“I see
things,” she says, knowing that this confession will likely end their
relationship before it’s begun.
He smiles
broadly. “A woman’s intuition, perhaps?” He wraps an arm around her waist, nuzzles in
her hair. “And what does your intuition
tell you about us?”
She shakes
her head. “It’s not like that. I see…”She pulls away and sits on the couch and
runs her thumb along red velvet. It
reverberates through her thumb, this feeling, and for a moment, all is
connected. She is the couch. She is red velvet. She simply is.
“Tell me
what you see,” he says, sitting across from her in his daddy’s leather
recliner. He leans in, elbows on knees,
seemingly eager to hear.
She closes
her eyes. It’s easier to talk about seeing
without looking. “The skies shatter and
the moon explodes into a billion billion teardrops which fall in a gentle lovely
rain to the dusty earth. Little girls
and boys dash hither and yon with great big baskets, picking up broken pieces
of perfection and setting them in their baskets to take home and brighten the
lives of sad mothers and fathers who have worked too hard at the harvest.” She pauses and opens her eyes to look at
him. “Can’t you see? They are dripping with weariness.”
He cups his
chin in his hand, straightens up in his chair.
His smile is less broad this time.
They always distance when they learn the vision doesn’t include
them. She wonders whether he’ll call off
their dinner date.
“They have lost
their way. The children bring shards of
the moon to illuminate them.”
“What do you
suppose it means, this seeing?”
“I have no
idea.”
“What, you
think you’re some kind of Nostradamus?”
“I’m not making predictions.”
“Then what
the hell are you doing?”
“Calling it
like I see it.”
He gave her
a grandfatherly smile, the romantic attraction gone like the moon. “You sound blue.”
“You’ve got
it all wrong. I’m not sad. I’m terrified.”
Labels: fiction Trifecta Writing Challenge