A Spark

My senior year of high school our English teacher asked our class to write a story based on three pictures he gave us. I cannot now remember what was depicted in these pictures, but those six years ago, this was the short story I came up with. Nagging and unpolished, it's not much to bark at, but I could cultivate it...

     “Susan Baker” appears on the screen one letter at a time. The well manicured hands continue to clack away at the keyboard as the editorial on Cher’s wardrobe unfolds. She has always been responsible for the one or two actual articles in her brother’s magazine. She had formerly referred to fashion as the envy based, long-legged tramp displaying, money mongering industry, but her grandparents had founded the magazine and created it from the dust of the Depression for their future generations to inherit and run. So she had hopped on the family band wagon, and the job now consumed her life. It paid well, and she was part of the elite in Manhattan. One of the best apartments money could buy was hers, the most eligible bachelors craved to make her acquaintance, and if she could not purchase the most contemporary designer outfits and jewelry, they were hers to borrow from the company’s stocks. Yes, the world was at her fingertips, she thought, and with a little maneuvering it would be eating out of the palm of her hand.



       She awoke to the buzzing of a black fly against the canvas of her hastily pitched tent. The night air had crept in while she slept, and a fine layer of dew now coated her sleeping bag. Rorek still slept soundlessly beside her, his ginger beard shining with little rainbows as the rising sun slipped between the flaps of the tent onto the beads of dew. A feeling of utter contentedness and ease washed over Susan, and she lay back down and watched the sun slowly dry the contents of their humble shelter. The black fly came to land upon her arm, and she looked on quietly as it took its breakfast. She felt the pinch of the bite, then the throbbing, itching sensation, but still she did not move. As a breeze blew in and opened the front of the tent, Susan peered out lazily at the breathtaking landscape, full of the dips of valleys and peaks of mountains. She and her husband had settled not far from the sheer face of a cliff that shadowed miles of the valley below at both sunset and sunrise. Husband. Husband? She blinked rapidly.





      The beep of a coffee machine. A click of a door down the hallway. A groan, a snap of the neck, and she slides into her slippers and down the hallway. Her voicemail blinks red, a tiny beating heart telling of news to come. She feels her own heart quicken as she hastens for the phone, and unavoidable reaction her body has whenever the slightest sign appears that her train may jump a new track that will lead her out of the monotony of an everyday routine.
      Three messages. The first one issues a soft voice speaking of scheduling a second date to follow up the last. The “last” date Susan had had with the man was intended to be exactly that; she thought two weeks of avoiding his phone calls would have made her sentiments clear. She deletes the message before the voice reminds her of his name. The past is once again swept under one of her overpriced, overstuffed chintz sofas. The second message is another complaint left by a tenant. The old woman leaves a complaint at least weekly of the late hours Susan keeps. She clicks “delete” again. The final message introduces itself as a “Doctor Vaughn”. Vaughn speaks firmly and informs Susan with little tenderness of her brother’s passing away very early that morning. “We send you our condolences,” the woman says stiffly and hangs up.
       Susan’s brow wrinkles and she blinks once, twice. She clicks delete again, walks into the kitchen and pours herself a generous cup of coffee. The shock ebbs quickly. She sits at the table and looks out the window at the line of skyscrapers leading off into the distance. Susan can see five blocks worth of the city in any direction before buildings and streets begin to be obscured by smog. She awaits the grief, now an expected visitor after the passing of yet another family member, but it does not come. In fact, she feels a smirk creep across her face. The magazine is hers to run. The power is hers to hold. Though these newly realized promotions are running through her head, and that ghostly smirk is plastered on her face, Susan feels no joy or anticipation in her heart. She does not acknowledge this void however, and continues preparing for a day full of new responsibility.



