by Jeremy Finn
"Randal! How sweet!" she exclaimed.
He walked around the bench and offered his hand to help her up. When she accepted, he lifted her from the bench and continued to grip her hand tightly. She felt awkward at first, but rationalized there was not much harm in two friends holding hands. She enjoyed the next half hour as they both strolled hand-in-hand by the canal. He did most of the talking, mostly about himself, but Lily did not mind because she was eager to learn more about this intriguing young man. They wound up at the restaurant a few minutes late. Jonathan was waiting outside the restaurant by the canal looking quite anxious. Lily felt guilty for being late and made a quick excuse to pull her hand free from Randal's grip.
"Jonathan," she called as they approached.
Her fiancé stood and looked relieved to see her, no sign of anger at her tardiness on his face. But then his countenance grew suddenly dark and dangerous.
"Why is he here!" he demanded, pointing at Randal.
"Calm down, hot shot," Randal replied scornfully and Jonathan looked as if he was going to pounce on him.
"Stop!" Lily commanded, suddenly aware and shocked at how rapidly the situation had grown hostile. I want both of you to meet and so I decided we should all have dinner together. There is nothing either of you..."
"Lily, you don't get it," Jonathan interrupted her. She was angered by his rudeness, but saw that he was extremely disturbed about something. "This guy is not who you think he is."
She glanced at Randal expecting to hear him brush off the accusation with scornful comedy, but he suddenly grew deadly serious as well.
"Jonathan, I don't know what you plan to accuse me of, but you better be sure you know what you are doing. This could turn out badly for you," Randal threatened. Lily took an involuntary step away from him and looked back at Jonathan with wide eyes.
"You mean turn out badly the way it did for Lily?" Jonathan said dangerously.
"Be careful, little man," Randal said softly and took a few steps toward him.
"Both of you stop it!" Lily demanded again. "We need to talk this out. I'm sure there is just some misunderstanding. Jonathan, Randal is a kind person. He wouldn't hurt anyone."
"Quite the contrary, Lily," Jonathan disagreed. "We knew each other, just casually, when you were first in the hospital. He was taking care of you for the few days after the wreck before you had your seizure. I didn't like the way he warmed up to you so much. That's what pushed me to propose a bit earlier than I had planned. After you said yes, you had your seizure."
"What are you trying to say?" Lily asked in confusion. She still thought she could somehow get these two to realize they were making something out of nothing.
"He's done saying," Randal said, uncharacteristically causing her to fear him. "He's done talking and he's going to shut up right now."
"No I'm not, Randal," Jonathan barked. He too seemed completely out of character, his voice rising to a crescendo and his veins bulging in his neck. "After I saw you eyeing her so much last night I went and did a little research. I should have done this earlier. I should have suspected. I have a friend who works in the hospital supply room. I asked her to do a little checking into the day Lily went into her coma. At first, she couldn't find anything unusual. Then, she showed me an inventory from a week after the date. There was one vial of a certain drug missing. There was a mini investigation and the loss was written off as an accident. Do you know what that drug does if given in overdose?"
Randal had paced slowly closer to Jonathan while he spoke. The two were nearly face to face now. Lily was too afraid and too intrigued to attempt to interrupt again.
"It sends the patient into violent seizures, often leading to death, but on occasion just into a deep coma," Jonathan finished.
"Jonathan, I don't understand," Lily mumbled, though honestly she did.
"And what are you going to do about it, tough guy?" Randal asked, sounding like a completely different person. Lily was frozen, her body uncontrollably tense.
"I wish I could beat you to a pulp right here," Jonathan threatened, "but I know you have the physical advantage. Believe me, though, I'm telling everyone. You won't go unpunished for this."
Those were the last of the words. The next few seconds passed in a flurry of movement as Randal rushed in and grabbed a hold of Jonathan by the shirt collar and began to shake him violently. Jonathan tried to push him back, making the crazed nurse furious. Randal reached back and threw his fist into Jonathan's face. Her fiancé lurched backwards and fell unconscious into the canal just behind where he stood.
"Jonathan!" Lily screamed and ran toward his body floating face down in the water, moving slowly toward the ocean beyond. She bumped into Randal in her frantic effort and he reacted instinctively as his nerves were still on edge. He pushed her aside and she fell backwards. She saw his face as she fell. It was red with rage then suddenly painted with fear as he watched her flop to the ground. Lily felt a crash against the back of her head as if someone had thrown a bowling ball at her from behind. The world around her turned fuzzy and then instantly black.
* * *
"Lily? Lily honey, can you hear me?" the voice echoed in her head and a pale light grew steadily before her. She struggled to climb toward that light and her eyes opened. She was in a plain room, lying in a bed. Was it a hospital? She turned toward the direction of the voice, wincing as pain stabbed the back of her head.
"Mom? Dad?" Lily asked.
"Oh, sweetie, we were so afraid we had lost you again!" her mother sobbed with tears of joy. They spent some time hugging silently as tears rolled down their eyes.
"Do you remember anything after the UH and West Point football game?" her mother suddenly asked.
