A Rush of Inspiration ~A Collection of Short Stories (Full Version)

All Forums >> [Gaming Community] >> [Legends and Lore] >> Writers of Lore >> [The Bookshelves] >> Other Creative Prose



Message


Xplayer -> A Rush of Inspiration ~A Collection of Short Stories (1/18/2010 20:26:56)

Olive Stipes


We were foolish kids then; she was thirteen and I was twelve. I don’t know why she did it. It was stupid and pointless. Why do bad things happen to people who don’t know any better? It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know about life’s infamous universal truth. Life isn’t fair.

The Accident, as everyone called it, occurred on the last day of a golden summer. The first day of eighth grade was less than twelve hours away. Yet, we still felt the summer breeze, the heat of the early September sun, and the sweat on each other’s hands that seemed to glue our intertwined fingers together. The sun was slowly creeping towards the horizon; it hadn’t begun to set yet, but its position in the sky flashed a warning that its light would no longer be with us in an hour or two. It seemed like any other summer day, although looking back, it was probably the most romantic day of that fateful summer.

The three of us, Olivia, Barkley, her dog, and I were the only ones on the sidewalk for as far as the eye could see. Our suburban development was built on a hill with one street running along the top and several others branching off of it down the hill parallel to each other. We walked on the right sidewalk of the street at the top of the hill; I can’t remember its name. Occasionally, a car would pass by on the street, but otherwise we were completely alone. That’s not to say that we were completely silent. On the contrary, our conversation was probably heard by half the neighborhood.

I don’t remember most of the details; after all, this was four years ago. I remember us talking about our new eighth grade teacher who was notorious for being exceedingly tough on her students. We talked about what we accomplished that summer. Besides the required summer reading, we resolved that nothing we did was useful. The high schools we planned to attend came up for about two seconds (what a boring topic!) We discussed newfound puppy love, rumors, and which guy and which girl were the most likely to become couples in eighth grade. Laughter filled the air, ran through the streets, and echoed across the hills.

In general, I have terrible memory for detail (my worst subjects in school are English and history), but the last part of the conversation we had at the top of the hill while overlooking the small suburban development is one I’ll never forget. The scene is imbedded in my mind like a sword in a stone. It began with a simple question.

“Do you believe in true love?” Olivia asked.

This question threw my twelve year old self forcefully out of his comfort zone. I began to sweat and had to swallow my spit before I stuttered, “Of…of course. Love of neighbor as yourself and all that stuff” – a poor choice of words as she was my next door neighbor and we were holding hands like lovers.

Olivia stopped in her tracks. Barkley pulled at his leash. Our hands broke apart. “Patrick, do you love me?” she asked with the cutest smile I’ve ever seen on her face.

My chest felt like it was about to break open. My face was flushed, redder than the stop sign at the street corner. I stared at her in all of her beauty, her pink T-shirt and blue, torn jeans. To most people she would have appeared to be a typical tomboy, but to me she appeared as elegant as a porcelain doll.

An ominous wind blew through the air, or perhaps it was just my imagination. My soft whisper of “yes” was drowned out by the barking of her dog. Without any warning, the dog dashed into the street straight into an oncoming car. Olivia was tethered to this crazy animal. She never saw the blue SUV. I never saw what caused the dog suddenly pull its master to her doom.

A terrible shriek and howl combined to split my eardrums in two. The smell of blood hung heavy in the air. I immediately imagined a Civil War battle with hundreds of bodies lying on the field. Organic fluids stained the blacktop of the street. My eyes first beheld the mangled body of a black mutt who seemed to have served as a speed bump for the two ton car. Its torso was flattened; its eyes were grey and unseeing. Its tongue hung limply out of his mouth out of which flowed warm crimson blood, the classic image of death.

My heart seemed to stop. There was no blood flow to my legs; I couldn’t move. My brain was screaming to the rest of my body to save her, but I was frozen to the spot. I know this sounds like a cliché and artificially contrived reaction, but there was nothing fictional about how my feet were rooted in the ground and how my entire body felt as if it were made of ice.

Then I saw her. Her body laid spread on the ground like a bird that had been shot out of the sky. Her eyes were closed and unmoving. She was limp and lifeless. There was a gash in the right side of her head which was clotting rapidly but by the time the bleeding stopped I feared it would be too late.

