One Night stand(trial version)
This is one of many stories set in a world I've been creating. I've been toying with this idea and finally got a first part written. It's pretty much unedited but I wanted to see what people think of it anyway. ^^
So, here goes:
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One Night Stand
I.
Joshua was a simple man with brown hair and cloudy blue eyes. An old but very comfortable brown coat draped over his shoulders and hugged his body. His jeans were always ripped and his t-shirts always had bleach stains; his glasses had the beginnings of cracks and his gloves barely covered his big but gentle hands. His shoes were spotless. No one understood how his shoes could be so clean and the rest of him so dirty, or rather, not dirty but worn. No one could understand until they saw his feet, tough and scarred, until they saw the way he avoided puddles and dirt roads, taking off his shoes when there was no alternate path, cleaning off his feet before replacing his shoes.
He was like hundreds of other burnt out young men but just that one peculiarity was enough to make him stand out as the one that might rekindle or fizzle out for good.
As a rule, they avoided him; everyone, even the vampires and werewolves and the magically cursed by birth, in other words, the freaks. But occasionally someone would forget the rule, charmed by his odd eyes, like the eyes of a blind man, and his harmless voice and gentle demeanor; someone would forget the rule and talk to him, tell him the story of his or her or its life. Joshua loved this. It gave him something to look forward to, something to keep him away from puddles and dirt roads so his shoes always looked nice enough so that maybe, just maybe, someone might let him come up to his or her or its place and let him see his or her or its posessions. He would not track dirt on the floor, and those his clothes were tattered, they too were clean.
It happened one day, when he was not expecting it. Trying to pick up a lone blade of grass without getting dirt on his gloves, he looked up from where he crouched and saw a whore, obvious from her clean stockings and her tight red skirt and her barely there black top that was not as tight as her skirt but thin enough to leave nothing to the imagination. He looked up and saw her tired but curious eyes and he knew she had wonderful stories for him to hear, but he never dreamed that she would let him up into her apartment, the place where she lived but never brought men home to if she planned on having sex with them.
When his clean boots stepped onto the green carpet a laugh bubbled up his throat and had to be surpressed. He was happy; he was ecstatic; he was in someone's home, the place where she could let down her guard and be herself and where her life was a pure, unaltered story that he desperately wanted to know about.
As he wandered around, gloved fingers hovering over but never touching her possesions, she found herself telling him about her life. Her name was Amelia but she told customers that her name was Lily, a name that suggested a purity and sweetness that she had lost when she was twelve. She had younger siblings that still lived with her parents and she secretly visited them, gave them a little money to help keep them alive and healthy. The only man she had opened up to had been wounded in the war and she saw him once a month; he could not see her anymore, being blind now, and she was glad because she did not want him to know what she still was.
She told him everything, even when he stopped wandering and had settled down on her couch, at her insitence. She sang songs she remembered from childhood while she showered, with the bathroom door opened so he could hear yet not see. But when she slipped under her one blanket and curled around her pillow - it soothed her to hold it as she used to hold her little sister, and this she explained - he told her a story, a quick one, about how he had escaped the war but not its horrors, about how he had been cursed to wander around listening to people, about how he rather liked his life, despite his poverty, because he had no ambition.
As she drifted off to sleep she knew he had lied, because she saw the way his eyes had sparkled as she had talked. She had kept talking to keep seeing that sparkle. When she woke up she wanted to tell him that he had lied, but he was gone. There were no footprints to prove that he had ever been there, no fingerprints anywhere except maybe the door. She saw only an imprint of a body on her couch and single strand of brown hair.
She never saw him again but she heard about him, and she knew that his ambition had reawakened. He had been and always would be cursed to listen to people, but he would not be content and satisfied to wait for people to come to him. He would seek them out, the ones with the good stories.
