Thursday, July 28, 2005


Everyone came to the party to touch Atoma. She lay on the bricks and they touched her. One by one. Tingling sensations zapped into her brain like dots and dashes of a telegraph signifying sensual words; the words metamorphosing into a male and female figure of electrical current. They mingled in the gray matter inside her skull, did dances, slung themselves around, twirling on the magnetic perpetuity of their attraction and repulsion, neither force winning out in the end. "Touch me harder!" she cried, and the boys all came to clench fingers around her extended limbs, to induce the feeling through her nerves and into those centers of ecstasy hidden from the outside eye. A smile of pleasure formed on her lips as mental cyclones whirled into each other inside her, yin and yang uniting in a flash of lightning that shot the sensation back through synapses, out of the threshold of thought, surging along myelin to extremities, waves of galvanic voltage discharging into the hands clasping her so severely... The physics professor looked up from his lectern to see the entire class panting heavily. This always happened when he read the chapter on nuclear fusion.

Story #256

10 comments:

The Mushroom said...

I've met people like that -- they seem like energy sources, dynamos, anodes to the cathodes and cathodes to the anodes that people can charge themselves up with. They're popular at parties, in offices, and other places where there are people who feel they need someone else's energy in order to feel full -- so popular that the 'regular people' who also have energy to share but aren't so brilliant about it feel depressed or jealous that this person gets all the accolade.

But like moth to flame, eventually the people who flocked to someone like that discover they were deluded -- the power-person wasn't a source of power, they were a source of drainage. A limitless void people threw their own life-forces into, which is why there was so much energy; it was donated by others. And still the rest are envious of the attention, even if they can stifle their smiles as they say "I tried to tell ya."

Jamie Dawn said...

Whew! I'm so glad you told that story, because from the pic, I thought she was about to be drawn and quartered.

Mush: Those who are the "life of the party" types are usually dying for attention and have low self esteem. If they didn't get the attention they crave, they'd probably kill themselves.

Cooper said...

Not the place I thought you were going.

The Mushroom said...

Jamie... That was my first thought, drawn and quartered, but she's obviously enjoying it. Wing or thigh? And some of the people you speak of do kill themselves to get attention. Recently saw a friend drop out of an online community she was rather popular in because she hated how other people seemed to crave attention... pot, kettle. There can be only one belle at the ball, she said in actions not words.

Doug The Una said...

Nice twist, Indie.

Kernie's father left when she was seven and her mother when she was nine. Her brother was quiet and her grandmother barely looked up from her knitting when Kernie came into the room. She'd been thin. Pretty. Angry and hungry and lonely and bored and studious.

When Kernie got to college, her dormmates greeted her with hugs and asked her if she had a boyfriend. Then they decided to go see who lived next door. That's when Kernie learned that you can't hold four people at once.

Saheli said...

That physics twist was quite something.

Indeterminacy said...

Prophet: Atoms are pretty simple, almost elementary.

Mush: We had a sales guy once at the place I work who was so outgoing he could have given Dale Carnegie an inferiority complex. Someone once called him Dale Carnegie with a chainsaw. Fun guy to be around. Anyhow, without your help, I would never know what my stories mean.

Jamie: Don't worry. You know I wouldn't let anything really bad happen to my characters, not unless they deserved it. ;-)

Alice: It always amazes me how the last line or two of a story can make or break whatever came before it. It can even make a banal narration seem suddenly brilliant, and vice versa. I had a "working ending" that I wrote that I knew was lame and ruined the whole narrative, but left it until I thought of something better. It was kind of a slow process, wanting something with nuclear fusion, and then thinking how to introduce it. I do think I kind of side-stepped the entire first part of the story and having to figure out what happened next.

Doug: I always think it's thoughtful when you or anyone contributes an alternative story to mine. I like to be entertained, too!

Saheli: I feel honored everytime you stopped by. And with this story I at least feel like I've lived up to your review of my blog (I know I don't always).

Tina: Thanks. And everyone else, check out Tina's current post! It's brilliant.

Mark: What a genius does in five minutes, someone brilliant can do in fifteen minutes. I worked on this one at least an hour.

Everyone: You're gonna be mad at me, but I don't know what else to do, since I don't yet have a story ready to post. That is, I'm skipping today, or posting late, if I think of something to post. The number 256 is also a nice number to hesitate at, as it translates to 100 in hexadecimal.

Indeterminacy said...

Here's a new Website called "The Master Smiled" that I came across at BE. I think you all will like it.

Anonymous said...

So nice to have you back! You and your stories were missed.
Peace.........

Anonymous said...

ahahaha now THAT's what education should always be like... ;) love it!