Finally, my legs were functional again. It seemed like an eternity, but since the driver hadn’t even gotten out of his car yet, it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. I fell to my knees and put my ear against her chest. She was still breathing, barely. The world around me started to dissolve into pure color, flashes of distinct images around meaningless blur. I heard someone shout, “Oh my God! 911? Yes. I just hit a girl with my car.”


I relive that day each time I visit Olivia in the hospital, even today, four years later. Every Friday I put myself through the same torturous process of visiting her and asking whoever will listen about her condition. The answer is always the same, “She’s stable, but there’re no signs of improvement in the near future. We’re sorry.”

I often talk to her, as if my words could reach through that coma. I tell her about all the experiences I’ve had since that day, all the teachers I’ve had, all the new friends I’ve made in high school. I hope that when she wakes up, she’ll say to me, “I heard your voice while I was asleep.”

Today is special in that it’s the fourth anniversary of The Accident. I brought a new batch of dandelions to replace the wilting ones in her vase. The thing about dandelions is that cuttings always seem to wilt quickly no matter how much water you give them. I’m not sure why they’re her favorite flower; I think she said that she liked how the seeds danced in the air.

I held her hand like I always did. “Today’s our anniversary, Olivia.” I paused to think of what I should say. Everything had already been said. There’s nothing new under the sun. I just sat next to her bed and gazed at her beautiful, peaceful face. Her silky black hair and her fair white skin seemed like the brightest things in the hospital ward, the things to which all the light in the room was drawn. I held her hand like I did on that summer day and hoped to feel the grip of her hand around my sweaty fingers. Maybe I imagined it, but I thought that I did.

“I love you more than anything, Olivia,” I whispered in her ear. “Please, your beautiful hazel eyes mean so much to me. It would be a loss to the beauty of the earth if no one beheld your eyes again.”

So I waited for the olive branch to return.




Xplayer -> RE: A Rush of Inspiration ~A Collection of Short Stories (1/20/2010 17:04:10)

Resolved


I have the unfortunate dilemma of having been born on December 31st. On my “special day,” everyone seems preoccupied with the large family reunions to take place that night as they anxiously wait for the large reset button to be pushed. At least, that’s how most people perceive the holiday of New Year’s Eve, a chance to begin again with a clean slate. Unfortunately, this leads to temporary amnesia for those foolish enough to make this assumption; they forget that there are still bills to be paid and jobs to which to return on the Monday following New Year’s Day.

To most sophomore college students, turning “legal” on New Year’s Eve would seem to be a dream come true, but honestly, I couldn’t care less. Once, and only once, I smoked a joint when it was offered to me, and I must be allergic to the stuff since I was puking for the next half hour. Incidentally, my New Year’s Resolution that year was to not do drugs ever again. So when my “buddies” found out that I was turning twenty-one on New Year’s Eve, they knocked on my locked door of my dorm room for about fifteen minutes asking the same question over and over again, “Where do you want to go tonight?”

Following my mother’s age old advice, I ignored them, but my buddies were a persistent bunch. I heard Alex on the other side of the door say, “Yo, Matt told us you’d be in here, 100% guaranteed. You wouldn’t want your roommate to be penalized for being wrong. I’ve got some great ideas for penalty games.”

My damn sense of loyalty got the better of me. I put down the graphic novel I was reading, got out of bed, and opened the door to the grinning faces of three members of our Five Man Band: Alex, the lead singer, Kyle, the drummer, and a disgruntled Matt, our keyboardist.

I sighed. Did they really have nothing better to do than bother me? Then again, that was their favorite hobby. Rather than getting annoyed I said, “Jeez Alex, your hair is particularly wild today. Did you forget to comb it after going to the movies last night?”

Alex playfully punched me in the shoulder, hard. I bit my tongue to keep from showing the pain in my arm that was getting worse by the second. If Alex saw any bit of weakness in anyone, he would be sure to make sure that they never heard the end of his insults and ridicule. Why the hell am I friends with this jerk?

“You’re forgetting rule number one, Adam. Recite it to me again,” Alex commanded with a sly grin on his face, or at least his artificially constructed face composed of layers of thick white makeup.

I humored him. “Rule number one of the Five Man Band, mind your own business.”

“Exactly, now I’ll give you a freebee. Rule number two, if you remember, is majority rules. If three of us agree to do something, it must be followed by the other two members with no questions asked.” How Alex passed 8th Grade still escapes me.