      The worn pot sat precariously over the tepee of logs Rorek had arranged. Sparks flitted and tumbled from the flint he struck until the faggot caught fire. Rorek sighed deeply, feeling like the Neanderthal who discovered fire and provided for the family. “Good job mountain man,” Susan teased, “Now all you need to do is bring a haunch of raw, bloody meat back to camp.”
      Rorek set the faggot under the tepee of logs and the flames quickly licked the new tinder. He smiled, “Well maybe when we return to society I’ll provide milady with some meat and potatoes. But for now it’s looking like another breakfast of oatmeal.”
      A cloud passed over Susan’s face, “You mean IF we return to society.” The fire crackled with warmth, as if trying to break the silence that had crept between the two. Bubbles rose from the bottom of the pot and Susan poured in a few handfuls of rolled oats. Rorek watched her carefully; he did not want to make her feel as though she were being examined like a patient, but nor would he question what was on her mind as any husband was wont to do. He could tell she was plagued somehow, an internal battle that arose when she looked beyond the beauty of nature and the simple life she escaped to in the lonely cliffs of California. He had always felt the presence of a doubt in her mind, and was only now beginning to understand that she struggled in the confines of human society. She had never mentioned permanently abandoning it before. “I don’t know what’s real,” she whispered, eyes lowered to the frothy oats.
      “Pardon?” Rorek mumbled thickly, still untangling his own thoughts.
      “What life am I living?” Susan wailed maniacally, “I dream sometimes that I picked up on that materialistic life in New York. That magazine, y’know? But I’m such a ghost of myself in that world, it’s like a nightmare. I have no soul, no emotional connection to that place. I crave power and money there, and it is all I live for, but I cannot feel any compassion in my heart.” She was breathing hard now, and as if their breakfast cooked in unison with her moods, the oatmeal slowly boiled over the edges of the pot. The volcano of fragrant, tan mush sizzled and burned on the fire. Rorek seized the pot’s handle and carelessly flung it to the ground, hissing as a red stripe flared across the fingers that had been grasping the boiling pot a second before. He plunged his hand into the bucket of cleaning water that he had taken from a brook earlier that morning. The pot had miraculously remained upright, with only a small trail of oats stringing from the brim of the pot to the fire, where the oats burned black. A sticky skin was already hardening over the gruel. Susan stood rooted to the spot where she has previously sprung up in her excitement. She seemed stunned into silence, but when Rorek calmly dried his hand and began ladling out the oatmeal, she spoke again.
      “I don’t even know if this is real, Rorek.” He looked up into her face which was smeared with some dirt from sleeping on the ground under their canvas tent. Lines around her mouth and brow appeared and her eyes glistened. She seemed almost childlike, pleading and confused.
      Rorek tried to laugh it off, “Look at my hand; you can’t get second degree burns in a dream.”
      She continued to look at him levelly, “I can’t even remember how I came to be here or be with you or be who I am. In my… ‘dream’ I know my whole history. All of my progress through life sets itself up like a timeline. I know the faces of all my lovers, if not their names, as well as the order in which they came into and exited my life. I have the knowledge of a full life in my dreams without the soul to connect emotions with the experiences. Do you understand?” She raised her eyebrows at him.
      He struggled to clarify, “Alright, taking this seriously… you’re saying that right now you have a full range of emotions. You feel love, anger, sadness, excitement, et cetera. You know what you want to do with your life and you know where your heart and desires lie, but you cannot remember how you came to be in California. You don’t know why you are… you, so to speak.” Susan nodded hopefully. She walked over to a pine tree and ran her hands down the bark. When she hit a patch of tar-like sap she eagerly scraped the drop off with her finger. A pine needle floated forlornly in the sap among the other indistinguishable specks. She massaged the sap slowly between her fingers, savoring every abrasive grain she felt against her thumb. Rorek looked away, feeling slightly embarrassed by this almost carnal pleasure she emitted while testing her senses of touch.
      She kept her back to him and said clearly, as if speaking to an audience, “I love this world best, where my heart and soul may be full to bursting with life though my history is lost. Where is the line drawn between dreaming and living?”



She opens her eyes and looks down at a marble floor. Susan moves her legs and sees a slim foot encased in a stiletto heel jiggle beneath her. She sits up and looks around her brother’s former office. His will sits upon the oak wood desk, a sole piece of paper, slightly crinkled and simply written. Even near death he was brief and to the point. No messages of love, no embellishments. She tries to conjure up a time where he had looked at her with the kind of brotherly love a typical man would have for his life-long sister, but somehow she cannot even conjure up a detailed face. Susan sees shiny black shoes and a crisp, pinstripe suit. A silk tie frames a thick neck leading to a square jaw and dimpled chin. Dark, closely shorn hair tops a cleanly shaven face. There her memory stops. He died from a stroke. Or was it a heart attack? “Stress related” is a description she remembers the doctor using. Susan focuses back on her brother.
       She can picture no passionate mouth, no bright eyes, and no straight nose. The figure she has created hints at no expression or emotion. A black hole appears where his nose would have been and expands across the areas his cheekbones, eyes, and mouth would have occupied. The blackness begins to spin as if it were a batter being stirred by an invisible spoon. Susan locks the image away in her memory without further scrutiny.
      Clearing her throat, she examines her new office. Some framed family portraits line the wall where the tall double doors stand. Racks of clothes wait expectantly to be modeled in the right hand corner of the room by the files of magazines of past. Her eyes move across to the other side of the room. A small dark lump lies discreetly in the left corner. Something expands from the mound, green and life-like. A sensation of curiosity peaks in Susan’s chest as she swivels her chair away from the desk towards the phenomenon.
      It’s a plant. A tree, in fact. Thin, web-like roots crawl out and away from the mound in every direction and the tree shoots up toward the ceiling. Susan lifts herself from her chair as panic erupts in her chest like a balloon. Moss, ferns, lemongrass, and forget-me-nots sprout hungrily from the tree roots and consume the room. A man enters the room, calmly stepping over the surrounding growth. She scrambles to remember the name of this other love affair she’d cast aside.
      “Another tumble under the desk, my chick-pea?” He says. The words drip out like burned fudge sauce; thick, sweet, and foul. Susan gazes up into his face with disgust, a retort tart on her tongue, and sees black eyes; or rather, shadowed, empty eye sockets.
      He seizes her arms and presses his mouth against hers as she tries to squirm from his grasp. When he pulls away, she sees a syrupy, black oil ooze from his mouth and eyes and pool on the floor. The thriving plant life retreats away from the substance, which burns and bubbles on the floor like acid. A vine twists quickly up the man’s leg and winds about his torso and face as if to defend the still mounting shrubbery from the poisonous goo. Without struggle, the man subdues to his fate and is soon wound up in vines. With a yelp, Susan makes a dash for the door and turns the solid gold doorknob. The doors swing open without force and the knob of gold melts into boiling oil in her hand. Susan screams sharply, flinging the oil from her fingers and wiping her blistered hand on her Prada brand skirt. The plants have already taken over the cubicles, and though all matter of man-made material is pooling into burning oil at her coworkers feet, they continue their business, undeterred by the chaos. Rorek stands with his back to the room, facing the elevator doors, which slowly open. With one stride, he steps inside and turns to face the decaying office. Susan registers his presence and identity and madly runs to stop his exit. As the doors begin to shut she sees his worried face, tears catching in his rough beard.
      His mouth hangs open and repeatedly mouths, “This is your power. This is your fortune.” The elevator doors shut with a click and all is consumed by burning, black ooze.