Free Minutes
I figured it'd been quite a while since the last little break from Forget About Me, so I'd put some stuff up here that I'm actually working on. This is what you might call a "teaser" for a short story I'm working on about cellular phones. ENJOY.
Free Minutes
Sometimes I’ll feel my phone ring. Feel the vibrations against my flank where it rests in my front pocket. Left side. I’ll feel it shudder, I’ll jerk like a gunslinger and pull it out only to find that no one’s calling, no one’s called. Then, a few minutes later, I’ll feel it again, only this time more real, more definite after the phantom ring. The ghost message. I’ll pick up the phone and tell the other person on the line, in the ether, whatever you’d call it, that I totally knew they were going to call. That I felt their ring before it ever happened. I used to laugh about it.
Sometimes that will happen. Sometimes when my phone’s still on the dresser.
I come here when I want to be alone for a while. I like the static of the ocean, hissing and fizzing every time a wave sloshes in. There aren’t too many breakers against the cliffs, and the soft collision makes for a lulling, beautiful drone. It’s the most natural thing in the world I can imagine. It’s a sound that existed before there was anything to hear it. Ancient. Unbreakable.
I want to stop thinking for a while. I’ll come here and stare at the waves until I fail to realize that I’m not really staring at anything anymore, that my eyes have focused beyond the waves, beyond the ocean and the horizon. Until I don’t even recognize that I’m no longer looking at anything in front of me, but am staring down eternity. Locking eyes with infinity. The great void that is beyond and within everything around me. I can’t ever think about looking at it, looking through everything else, because as soon as I realize I’m staring off I look at something in front of me to test it, like realizing you’re dreaming. The first thing you try to do is wake up.
I’m not sure if I’d want to be able to know I was staring into it. Who knows what that could do to a person?
It’s about that time I realize I’m doing it again, and about that time I hone in on a cloud bank disappearing over the horizon. And about that time, my thigh starts to feel a familiar shake, and I jump as if I’ve never felt it before, as if I’ve been waiting for it all my life.
“Hello?”
Free Minutes
Sometimes I’ll feel my phone ring. Feel the vibrations against my flank where it rests in my front pocket. Left side. I’ll feel it shudder, I’ll jerk like a gunslinger and pull it out only to find that no one’s calling, no one’s called. Then, a few minutes later, I’ll feel it again, only this time more real, more definite after the phantom ring. The ghost message. I’ll pick up the phone and tell the other person on the line, in the ether, whatever you’d call it, that I totally knew they were going to call. That I felt their ring before it ever happened. I used to laugh about it.
Sometimes that will happen. Sometimes when my phone’s still on the dresser.
I come here when I want to be alone for a while. I like the static of the ocean, hissing and fizzing every time a wave sloshes in. There aren’t too many breakers against the cliffs, and the soft collision makes for a lulling, beautiful drone. It’s the most natural thing in the world I can imagine. It’s a sound that existed before there was anything to hear it. Ancient. Unbreakable.
I want to stop thinking for a while. I’ll come here and stare at the waves until I fail to realize that I’m not really staring at anything anymore, that my eyes have focused beyond the waves, beyond the ocean and the horizon. Until I don’t even recognize that I’m no longer looking at anything in front of me, but am staring down eternity. Locking eyes with infinity. The great void that is beyond and within everything around me. I can’t ever think about looking at it, looking through everything else, because as soon as I realize I’m staring off I look at something in front of me to test it, like realizing you’re dreaming. The first thing you try to do is wake up.
I’m not sure if I’d want to be able to know I was staring into it. Who knows what that could do to a person?
It’s about that time I realize I’m doing it again, and about that time I hone in on a cloud bank disappearing over the horizon. And about that time, my thigh starts to feel a familiar shake, and I jump as if I’ve never felt it before, as if I’ve been waiting for it all my life.
“Hello?”
Submitted by DeadLanguage at 6:16 AM
2 Comments:
Eeenteresting.
There were a couple of places in the next-to-last paragraph where I had to read over a phrase a time or two, to make sure I understood what you were saying. But maybe that's a good thing--keeps you from just scanning over a passage without really knowing what's going on, and such.
I like how you communicate the idea of "jerking away" from that trancelike state before you fully realize you're in it. Kinda like the unavoidable need to wake up from an almost-lucid dream, just before you reach complete clarity.
Really neat, actually. Both the thing about feeling the cell-phone vibrating, and the snapping out of a trance are things i've experienced, and yet never talked about and never knew for certain anyone else experienced. Always neat to see things like that expressed by other people. Makes me like a character when I think we've got something in common.
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