Just little short stories I've written. Some were for a class; others just for fun.
each chapter is a separate story.
WARNING: not the best quality
but (hopefully) interesting.
hope you can enjoy!
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*inspired by the music of Daughter <3*
The moment I first saw him he was laughing at the rain. I was in the back of Grandmother's '38 Ford. In all my miserable glory, I had spent the previous hour and a half at the train station, allowing the fresh mercy from the clouds to mingle with the tears streaming down my face. The storm deepened the ache swelling inside of my chest as it pelted me like the raindrops. Every stitch of sorrow sewn into me in the past half a year all poured down at once. I don't think I could have helped it, considering it was my first day in town. It made my heart throb to discover that my very first day of escape from the chaos I once called home brought on inner turmoil even more violent. In the initial hours of that day, I was sure it was going to be enough to melt me into the ground like just another puddle. But in that moment, when I leaned forward and pressed my nose up against the foggy glass that was the window, I didn't see a storm anymore. In one instant, all I saw was him. He stole the entirety of my concern.
It wasn't just the fact that he was out there, barefoot and dripping, with his hair that was smothering black as midnight streaming into his eyes. It wasn't simply the sparkle on his lips. It wasn't the way they constantly jerked upwards, again and again, showing flashes of his teeth that glowed white in the mist of silver all around. I think it was more of the wholeness of the situation; the realness of it. There was something about the way he was throwing up his arms, raising them up towards the sky; spinning in circles; leaping and hopping and twirling around, his shoulders rocking with the jubilation. Suddenly the agony inside my chest had vanished, replaced by an enormous heat in my cheeks. It was as if all the joy inside of him found its way to me, and leapt into my own heart before I could see it coming. I couldn't help but shiver from the warmth the moment the realization hit me: it was magic that he had. And the moment I realized it-of course- I had to know why.
I asked my grandmother who he was, and after she had coughed and spluttered and cleared her throat a considerable number of times, she tapped the rim of her spectacles and turned to stare at me. The wideness of her eyes was almost threatening.
"That, my child, is Jaice Shannon; and heaven forbid you should have anything to do with him."
The summer of 1954, I was only twenty years old. I had no intention of being divorced by my first husband, whom I had married out of a pure sense of duty and guilt-ridden obligation only two years prior. I had no intention of contracting TB and leaving my infant daughter in the care of my own mother. I had no intention of riding a train from upstate New Jersey to a small town in Maryland where I would teach piano lessons to local children. But I also had not the slightest intention of meeting anyone like Jaice Shannon; and without Jaice Shannon, my vision might have stayed skewed for all eternity.
In the beginning, it was intended that I should go to south Jersey to help my sister-in-law run the farm. But when my brother fell from the ladder in the orchard and broke his back, we decided my presence would only add to the strain. Grandmother offered for me to come keep her company for the summer in Maryland, and I gratefully accepted. So, at the end of June, when the sweet scent of magnolia blossoms hung in the sultry air, and the chirping of cicadas hummed from the trees, I went to stay in her little white cottage that lay right on the edge of town.
