| brian douglas skinner |
fiction
These are passages I wrote as part of an assignment in a creative writing class. The passages all had to begin with the phrase "I don't know why I remember" and they were supposed to appeal to as many of the five senses as possible. I wasn't born to be a writer, but it's fun to mess around. See what you think.
Backstage
I don’t know why I remember it with such awful clarity. We’d gone backstage together after the show, and she’d followed me into my dressing room. I didn’t tell her to leave. I just stood there staring dumbly as she closed the door and sauntered across the room, stopping with her face just an inch away from mine. Her breath was hot on my face, heavy with the stench of new felt and fresh glue from her latest lip job. And then she leaned forward and pressed her mouth onto mine, her big powerful lips prying my mouth open. I grew dizzy from the taste of the soft old felt deep in the back of her mouth. She shoved me and I fell backward onto the dressing table, sprawled among the combs and brushes and safety pins. I raised my head and looked down across my body, only to see my own froghood silently betraying me, standing up stiff and slim like some kind of fuzzy green bean. She lifted her skirt and straddled my waist, her vast pink belly eclipsing my narrow torso, and then lowered herself gracelessly onto me, my slim little green bean lost in her copious velveteen folds. I think I fainted then, or at least I have no memory of the actual act. When I came around she was heaving heavily on top of me, her cheek against mine, panting hard, right on the brink. Her husky voice loud in my ear, almost shouting, “Oh Kermy Kermy Kermy. Oh God KERMIT!” I felt her stiffen and then there was silence.
Ferry Crossing
I don’t know why I remember that last ferry crossing we took together. I was 13; Sara was 17. It was a humid summer afternoon and the ferry was almost empty. We sat across from each other, a hundred ivory mah jong tiles spread out on the table between us. At the end of the table a big oscillating fan stood by the windows blowing cool brackish ocean air over us. The engines throbbed from the effort of the crossing, with a deep resonance more felt than heard. Sara was frowning in concentration, biting her lip, staring at the tiles, shoulders slouched forward, hair falling in her face. My root beer was too syrupy to drink, but the can was ice cold so I sat holding it against my temple, staring at the few square inches of skin where the first button of her shirt had come undone just below the collar. She glanced up and caught my eye, and her frown hardened. It wasn’t my turn, but I looked down and started studying the mah jong tiles intently, blood flooding to my face, my cheeks burning. Eventually she must have played a tile, but I don’t remember that.
Evacuation
I don’t know why I remember so clearly the night before the evacuation. I’d finished loading our airship and I walked alone out past the edge of the compound, across the brome, and down to the levee. The ground was damp by the levee – the rancid ocean already seeping in through the stones. A breeze blew in from ocean carrying a thick, noxious fog. Beyond the levee the ocean stood stagnant, its waves silenced, its fish floating dead on the surface. From behind me drifted the noise of the airfield. A thousand tethered airships packed together on the tiny airfield between the cliffs, their frames keening under the stress as the breeze pushed them all a foot or two further inland. I stood there as long as I could, gradually growing cold and damp, and then finally I took the last of the useless iron clovers and pitched it into the ocean.
