffened, creating defensive bark, a skin beneath which the living cells of the plant flowed and swarmed, passing nutrients up and down.  They sent water up to the leaves, and brought down synthesized ATP, food to feed the growing roots.

At the base, the root sank deeper, providing support, and split off to grow in new directions.  It had to stabilize its brothers above, and it fought for every inch against the hard ground, the rocks and other impenetrable items in amid the soil.  Sometimes, its path was stymied, but it always found a way around, chasing after that water.

At the top of the tree, leaves exploded out, each a separate factory to create more energy, to support itself and its surrounding fellows.  They angled towards that precious light, drinking it in.  Each leaf enjoyed its time at the tip of a branch, but the branch eventually moved past it, leaving it as just a side extension.

No leaf complained about this shift in its fate.  They were all a part of the whole, all feeding the greater organism.

Time passed.  The tree measured the passing time, in the rings on its trunk and the growth of its cells, but it didn’t know the meaning of these changes.  It only knew the beauty of growth, the symphony of healthy cells.

Did the tree know that it was alone, away from its brothers and sisters, the sole survivor in this cave, where only happenstance allowed it to grow?  Likely not, even as much as plants understand things.

Besides, the tree would not be alone much longer.  By now, it had enough energy built up, strong enough reserves, to begin the final stage of its life.  It would create seeds, tiny little copies of its own cells, with instructions to go forth, to spread wide, and seek two things:

Gravity, and light.

The tree was alone, yes, but it would not be alone forever – and what is time, to a tree?

He didn’t know why she died.

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“Oh… Shit.”

I stared at the body, my eyes frantically searching for some sign of movement.  “Come on, come on,” I murmured to myself, needing to see some tiny little sign of life.  Was the chest rising and falling?  A little twitch of a leg, I prayed.  That’s all I needed.

Behind me, I heard footsteps, the eager, quick little footsteps of a child.  Shit.  Timothy was coming down the stairs.

I spun around, dashing over to the stairs, trying to spread my arms wide.  “Timmy, wait,” I said, hoping to catch him before he came around the corner and saw the body.

He stopped, bouncing up and down on the step.  His eyes looked bright, filled with an eight-year-old’s happiness.  “What, daddy?” he asked, already trying to look past me.  He already wanted to play with her, go see her.

I felt my heart ache as I realized that, at some point today, I’d need to tell him.  As bad as I felt, I knew it would be a hundred times worse for him.

“Um… listen, please go back upstairs for a few minutes,” I said, stalling for time.  Did I need to call someone?  What should I do with the body?  Move it?  Leave it?  “Just play with your toys for a bit.”

Timothy frowned.  I could see the little gears in his head turning; he was a smart kid, and he’d soon figure out that something was wrong.  But I needed to buy time.

“Okay,” he said, less excited now.  He turned and headed back upstairs, glancing back at me.  I made sure to watch until he turned the corner into his room.

As soon as he’d retreated, I hurried back to the living room, my heart rate increasing once again.  “Shit, shit,” I muttered to myself, running my hand through my thinning hair.  What in the world could have happened?

I’d last seen her before I went to bed last night, and she’d looked just fine.  Exercising, I recalled.  Not a care in the world.

Now, she lay by her water bottle, and I could tell clearly now that she was dead.

A hundred thoughts fought inside my head.  I’d have to call the school, contact Timothy’s teacher.  I considered that maybe I could find a replacement, but I didn’t think any of the kids would buy that.

I’d just have to be honest, I realized.  Timothy would need to learn about death at some point.  It would break my heart a little to see some of the childlike innocence fade from his eyes, but I just couldn’t see any other option.

Before I called Timothy back downstairs, however, I ducked into the kitchen to grab a brown paper bag out of the cabinet.  Once he’d seen the body, I would stick her in the bag, and then put the whole thing in the freezer.  That would at least buy me some time to dispose of the thing.

God dammit, I cursed to myself one last time as I headed upstairs to bring down my son.  Why did Harriet the hamster have to die during my shift to watch her?

Missing Brains: 2016 Edition

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New Year’s Goals

That’s right, it’s the new year!  2016, baby!  And there’s going to be some changes around Missing Brains (here).

Schedule

First off, scheduling.  Missing Brains, the blog, is sticking with a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule.  Three posts a week!

However, since I beat the 52 book challenge last year, I’m going to be doing something different with the Monday posts.  Instead of providing a book summary each week along with my thoughts, I’ll be keeping to the following schedule:

Monday: I’m going to be telling a serial story, called The Amateur’s Guide to the Apocalypse, in segments.  I’ll post a new segment, about a thousand words per update, every Monday.  Hopefully, the story will end at exactly 52,000 words.

Wednesday: Wednesday will be a short story, with a theme focusing on real life.

