I decided it was about time for me to do another random word story. For this task, I use a random word generator to produce 3 nouns, 3 adjectives, 3 verbs, 3 adverbs, 1 interjection, and 1 preposition. Then, from this list of words, I write a piece of flash fiction.
Today's story will use the following words.
Nouns: mud, dignity, postscript
Adjectives: ancient, hollow, loving
Verbs: flow, capture, devise
Adverbs: officially, heavily, infinitely
Interjection: Oh!
Preposition: beyond
Then, for fun I created a Wordle out of these words. I like Wordles, so that's a good enough reason to do it.
Now, here's the story. I hope you enjoy it!
Falling
into Love
As a young girl, I wrote down almost everything I saw and
felt in a worn little spiral notebook.
They were almost a kind of postscript
that helped me organize the information I couldn’t otherwise decipher. I wanted to devise an explanation for everything.
Let me be clear.
Curiosity and exploration are wonderful things. There’s nothing wrong with analyzing the
world in order to understand it. It’s a
desirable thing. Yet a list of facts, of
cause and effect relationships, can’t touch what it feels like to be
human. You need real life experience to
get the whole picture. Call it practical
experimentation, if you will.
I’ll never forget the day I learned this crucial
lesson. I was eighteen. Officially
an adult, I applied my infallible (to my mind anyway) logic to everything with
renewed confidence. I heard about the
so-called beauty of love from all sources.
Despite all the fans of love, the idea of loving someone for life seemed ludicrous to me. I judged every couple as I saw as delusional
and doomed to failure. So the idea of
leaping into romantic entanglements seemed ridiculous. Of course I wouldn’t waste my time with such
nonsense.
It was our last day of high school. I walked home with my friend Jesse that
afternoon. I’d known him since his
family moved to town halfway through Kindergarten. He was easily one of my oldest friends, and
he loved to argue with me about my outlook on life. As a writer, he investigated the world
through literary means, and he had a decidedly romantic perspective on the
world. While we didn’t always agree, I enjoyed
our debates.
The rain had fallen heavily
through most of the day, but by the time we set out for home, it was barely
a drizzle. We tromped through the damp
streets discussing the nature of string (it was his day to select the topic of
our debate). I stuck to issues such as
tensile strength, functionality, and material.
He focused on its ability to hold things together. “If we tied a long enough string between us
when we both leave for college, we’d have that one thing in common. Each little movement one of us made would
have an influence of the other.”
In retrospect, I understand his reason for taking the
conversation in that direction. Yet at
the time, I jotted down his latest argument in the notebook I reserved
specially for our post-school discussions.
“Perhaps, but the string would also wreak havoc on traffic patterns,” I
noted.
At this point, we were approaching a downward slope that led
to a small creek that flows through
the middle of town. My house lay just beyond that, so we usually cut across
to save time. On this day I instinctively
turned to go down the slope.
Jesse’s hand gently captured
my wrist. “It rained a lot today. Maybe we should go around the long way. You don’t want to get your shoes soaked.”
I looked down. The
water level didn’t look that bad. “It’ll
be fine,” I insisted as I took a step.
At that precise moment, the mud gave way and left me struggling to get a foothold. Jesse automatically tightened his grip on my
wrist as he attempted to hold me upright.
In the end though, gravity prevailed, and as a result of his efforts,
received two falling bodies for the price of one misstep.
Well played, gravity.
Well played.
Dignity evaporated as Jesse and I tumbled one
over the other down the mucky inclined plane.
He held me close to his body all the way down, as if that would somehow
shield me from the fall. Soon our
momentum brought us to the bottom, just beside the water. He came to a rest on top of me.
That’s when it happened.
My head spun slightly from the dramatic tumble as I looked into Jesse’s
face. Mud plastered his cheeks and hair,
and a twig stuck out from behind his ear.
Yet through all of that, I saw the concern on his face. He leaned down slightly so he could get a
good look at me, and I couldn’t avoid the intricate details of his green irises. Something warm, something wonderfully
unexpected seemed to echo infinitely in
his eyes. My chest suddenly felt hollow, and I realized something was missing
from that moment.
“Oh!” That single
word escaped me as the enormity of it all sank in. He’d been in my life all this time, yet now,
for no explicable reason, I saw him in an entirely different way.
He seemed confused by my monosyllabic utterance. “Amie, are you okay?”
In response, I slid an arm around his neck and pulled him
even closer. When I pressed my lips
against his, I did it wholeheartedly. I
intended to savor the warmth, the pressure his lips exerted against mine, and
the way my body reacted to all of it. My
chest no longer felt empty as a glowing feeling swelled inside me. It felt like something ancient and scarcely understood was at work, pinning us together in
a cloud of feeling. I needed to know every
detail it.
Gotta love biology.
When I pulled back, Jesse looked bewildered. “Did you hit your head?” he asked.
I laughed. “I don’t
think so.”
Satisfied by that answer, he leaned down and kissed me
again. I accepted the kiss with fervor,
anxious to feel more.
Never underestimate the power of practical experimentation.
