This is my guest entry for the flash fiction contest at Lascaux Flash.

Intangible

She writes her number on the back of my hand with a black magic marker.

Then she says hello.

We dance the way people at parties dance, a fast slow dance of an excuse to press our bodies together, to what passes for music at these types of things. Stuck in the middle with you.

When she speaks, she leans in close, the black tips of her blonde hair tickling my face, her hand soft on my shoulder.

I’ve read when a girl is really into you, she’ll take any chance to make physical contact.

I’ve only read.

I fetch her a drink, standing in line for an eternity, glancing her way, worried should she leave my sight she will disappear, ethereal.

I return.

I don’t go here, she says, between sips of her beverage. I’ll transfer, I say, joking, but not really.

With nods and a smiles, my friends leave. Her friends linger, inspecting me as they embrace her goodbye.

Time passes. We find our way into the cold.

Our night ends at the threshold of her friend’s building. Call me as soon as you wake, she says.

I tell her this is not the end of our tale. She nods.

I spend the remainder of the night in my bed, watching the minutes flick by.

Morning light peeks through the yellowing blinds of my bedroom and I clutch my phone, finding myself paralyzed by the idea of blemishing the perfect of yesterday with the unknown of tomorrow.

A follow-up from yesterday’s post: Long Lost Stories.

Yes I did go looking for my notebook when I got home last night. And yes, I did find it.

What? You’re wondering, perhaps, if I opened it up and took a peak? If so, was it any good.

You know what, I have to say it wasn’t too bad. There are some parts I would change, but it was supposed to be a first draft anyway. You know what, how about I just open up the bad boy and show you what I found.

Excerpt from the long lost moleskine reporter’s journal that has gathered dust in my bedside table since 2006 (as much as it kills me, I’m writing as-is, not cleaning anything up):

Luke awoke from his dream with a single thought in his head: I have to visit Mom and Dad and find my Dinosaur Encyclopedia.

Already the details of his dream were fading like an ice cream headache; what just a moment prior felt so urgent was now just a memory. What remained was a desire to hold the favorite book of his childhood once more.

Luke contemplated calling his parents at that moment and asking them if they knew of the whereabouts of his book. He quickly changed his mind once he realized it was 3:23 AM and a call at that time would probably kill his mother. Luke had once called his parents at 12:30 AM on New Year’s Eve to be met by his father’s voice frantic that his mother had seen Luke’s phone number on caller-id and had fainted, thinking something horrible must have happened to him.

Luke turned off his nightlight and fell back to sleep, this time dreaming he had won the World Series, only he wasn’t one of the players but was instead the baseball and had felt extremely lucky the opposing team consisted of tiny infants who were up way past their bedtime. Luke remembered none of this upon waking the following morning though he did wonder why he was suddenly so cross with his baseball bat.

Okay, I lied. I did clean up some of the more egregious writing. Not all, but some.

If my counting was correct, this notebook contains roughly 14,000 words. I don’t know for sure why I abandoned the story, but most likely it was because I hit a wall. Maybe if I read through it now, after all these years I can make something of it. It’s worth a shot, I suppose.