Fever Dreams?

So, I think I might be sick. There's been this wicked stomach thing going around, and while I haven't thrown up (in sixteen years) I'm not feeling great. Sleeping last night was a challenge because I had horrible chills - but I also had a crazy, crazy dream. For no other purpose but to tell someone...here goes. I dreamt that James Franco came to my house to try and sell me a vacuum cleaner. He was dressed as cookie monster, had a sesame street back pack, and was holding a full sized gum ball machine like the ones at the mall. It was bizarre.

Valentine's Flash Fiction

Clich´e Chronicles Vol. 2

"Love is a Choice"

The building was unassuming and sterile, the windows obscured by part-time-model couples clad in overreaching smiles. A sign blazed above the door in stark white helvetica. “Cupid, Inc.” I had seen their ads in the paper – thin, finger-staining fliers that boasted promises of love. Valentine's Day special; fall in love for 50% off the whole month of February! My stomach hurt.

       “You ready, David?”

        I turned to face her. Riley was stunning. She had a small, angular face with exaggerated features. Her frame was soft and somehow willowy. The girl was all eyes and tits, but I didn't feel a thing.We'd gotten married in our youth, blinded by the arrogance of young adulthood. Our marriage would be different. Chemistry was an illusion, and sparks were overrated. We would show the world that neither was a necessity for success. All one needed was friendship and drive. We were wrong. 
        “I don't know.”

        She released an exasperated huff that dissipated like smoke on the February air.
        “So, you don't even want to love me.” It wasn't a question.

        “I...I don't know, Ry, do you love me?”

         Her face twisted into a knot. “I want to. I want this to work.”

         I thought back over the almost four years we'd spent as husband and wife; the loneliness, the silences, the petty arguments, the awkward sex.
        “Why?”

        “Think of how much easier it would be, David. No failure, no judgement, no having to rebuild our lives from nothing. We can be happy.”

         I looked to the open-mouthed smiles of the models on the windows, their eyes lost in laughter. Happy looked a lot like lying to me.
        “This is really what you want?”

         “It is.”

         There was something attractive about going back to sleep; of plugging into the matrix and dissolving into a world of pet-names and smiley brunches.

         Without meaning to I pulled my phone from my pocket and watched the little green light blink. I already knew who the waiting message was from. Cora was a strange woman. In a world of gingerbread men she was a genuine original. Her only cookie-cutter twin on this rock was me. We each possessed one hemisphere of the same brain. I hadn't meant to fall in love with her. Hell, I hadn't even meant to meet her.

       I looked up again to the clownish faces on the window, my eyes aching with the threat of angry tears.
       “Okay.”

         Riley grabbed my hand and headed for the door. The waiting room was pristine. The lighting was a harsh, florescent white that showcased every coffee stain on the battered travel magazines. Plan your second honeymoon!

        “Riley and David Rae?” 
         A woman with a clipboard stood framed in the doorway, her pink scrubs dotted with tiny red hearts.

        “That's us.” 
          Riley stood with a forced smile and grabbed my hand. I suppressed a scoff. We were there because we weren't in love, and everyone knew it. There was no point in pretending.

         The “nurse” (or whatever the hell she was) led us into a small room that housed what looked like two dental chairs. The green vinyl squeaked beneath me as I slid onto it and stared into the overhead light.

        “So, tell me a bit about your situation.”
         The "nurse" put the tip of a pen to her clipboard and looked at Riley to speak.

        “Well, David and I have been married for a little over three years now. We never dated. We'd been friends for years and just, I don't know, thought it would be a good idea...”

        The nurse nodded as she wrote. “Vegas?” she asked.

        Riley blushed. “No, actually. We had a wedding.”

        The nurse smiled. “Well, your situation is very common. People take the dive for lots of reasons and end up sitting right where you are now.”
        I couldn't help but think of all the loveless asses that had been right where mine was. I fought a frown.  
        “Well, if I could just have you each sign and date this form, I'll go mix up the magic, and the Doctor will be in shortly.”