Friday: Friday will also have a short story update, but Friday’s theme will focus on the fantastic, science fiction or fantasy themed.

Other improvements

Twitter: Missing Brains is going to have a twitter handle!  Of course, it won’t be @MissingBrains, since that’s my personal handle – but maybe I’ll make @MissingBrainsBlog into a channel.  I’ll hopefully attract a larger audience through Twitter.

RSS: I don’t really know how RSS works, but I’m going to try and use it.

New Website Design: In the works, probably not coming for a while.

Patreon: This is a new thing – when I’m not writing, I’m a graduate student.  Notably, neither graduate students nor writers make much money.  That’s why I’m going to see about setting up a Patreon, so that readers (you) can fund writers (me!), to help me afford to keep on writing!  I’ve never set one of these up before, so we’ll see how it works out.

The future

Can I keep this up?  Will my well of inspiration run dry?  We’ll find out – together!

My latest novel is LIVE and for sale – for just 99 cents!

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Hey there, reader!  Do you like stories with comedy, drama, angels, sassy female heroines, and the end of the world?

What am I saying, of course you do.  Who in the world wouldn’t like such an amazing sounding story?

Well, now you can read the very story I described above, all for just 99 cents!  And you know that it will be good, because I wrote it!

Check out my latest book, Apocalypse Before Coffee, by clicking the picture of my book above!  It’s for sale on Amazon, and it’s only 99 cents, or free to borrow and read if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber!

Seriously, give it a look.  It includes a plucky female heroine, a rather sarcastic angelic guardian, sneaking into Hell via the back entrance (located in the DMV), multiple celestial beings getting pepper-sprayed (it’s nothing they don’t deserve), people nearly vomiting from inter-planar travel, a climactic showdown for the fate of the entire Earth, and spiky demonic toilets.

And if that doesn’t describe the perfect novel, well, I don’t know what you want.

A day in the life of a secret agent

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The door slid open to reveal two hefty men, both of them clad in identical black outfits and both wearing identical angry scowls.  They gaped at me for a moment, and then lunged forward, grabbing for the guns at their belts.

That moment’s pause was their undoing.  Relying on my years of training, I slid forward, ducking under the swing of the nearest.  I rose up with a powerful uppercut, connecting squarely with his jaw and sending him flying backwards through the air.

I pivoted as soon as the blow landed, opening my hands to grapple with the man’s companion.  He’d freed his gun from his holster, but I snagged his wrist, keeping the pistol aimed up into the air.

The gun fired, a sharp retort that echoed through the air, but I twisted at his hand, snapping his wrist and knocking the pistol from his hand.  I caught the gun by the barrel with my other hand, swinging the butt up to connect with the man’s temple.  He collapsed down bonelessly next to his fallen companion.

Readjusting my grip on the pistol, I sighed.  Were all henchmen so easy to beat up?

Up ahead of me, I could see stairs rising up, entering the main chamber.  Up ahead, I knew, the evil Dr. Universe was putting the final touches on his Total Annihilation Ray.

Just another day, I grunted resignedly to myself.  Remember, Jeff, once I make it through this trouble, I’ve got a fresh six-pack waiting in the fridge at home for me to arrive.

That thought was all that kept me moving forward.  I sighed, shook out the tension in my shoulders, and then bounded forward, the pistol held in a two-handed grip and pointing ahead of me.

Sure enough, as I climbed up the stairs, I found myself standing inside the massive, domed interior chamber of the old observatory.  There, in the middle, the huge and twisted shape of the Total Annihilation Ray rose up, pointing out towards the closed observatory doors.

And there was Dr. Universe, fiddling with the massive control panel in front of the Ray.  He glanced up at the sound of my approaching footsteps, giving a cackle as his eyebrows rose up above his reflective goggles.

“Ah, Jeff the Secret Agent!” he hissed at me.  “Here to stop me, I see – but you’re too late!  The Earth will soon cower before-“

I groaned.  Not the world domination speech again!  I hefted the gun in my hand and put two shots into the console beside Dr. Universe.  A shower of sparks erupted out from where the bullets hit, scattering and dancing across the metal observatory floor.

“Come on, Universe,” I called out.  “Haven’t we been through this enough times already?  Just give up, and I’ll haul you back off to jail.  We don’t have to go through-“

“Too late, Agent!” the man screamed dementedly back at me.  “Even if you stop me, I’ve already activated the Annihilation Ray’s automatic countdown!  You can’t shut it off-“

Ugh.  I stepped forward, past the insane scientist, over to the base of the Total Annihilation Ray itself.  I flipped open a small control panel, revealing a red lever, and pulled it down.

For a moment, the electronic hum in the chamber rose to a fever pitch – and then, suddenly, it cut out entirely.