“Fine,” I said. “Then why did you bother asking my opinion about where we’re going tonight? Why didn’t you just use rule number two and force me to go where you guys wanted to go?” I glared at Matt who turned away and avoided my gaze. He usually supported me when Alex and Kyle got crazy ideas that involved me. He’s not the type of person who would sell out his friend, or so I thought.

“Cause it’s your birthday! And um…” Kyle said in his slow stoned voice. He was the wise guy who came up with the name “Five Man Band” for our music group in the first place. It probably should have been called “Dumb and Dumber.”

Alex interrupted Kyle’s thoughts – or lack thereof, “Anyway, if you ain’t gonna pick a place, we’ll pick it for you. Meet us at Big Heads at nine o’ clock this evening sharp. Otherwise, heads will roll.” Alex played air guitar for about five seconds while wailing an unintelligible solo. Then he punched Kyle in the arm and said, “Let’s go.” The biggest heads ever attached human shoulders bobbled down the hallway singing death metal.

To kill some time, I finished reading the graphic novel. As I flipped through the pages, I couldn’t help but see myself in the main character. He was constantly being harassed by the leader of the brigade he was forced to join and was constantly being thrown into some convoluted plot that was of no concern to him. The only difference was that his brigade was composed of himself, three girls, and one ambiguously gay guy while the Five Man Band has four guys fighting over one female backup singer, Rose. After finishing the novel at around 7:30, I fell asleep. I don’t remember my dream.

For no particular reason, I woke up at 9:37. I checked my watch and hollered, “Damnit!” loud enough to wake up the entire dorm. Fortunately, no one was asleep; it was New Year’s Eve after all. There weren’t even any other students in the dorm that I noticed as I sprinted through the hallways to my car parked on the other end of the campus.

By the time I got to Big Heads, it was a few minutes past 10:00. I had no trouble picking out the Five Man band; Kyle was always the tallest person in the room. Alex and Kyle were lined up at the bar happily enjoying themselves. Alex saw me walk in and beckoned to come over. I rolled my eyes and begrudgingly obliged.

“Whaddya want birthday boy?” Alex asked. “My treat.” I knew I would have to pay him back later. Alex always asks for repayment for gifts. I don’t think he understands the concept of giving. Christmas with the band was a disaster, but that’s another story.

Since I knew that arguing would be a futile pursuit, I just said, “Get me a Guinness.”

The beer wasn’t the best in the world, but it was certainly better than pot. It reminded me of coffee in that it would be an “acquired taste.” Honestly, it wasn’t a taste I wanted to acquire. I could already feel that my brain began to slow down. Everything around me began to happen slightly slower. All was calmer and darker, an artificially induced mellow.

Through this haze of alcohol, I asked Alex, “Hey, where’re Matt and Rose?”

Alex smiled. “Oh, they went out back. Matt said he wanted to be alone, and she followed him after he stormed out of the bar.”

Perhaps it was the alcohol, but suddenly I decided that all rational thinking was a pointless waste of time. I needed to act now before Matt did something indecent with the girl I loved. I dashed through of the bar, through the clouds of cigarette smoke and over the clusters of people. I stormed out the front door and headed for the back behind the dumpster, the place that my drunken mind believed was where any eloping lovers would hide. Surprisingly I was right, and I found Matt and Rose glued together in an intimate embrace kissing, tonguing, and who knows what else.

Disgusted is not nearly an intense enough word to describe my reaction, but rather I felt sickened by the event I witnessed before me. Matt is often mistaken for Leonardo DiCaprio, just not as smooth in his composure. However, as he and my sister exchanged saliva right in front of me, he was a suave, romantic gentleman. Rose also appeared as a budding flower blooming as I watched. She rivaled any Spanish gypsy with her subtly dirty skin and pink dyed hair. Their eyes were closed, and they seemed completely oblivious to my presence.

My body acted impulsively and immediately. Before I even opened my mouth to roar at Matt, he was on the ground, and I was pounding his face into the dirt. After four solid blows, he kicked me in the stomach hard enough to get me off his chest. I saw nothing but a red blur, but as I prepared to charge at him again, he held up his hand and shouted, “Stop! Think!”