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Hrm. There isn't much in terms of background info of the world that you would need to know, except it's a modern fantasy. And damned if I know what the war was about, but it happened and a lot of people died and the world is still suffering because it was very recent ^^
This is one of many stories set in a world I've been creating. I've been toying with this idea and finally got a first part written. It's pretty much unedited but I wanted to see what people think of it anyway. ^^
So, here goes:
============
One Night Stand
I.
Joshua was a simple man with brown hair and cloudy blue eyes. An old but very comfortable brown coat draped over his shoulders and hugged his body. His jeans were always ripped and his t-shirts always had bleach stains; his glasses had the beginnings of cracks and his gloves barely covered his big but gentle hands. His shoes were spotless. No one understood how his shoes could be so clean and the rest of him so dirty, or rather, not dirty but worn. No one could understand until they saw his feet, tough and scarred, until they saw the way he avoided puddles and dirt roads, taking off his shoes when there was no alternate path, cleaning off his feet before replacing his shoes.
He was like hundreds of other burnt out young men but just that one peculiarity was enough to make him stand out as the one that might rekindle or fizzle out for good.
As a rule, they avoided him; everyone, even the vampires and werewolves and the magically cursed by birth, in other words, the freaks. But occasionally someone would forget the rule, charmed by his odd eyes, like the eyes of a blind man, and his harmless voice and gentle demeanor; someone would forget the rule and talk to him, tell him the story of his or her or its life. Joshua loved this. It gave him something to look forward to, something to keep him away from puddles and dirt roads so his shoes always looked nice enough so that maybe, just maybe, someone might let him come up to his or her or its place and let him see his or her or its posessions. He would not track dirt on the floor, and those his clothes were tattered, they too were clean.
It happened one day, when he was not expecting it. Trying to pick up a lone blade of grass without getting dirt on his gloves, he looked up from where he crouched and saw a whore, obvious from her clean stockings and her tight red skirt and her barely there black top that was not as tight as her skirt but thin enough to leave nothing to the imagination. He looked up and saw her tired but curious eyes and he knew she had wonderful stories for him to hear, but he never dreamed that she would let him up into her apartment, the place where she lived but never brought men home to if she planned on having sex with them.
When his clean boots stepped onto the green carpet a laugh bubbled up his throat and had to be surpressed. He was happy; he was ecstatic; he was in someone's home, the place where she could let down her guard and be herself and where her life was a pure, unaltered story that he desperately wanted to know about.
As he wandered around, gloved fingers hovering over but never touching her possesions, she found herself telling him about her life. Her name was Amelia but she told customers that her name was Lily, a name that suggested a purity and sweetness that she had lost when she was twelve. She had younger siblings that still lived with her parents and she secretly visited them, gave them a little money to help keep them alive and healthy. The only man she had opened up to had been wounded in the war and she saw him once a month; he could not see her anymore, being blind now, and she was glad because she did not want him to know what she still was.
She told him everything, even when he stopped wandering and had settled down on her couch, at her insitence. She sang songs she remembered from childhood while she showered, with the bathroom door opened so he could hear yet not see. But when she slipped under her one blanket and curled around her pillow - it soothed her to hold it as she used to hold her little sister, and this she explained - he told her a story, a quick one, about how he had escaped the war but not its horrors, about how he had been cursed to wander around listening to people, about how he rather liked his life, despite his poverty, because he had no ambition.
As she drifted off to sleep she knew he had lied, because she saw the way his eyes had sparkled as she had talked. She had kept talking to keep seeing that sparkle. When she woke up she wanted to tell him that he had lied, but he was gone. There were no footprints to prove that he had ever been there, no fingerprints anywhere except maybe the door. She saw only an imprint of a body on her couch and single strand of brown hair.
She never saw him again but she heard about him, and she knew that his ambition had reawakened. He had been and always would be cursed to listen to people, but he would not be content and satisfied to wait for people to come to him. He would seek them out, the ones with the good stories.
-----------------------------------------------
Hrm. There isn't much in terms of background info of the world that you would need to know, except it's a modern fantasy. And damned if I know what the war was about, but it happened and a lot of people died and the world is still suffering because it was very recent ^^
.