John Kuczmarski
Beginning Fiction Writing
Beginnings 250 (Perspective w/light)
June 7, 2005
Rekindle the Rapport
The reflection of the office lamp on the window made it nearly impossible for Rebecca to see out into the ghostly summer night. Not that she was concerned with the arid desert evening; she was fervently pecking away at the conclusion to her “Metaphors of Sexuality in American Society” thesis. Because there was no way for her to see out as he looked in, the one-way window transparency did, however, benefit her colleague, the spying Samuel Gervin, whom she knew before she moved to the vacant desert of Montana. His hesitation before entering wasn’t voyeuristic. Instead, Samuel -- nervous about rekindling any relationship, be it business-related or long-time friendship -- had paused in awe of the strokes of undulating reminiscence that bombarded his conscience when he saw her assiduously typing away.
Samuel and Rebecca had been friends for almost all of the two-year experience at the small Stone Child College near Box Elder, Montana. Samuel had always considered their relationship as something more than companionship, but was complacent with their rapport, which was generated by doing field research for their ecological final, studying for finals, and attending most classes together. The waves of college memories -- from getting lost in the Appalachians during their research project, to surviving the car crash on I-191 near Harlowton, to Rebecca’s graceful smile of gratitude whenever he reminded her to take her insulin – almost made him dizzy with glee to see her. Taking a deep breath, he balanced one crutch against his hefty body, opened the screen door, inched his broken leg inside the doorframe, and was about to rap upon the window-pane of the door, but paused. An uncertain, icy panic besieged him; “maybe I shouldn’t visit her,” he thought at the last minute. “Maybe she doesn’t even want to see me in the middle of her work”. Too late -- the squeak of the screen door had alerted Rebecca, who twisted in her chair, squinting out into the dim night to determine the source of the disturbance. In an embarrassed fluster, Samuel simultaneously realized his impending obligation to, now, knock and enter and his desire to bolt away from the porch and abandon the visit entirely. He awkwardly wheeled around his body, wrenching his leg forward, and rapped twice on the door, only to snag his crutch on the screen door, tripped, and fell into a pathetic heap on the porch just as Rebecca opened the door.
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Startled, and suddenly frightened, by the alarming clamor that had just assaulted her door, Rebecca pounced out of her chair and then froze, uncertain if she should scream and call the police or boldly confront her intruder. Despite their differences, Rebecca and Samuel did meet ends on one aspect of their behavior, indecision. And much to her chagrin, just as stalling between the choices of knocking or fleeing had resulted in Samuel's pathetic collapse outside the door, Rebecca now stumbled between her two approaches and flung open the door and screamed blindly into her intruder. Samuel, who had by that time gotten up, collected himself, and was about to attempt to re-enter, caught the full blast of her uproarious siren of a scream head on and tripped back again into a winded heap on the floor in front of Rebecca.
"Who the fuck do you - Oh my god. Samuel! Samuel, are you alright? Oh my god! What the fuck are you -- ? You scared me to death. Were you trying to scare me?"
"What the fucking hell do you think I was trying to do? I was trying to visit you! Just popping by to remember the old times, you know! Did you have to scream in my face?"
Rebecca, laughing, "Oh my god! Well it's great to see you, Samuel. I think this break is what I needed. Damn, you sure pick the craziest times and entrances though. What the hell happened to your leg? Why are you in crutches?" Then in a playful, mocking tone, Rebecca said, "Oh you poor thing....snooby dooby wooby..."
"Humph. Well you certainly recollected my "love" for babytalking." Samuel muttered rolling his eyes. "Help me up, will ya?"
Rebecca gave Samuel a hand, pulled him up, helped him regain his balance on his teetering stilts and he followed her into the house wedging himself in behind the screen door before it swung shut.
The Cure
A crescent sliver as sharp and as clear as Rinaldo had ever witnessed shone into the valley, illuminating the shadowy Peruvian forest. “It must be the proximity to the equator,” Rinaldo thought, “that makes the moonbeams so crisp and vivid”. As he headed back to the base camp, he buried his longing for the gems of civilization – a radio to hear the recent news of the Kennedy assassination, his Aztec history books to peruse, and a cool shave. He suppressed his civilized desires because he knew that not only should he strive to take advantage of the richly immersive experience at the tropical rainforest of the Tambopato reserve, but he had no other option but to savor the 6-month-long commitment in the northern portion of the reserve, near the Bolivian border, along the eastern border of Peru. Although Rinaldo was surrounded by throngs of ornithologists, studying “the world’s greatest diversity of bird life”, as the tour books read, his expedition revolved around botanical research. This specific research had just recently discovered a chemical response to the endangered Carnero (Poulsenia armata) specimen.
Rinaldo had taken his sojourn away from the camp to overlook the peaceful forest, in order to temporarily escape the hullabaloo sparked by the recent findings. When he returned from his reflective respite, he found the base camp, despite it being past midnight, brewing with lively scientific commotion. On a typical day the four canvas tents were stagnant abodes, housing typical laboratory equipment -- microscopes, samples of flora and fauna, maps of the Tambopata’s ecology, and mysterious substances contained in equally mysterious flasks. The source of this midnight din revolved around one of these specific flasks. Bubbling and frothing, fluid in the beaker containing a sample of the 100-foot Carnero tree had shifted from a translucent whitish hue to a crimson viscous liquid. This chemical change meant the xylem of the Carnero tree had reacted with the AIDs virus strain, indicating only one thing -- the tree had potential curative properties.
John Kuczmarski
Beginning Fiction Writing
Beginning 396 (Visual Images)
June 9, 2005
The Tidal Wave
“Watch out for the second loop – it’s vicious,” said Frederick with an air of experience to his African American brother, Fritz, who was masking his worry by fidgeting with his seatbelt. Frederick timed the warning perfectly. Immediately after he spoke, the coaster’s lap bar shot down, and the entire car lurched forward with a crank. There was an instantaneous pause that gave Frederick just enough time to smoothly rotate his head to the right and boldly smile at his squirming, uneasy brother before the coaster train jolted out of the depot with a booming sound of explosive cranks and clinks, and the speed and urgency of a full-bladder toddler sprinting to the bathroom.
The enormous rush of fear and anticipation that had swelled up in Fritz, when he had been waiting in the depot, immediately purged out of him with a scream of exhilaration. His eyes tearing with the speed, fighting the oncoming torrent of wind, he turned to the left to examine his adrenaline-junkie brother. Frederick’s dark-skinned left arm was raised like he was hailing down a taxi at rush hour and the right arm clenched over his body as if wielding a crowbar. Laughing at the intensity of the speed, he said, “Yeah, Chicago Six Flags! Can’t get this back in Tennessee! Can’t get this anywhere, but,” and he paused for Fritz to chime in, where both of them finished the sentence, “Heeerrreee!” The two brothers both let out bellowing howls that were an octave above the cacophony of shouts and screams of the other passengers.
The coaster swerved left and right, dipped and dived, whipping around its passengers like willow branches during a tornado. Before beginning its plummeting descent, the roller-coaster reached its zenith and paused as if a plane stalling in mid-air. A dead silence fell upon the passengers before their thrilled screams billowed out into a descending clamor of yells and shrieks as the coaster bulleted back to the station.
Because he had never been on a coaster before, and because of his older brother’s appreciation of the coaster, this ride felt like an initiation into adulthood on Fritz’s eighteenth birthday. He was exuberant from the rush, but more so from the satisfaction of weathering his storm of reluctance and connecting with a source of Frederick’s wild energy.
“Well, now you’re a ‘Tidal Wave’ veteran.”
“Yup, I checked that second loop.”
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