I lowered my bloody fist, red with the blood of my best friend. Matt’s face resembled uncooked ground beef. His nose was bleeding profusely, and both his eyes began to show darkening around them. I couldn’t believe what I had just done. I’d been willing to kill my best friend over a girl when there was no indication that she was being harmed.

“I love Rose,” Matt said calmly.

“I know,” I replied. “I guess I just couldn’t accept it.” I sighed. “She loves you too you know. She talks about you all the time, even when she’s with me.”

“So are we cool?”

“Yeah, we’re cool.”

We hugged like two long lost brothers. He whispered in my ear, “Today, with Alex and Kyle…I tried…”

I shook my head, “It’s alright man. I know. I know…”

“Happy birthday, dude. I hope that hand of yours can still play guitar and hold our band together.”

“Screw the band. Maybe we should make a two person music group, like Simon and Garfunkel.”

Matt laughed, “Yeah, Adam and Matt. I like it already.”

My New Year’s resolution was to maintain control with my mind rather than my emotions and allow my sister to kiss whomever she wants.




Xplayer -> RE: A Rush of Inspiration ~A Collection of Short Stories (1/20/2010 17:08:13)

The Laws and Customs of War


A dusty road wound towards the horizon, a snake swimming through an ocean of sand. Occasional dust storms were the only travelers on the road; no person who loved his life would dare travel on it. Besides, the towns and cities through which the road traveled were not exactly premier tourist attractions. Visitors ask, “Was the road always this way or was the road’s present condition caused by the war?” The simple answer to that question is simply “I don’t know. This country has always had war and always will have war. It’s a part of the culture.”

Frank mused over these things as he stared down the road through the scope of his assault rifle. Boredom does strange things to people. A soldier is not supposed to aim his weapon until he is ready to fire. Yet, Frank used his scope like a pair of binoculars to observe the desolate scenery.

“Still nothing,” Frank sighed. “I thought this place was supposed to be crawling with terrorists; at least, that’s what they say on the news. People get blown up every other day, right?”

Joe smiled, “That only happens in the inhabited part of the country. Ha!”

Some members of the United States Army argued that there were no two soldiers who acted as a better team than Frank and Joe. Both had won metals for their valor and bravery, and they always seemed to know what the other was thinking. Childhood friends who were next door neighbors, attended the same schools their entire lives, and were placed in the same army division tend to have this brotherly bond. They even looked somewhat alike, both with army crew cuts and white skin that screamed “Look at me; I’m an American!”

“I remember,” Frank said, “the times at the beginning of the war. We were true soldiers then, always raiding terrorist hideouts and killing a bunch of people in one day. Where have those days gone? Now we’re some sort of goddamn peacekeeping force out in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!” Frank shouted the last phrase towards the mountains and heard it reverberate across the hills for the next five seconds.

“I could sure go for a cigar right now,” Joe said. He leaned up against an abandoned brick home on the dirt street that they were supposed to be guarding.

“Ah,” Frank exclaimed, “you’re in luck. I have just the thing for a boring occasion like this.” He pulled two Cuban cigars out of his pocket.

Joe was astonished. “How the hell did you sneak those in? You could get in big trouble you know.”

“That’s only if you’re a normal run-of-the-mill soldier but not if you’re Franklin A. Smith,” Frank said proudly. “Don’t worry; I have connections.”

Frank walked across the street and handed Joe one of his precious cigars. Joe took it gratefully, but then stared at Frank quizzically and asked, “How do you suppose we’re supposed to light these?”

Frank slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand, “God, I can’t believe I forgot the lighter.”

“You suppose we could just shoot ’em?”

“Nope, tried that before. It failed miserably.”

“You sure you don’t have a lighter, a match, nothing?”

“I thought you would have one.”

“Christ.”

The two soldiers stood at the corner of the two main roads of the town with an unpronounceable name in Afghanistan. Soon they were rolling on the ground laughing at their dilemma. The heat does strange things to people.

Joe got up first, “Frank, I’ve got an idea.” He whipped a magnifying glass out of his pocket. “We’ll use this. Once one of them is lit, we’ll use it to light the other one.”

Frank laughed, “Have you ever used a magnifying glass to light anything before, Joe? It takes a really long time.”

Joe shook his head. “My cousin burned clean through a dried autumn leaf in about a half an hour. Besides, it’ll pass the time, right?”

So the two soldiers knelt there on the dusty ground with a cigar lying in the dirt. It was high noon, so Joe didn’t have to worry about the shadows cast by the buildings around them. He lined the beam of focused light at the tip of the cigar.