       Riley signed the form without reading it, then handed the clipboard to me.

I, ______, am aware that all effects and treatments provided by Cupid Inc. are temporary and require biannual procedures to maintain. Cupid Inc. cannot be held liable for any subsequent legal and/or criminal damage on part of the patient or his/her significant other due to the loss of said effects, i.e. physical/psychological injury resulting from spousal/domestic abuse, divorce, alimony, child support...

I looked up from the clipboard. Riley was examining her fingernails. I couldn't understand how she was so calm while my insides were screaming. My chest ached with a pain that made me wonder if I was dying. I could hear my own pulse, and couldn't tear my thoughts away from Cora; her mossy green eyes, her nose, crooked from a childhood injury, the tiny freckles on her face only visible close up. She was not what one would call a typical beauty, but she was the most gorgeous creature I'd ever seen. I wanted to scream.
        The door opened.

       “Hi there, folks, I'm Larry Bennet, or as my colleagues call me, 'Doctor Feelgood.'”
        The room echoed with his and Riley's dry laughter, and the nurse re-entered the room with two syringes on a tray.

       “We all set?”
         She looked at me and the form in my hands.

       “Oh, uh...” I raised the clipboard and was distracted by the glint on my wedding ring. Forsaking all others...fuck. Closing my eyes I pressed the pen to the paper and signed my name.

       “Great!”
        The nurse grabbed the clipboard from my hands and immediately rolled up my left shirtsleeve. She used two fingers to tap against the inside of my elbow and tied my upper arm with an oversized rubber band.
       “Doctor, he's ready.”

       Doctor Dipshit approached me with needle raised. His too-white smile was showing too much and matched his tacky lab coat too well.
       I'm sorry, Cora. I rammed my eyes shut, and held her image on the inside of their lids.

       The pinch of the needle was brief. The doctor untied my upper arm, and allowed the sticky, alien warmth to spread throughout my body, slowly erasing the magic from Cora's face. She slipped away.
       I sat for a small eternity, feeling progressively more apathetic until I heard my name.

      “David?”
        It was the voice of an angel. I snapped my eyes open with a smile on my face and gazed at my wife, perfection personified. Her giant blue eyes pierced my soul, and her frame made me want to cry. I roved my eyes over her tiny details. I loved all of them, and would continue to love them... for up to six months.  

2012, Carolynn Staib - cfstaib@gmail.com

Cradle Lake - Flash Fiction

Cradle Lake

We saw all through amber gauze, which blurred lines of shapes, and of realities. Cicadas hummed from the trees; a lulling static song that buzzed like the adrenaline in my veins. Even now I have never felt less judged, never freer, never more at peace.

Our bronzed torsos stood bare above the surface of the water, glistening with the drying dew that still clung to our skin from the swim. It ran as tears down his back, and across the wasp sting from the previous day’s hike. I had thought him so brave for not crying. Every few moments he would reach round and scratch the place with a wince. “Don’t touch it,” I had said with a splash. The fresh drops upon his shoulders like beads of crystal shone in the light of the intensifying sun. I watched them evaporate from the angry wound, which I so desperately wanted to soothe.

I had only wanted to make it better, and for him to want me to. It wasn’t until I pulled my lips from his skin that I truly realized what I had done. Awkward, I shifted my feet in the sand beneath the waves.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he finally said.

I sank my head to escape, straining to see my toes at the bottom of the water. “Sorry.”  The sound of campers laughing passed behind us down the beach. He looked up from my face to watch them disappear before the silence drown us both.

I hadn’t expected his hands, warm despite the stifling August heat. They grasped my shoulders and urged me to face him. He didn’t say a word, only pulled me against him, my head upon his chest, his arms cradling my soul.

            It may have been the first day that I believed in love; a concept tossed about throughout my youngest years, but always challenged by behavior. Like dad, who seemed fond of the word but left us anyway. But the thing I felt then did not at all resemble the obligatory notion I’d encountered at home. It was as though I had become better – undergone a strange metamorphosis that rendered me complete. In his arms was clarity, and there I was content.

