“Briefly.” Part 2

I am terrified.

The old croon that sat beside me on the plane gets up and slides out of the seat into the aisle, politely making her way towards her seat in 13B.

“Excuse me, sir,” I hear her feebly squeak, clutching her handbag and showing off her dentures in a smile.

I can only sit here in shock. The sentence she breathe out still crowded my mind, sending off signals of panic and fear into my head. How does she know? HOW?

Enter memory:

I knew Devin for my whole life. He was the official nerd in my town of St. Johns, Michigan. I mean, he was so smart that he made all of his teachers look like idiots. He started his own business at age seven, repairing broken VCRs and cassette players. Absolute genius.

I was in the same grade as him for all 13 years of school. I can’t even count on one hand the amount of times he spouted off facts about technology in science class, or various equations in math. My teachers would turn red-faced as he embarrassed them by telling them a fact they didn’t know, or asking a question that they couldn’t even comprehend because their education didn’t cover that particular aspect. It infuriated them.

I never ran in the same circles as Devin when I was in my younger years. Why would I? I thought he was an alien, and stuck with my semi-popular small town friends. I was no genius, almost flunking out of ninth grade. At the time, my parents were facing a huge financial crisis, starting with my dad facing criminal charges for money laundering at work and ending with my parents dragging us through the nastiest divorce in the history of St. Johns.

That year put me through the ringer; I was just never… quite the same.

But I have to admit to the one reason I didn’t fail ninth grade – Devin Foote. Once Mr. McNamara told me my pre-algebra grades were unacceptable, and reamed me over hot coals for getting a 28% on my quiz, it was the final straw.

Tear-stained and besides myself, I sat alone on the front steps of my school. I couldn’t go home — mom was probably throwing things and screaming at dad, like she always did when he was home on Tuesday afternoons. That was the day that Devin spoke to me for the first time in my life.

“Are you… ok?”

From that point on, he was lovestruck and I used that to my complete advantage. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.

I am a monster, controlled by fear and instinct.

“Would you like something to drink?”

Exit memory. I turn to face her.

The flight attendant is smiling her stupid, fake smile. She has lipstick on her teeth. I hate your completely plastic self and all its parts, I venomously think.

Smiling an equally fake and mocking smile, I say, “No. Thank you.” She catches my drift and immediately stops smiling. Her eyes shift to my seat partner, a stout, middle-aged man with an incredibly annoying, hollow cough.

Enough with the past. Putting my most neutral poker face on and feeling my heart grow steadily more immune to my previous thoughts, I now think of ways to avoid a certain fate.

-Excerpt taken from “Briefly”, a short story by Sarah Lynae.

“Redemption”

Smiling, she calmly placed the cell phone in her lap.

“It just might happen,” she breathed, barely able to contain her excitement. Who knows how many nights she had spent awake and staring at her ceiling, praying and wishing that there could be more to the story than had been written so far.

She knew. She had counted them all, painful and frequent, full of doubts and fears, pain and a last bit of hope that she had clung to for two years since she had first seen him…

… That day was so clear, so fresh within her young memory. She was playing in the field with her friends, and lost her balance, only to see him when she looked up once again, his blue, beautiful eyes…

Nothing else had been the same since.

Only two years, one month, and six days ago. It seemed so dramatic and far-flung to count the days as she had, but she was in a state of mind that welcomed fairy tales and surreal ideas.

She had lost sight for a time, yes. A long time. The consequences ran deeper and further than she could even see at the present time. She had cast a lot of things aside at that point in her life, chasing God-knows-what and finding the end of the path, only to see that she was a long way from where she needed to be. But a lot of backtracking, praying, backtracking, crying, and backtracking once again placed her back here, back to this crucial moment when all the world was realigning again, and she could see the sunlight through the thick trees of her mind.

She was back, and he was waiting.

-An exerpt from Redemption, a short story by Sarah Lynae

“Briefly.”