“And now we wait.”

Frank sighed, “If only real life were as fast as Toy Story.”

Joe chuckled, “You saw that movie too?”

They didn’t talk for a while. The silence between them was awkward, but understandable. Two run-of-the-mill soldiers should remain silent at their posts as not to attract attention, but there’s no better way to attract attention than standing on the side of the road while attempting to light a Cuban cigar with a magnifying glass. It’s certainly something you don’t see everyday.

After about five minutes of waiting, the silence was broken by the crying of a child. The soldiers had heard crying children before, but this cry was fairly unusual. It wasn’t a cry of pain, and it wasn’t a cry for help. It was something in between, something that tears at the listener’s soul each second he hears it.

Frank stood up, “Keep that glass on those cigars; I’ll be right back.” He readied his riffle and set off in the direction of the mysterious crying.

When he turned the corner, he saw an Afghan child no more than ten years old crying on his front doorstep. Tears welled up in the child’s eyes, but they seemed incapable of flowing down his cheek. They just kept growing until the tears plopped on the ground like big fat raindrops.

Frank stooped down to the child’s eye level. He wiped the child’s tears away and said affectionately, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. What’s wrong?”

The child began to shake his head vigorously. Before Frank found out why, there was an explosion.

Boom.

A split second before the blast of dust, body fluids, and shrapnel flew into the sky, Frank thought that he saw himself comforting the child, an out of body experience perhaps. He couldn’t help thinking, “Oh my God! It’s a trap!” By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late.


When Frank came to, he was in the medical tent. He didn’t feel any pain – or anything else for that matter. He couldn’t move; his limbs wouldn’t respond. His head was in a brace, one he had seen in first aid to prevent further neck injury. Frank surroundings were blurry and indistinct. Sound and images blended together repeating over and over. He heard someone repeat like a canon, “He’s coming around. He’s coming around…”

Frank’s eyes drifted down to his legs and saw what remained of them. Where his right leg had been, a stub of a thigh remained. Most of his left leg remained intact, except his left foot which looked as if it had been amputated. Then the pain hit. Suddenly, Frank was screaming with the pain of a thousand incisions over every square inch of his body. The world was thrown into spiraling chaos. Frank felt a needle slip under his skin and he drifted back into an artificially induced sleep.

When he regained consciousness the second time, the pain was mostly gone. Now, soreness took hold of every muscle in his body, soreness that he was sure will last for years. Frank found that he could move his arms, but the rest of his body was strapped down to the medical bed, probably due to his outburst earlier. His vision was slowly clearing, and he was able to decipher the figure of Joe sitting at the end of the bed. He twirled an unlit Cuban cigar between his fingers.

“So you finally woke up,” Joe said with a smile.

“Those terrorist bastards.”

“Do you want to know how many pieces of shrapnel they had to remove from you?”

“Not really.”

“When you get out and about with a new pair of legs, I’ll give you your Cuban back. Then we can smoke it together.”

Frank managed a weak laugh. “No way man! I owe you my cigar and a lot more. Thanks for saving my life.”

Joe grasped Frank’s hand. “We’re blood brothers, Frank. A good soldier never leaves a man behind.”

War does strange things to people.




Xplayer -> RE: A Rush of Inspiration ~A Collection of Short Stories (6/9/2010 17:24:15)

The Cost of Coffee


If the seconds of a car accident can seem like an eternity, imagine how long four years of waiting for nothingness feels. Day after day, week after week, the same unchanging news reaches my ears. The only thing that drags me to the hospital bed every Friday is an empty hope, a foolish assumption that everything would eventually be alright. A drought cannot last for an eternity. Once a doctor said to me, “No illness lasts forever. The only thing that lasts forever is death.” I’m not sure if he was trying to comfort me, but if so, he did a lousy job.

There is another force that pulls me to visit Olivia each week, love. Of course, this love is very much one sided, but I’d like to believe that she is still asking the question she asked on that fateful day, “Do you believe in true love?” Every week, every day, my answer is “Yes Olivia, my true love is you.” To love is an addiction almost as fruitless as any drug. The more of yourself you give, the more love demands of you. One reaches the point that one’s entire self is given, devoted to love. Even then, love still demands more, more than everything we have. I’ve seen everyone from Freudian psychologists to priests on the matter. The psychologists say that this excessive demand of love is just a mask for one’s own excessive demand to be loved, that by loving others we believe we will receive equal love in return. The priests say that whenever we love truly, we love God, and God’s love is unconditional and infinite, so it can never be matched. The demands of love are simply a futile attempt to match God’s love. Honestly, I don’t know who to believe, but I have concluded one thing. With love there is no such thing as equivalent exchange.

