Reflect

Sitting on a bench nestled in the wooded courtyard outside the towering glass building, he stares through the green-leafed tree branches. A peaceful refuge amid the busy city, he relaxes as a butterfly flutters by.

The greenery is lush and verdant, crowding around the shimmering, reflective windows of the building; a stark contrast to the courtyard's natural surroundings.

From his bench he can see his own reflection in the amber tinted glass that covers the building's surface as it rises out of the tree cover into the blue sky.

His reflection is dressed like him, sits like him, and looks to be his exact double in every way; yet, his reflection was not looking back at him, but writing in his notebook.

He frowned with concern at his reflected self, whom did not look up from his writing. After a moment he stood up from the bench and slowly started to walk toward the building's mirrored wall.

His reflection did not move, he just continued to scribble happily in his notebook.

Dread filled the pit of his stomach as he moved closer to the building, a feeling that spread along his spine as he neared to where his reflection should have been staring back at him.

Up close to the building's windowed wall, he could see all the surrounding scenery reflected like a true to life mural, save of course his own image, who sat quietly writing on the bench he himself had just left.

Apprehensively, he reached out and touched the smooth surface of the building. It was solid and unyielding, though slightly hot from the sun's light. He knocked on the window, half testing its realness, half trying to somehow get the attention of his reflection. Neither seem to take any notice.

He bang a bit harder with his clenched fist and the window shook with vibration slightly, yet his reflected other continued to write unperturbed.

A wind picked up and shifted the trees as clouds shaded the sun light, darkening the sky above. A shiver traveled up his spine into his skull as he looked behind his seated reflection into the thick shade of the trees, and saw that the shadows started to gather together from all the nooks and crannies of the woods.

Moving like living smoke, the shadows grew together to form a mass that loomed behind both himself and his reflection in the amber hue of the window's surface.

Massive tendrils grew out into arms that stretched out and up to add to the shadow creature's height, while two burning red eyes opened near the beast's apex; eyes that stared directly at him.

The thing began to move toward the bench where his other sat unconcerned with anything that was happening. Banging on the window he tried to warn his reflection of the approach of the shadow creature, but he did not hear.

When the creature moved around the bench and continued toward him and the building, taking no notice of his writing other self, he began to pound and scream louder to try and get his reflection to do something. But still he merely sat and wrote feverishly in his notebook, a small smile upon his lips.

Panic filled his mind as the creature neared, its smokey body growing larger, reaching out for him, clawing with its long snaky arms as it shook the ground with a booming roar.

He screamed as he banged both fists against the building, and then stopped suddenly as an idea came to him. His eyes squinted in thought and then widened as realization came to him.

Slowly, he looked up at the creature as it bore down upon him, closed his eyes, and turned to face it.

He felt the darkness enveloped him but he opened his eyes. He was back on the bench, a soft breeze blew through the trees and birds chirped in the blue sky above.

He looked around and saw no sign of the shadow creature and realized he had a pen in his hand. On his lap was his notebook with his almost illegible handwriting scrolled all over it.

Across the courtyard, in the reflection of the big building's windowed surface, his double sat on his bench as well; looking surprised to find he had no notebook on his lap or pen in his hand.

He smirked at the confused image and began to scribble in his notebook.

Behind the bench his reflection sits on, the trees begin to move back and forth in the growing wind. The shadows begins collecting together as his reflection looks at him in the amber windows. His reflection's eyes grow wide as he watches the shadow creature gain shape.

As he writes in his notebook, a mischievous grin slides across his face, and his reflection gets up and shouts to get his attention.

Salt Silver Oxygen

Storm clouds crowd the sky, as they always had. Ever since she was a young girl, all she had known was the dark gray cloud cover. For as long as anyone could remember, the clouds had leer on high, menacing great storms, but never a drop came.

They stumble across the arid plain; he had struck out from their village all those months ago, pulled, he had said, pulled by a feeling that he needed to follow, and she had followed him.

Their water pouches had run dry and they had not found a cache of hidden moisture for days. The constant humidity in the air sucking the energy from her very being, but on she followed him; as long as he kept on, so would she.

Traveling so long and far from their home, in search of something he would only say was a feeling just out of his reach of understanding, a feeling he had to find a way to bring the long rumbling storm.