"Well, yeah, of course, mom," Lily replied. "That was like...about exactly two years ago, right? The last thing I remember was being in the hospital after the car wreck and, well, that's it."
For some reason her mother looked greatly relieved. "Well, the football game was actually two and a half years ago," she explained. "You remember you were in a coma for six months."
Lily nodded, trying to piece things together. "But what about Jonathan?" she asked. "He proposed to me just a few days ago."
Her mother and father suddenly looked very somber. "It was more than a few days ago," her father began, "but I'm afraid we have some terrible news." He was struggling to make eye contact with her but forced himself to continue. "You and Jonathan were out on a date in Chinatown, apparently. The police believe someone attempted to mug you. Jonathan probably tried to put up a fight, and he was murdered by the assailant."
Lily was shocked. She was having a hard time remembering anything short of Jonathan's proposal. It had been so sweet and caring, and seemingly only a day or so ago.
"Fortunately, we have a very brave man to thank for your rescue. You too were pushed to the ground just when he noticed the commotion and rushed over to save you. The attacker ran off, and he administered first aid on the scene. Well, what do you know? There he is right now. How long have you been standing humbly in the doorway?"
"Sorry, sir. Just here to check up on Lily."
"No need to apologize, son. You're the reason she's still with us today."
"I'm sorry about your memory loss. We'll have to keep a close eye on that. By the way, let me take the opportunity to introduce myself to such a pretty girl. My name is Randal," he said with a winning smile as he tossed his wavy hair aside.
Insight
Part of my goal in writing a series of short stories is to challenge myself to write different kinds of stories. I seem to be most comfortable with fiction with a twist or stories that have some sort of otherworldly or mysterious element. So, I decided I should try to write a romance story. This is what came out. Maybe you would not even consider it a romance, but it has several of the elements I learned from my education in the school of Korean television dramas. There is a triangle relationship - an absolute necessity. Of course such a triad is only interesting when t
he two of the same sex (almost always males because the predominately women viewers like to fantasize about having two men fight over them) are nearly polar opposites (rich/poor, charming/plain, etc.). Finally, the guy who I would prefer to win the girl loses out in the end. The arrogant, rude upstart gets the girl while the modest, polite gentleman sadly bows out and occasionally settles for a second best. I have not figured that one out yet and probably never will since I am not a Korean female and my wife, who is a Korean female, is not a typical Korean female. Anyways, for ideas and background, Hawai'i works well since I lived there. Chinatown was a favorite haunt and fit the scene well since it is a place that is colorful, interesting and seedy. As for the coma, I actually knew a girl who mysteriously suffered a coma induced due to seizures and when she finally recovered, she could not remember a certain block of time. She also had a boyfriend. There you go, the seed for a story. I'm sure this story did not satisfy romance readers. I can only say it is a limitation and I will, possibly, work on improving it in the future.
THE DANGERS OF CREATIVE WRITING
Robert Hicks walked sullenly down the cracked sidewalk alongside dilapidated storefronts and dingy bars. Work was killing him. Each night he trudged home weary and emotionally drained. By the time the cares of the day started to fade, he was already beginning to feel the stomach twisting dread of the next day approaching. True, his boss was fine. His coworkers never really bothered him. Even his work received some praise every now and then, but that was just it. Everything was bland and humdrum. He could wake up four months from now, go to work and never realize he had leaped forward in time. His life was really that routine.
It would be better if he had a bit of excitement in his life, he thought. He would welcome a boss with a fiery temper or a coworker bent on burning the office down. At least then there would be some drama and excitement in his life.
As he approached his brick apartment building set inconspicuously among a cluster of aging structures, he sighed deeply. It was Friday, the day most people broke free from their weekly routines and enjoyed two nights of blissful abandon. Many of his neighbors did not even remember their Friday or Saturday nights, but they still looked forward to the drunken fests as if they were the only reason for suffering through a week of menial labor. Robert had never been that type, though, and even if he was, he didn't really have any friends to hang out with anyways. So, he usually spent his weekends on the couch in front of the television watching nothing in particular or playing some endless game in some endless cyber world populated by avatars endowed with the same depth of personality as he.
After climbing the stairs to his apartment and narrowly dodging a chance encounter with a neighbor leaving for a trip to the corner market, Robert threw his briefcase in the corner, tore off his tie and set about warming his dinner in the microwave. He plopped down for his usual run of Friday night shows: some cartoons, reality TV that was anything but real, news and late shows where men earned a living making fun of people they never met. Just as he was beginning to search for something on cable because the networks were reverting to infomercials (he did have some standards to uphold), the cable went out - flat out. Every channel was a flurry of white fuzz and buzzing static.
"Are you kidding me?" Robert exclaimed to himself. For a moment he thought about going to sleep, but it was barely midnight and he intended to stay up for hours longer if only to allow himself to sleep far into the otherwise monotonously boring Saturday. Then he thought about reading a book. The problem with this plan, he realized, was he did not have a single real book in the apartment. He had several unused instruction manuals and a couple comic books, but he already read through them many times.
