A Beginning

I really don't know what this story is about exactly. I was thinking about making it a fantasy story but I really am not yet sure. Hope you like it and if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Darkness surrounded him and rain pelted down on his bare head. He should have remembered his umbrella. Lightning flashed, illuminating the deserted street for a brief moment before plunging him into darkness once again. The young man continued walking and two steps later, thunder crashed around him.

He moved forward steadily, unhurriedly, heedless of the rain that poured around him.

“It was stupid,” he said to himself. “I should have been more careful.” He shoved his wet hands into his wet jacket pockets and kicked a stone dejectedly as he continued to walk.

“But of course, you do stupid things all the time,” he continued. “Like deciding to walk home but leaving your umbrella behind.”

Rain dripped from his dark eyebrows into his green eyes. It dripped from the tip of his sharp nose. It collected in his normally brown hair, turning it almost black and dragging the ends of it onto his forehead.

He kicked another stone.

The stone jumped and skittered away, scaring a cat seeking refuge under a bush from the storm.

He kept walking, unconcerned.

Lightning flashed again, and the street was visible to the end of the block for half a second before the light died away again.

The young man didn’t flinch.

Not at the lightning.

Not at the rain.

Not at the thunder a few seconds later.

He just kept walking. Muttering to himself about how big a fool he was.

He walked all the way to the end of the block and never noticed the dark van slowly trailing him.

The lightning flashed again and the van sped up, pulling next to the young man. As the resounding thunder rumbled through the sky, the side door opened and the young man was pulled inside.

The door slammed shut and the van took off all in the same moment that the thunder died away.

Through his fear, the young man thought again of what a fool he was.

Secret in the Attic

I'm sorry I missed a week and am late this week. It's been a little crazy lately what with work and driving and lack of sleep and all. I wrote something new and I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I hope you like it.

It was a really windy, the day she arrived at the house. It had been threatening to rain all day, but so far only the wind had arrived.

She had driven all day to make it to the house before everyone else arrived. She wanted to have some time to herself to face the house. She hadn’t been here for five years, but she had been expected to be here this time, regardless of whatever had happened previously.

The house was three stories tall with whitewashed siding and a dark green door and shutters. It was an old Victorian house. Most people would love the house. It really was beautiful. She was not most people.

She forewent the front door and instead went to the back yard. There was a rope swing hanging from the large oak tree. She used to swing off it into the lake that stretched out to the East. She looked toward the back door. There was a screened porch around another dark green door with a window.

She remembered the door well. It was the one that had allowed her to escape.

She had run out of the house that day through that back door. Now, she would enter the house for the first time since then through that same door.

She strode determinedly toward it, climbing the five stairs quickly. She opened the screen door to the porch and crossed to the green door. But there she hesitated. She could hear again the screams of that day. She didn’t even have to go inside to hear it. To see it.

She had run down the stairs from the attic and found her mother in the kitchen. “How could you not tell me? Why did you never tell me?”

Entering the kitchen she could see the scene between herself and the woman who had raised her. They had fought for an hour before she had finally left. Her mother called after her, “Really, Eliza. It’s not that big a deal.”

But it was a big deal. So big that she hadn’t spoken to her mother since. She hadn’t been to the house where her family spent most weekends during the summer since that day.

She moved through the kitchen and started climbing the stairs to the second floor. Then to the third. Then finally, she pulled the hatch down to release the stairs to the attic where she had found the papers that had torn her world apart.

She found the spot where the papers had been. She didn’t know if they’d still be there, but it didn’t matter. She remembered what they said.

“I thought you would be here before everyone else.”

Eliza turned around to see her father coming up the stairs to the attic. “I had to come. My brother is getting married. I couldn’t miss that. Even if he really isn’t my brother.”

“Just because we adopted you doesn’t mean we’re not your family.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We didn’t want you to feel exactly what you are feeling now.”

Eliza looked down at her feet and then up at the man who had been her father all her life. She wanted to forgive him.

“You’ve had five years, but I can see that you need more time. I will be here when you’re ready.”

Blackheart's Treasure

I know I promised new writing this week, but I didn't get it typed up in time (it's quite long). It'll be here next week. For now, enjoy this scene from a romantic suspense story that I never got around to finishing. I do plan to come back to this story eventually. But not yet.

May 1635

Juan, El Corazòn Negro, looked over the side of his ship and sighed.  The sun was setting in the West over the land where he had settled his family.  He still missed his Spanish home, but his new home was beautiful as well.  And his sons were still able to have Spanish wives brought over from the old country.

A rare smile touched the old man’s face as he thought of his sons, Nicodemo and Ricardo, finding the letters he had left for them.  Let them fight over his treasure now.  All those years of piracy had made him a rich man, but for what?

“One more trip, Elisa,” he would say.  “Then I’ll stay home for good.”