So many trials and dangers they had come through, over harsh lands that threatened to destroy them if they were to but falter. But they had been strong and endured.

Until now, in this vast, cracked earth plain that seemed to go on forever, never nearing the mountains that darkened the horizon between the gray sky and washed out land, now they stumble.

She trips on her own feet and falls to her hands and knees as he looks back to her. She wants to cry, but is too exhausted and her body is too dry now to bring tears anyway. He turns and staggers over to her, reaching out his hand to help her up.

A hoarse scream cracks from her throat. Why? She asks. Why does he go on?

He stops and lets his hand drop to his side as he looks at her with sad eyes; tired, but not yet defeated.

Because he must. He answers and turns to begin walking towards the mountains on the far horizon again.

Thunder cracks in the clouds above as he steps and he looks up at the rolling mass above. Each day the same, the clouds rumbling with the promise of a storm, and each day, nothing. Just rumblings and no more. Life had gone from the land and the sky would not give it back.

Yet, as another rumble comes, louder than the first, shaking the ground she holds onto as she kneels watching with burred eyes, he stops and looks up at the sky.

She watches as he cocks his head and seems to smell the air. Her shaking stops as she watches and he turns slowly, smiling with a goofy grin across his lips. He looks down from the sky toward her and passed her, to something behind her.

She lifts herself off her hands and cranes her head around to see a crowd of weary travelers stumble toward them. As they come closer she can see that it is their entire village. They had followed as well. Some carry the young and support the elderly, but they too had made it across the harsh land. Followed him.

She looks to her sides and can see more groups coming up, more villages all stumbling with exhaustion to where the the rest stood and stared at he whom they had all been pulled to follow.

And he smiles at all in a serene grin that has somehow wiped away all the tiredness from him.

when all had gathered behind where she knelt, she looked back to him and he gave her a broad smile which filled her with a desperate confusion.

Thunder booms in the sky above as the dark clouds are illuminated by a flashing light within. She had seen lightning a few times in her life, when the clouds looked as if they where going to burst but those times were few and far between.

Now the clouds are full with flashes of lightning that dance inside the billowing blackness above.

I know now. He says as he smiles at her and turns toward the horizon with his arms lifting up to the sky. Quietly, his sandaled feet lift off the ground and he floats up into the air.

She cries out to him and staggers to her feet to chase after, but he turns and shakes his head with the knowing smile still across his face.

His image waivers as a bolt of lightning streaks down from the biggest of the darkening clouds and he raises higher, lifting his head skyward, closing his eyes as a drop of rain falls upon his cheek, rolling down his face like a tear of joy.

Lighting cracks again and as the thunder booms in unison, more rain drops fall from the full clouds above, a shower at first that soon begins to pour down upon the land and the crowds that laugh and cry and dance around her.

She feels the rain's moisture wet her parched skin but she can only watch as he raises higher into the sky, finally disappearing into the storm.

Dropping her head she looks down at the ground that becomes muddy around her feet with the rain at long last. Her tears fall at long last as well and mix with the rain drops to add to the life-giving moisture the land has longed for.

She watches the drops plop as they hit the ground before her feet and then she sees a glint of light glimmering off the water droplets.

Startled, she looks up and sees a crack in the cloud cover, and a beam of golden light shining down from somewhere beyond the darkness that had always been complete in the skies above.

The crowds behind her stop their celebrations and stand silent as they all look up to the light that breaks through. One beam, and then another, and another; pushing through the darkness and opening the cracks larger and larger.

The rain still falls but the clouds begin to break up from each other and let more of the golden light through, until there is enough open space to see a bright blue behind.

A blue unseen for a thousand years.

And as she looks up into the sky for the first time, she smiles and laughs at his goofy grin and knows why as well.

The Ghostbuster Bikes Dream

Last night I dreamt I witnessed a crime.

As I watched, two men came into a busy auto-body shop and stole two custom-made bicycles. Everyone was too busy to notice except me. I didn't try to stop them, I just watched them speed off and said, “Hey, those two guys just stole the Ghostbuster bicycles.”, and we called the police.

I described the bikes to the police over the phone and eventually they came around bringing a bike into the shop.

They were smiling and happy, they were not able to get back both yet they explained, but they had managed to find one of them at least.