            A fire was lit inside me as his chin caressed my face, and my skin erupted when his timid mouth approached my own. There was no space to separate us, and still the whole of the universe hung suspended between our lips. Eternity passed within that moment. Suns and dependent civilizations were born and died, but no time had passed at all. Time was just an illusion created by men in suits. And then it was over.

I was thrust from him, disoriented by the spots in my eyes the sun had made. Tiny tidal waves rushed behind me as I fell into the water’s arms and watched him recover from the moment, facing the beach and waving at our counselor.

            “Guys, come on, it’s almost time for chapel!” He ran as fast as the lake would allow, the water jumping up and nipping at his jaw. I was hurt by his shame. My eyes clung to the red welt on his back as he fled, imagining my lips were still there. He was to the beach before I could stand. “You too, Calvin!”

I’ve searched my whole life for that fleeting peace; the one they would call abominable, the one they say he hates. But hate was never a part of it. Love does not even recognize the word.

Carolynn Staib, 2012 - cftaib@gmail.com

New Poem

Nearly Calvin

How proud your mother must be, sword-bringer

And strange how often I wish she were me

I can claim no credit for who you are now, or who you’ve yet to be

Still, I fancy us scraps of the same tablecloth

Where yellow daises dissolve inside the mouths of moths

Rest, little tanager

I want you to be well

And to steady the flickering light that pierces your shell

I’ll take the couch, you can sleep in my bed

Or hide in my soul and let it cradle your head

Futile devices though words may be, and I’ve no steel in my name

I hope you’ll listen to me

I see you wither with pain and loss

And deny your desires at any cost

Loving only through film-reels that burn in your brain

Of lakes and kisses and sunburns and shame

And while happiness is fragile

And fulfillment is death

The idea of you hurting stabs me in the chest

You’re right

You were not made for life, not on a rock so full of cracks

But the world is lighter because you lift it

All five parts upon your wasp-bitten back

You’ll be the first invited, little Atlas

To the parade among the trees

Your soul is the least impossible

Irrefutably (and if I accept you, so will he)

New Poem - (Dis)comfort

(Dis)comfort

I say I want contentment

I lie

There’s no healing for the healed

No recovery for the sane

Flaw is required for repair

Resurrection’s for the slain

To find perfection is to die,

Immortality the grave

For it’s through humanity we grow

Temptation frees the slave

Wisdom and innocence cannot coexist

Which do you want to be?

There is no purpose without struggle

We need to lick our sores

For to be content is to seize up

And improve no more.

~Carolynn Staib, 2011~

Northern Lights

Heads up...I'm a space geek.

For anyone interested, the aurora is predicted to make an appearance tonight or tomorrow night. Earlier this week the largest sunspot in years was discovered, suggesting a mass-emission solar flare (yes, yes, "mass-emission," quit giggling you pervs!). To give you an idea of the volume of solar matter ejected; the sun spot is estimated at 50,000 miles long and 25,000 miles wide, and could easily fit the earth inside it eighteen times over. Whoa!

Auroral forecast is incredibly subjective and depends on a lot of factors so there's always the risk for disappointment, but if it decides to drop by it should be spectacular. If you happen to miss it this time there will be other chances. 2011/2012 marks the end of a typical eleven year solar cycle, the ends of which produce a lot of flares - and it's thought that this "cycle-finale" is particularly active. Look up.

Legitimate Fan!

So last night I went on omegle.com (chat roulette-esque anonymous chatting for those who are unfamiliar) as I sometimes do, to search through the piles of horny teen boys in hopes of finding a legitimate philosophical conversation/connection with a stranger. It happens. ANYway, omegle has this new function that links with your facebook and matches you with people who have similar interests (this is great for avoiding the pervy teens), and I was matched with someone who likes "Carolynn Staib." I'd never met this person before and he went on to say that he's not only read, but loved my stories. It was probably one of the more rewarding experiences of my life, and I just thought I should share. It means so much to me to know I'm heard.