But that one more trip always became one more and one more and one more, until now he was too old for one more trip and Elisa had died.  The smile fell from his lips and a tear slipped down the battle-scarred cheek of El Corazòn Negro.

Le Cœur Noir.  The Black Heart.  A merciless pirate known throughout coastal Europe and the Americas.  He had found nothing but gold on the seas while the true treasure waited for him on the land he had bought in the Colonies.

Since Elisa’s death three months ago he had found nothing to fill the hole in his heart.  A heart that wasn’t as black as his name described.  Not even his two precious sons could open his life once more.  He longed only to join Elisa.  While Nicodemo had grown up like his mother, Ricardo had, regretfully, grown up like himself, restless and full of an insatiable greed.  But since their mother’s death they had begun to fight tirelessly over the fortune Juan had amassed through his years of piracy.  He had eventually split up most of it to give them equal amounts.  However, there was one piece left.  The treasure from his final voyage, by far the most booty he had ever returned with.  His greatest prize settled now in a wooden crate back in a deep cave in the ocean.  The letters told them how to find it, but who knew how long it would take to find the three underwater caves?  And then they’d have to choose the right one and find their way through the mass of tunnels to the right place.

The letters said:

I know you will fight over the last piece of treasure until one kills the other, so I have hidden it.  There is a place deep within the ocean where three caves sit side-by-side and tunnels wind through them.  But I must warn you that the true treasure does not lie deep within Davie Jones’ Locker, the true treasure lies beside you each night and lifts their small arms to you each morning.  It is the love of your wife and child.  Do not repeat my mistake, son.

Your Father.

Juan wiped the tears from his eyes, tears that no one would ever have believed he shed, and took a match from his pocket.  He lit it as his eyes followed the line of black gunpowder to the three barrels stacked in the center of his legendary ship.  He touched the flaming match to the end of the line at his feet.

Years later, they would still talk of the demise of El Corazòn Negro and wonder what his last thoughts were when the ship was blown away.  Speculation abounded but none even came close to touching on his last thoughts.

In the final moments of his life, Juan Marcos-Ramirez cursed the treasure so that only love, true love could find it.  Then Juan Marcos-Ramirez, El Corazòn Negro, was no more.

Why'd We Stop?

This story is creative non-fiction. I wrote it awhile ago as well. Next week however, I am going to have brand new writing for everyone to read.

“Thumbs up means faster. Hand slicing across your neck means stop. Thumbs down means slower. If I twirl my finger around, it means we’re turning around.”

He didn’t always use that one.

These were the instructions before I got on the tube for the first time. Some people might recognize them as skiing instructions, which they are, but the one time I got up on skis lasted a whopping grand total of five seconds. The tube is much easier to get the first time. And when I got it, it got me.

I met Tony when my family and I lived on Fraser Avenue in Port Coquitlam. He lived next door and made friends with my dog before he made friends with us. When we finally introduced ourselves, we learned that he had a daughter my age that he never got to see. As a result, I became his other daughter. My parents didn’t seem to mind much, liking Tony as they did. Besides, he loved my sisters just as much as he loved me and didn’t play favourites.

The six of us would often go out on his boat in the summer time. We would go to the Fraser or Pitt River and spend the day on the beach and once, Tony showed me what tubing was. Well, I got hooked.

Anytime he would ask, “Who wants to go tubing?” I’d be the first one with my hand in the air.

“I’ll go.”

So, attached, with seventy-five feet of rope, to the back of the red and silver Cobra that Tony used to drive, I would whip up and down the river until my arms were so tired from holding on that they were ready to fall off. I never did.

Though every time I get on the tube to tear after the boat is another adventure, one time always sticks out in my memory.

As we scream down the Fraser I let go long enough to throw my thumb upwards. He sees the signal and picks up more speed. All I can hear is the wind rushing past, the engine of the boat – much more than the 95 it says on the back, and my own laughter.

He turns back to check on me again and again I tell him I need more speed.

When he stops and starts pulling me back I ask, “Why’d we stop?”

“Weren’t you scared?” he asks me.

“No,” I reply, indignant at the thought.

“I was.”

We start to go again. I lean back as we pick up speed and the power of the boat pulls me onto its wake. I watch the waves as they rush toward me. Lean left as Tony turns left, lean right as he turns back right, clench your teeth so you don’t bite your tongue, hold on tight here comes a big wave. Thoughts run through my head as I sit in the tube being yanked around left and right as Tony tries to dump me. I hold on through it all.

He starts to do donuts in the water, making the waves I’m going over bigger and bigger with each turn. Then, I see one coming toward me. It’s the mother of all waves, bigger than any I’ve ever been over before. I lean back, grasp the handles with all the strength I have left, and feel the tube get lifted off the wave with the force behind the water. My feet fly over my head and I can hear Tony cut the engine.

When he stops I look at him safely from inside the tube.

“Why’d we stop?” I ask.