I was livid.

They had brought just a plain looking bmx. I asked them, “Did you not hear what I said? I told you, they were two 'Ghostbuster' bikes! This is a small, gray and silver bmx. The bikes that were stolen were black, and had the words Ghostbusters painted in red lettering on the frame as well as the Ghostbusters' symbol decal-ed all over them. Also, they were twice as long as a regular bike.”

The police officers looked disappointed, and said, “But isn't this one of the bikes IN Ghostbusters?”

I became enraged.

“This is from E.T.! Get the hell out of here!”

The summer heat is getting to me...

Kettering

Before he knew what he was doing, Michael jumped down into the trench, landing beside the young girl that had fallen off the ledge and onto the subway tracks.

The sounds of the crowds' shouts, loudest of the them all the terrified screams of the child's mother, distant in his ears as he bent down to gingerly scoop up the unconscious girl in his arms. A trickle of blood flowing from the cut on her forehead where she had hit against the metal rail.

Michael could see she was breathing slowly like she was in a restful slumber as he lifted her off the grimy ground.

Moving as in a dream, he turned to lift her fragile body up to the waiting hands of the crowd kneeling down at the edge of the platform. He felt her light weight being lifted from him as another sound poured into his ears; the muffled horn of the subway train.

Slowly, he turned his head to look down the dim tunnel which was being lit by the bright lights of the train as it barreled down the tracks, blowing its horn wildly at him.

The people on the ledge screamed for him to climb up, holding out their hands to him. But there would not be enough time, he was near the tunnel opening; the train was almost upon him already.

Michael turned and faced the train, and as its lights glared in his eyes, he remembered moments from his life.

Falling off the monkey bars at school when he was a young boy. Chasing after a street-hockey ball while a car screeched its brakes. Sliding off a friend's roof while they snuck out after dark as teenagers. Wiping out while skiing down a wooded mountain trail.

All these incidents flashing through his memory; such odd things to be remembered at a time like this, but there had been something there he had not seen before.

Every near miss, all of them, should have ended with at least a terrible injury if not death; none did.

Each time he had simply walked away, not giving it a second thought. Until now. Now he looked; he watched as his memories revealed to him the answer.

It had not been fate, or even dumb luck that had save him. Every time his life was to be cut short; it had been him.

The white light washed over him and faded away as the screeching of the subway train brakes filled his ears.

Michael opened his eyes to find the train was a few meters in front of him, unmoving, though its wheels spun madly, sparks shooting from their contact with the tracks.

The driver's face was a white sheet of astonishment as he gripped the train's brake lever.

The crowd's shouts and screams had died away and as Michael turned to look at them, he realized that he was at the same level as they were. Their faces agog with disbelief.

He looked from them down to see that he was hovering above the dirty track floor about two meters up. Hand outstretched to the train in front of him, Michael could feel that he was stopping it from plowing through.

His feet dangled as he hung effortlessly in the air, looking as taken aback as the crowd.

A though of floating over to the ledge and he started to move toward the crowded platform. The people moved back as he touched down quietly on the floor.

The train suddenly lurched forward as he put his hand down; it rolled to a slow stop and some of the passengers that could see out of the windows watched his landing.

The crowd stood silently, the entire station did, as Michael looked at his hands; turning them over to inspect them as though for the first time.

He looked from his hands to the staring people, the mother of the girl he had lifted out off the tracks held her daughter in her arms, standing out in front with tears in her eyes.

She began to say something but her mouth only opened and shut noiselessly.

Michael looked as perplexed as the rest and almost started to say so when he heard a shout in the distance. A cry out for help, seemingly close by, but no one in the subway station had said a word.

Again it came and he turned to look down the dark tunnel at the other end of the platform. No one else seemed to react to the plea but him. He heard it a third time and stepped off the platform edge to hover above the tracks.

The mother stepped forward as if to stop him, but then looked into his eyes as he looked from the tunnel to her.

“Go on.” she whispered after a quiet moment.

Michael nodded and turned himself toward the far tunnel taking a deep breath. Like a bolt, he took off through the air; a blur of movement that disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel that led to the city outside.

Summer Storm

Lightning flashes in the sky, lighting up the dark clouds that loom, but still no rain comes to break the mounting tension. Thunder rumbled and he was there.