With these thoughts running through my head, I sat at the bedside of my beloved, Olivia. The afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows and lit her face. If one were just sleeping, this spotlight of the sun would probably cause one to wake up, but I had to remind myself every week, “She’s not just asleep.” I’m foolishly thought that sometimes; she’s so tranquil in her bed. Her skin was soft and pale, but to me seemed almost radiant. I thought of washing her silky black hair, but I felt that would disturb her.

There I go again, assuming she’s asleep.

At times I’m angry at her, angry that she couldn’t control her dog, angry that she wouldn’t wake up. Throughout high school, I’ve built friendships, but no formal relationships. I was afraid that she would wake up and find me with another girl at my side. I closed my heart to others to the point of almost becoming cynical. I feared the consequences of another commitment, the possibility of another loss. My relationship with Olivia had not even begun before it had ended, and I couldn’t imagine the pain I would feel if I were to lose a friend whom I loved as deeply as I love her now.

Today, I was as far from those feelings as the sun is from the earth. In fact, I felt guilty about wallowing in self pity. I wasn’t the one who had been hit by a car. I wasn’t the one trapped in a coma, unable to socialize with others, unable to live my life. “Who is the victim here?” I reminded myself. The guilt drove me to tears, and I held Olivia’s hand in hopes of consolation. There was none.

A nurse entered the room. Having visited the hospital every week for four years, I’ve gotten to know some of the hospital staff. This nurse was unfamiliar to me; she had long red hair, glasses, and was unusually tall. Her presence signaled the end of visiting hours, so I left the room after giving Olivia a peck on the cheek. I still haven’t kissed her; that would be unethical. I want her first kiss to be consensual. I want her to kiss me back.

The hospital was relatively close to my house, so I often biked there. I walked through the sterilized hallways and took the amazingly fast and smooth elevator down to the first floor. I left the lobby without a word to anyone, not even my mother at the reception desk. By now, she understands. I unlocked my bike and rode down the main artery of the small town. It connected us to the big city, so it was often packed with traffic of people from the suburbs going to or from work. Rumor has it that a drugstore I passed as I rode down the road was considered for use in a major Hollywood production, but the producers and government officials were unwilling to close down the major street. Distracted by this thought, I almost ran into a pick up truck pulling out of a video rental store. Thankfully, we were both able to stop in time. My relatively slow mountain bike (that is, slow compared to a road bike), can stop on a dime, and the pickup was moving slowly to begin with. I crossed the main road carefully and promptly arrived home. My father was ordering a pizza, and my two younger siblings were watching television. I, on the other hand, had to do homework.

I checked my e-mail on my laptop and found much of it to be spam and chain mails. One e-mail that caught my eye, however, was titled “FW: FW: FW: Universal Healing.” After scrolling past the other addresses, I saw the body of the text.

I heard about the Universal Healer from my friend who had been healed by her. She claims to be able to heal any physical illness or infirmity; even those which are incurable or permanent (like chronic pain). My brother had a heart condition which forced him in and out of hospitals almost monthly. He was a sickly man, but highly intelligent. He had ideas which would have certainly helped our society, if he were able to implement them (my brother was an inventor, but that’s beside the point). Our family got in trouble with the insurance company and our debt with the hospital grew continuously. Desperate, he contacted the Universal Healer, and the next day he was completely cured! The doctors who examined him were amazed at his miraculous recovery from what was thought to be an untreatable condition.

To contact the Universal Healer, e-mail your name and date of birth to the address bellow. If she is interested in curing you, she will contact you within 24 hours of you sending the e-mail. Please do NOT include anything else in the e-mail, as it will automatically disqualify you from healing.

This is NOT a hoax. Also below is a list of doctors who have seen and can confirm the results of the Universal Healer.