“You always build your emergency shutoff levers in the same place, Universe,” I pointed out grumpily as the man stared at me.  “Come on, I’ve stopped you what, a hundred times?  Can’t we just cut the charade-“

“Agent Jeff, you fool!” the man shouted back at me.

Apparently not.  I raised the hand not holding the pistol and rubbed my temples.  I could already feel my headache starting.

“By disabling the Ray, there’s nowhere for the pent-up death energy to go!” Dr. Universe called out to me.  “Now, it’s all going to go critical!  We’ve got less than a minute until total meltdown, killing us – and sinking this entire island back into the ocean!”

On the control panel behind the mad doctor, a series of numbers appeared, counting down.  The meltdown was coming.

As always.

With another groan, I stepped closer to the doctor.  “Okay, where’s the secret escape?” I asked.

“Uh, the what?”

I waved the gun half-heartedly at him.  “Come on.  You always build some crazy stupid escape door into these lairs of yours,” I said.  “Remember, I’ve stopped you dozens of times before?  Just show me where it is.”

“Never!” the man shouted back at me, pointing at me with one white-gloved hand.  “I’d sooner perish with my invention than let you escape-“

He never told me.  I always hoped that he’d come around and see sense, but apparently logic wasn’t one of the doctor’s skills.  I looked past him, and spotted the small door set back against the far side of the observatory wall.

“Hey!  You can’t go there – that’s off limits!” Universe shouted at me as I ran for the door.  “Wait, that’s not allowed!  Stay here and perish!”

I hit the door with my lowered shoulder, and it burst open.  I squinted my eyes at the bright sunlight shining outside, feeling it cut into my head and intensify my headache.  Holding up one hand to shade my eyes, I scanned across the landscape.

There!  The harbor!  I leapt down from the observatory, charging across the island.  Behind me, I could hear Universe puffing as he tried his best to keep up with me.  Despite his grand speeches about devotion to his ridiculous science experiments, the man never actually seemed willing to stick around and die with them when they invariably started exploding.

I burst out of the jungle brush and onto the road, leading down to the harbor.  I could see a couple small boats bobbing up and down, although none of them seemed to have a motor.

Not that I worried.  “What I wouldn’t give for some aspirin,” I muttered to myself.

Suddenly, the sound of aircraft propellers cut through the air.  Down from the sky descended the Project Zero, a tilt-rotor aircraft that had been custom outfitted for my mission.  The airplane’s door had been slid open, and I could see Montebusty leaning out, holding out her slim, feminine hand to me.

“Over here, Jeff!  Hurry, we don’t have much time!” she called out in that sultry voice of hers, her long blonde hair flapping in the downwash from the plane’s engines.

I angled towards the plane, reaching out and catching the woman’s hand.  She hauled me up aboard, somehow managing to keep her large, busty chest rubbing against my head the entire time.

I stifled another sigh.  Great.  My coworker probably wanted to have sex in the plane again.  We were supposed to be professionals! I wanted to yell at her.  We’re supposed to be hunting down terrorists, not having wild, bendy, athletic sex in the back of our experimental aircraft!

As the plane pulled away, I heard the series of earth-shattering booms coming from the abandoned observatory.  Lifting off, the aircraft shook from the shock wave of the Total Annihilation Ray melting down, but we managed to stay in the air, even as the ground split and exploded beneath us.

“Oh no!  It looks like Dr. Universe is escaping!” Montebusty called out, pointing out the window with one perfectly manicured hand (and somehow straining out her chest in the process, to the point where I expected at least one tit to leap free).

Trying not to glare at her overt sexuality, I followed her pointing arm.  Sure enough, I could see Dr. Universe’s white coat on board one of the boats – it seemed he’d just managed to reach the harbor and cut one of the boats free before the dock sank below the surface of the waves.

“I see you, Agent Jeff!” I heard him shout faintly up to me.  “Next time, you won’t foil my plans to dominate the world!”

With a little surge of pleasurable satisfaction, I flicked him the bird as the plane pulled away.

“We’ll send the Royal Navy boats out to catch him,” Montebusty promised me, stepping forward towards me.  “He won’t get away!”

I knew she was wrong.  Universe always somehow managed to escape the searching Navy vessels.  But I didn’t bother to correct her – what’s the point?

Meanwhile, Montebusty pushed me back into a seat, her hands crawling over me.  “Now, I must make sure that you’re okay,” she murmured up to me, as her hands slid up my thighs.  “After all, you’re a hero – and you deserve to be given whatever you want as a prize!”

I held up one hand, trying to block out the view of her massive cleavage pressing in against my crotch.  “Listen, Monty-“

“Montebusty,” she corrected me, accenting her full name, even as her damn chest melons strained to burst out of her low-cut, skin-tight top.  I could see both nipples standing out, hard and erect.  Her hands slid over my lap, feeling for the bulge in my pants.