Standing on the horizon, a dark figure against the darkening sky.

She had never seen him before, but she knew who he was; she knew he had come for her.

Another streak of lightning raced across the sky behind the figure and she could see the features of his strong, bearded face; could see the flash in his dark eyes; eyes that looked directly into hers.

She stood defiantly across the field, her chin raised up as she stared back at the man. Her own eyes shining fiercely with the flashing light.

The rumble of thunder began to fade as another bolt of lightning sparked anew with a cracking boom.

At this the dark figure starts toward her and she hurriedly stepped onto the dusty plain to match his stride. The dry, arid ground crunched under foot as they both made their way across the barren field, moving swiftly, straight toward one another.

Her heart beat built as she neared the tall, dark figure of the man, moving purposefully to her.

A dozen or so strides away from each other, they came to a halt and regarded each other in the quiet rumble of the storm building above them.

To her left, movement made her quickly look sidelong at a third figure that had come, seemingly out of nowhere.

A young boy with a dirty face and carrying a guitar taking up half the size of his body sauntered up lazily.

He too, stopped paces away and she looked back to the bearded man who had not taken his deep, black eyes off of her.

Her heart raced until all she could hear was its beating in her ears.

Another flash lit up the sky and the man flourished his arms and held one above his head and the other down and out towards her.

She took a breath in and was about to speak when the young boy's guitar sounded with a proudly strum chord.

He worked his little fingers deftly along the strings and the man, just as suddenly began to stamp his boots to the rhythm of the guitar, kicking up puffs of dust as he moved his arms fluidly with each stamp.

Not knowing what to do, she watched with amazement as, with a sudden pound on the top of his guitar, the young boy stopped his strum and began to sing in a loud, wavering voice and the man began clap to keep the beat.

Once the boy's first verse was complete he beat on his guitar again and began to strum and sing together as the man began to move in a wide circle around where she stood.

Unknowingly, she too began to clap rapidly to keep the beat and spin slowly around as the man moved his circle in closer to her. As they spun and turned, their eyes never left one another until they were only inches away from each other.

They began to move around each other; at the same time, with one another. Two figures, moving in and out of one the others' space, as the other move into where they had just been.

The boy's song suddenly stopped once again and she looked deeply into the man's eyes, which were not black, but the deepest brown, and the lightning flash with a thunderous crash.

Rain began to fall from the ripe clouds, patting down on the dry ground around them.

The boy sang a solemn chorus and, as the rain began to fall harder he began to strum once more, and the two figures became drenched as they danced with passion to beat of the drops hitting the long parched soil.

And when the last of the thunder rumbled away into the distance, she spun around to find she was alone.

She looked to the ground and saw it was muddied from the movements of the dance. The boy's song and his guitar faded in her ear while the brown eyes of the man burnt in her memory, and the rain fell, cooling her skin and at last quenching the land of its thirst.

Bounce Point

Keith's curiosity got the better of him.

Normally he would never ask a stranger their business. It was a good rule. In the city there were too many weirdies and oddballs, that asking such an innocent question as; “What are you doing?” could land you in a heaping pile of crazy.

But he had been watching the man in the middle of the little park field for about a half hour and he seemed completely normal, except for the fact that he kept testing spots on the grassy ground with his feet; stomping down a normal looking patch of grass, sometimes doing a little two-footed hop on the spot, and then looking up into the sky.

It seemed to be random, but the man, wearing a clean-cut set of khaki shorts and a polo shirt, was so methodical about it, it seemed he may be conducting an experiment.

So, despite himself, Kieth got up from his bench where he had been reading his book and slowly, apprehensively, made his way to the open area of grass where the stranger continued to stomp, hop, and look up.

When he got a few meters away, he stood with his arms folded across his chest and ventured his inquiry.

“So,” he started shyly, “uh, what are you doing there?” He cleared his throat nervously.

Without looking up from his routine, the man stated in a perfectly normal tone, “I'm testing the ground for a bounce point.”

Kieth nodded as if he understood.

“Oh yeah.” he said in agreement, and then with less certainty he added, “Bounce point for what?”

Hopping on a new spot the stranger replied, “For a leap point.”

“I see.” Kieth said, even though he did not.