At the end of the message were an e-mail address and the list of four doctors and their contact information. With Olivia fresh on my mind and little rational thought, I composed an e-mail to the given address giving my name, Patrick Clark, and my birthday, July 16th 1991. Before I clicked “send,” I did give some thought to the possibility that this could be a scam or virus, but I figured, “What is someone going to do with a name and birthday?” I sent the e-mail with no regrets.

That night, I had a dream so lucid that I never realized I had fallen asleep. I was sitting on a soft cushion, the ones people use to meditate. I was surrounded by four walls made of light brown, translucent paper. The room was small, only about a hundred square feet in area, and in the center of the room there was a can of burning rosemary. Despite no obvious light sources, the room was lit as if there were electric lights on the ceiling.

The wall across from me slid open, and a girl walked into the room from the darkness beyond. She was Asian, Japanese probably, and had hair longer and silkier than even Olivia’s. Her eyes were a strange sort of grey with a hint of green and seemed to change between the two in the light. She knelt down next to the tin can and added more rosemary without even looking at me.

“Who are you? Where am I?” I asked.

The girl sighed, as if she had heard the questions many times before, and said, “My name is Yui, and this is the room in which I contact people for a universal healing.” She finally looked at me with questioning eyes. “I assume you aren’t the one that needs healing though. You come for someone else, do you not?”

Deciding not to ask her how she knew that, I replied, “Yes, her name is Olivia Martina. She’s…”

“In a coma, and has been for the past four years, I know,” Yui said. “I know everything about your life, your love, your dedication, your tears. However, be warned. Nothing in life is free, and nothing happens without reason. By healing Olivia, I upset the balance of good and evil in her life. In order for that balance to be maintained, an evil equal to the good of her healing must happen. Since you are the one to contact me, this evil will happen to you. I have no control over the evil, so I can’t tell you what it’s going to be. I just know it will be an equivalent exchange of fate. If we are to proceed, I will need her birthday.”

Weighing these words in my mind I said, “That’s fine, do it. Her birthday is December 31st 1991.” I guess I was being selfish.

Yui sat on the floor with her legs crossed. She folded her hands as if in prayer then extended her right hand in front of her with the palm facing the sky. An orb of blue fire mixed with white light appeared in her hand. She was chanting something, but I couldn’t hear the words. The dream slowly dissolved around me, and I woke up.

The next day, Saturday, I received a phone call from Olivia’s mother informing me that Olivia was awake and well. As fast as I could, I grabbed my bike, forgetting about everything else in the world and pedaled to the hospital and went to the second floor. Still dressed in the clothes in which I slept, I ran past the nurses and entered her room. Olivia was surrounded by doctors asking her questions. Without thinking, I pushed my way past them and grabbed Olivia’s hand. “Are you alright Olivia?” I asked her.

She stared at me with those beautiful hazel eyes and asked, “Who are you?”

Shocked, I simply stood there holding her hand until the nurses pulled me away from her. I stared into nothingness; I felt like I couldn’t move. This was the cost, certainly. In a trance, I performed my regular routine, elevator, lobby, bike, and road. I almost was hit by a car when attempting to cross the street during a red light, but I barely cared. I locked myself in my room and cried for most of the day.

That afternoon I heard a knock on my door. My father was holding the phone. He said, “It’s from Olivia.” Invigorated with new life, I snatched the phone from his hands and said, “Hello, Olivia, it’s me Patrick.”

Her calm, sweet voice on the other end spoke words of disappointment, “I’m sorry Patrick; I don’t remember you. I don’t remember most of my friends. But my mother told me that you’re a precious person to me, and I’d like to…I don’t know how to say it.”

I tried to get over my shock. So it’s true, I thought. Finally, I said, “Let’s start from the beginning then. My name is Patrick Clark.” Just hearing her voice again warmed my heart and alleviated my selfish sorrow.

Every morning during the weekends, Olivia and I would go to the local coffee shop for a drink and an opportunity to reacquaint ourselves. I never mentioned my trips to the hospital to her, although I suppose her mother must have told her about them. I was more interested in hearing her talk about what she experienced during four years in a land of nothing but dreams. Besides, self praise is nothing but narcissism and certainly not a good way to impress someone. I would always pay for the coffee out of a mixture of love and guilt. Not a day has gone by when I haven’t wondered who truly paid the price for Olivia to wake up. If it was me, I think the coffee was a bargain. If not, I feel like I hold an outstanding balance.




Page: [1]

Valid CSS!




Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition
0.140625