I am sitting across from a wrinkled elder, feeling as if on trial from the harsh, steady gaze sent deep from within her. It is so powerful that it causes me to slump down in my chair and grasp my travel bag even more tightly, biting my lip and looking toward the red-accents of the Northwest airplane, flight 245 to Portland, Oregon.

Thank God I’m in an airport, I sigh. She almost looks the murdering type with that croonishly evil look of hers.

Still curious, I begin to ponder why she is staring. It’s certainly rude, if nothing else. Could it be that I dress strange? I look down at my jeans and Cambodian tee-shirt with the oddly wrinkled collar – its own authentic “I-got-this-from-a-third-world-country” stamp – and my fairly plain brown shoes. No, nothing out of the ordinary. I begin to thumb through my Sudoku puzzle book, looking for an empty one that I can kill time with.

But even after I find one and begin to insert numbers in the little squares, my brain is continually reeling. What is causing her to stare like that? I look around the small sitting room for gate 25-A, searching for another seat to wait in, away from her probing eyes. No such luck. The only seats available are on either side of me…

Wait. Maybe it’s not just this woman. Why isn’t anyone sitting next to me? This makes me extremely fidgety and self-conscious. I am not wearing anything out of the norm. I am a caucasian, 5’4″, 20-year-old female with blonde hair and average build. Nothing about me screams “LOOK AT ME” or even gives the hint that I am noteworthy or above normal. Nothing. Yet no one is sitting next to me, even though all the other seats are taken, and some of the passengers are standing, and this unnerving old lady, this…

“Attention all passengers riding on Northwest Airlines flight 245 to Portland, Oregon. We are now welcoming aboard all first-class passengers, and passengers with children or disabilities.”

Maybe she’s the reason why no one sat in the seats next to me? I look at the exec next to her, the one in the 5k suit with the sleek black carry-on and high-ranking briefcase. She examines her profile in the compact mirror, and finishes the touches of her cherry-red lipstick. She’s not phased by the geezer. Neither is the man on the other side of her, the one talking nervously chatting with his wife on his cell phone and breathing harshly. So why am I?

“Honey, I can’t wait to be home. I just don’t know how this plane will even make it off the ground. It looks so rickety, and the doctor just didn’t sound positive about my sickness being gone. Did you know that we have the highest probability of crashing because…” He is completely red now, with a dripping layer of sweat building on his lip and upper forehead.

The Sudoku puzzle just got harder, and I give up. Sighing, I reach into my bag and pull out my iPod. Listening to Michelle Branch will get her off my mind for a while. Thank God I’m next to the window and can see our plane that’s being prepared to take off, the Houston sunset brilliantly flashing in the distance. I wonder if the dust in the air really does make the sunsets redder in Texas. It’s almost as read as the Cindy Crawford-esque executive’s lipstick is.

At that, my human nature perks up and I steal another glance to the seats across from me, and… God! That lady is still staring.

She needs to take her meds for the day or something, because she is clearly deranged. Why is she alone, in fact? Maybe I should call airport security. But if I do, she might lose it and kill them too. Does she realize how hideous she looks with her pruney face all scrunched up like that?

I guess I just know the truth about who I am… and I hate the piercing look she is giving me. For what it’s worth, I’ve never murdered anyone. No, I haven’t. But what I’ve done sometimes is comparable in my morally tortured and guilty conscience, and I can’t wait until the day when it’s too seared to feel anything. It’s like this hag knows me, knows what I’m doing, knows my past… No. She doesn’t. No one does – anymore.

“Now boarding all passengers for Northwest airlines flight 245 to Portland, Oregon.”

It’s about time. I cram my iPod back into my bag and and fiercely march toward the growing line, boarding pass in hand and still feeling the burn of her eyes. You know who I mean…. HER eyes. They’re on the back of my head now, probably still reading my mind.

–

I’m seated on board, in a window seat as usual. I buckle up and stare at the last golden-red rays of sunlight, the breaths of a world about to plunge into darkness.

How could I do that to him?

My thoughts consume me. My guilt overwhelms me. All of the emotional pain of the last few days terrorizes every waking moment. But I have to pretend that it’s ok – those were my orders, sent from the logical, objective side of my brain to the depths of my soul, where the trauma lies. My life depends on it. I need to remember that.