Then the man hopped to another spot and bounce a little higher than he should have for such a little hop. About a half a meter off the ground.

“Ah, ha!” the stranger said with the delight of discovery as he immediately tested the pot he had just bounced on.

Kieth watched on with interest.

“Did you find one?” he asked, genuinely wanting to know.

“Yup.” the man answered simply. And then looked from the spot on the ground to the clear, blue sky above and then over to the trees that lined the field.

“Okay, let's see if this works.” he said to himself as he strode in big, meter-length strides away from the spot to the trees, counting as he went.

Kieth watched with a perplexed look on his face and counted along in his head; twenty paces.

The man then turned back to face him and the spot. He waved his hand for Kieth to move back.

“Could you step back a few paces, please?” he asked politely and Kieth hopped out of the way, going back almost to his bench, then stopped to stand and watch for what this strange man was going to do next.

Back at the trees, the man took a few deep breathes which he blew out with force while shaking out his arms and hands to loosen them up.

And then began to run full tilt towards the spot on the grass he had bounced from.

Keith's eyes widen as the man sped towards the spot. At around seventeen paces he leapt up like a long jumper and stretched out with his legs to land, full force on his bounce point.

He landed dead on and bounced, rocketing into the air.

Kieth's mouth dropped open as his eyes shot up to watch as the man climbed higher and higher upward until he was no more than a dot against the blue, cloudless sky.

When he could no longer make out where the man had gone, Kieth looked around to see if anyone else had seen what he had just witnessed, but there was only him in the park at the moment.

He put his hand on his hip and scratched his head with the other.

After debating it, he walked over to the bit of ground the man had launched from and padded it with his foot.

It seemed just as solid as the ground around it. Nothing special at all.

He looked around again to see it anyone was around; a couple holding hands walked along the path through the park and he smiled at them as they passed him and continued on through.

Once they had gone he took a deep breath and did a hop onto the 'bounce point'.

As he hit, the ground gave way into a sink hole and he landed off balance, rolling his bad right ankle.

Limping home on his swollen ankle, book in hand, he decided it was still good practice to never ask strangers their business.

The Machine

Underneath the surface of the planet, deep down in the depths; passed where people fear to venture; passed all known knowledge; massive tolls push great wheels that turn huge cogs of the machine that powers the world.

The parts of the unimaginably large machine all move, and whirl, and pump, and click throughout the ever expansive catacombs, high-vaulted chambers that look neither carved nor natural, only apart of the intricate machinery itself.

Smaller creatures move smaller wheels and smaller cogs at different points along the machine, all of them hard and worn from their years of labour. Every one of them driven by whipping slave masters that looked even harder and more worn, wearing leather hoods and snarling with hatred as they crack their whips unmercifully.

Driving the slave masters, were even more menacing figures, standing in the shadows of the caves, looking on in silence; their glowing eyes watching for any slack in the eternal workings of the machine.

Occasionally, one of the shadowy figures would bolt out from their hiding and swooped down upon a slave master who's whip was not snapping as often as it should; kicking and screaming, the slave masters would be carted off, gripped in the talons of the screeching creatures as horrid wings carried them up into some high ledge in the ceiling to be feasted upon. Just to make sure the machine was working to maximum efficiency.

Through the workings of the machine; the cogs, wheels, shafts, pistons, axles, and other various parts deep down into the world's core, the heat and motion caused the soft stone of the center to melt and churn into molten lava; the life blood of the planet.

And as the sea of heated rock moved, so did the entire world, thus creating atmosphere and environment to allow life to survive and flourish on the surface.

But this is only a by-product, a happy coincidence of the true purpose of the machine.

For sitting at the machine's end, the machine beginning, was the most terrible of beings. A fat, lazy, dirt covered old man, with a big round belly and a ratty, sooty beard. A wizard.

It was he who had thought of the machine; he who had forced the creatures of the sub-terrain into building and running it. For eons he had threatened them with his magic to construct his great machine. And for eons more had he enslaved them to run it with their sweat and blood.

A machine built for a selfish purpose. For in the end, the machine, and all its systems that ran thousands of leagues under the world's surface, and created enough heat to melt the core of the planet, also ground the wizard's coffee beans to the perfect consistency.

Wizards love coffee.