Then it struck him, why not write a story? At first the idea was intriguing. Then laziness and self-doubt argued against it. He puttered around the room picking up this knick knack and that until he finally forced himself to sit down at his computer. He pulled open his word processor and sat back in his chair. He nearly strayed as he considered transitioning to his computer game, but he had lost his avatar the night before, and it would mean starting from scratch again - suffering to every merciless super-powered gaming addict roaming the virtual world with god-like powers matched with the charity and social graces of a spoiled three-year old.
So, he started to write. It was hard to come up with an idea at first, so he just started writing about a place. The more he described the place, the more fun it became. In no more than an hour, he had built an entire new world more expansive and imaginative than the virtual world he often gamed in, and it all existed as simply words on a page. He got up to go to the bathroom and grab a soda and found himself anxious to get back to his writing.
Robert finally went to bed as the sun gained a hand's breadth above the horizon. He itched to keep writing, but his body had finally subdued him despite the chemical weapons he downed in an attempt to reject his body's fight to take care of itself.
He slept, but his story did not. He had created a world, a host of characters, and the beginnings of a tale that demanded continuation. No matter if he slept, worked or even died, his story had begun and would always exist now.
When Robert rose from bed late Saturday afternoon, he jumped out of his bed with a spring. This was not normal for Robert Hicks. He gobbled a bowl of cereal and ran to his computer. He did not even check to see if the cable was back on. New ideas were coming to him already and he felt an urge to get them into print. He sat at the computer for hours and realized after the fact he had missed his date with Jenny. Granted, she had asked him to dinner and he only accepted because he couldn't think of an excuse on the spot. Well, she would get over it.
Robert's world slowly but surely expanded. It began to draw him in and take on a reality at first much like his forays into cyber realms, but soon it became even more real. On the computer, he could make decisions and cause some things to happen or change, but in this world he controlled everything. He had absolute power to create and direct.
Eventually, work came again and, though he longed to skip it, he realized he had to face reality. For the first time in many years, though, the day seemed to go faster and he even had a bit of a skip in his step. The mundane droll of work was less taxing when he had his story to look forward to, and he could daydream about what would happen next whenever he found himself stuck in a lagging meeting or listening politely but absently to a co-worker's lengthy explanation about something he did not intend to understand. It was an art he soon cultivated and ironically he gained a reputation for being a good listener who cared about the views and opinions of others.
After a week of writing and developing a solid handful of chapters, Robert was feeling fairly proud of himself. His population of little yellow creatures was thriving and the drama was non-stop. Action was more fun to write about than conversation, so he filled his story with chase, fight and intrigue around every corner.
Friday night came and he felt the urge to write something riveting into the story - something that would really cause readers (for he was starting to consider sharing, or possibly selling, his story someday) to scoot to the edge of their seats. What if these creatures he conjured decided to push the bounds of their reality? What if they pursued some of the questions he held in his own conscious? He chose to make them explore their origins. Through science, telepathy, and every other means, they would seek to discover how they came to exist in their universe.
Robert wrote late into the night and finally dragged his sluggish body into bed. He fell into a deep sleep and experienced vivid dreams. His dreams were both instant and eternal, as dreams can sometimes seem. He experienced the whole world of his writings and found himself immersed in it. At first, he was a non-corporeal observer, but then things changed. The creatures became cognizant of his presence and so did he. It is rare for most, but sometimes we realize we are in a dream. Almost always this signals the near end of the dream, for whatever reason. This time, though, Robert's dream continued.
"We ha
ve found you," one of the little yellow beings said with deep awe.
"What do you mean?" Robert fumbled. "Why are you looking for me?"
"Isn't it the most primordial search?" the fictional character asked. "Don't we all long to know where we came from, why we are here?"
"You mean because I wrote you?" Robert asked in amazement.
The creature and his comrades seemed a bit confused, but then one with ornate clothing stepped forward to address him. "Lord, we humble ourselves before you. We have always known of you or suspected your hand in our world, but it is breath-taking to actually see god in physical form standing before us."
With this, the whole group bowed low to the ground in abeyance.
"What are you doing?" Robert asked with some confusion and a measure of disgust - he was never one to lend much credence to spiritual explanations for things. Before the odd exchange could continue further, though, the dream began to pull away from him. Loud knocking reverberated through the land around him and suddenly he snapped to his bed. The windows poured sunlight onto his disheveled blankets and a repetitive rapping sound came from the door down the hall.
"What on earth?" he exclaimed to himself and shuffled ruefully to his front door.
"What is it?" he asked with thick annoyance when he found one of his neighbors waiting patiently outside.
"Oh, sorry Robert," the man in shorts and a t-shirt replied. "I figured you would be up by now, you know, since it's around lunchtime. Anyways, do you want to go fishing with me? We'll be back before dinner?"
"Oh, no I..."Robert stumbled for an excuse then decided to just be blunt. “I don't want to go out. Never much of a fan of fishing anyways. You have a good time."
He shut the door before the mildly insulted man could respond. Granted, he acted a bit more unsocial than usual, but all he could think of was getting back to his story. He couldn't shake the idea that the dream he had was something more than just a dream.
