Word Count: 314
The first word of the last story I write will have to fly like the non-random darting bows of a bat, sensitive as sonar to wring empathy quick and flowing with relative response from its readers.
The first sentence of the last story I ever write has to have the hook of a talon to catch and latch onto its prey. To intrigue and entice one to follow the crumbs dropped as sensual adjectives and excitingly active verbs.
The characters, particularly the protagonist, must be interesting as an unopened present yet as intimate as an unborn twin. I find her hiding in the farthest corner of the decade before. Between lovers back when relationships were rides in a prototype mini-submarine that navigated under the surface of blue-green rippled seas. She is a slice of a woman I’ve been, with bites taken out that are hardened as crust.
She brings with her the salt scent of the ocean, the gritty caress of beach sand. I will not give her the same heartaches, the same man. She will be paired with a man who has drifted through in an earlier time, unappreciated by the woman she was at the time. She will know the right things to do this time around and come through it with proud scars of delicious sweet knowledge.
Fiction is reality twisted to fit into a fantasy concept of what could have been. Fiction is the root of the tree that is hidden from earthly eyes. Fiction is life as it might be, good, better, bad.
But I play with my puppets gently and let them sleep back into sweet escape when I’m done. Bundled in cotton batting soft as clouds, their eyes close in repose of dreams that will bring them back to life when another last story calls them again to lace up their slippers and dance.
I like what you’ve done with this piece – more a meta-story than a story, but nonetheless intriguing. It is filled with possibility, and as often the case with your stories, a repast of relationships. Particularly enjoyed the puppet metaphor, which contains within it the heart of fiction, and plays in my head in an unsteady dance between reality and un-reality (speaking of which, fiction as twisted realty plays interestingly, but perhaps not your intent in next to last Paragraph).
Congratulations on the year’s worth of work – I’m sure you’ll continue – piece 366 of 3653 works for me.
Thank you, Steve. Yes, it was my thought or concept about twisting reality into fiction. I sort of think that perception, and certainly memory for the long term, turns all reality into something other than pure truth. And no–thanks, but I am not continuing the daily stories; though I’m sure to be writing them in some form every day!
Yes, twisting reality is what we all do, but my comment had to do with twisted REALTY; as depicted in paragraph 5, might be more of a Stephen King story.
Gotcha–thank you for catching that!