Only three had come to share in the farewell. And soon it would be officially over. The camera and other equipment were destined for a film museum, the seats were too old to interest anyone anymore. Everything else had been promised away to the usual caring scavengers catching wind of a cache of history. The beam of light through celluloid streamed from the projector across the span of the theater, spreading out into moving images on the screen. Victor, who sat towards the back, nodded off, lulled by the sound of the organ music accompanying the antique visuals of a silent movie. His dream became a spark of light mingling with the light of the diva flowing through the air. It gave her life and form flavored by his modern imagination. He awoke as the film ended, the dream but a vague memory. He left with the others, but in one hidden corner of the soon to be abandoned theater slumbered the diva he had created, waiting to be imagined again.
Story #178
Once again, I'm overwhelmed by all the story versions you dear people contributed! Thank you very much. It's fascinating how each person saw this photo in a different way. The stories will be posted at indeterminacies.blogspot.com tomorrow morning.
9 comments:
Esperanza was always a wishful thinker, even in the bleakest of circumstances. This wasn't a condemned building, this was a historical home that needed a bit of replastering to restore its luster. She wasn't homeless, she was one of those idealistic youth who took a year off from college to hitchhike across Europe, but staying within her means she wasn't far from her landscape and took her journey while still in high school. She wasn't sleeping on a discarded piece of foam with a dirty sheet around it, she was roughing it like a camper in the wilderness but with the resourcefulness of a silverback gorilla. This life wasn't killing her figuratively if it was doing so literally; her days were restful, peaceful, and exciting, and she even had a cartoonish sign to represent that she was merely going to sleep for a bit.... She wouldn't actually leave if she were smiling, she believed. When the authorities found her in rigor mortis the next afternoon, like Carroll's Cheshire Cat the smile was all that remained.
The Zs, you see, are the ticket. They're the only way off this rock. Tara scored hers earlier tonight, in the unisex pit of a bathroom at Ministry, from an androgynous figure in a grey silk shift and black leather knee-boots.
It was the blond spikes that gave it away.
"I know the path to the unicorn farm," Tara told the conductor, her ice blue eyes meeting those black wells with a level certainty that belied her age.
The conductor smiled -- an old smile, smiled by David Bowie and Cleopatra and Benjamin Franklin -- and produced a torn pink slip of paper.
Tara accepted the ragged pamphlet, presented with gravity and a certain reverence.
"You know what to do," the conductor said. "Just don't let them see the blues of your eyes."
the kidnappers wanted to send pictoral proof that they had her, so they could demand a high ransom and live for the rest of thier lives in comfort on the beaches of the phillipines. they weren't evil or mean, they just didn't feel like working hard and long for only a small chance at retirement. they didn't want to be known as "bad guys" so they asked amanda to hold up a little sign, something whimsicle, lighthearted, that would prove she was alive but also show she was in a playful happy mood. the pink paper was her idea.
"There she was. They had eventually discovered her in her shelter. Marilyn had decided to live far away from the madning crowd because she could not bear the noise of snoring.
Since she was very small, she had grown used to that awful sound: her father snored so loudly that it could make the whole house shake like under earthquake effect.
It had taken a long time to find her.
Meanwhile Marilyn had turned into this pretty young lady they could see in the photo they had been sent as answer to the different public appeals to find her.
They were all very happy and went there to bring her home.
They wondered why she was holding that zzzzzzz card though. How could they have realised that??? Marlyn had now a handicap: she had lost the capacity of even producing the zzzzzzz noise when she was sleeping!
But even so they were awfully happy to have her back to the still shaken-up house with the earthquake like snore sound of her father which had made her become that unsually different!"
I hope you can find some sense in this! That's what I came to in a sunny but very cold Sunday morning down here1 Have a GREAT week! ** M.P.
I love these stories! It feels like my birthday again. Sorry for showing up so late but I waited until mine was finished before reading your versions.
Now it's my turn to give somthing back. All the stories you wrote these past weeks are collected at indeterminacies.blogspot.com.
That is sweet! Truly viewer-created art, decocted down to a sweet syrup of creativity that others may pour unto their mental flapjacks. Don't forget to share a link in the margin of SyncInde to that page, and other promotional devices. :) (Also thank you for the contributor links on IndeSynch pointing to 'the right places'. :))
Give me time with the promotion bit. I've added blog explosion for now, which has done the most for me. The rest I'll have to see about after my vacation.
Inside the main operations conference room (OCR1) of the secret NSA surveillance post, a party was in progress. Champagne had been uncorked. Cigars were being lit. One of the office assistants had found some party hats from the last new year’s celebration. Even Charlie Moss, the team leader and a hard-line relic of the cold war had stretched his normally frozen face into a slight grin.
The root cause of this rare atmosphere lay in the events of the previous hour. After two and half years of surveillance, the team had finally managed to capture a meeting between the Zebra, a notorious con woman and black market smuggler, and one of her contacts. Using satellite video technology they had recorded a meeting in which the Zebra had pointed out the secret location of her next black market deal, a sale of stolen archeological treasures unearthed in western China, on a map for her client. Even as they celebrated, the unit of special operations commandos placed at the team’s disposal was on their way to the site. It would not be long now.
Suddenly the door to the room flew open, and Jamie Reed, the one team member left to man the operations floor, rushed in with a print out of a surveillance photo gripped tightly in her hand.
“Sir,” she yelled to Moss over the din, “I think you should see this!”
The picture that she handed to Moss showed a young woman, the Zebra, lying in the roofless ruin of a bombed apartment building in Serbia. She appeared to be sleeping, and this observation was made even more clear by the pink note held in her right hand beside her head like a word balloon in a comic book. The note said simply, “zzzzzzz.”
Moss looked long and hard at the photograph bringing it right up to within an inch of his glasses and turning it back and forth. She left a note, he thought. It’s like she knows someone is watching her. He looked hurriedly up at Jamie.
“Get back to your station. I want to know the second the Zebra moves.”
Half a minute later, she raced back in.
“Sir, she’s gone!”
“What? How?”
“We don’t know. One moment she was there, the next she was gone.”
Moss looked down at the photo then stood up slowly.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, meeting each of their eyes, “we’ve been made.” He picked the photograph up and tossed it into the middle of the table where it settled on a box of cigars.
“The Zebra is gone.”
Wow! That is so imaginative! I'm simply awed. You didn't happen to write for the "Get Smart" series, did you?
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