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Kyle Cornett-Ching currently lives in a small cave, hidden beneath the ground. Occasionally he sends out the products of his fevered imaginings in return for fame, glory, and, one day he hopes, some form of cash recompense (GASP). He attends the University of British Columbia Okanagan, and thanks his parents for their constant support. Currently he is working on a massive novel, and has a number of other short stories fighting to be published.
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Words
It has been a well known fact for centuries, millennia even, that the raw energy of the universe is shaped and controlled by words. The ancient Egyptians knew this, and blanketed their tombs with words to protect and provide safe passage for the souls of the deceased. The Norse god Odin gained the ability to write, so the legend goes, by hanging, dead, from a tree for nine days. This is hardly a surprising sacrifice. Words are important. And they are powerful.
Consider the rising of the sun. We can read the words, 'the rising of the sun', and form in our heads a picture of the sun rising. But what if the word 'sun' did not exist? What would be rising? Would anything? Or consider the verb, 'to rise'. How do you define movement without using a verb? And what of the word 'of'? Even those two letters form an image in one's mind that would be subtly different if they were absent.
I, too, have laboured to gain the power of these words. The power to take from a formless void a static, controllable, whole. To this end I have climbed mountains that weren't mountains, but merely lumps of rock, and in truth were not even that. I have fought nameless monsters, and in naming them, driven them back, tamed them, and made them fight for me. I have endured pain which is no longer beyond the human capacity to describe. I have the words. For all intents and purposes, I am God.
Yet I seem to have lost one. A word of unsurpassed power. Without it, I can't...
Let me start with what I can write, which is everything. This is an adolescent male, Caucasian, ginger haired, freckled, fit but not athletic. He is turning nineteen years old in one month, but today he is only eighteen. He has a name. Daniel.
He is sitting in an armchair, in the corner of a room approximately eighteen feet wide and fourteen feet across. There are other couches in it. This room is a student lounge, a standard hiding place for slackers, and students who have no other classes to be at, but do not wish to begin the inevitable studying which must follow. The couches are mismatched, donated cast-offs, and what new seats there are tend to be cheap and uncomfortable. Daniel is waiting for someone.
The next word is Ameline. This word describes a young woman, nineteen years old. Her hair is short, jet black, and a sharp contrast to her pale face which the bangs frame perfectly. So far, the ravages of time have brought only caring, sensitive eyes, a thin, tight body, and a pair of breasts, not enormous, but definitely visible. She is the most beautiful woman that Daniel has ever seen.
She sits in the couch next to him. "Hey Daniel."
Daniel responds...and here, here is where I need the word! The one magic word that breaks the will of Ameline, and puts her heart, body and soul into Daniel's palm to be dispensed as he wishes.
Ameline sighs, "Fine. Well, you know. Same old, same old. That class is really boring as all hell, though. I don't even know why I have to take it."
Daniel speaks, "..."
"I guess," she replies, "but it seems kind of useless for my major."
One more word, to become God well and truly... 'friendship?' No, that's not what I'm looking for.
*
This is a stone bench, in a park on the campus. It provides a beautiful view of the vivid reds, oranges and purples of the setting sun. There is a tree to one side of the bench, which is putting forth the first blossoms of spring. Ameline is sitting on the bench, with her head in her hands, and Daniel is pacing back and forth, stopping occasionally to lean on the tree for support.
"..." Daniel's words are punctuated by hand gestures.
"I know that now!" shouts Ameline. "Of course I know that now! But he said he loved me. He said he loved me Daniel, and I thought I loved him back."
Daniel leans against the tree for a moment.
"I just...I just can't believe he'd do that to me," Ameline whispers, between tears. She begins to beat her fist against the rough surface of the bench. "I can't believe he'd do that to me!"
Daniel whips around, and grabs her fist. "..." he begs her.
The impotence of this demands a rewrite. Had I known earlier, I...I could have written the words that saved her this atrocity... I'm God, damn it. The world bows to my will. The world bows to my will!
"I thought I loved him, Daniel, but he was just using me, using me, he was...was using me..." she breaks down completely into sobs.
Daniel stumbles to find the right words to say, "..." Always, always stumbling for words! I knew this once! I owned these words!
"You're right...you're right," she calms down a little bit, "I just need to find someone who cares. But sometimes I feel like nobody does..."
Daniel hugs Ameline, and perhaps, sometimes, no words are needed, because the next thing she says is,
"You're sweet."
I can almost see it. The key to the universe, the slippery bugger which has evaded every grasp of my recollection, but I've got it now. I can hear it resound in my ears, I can feel it rising out of my larynx, taste it on my tongue, and feel it dribbling down my arm through the pen and onto the page...