It wasn’t there.  “Monty, I’ve got such a headache,” I groaned, pushing her back.  “Listen, can we just fly back in silence?  Come on, my head is killing me.”

Montebusty pouted at me, pushing out her supermodel lips and fluttering long lashes.  “Are you sure?  I’m feeling especially flexible.”  She lifted one leg up until it pointed up at the ceiling.

I pointedly closed my eyes and tilted back in my seat, staring up at the ceiling.

God, I couldn’t wait for one of those beers at home.  I knew that the Queen would want to present me with another medal or something, but surely we could skip the whole ceremony this time.  I already had boxes of the damn medals sitting all over my apartment.

As the plane winged its way across the sky, I let myself daydream.  Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have any other job, I thought, not for the first time.  Anything but this one.

Why had I ever answered that damn newspaper ad for a secret agent?

The Art of Coffee Shop Sketching

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I glanced up from my sketch book as she stopped in front of my table, her free hand tapping at the chair across from me.

“This seat open?” she asked, giving the words an upward lilt to suggest a question.  Brown hair fell in waves around sparkling hazel eyes.

I nodded, only briefly eyeing her, not wanting to lose my focus.  My pencil remained poised over my half-completed sketch, about to complete an important stroke.

I heard her pull back the chair, settle into it.  The corner of my eye caught her coffee cup as it landed on the table, only inches from my own.

I focused on my work, but when I next looked up, I saw her eyes observing me.

“You’re good at drawing?” she asked.

“Sketching,” I corrected.

“What’s the difference?”

A loaded question.  I handled it carefully.  “Drawing is a scene, a still object, capturing what it is.  Sketching is fast, in motion, capturing the sense of the object.”

She nodded, her hair bouncing in gentle waves around her face.  A pretty face, with those hazel eyes that caught my attention.  She smiled, and I noted the dimple on her left cheek.

I knew what question would come next.  It always did, at some point in the conversation.  Sometimes I would say no, sometimes yes.

Today, I pushed to get it out, instead of waiting for the conversation to meander its way there.

“You want me to sketch you, don’t you.”

A smile, quick but genuine.  A hand rose up to self-consciously push back a strand of hair behind her ear, although it immediately freed itself.  “If you’re willing,” she demurred.  Even as she brushed off the suggestion, however, I could see her leaning forward, showing her eagerness.

Why not?  I gave her a smile, a brief little smile, a secret between the two of us that she cautiously returned.  I flipped the page on my sketchpad, hefted my pencil.

For a long, indeterminate moment, I watched her, looking not at what she was, but her essence.  How can I describe the unspeakable in words, when I could show it, capture it, on the page with my pencil?  My pencil flew across the paper, sure lines joining each other.

Once I began, I worked quickly.  Rarely did I need to glance up at her; I held the image I wanted in my head, rushed feverishly to transfer it to the paper before it faded.  She leaned forward, grinning, but I kept the pad tilted away from her.

“Not yet,” I warned her.

“I want to see!” she teased me, but she sat back, waiting, pouting as those hazel eyes smiled at me.

My mind, wandering as my hand flew across the page, imagined our future together.  I saw the curves of her body, exposed and no longer hidden beneath her coat and garments.  I visualized as she arched her back, moaning in ecstasy as our bodies coupled together.  I saw those bright, hazel eyes shining at me, filled with love and devotion, as I pushed back the white veil that covered her head.

My hand ceased moving, and I smiled at my captured image.

I turned the page around, letting her see.

For a moment, there was silence.  I watched, feeling my lips quirking upward, as she stared at the page.  Her eyes widened, and then narrowed.  Her mouth dropped open, but no sound came out.

With a huff, she burst up from her chair, the motion explosive.  Those hazel eyes glared down at me, furious, as she snatched up her cup of coffee.

“Rude.  Unbelievable,” she grimaced, as she walked away.

I frowned, but said nothing as she stormed off.  I turned back my sketchbook, looking at the image.

A luscious, ripe pear, with such soft curves.  Despite the black and white starkness, I felt as though I could lift the fruit from the page, sink my teeth into its juicy flesh.  The swell of its bottom, the slight shading to suggest the breasts and buttocks… I felt myself waver on the edge of arousal.

The sense of her, her lusciousness, captured forever and bound to the prison of the paper.

I added a few more details, some cross-hatching, when I heard the tapping.

I glanced up from my sketch book as she stopped in front of my table, her free hand tapping at the chair across from me.

“This seat open?” she asked, giving the words an upward lilt to suggest a question.  Blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, revealing bright blue eyes.

I nodded, only briefly eyeing her, not wanting to lose my focus…