…I look to my right in terror.

She’s sitting next to me, still staring. She leans over and whispers…

- Excerpt taken from Briefly (A short story by Sarah Lynae)

As Far as I can See…

I don’t know much, do I?
I pretend, but the mask I feel is wearing thin.
The acid rain that falls because of the world’s tears is enough to melt away the stone-hard facade that has kept me hidden all these years.

Some jumbled thoughts from a year ago.

Once again:
I am in this position. I feel like I am about to plunge into an adventure greater than myself, and it’s a huge step out of the norm. Out of my comfort zone. What will I do?
I want more than anything for this to happen. I want it to. But can it? Will it? Why is it that the water looks so much deeper from here? The river scares me. I’m afraid it will carry me away too fast, too far. I don’t want to lose anything, but I want to gain.
Why do I have to lose everything to gain something more than everything? Do I make sense to anyone expect myself? I sit here and feel more awake than I should.
I should be anywhere but here.
I want to be anywhere but here.
Is life supposed to be this feeling that I have now? Am I supposed to always feel like a tiny fish in a big ocean, like a grain of sand on a beach?
I think the thing I fear most is the waves. Adventure calls within them, but I don’t always feel like taking chances. Is life all about taking the leap, and then looking back to see how far you actually fell?
Or is life a flight, soaring on the wings of some great unknown feat, dodging Fate and facing storms head-on? I’m only afraid that Icarus will be relived through me. I want to reach the sun, to fly to it…
But will it melt my wings?
After all, with this frail human body, my soul is the only thing not made of wax and mortality. I want to soar, but is the chance too great?
I’ve seen it before. I’ve watched others take this plunge, and the water was too rapid for them. it froze them, and carried them far away from me, far away from the solid life they knew.
But then again, I’ve seen others soar. I’ve seen them accomplish feats unimaginable and conquer fear unhindered, unchecked.
I still don’t know if I have the courage to see… am I Icarus? or am I an eagle? Are all my feeling wings made of wax… or are they real wings, ones that God has given me so that I may have just this opportunity to become weightless above the earth?

God, I’m scared. Help me to take the leap.

Thoughts on the insatiable disease: Greed.

No rest for the weary,
No money for the poor;
We should be happy with what we have-

But all we want is more.

Run-on Sentences

I saw the eyes of a girl as I passed her on the street that seemed to say, “I don’t exist, we don’t exist” as the empty orbs bared her soul and I found no solace in its depravity and chaotic madness, but she describes my generation, who are a puzzling case, for the most part without extremely wicked intentions yet not in the least selfless, and hopeless despair reigns with no moral law yet standards rule in every person’s life causing conflict between sub-cultures from the emo guys to the punk girls, from the preps to the geeks, all trying to escape a world in which they are victims of pain drowning in their own sorrow and too absorbed to see the writing on the wall that says we’re all drowning in this Sea of loneliness together, so near yet so apart from each other and wanting to stay that way, everyone casting out HELP messages in a bottle but receiving all of each other’s for no one can help anyone else when they are flailing for their lives as well, and they want the love and peace of Jesus but find only despair, war, agnosticism, and atheistic connotations, too filled with empty pleasures and illicit expressions of a miracle they search for but try to steal without realizing their thieving hearts are in a desensitized and demoralized state even though it is overwhelmingly obvious, from the guns to the camera flashes, a generation of extremes, and since there is nothing to be found in their lives they will settle for the vicious cycle of nothing that began at the Tower of Babel, trying to be one and unite for one purpose but cutting everyone down with their shears of political correctness and acceptance, and my generation is trying to hold back the Dam of Decay with one weak thumb that’s threatening our lives in the near future, and someday the dam will give way to universal apathy and despair BUT no one is going to stop me from fighting for every last person from my generation, every last one, and when I have fought my entire life for them and against them I may die at their hands but I will die begging for their lives and praying that God will forgive them “for they know not what they do” because they know not what they do.

(written July 3, 2007)