Daniel moves his lips towards Ameline...but she turns away.
This word is 'Confidante'. It is not what I am looking for.
"I can't...right now...I just don't...you and I....and...it's pretty late...I should go..."
"..." Daniel apologizes desperately.
"No...it's not...just...I'll see you tommorow..."
Ameline flees.
Daniel, speechless, watches her go.
NO! He does not watch her go! Chase her, you dumb shit! I can't do all the work for you!
*
This is maddening. The world spins on my fingertips. I define its threats, hopes, movements, dreams, and fears. I am the writer. I am this world's God!
"..." Daniel requests.
Ameline responds, "Daniel, I don't think you know what you really want."
I know what I want. I wrote it. Daniel loves Ameline.
"..." Daniel pleads.
"It feels like...like you found some new courage or something, and you want to hurry and use it before it disappears again. Why are you in such a rush?"
I can see it proceed so simply in my mind's eye...but the words don't come. The word I need doesn't come. Did it ever exist? Without it, I am an incomplete and broken god, worthy of no prayers, no entreaties, no faith. Alone, while the fickle worshipers desert me for newer and shinier writers. Writers who have the words that they need to hear.
I will not accept that. Ars longa. My writing is beyond the reach of time and the cares of the world. Daniel loves Ameline. Ameline will love Daniel back.
The rest is merely a matter of semantics.
*
This is Ameline's bedroom. Posters adorn the walls, a mixture of various interests of youth, Pokemon, Barbie, Sonic, segueing without rhyme or reason into rock bands, movie stars and a calender with firemen on it. Daniel hadn't initially noticed the fireman calender, but as the situation has... (where are the words!)... moved into new territory, he has begun to feel rather uncomfortably as though his performance is being compared to them. The room shows many hallmarks of being occupied by one who does not or does rarely throw things away, and he is comforted by this thought. And then his attention is drawn back to her body, and the firemen are gone from his mind.
How did this happen? I didn't write this... I couldn't have. Not five minutes ago, they were studying. Studying! Daniel was on the bed, reading the textbook, and picking absentmindedly at the decorative stitching on the pink blanket. Odd lumps and thin places testified that the bed had been made in a hurry before his arrival. Ameline sat at the cluttered desk, poring over hastily scribbled and only marginally legible notes.
"..." Daniel read.
"That was a quote from, Kennedy I think."
Her parents were out of town. Being nineteen, she said, allowed her a considerable degree of freedom.
"..."
"'Just watch me'? Yeah it was, it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis."
"..."
"Trudeau? Where does it say Trudeau! Give me that!"
She snatches the textbook from Daniel and confirms that the quote in question did not actually have anything to do with the global nuclear standoff of October 1962, and everything to do with the FLQ Crisis of October 1970.
Ameline tosses the book to the floor, and begins rubbing her neck.
"I'm going to fail this," she says, "I just know it."
And then... someone suggests massages. Who did that? Daniel wouldn't do that. She wouldn't do it. It wasn't my idea... and now suddenly her shirt is gone, fluttering, empty, down to the little lane which Ameline keeps clear of accumulated detritus in order to provide easy access between her door and her bed. It lands half in the lane, and half on top the discarded text book, like an empty shopping bag.
This word is... is...this word is...
Ameline's bra is open. Daniel's hand moves down her side. Daniel's hand... Daniel gropes Ameline. Ameline feels like a soft, warm, stress ball, the kind you squeeze to relieve tension. A water balloon, filled with tepid water, and made out of silk. A velvet pillow, already heated. A...
"..."
Ameline laughs, "Accident my ass. That was premeditated." She looks at him, and suddenly her face is serious, "Daniel... I don't... I really don't think I feel this way about..."
He kisses her.
Then he...
Then he...
Then he...
*
The...sun...rises.
The next few days are awkward.
Ameline feels strongly that she and Daniel will never work as a romantic pair.
Daniel also feels strongly. What he feels though, is a much more complicated question.
"..."
"I...I don't know why, Daniel. I just wanted to know I guess. Know what it's like, beyond just watching it happen on TV, or reading it, or having it described, I guess."
This is not what I wanted.
"..."
"Again? I...well, sure, maybe, I just..."
This is meaningless sound, random letters spewing across the screen as though an animal had run across the keyboard.
"But I don't love you Daniel. I'm sorry. You're a good friend, I can't think of anyone else I'd want my first time to be with, I just..."
The word I was looking for...
"I just don't love you."
...was not 'Benefits'.
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