A long year for a short story

Here lies the short short story (getting longer and longer) written by you and me.

This is a story in twelve instalments. Like a sitcom, of sorts. Except you play a hand at determining the outcome.

Each and every month for twelve months (April 2010 until April 2011) I'll add the winning sentence from the month's contest winner.

Where will our tea drinking lady go and what will she see (most importantly who will she be by the end of it all...?).

If you don't know what the heck I'm talking about and would like to, click here.

So far, the story goes a little something like this:

April
"It will start with tea because this is how pensive moments are spent in this home. The nature of this moment is concerned with love, as it most often is. The woman with her hand aflutter above the kettle cannot think of a time when her concern will not be love; to understand it, to embody it, or at the very least, to know what it is not. She winces, her hand burned by the boiling steam the moment her mind lands backwards, on him, and the days where it was not about love, but about power.

May
"Her fingers shake and she stares at them while they turn the dial to close the element. The gas pops closed. The flame extinguishes, the kettle is silent. She pushes the kettle hard against the back of the stove so the cats on the counter have less a chance to knock it with whisker and tail. The cats adore the flame; it attracts and repels them. Frequently a whisker ignites or an eyebrow lash disappears. They stand there, blinking, then shake their small heads and walk to the other side of the counter to look offended from afar. With a cool breeze blowing gently, the cats hop to the open window to look out at the garden and feel the air on their little faces.

June
"She holds the orange cat’s tail, keeping the arched body balanced between the heat of the kitchen and the air outside. She feels for the scissors on the counter and snips a small patch of hair from the very tip of the tail. She rubs the orange down between her fingers until it bunches and holds. She paperclips it together and places it in the waiting envelope. The envelope contains one other item: a note with the words “there is missing happening here.” She scrawled the words in her very best and most natural handwriting so he would know that it was her. A single tear danced softly down her pale cheek and then gently landed on the envelope, sealing it with her love.

July
"She walks to the post box once a week. Each week with the same sized envelope (held carefully, always, so not to be creased) and the same sized note inside. The words are always different. Her feet follow the patterns of the sidewalk; familiar with crests of cement where tree roots push upwards and the crevices where the earth has given way. This sidewalk is no stronger than me, she thinks. How will he show me he loves me next?

August
"Waiting for mail to arrive can be delicious and it can be torture. She waters the plants (their trays overflow and the soiled water turns the carpet dark), she cuts her hair (even, it is never even), and she reads in the garden (the pages turn forward and turn backward…it’s hard to understand words when preoccupied). Five days, no mail. She lets the cats assault the postman and her eyebrows fall each time he passes with a bag full of letters and none for her. Today the wait is neither delicious or torturous, just numbing.

September
"Sending the cat’s hair in the mail no longer provokes his letters, not even her words pique his interest. The clouds gather thicker along the mountains and the sun arcs lower in the sky. The summer is passing and it does not carry him with it. He is still in front of her, ghostly as always, transparent as ever. He is real somewhere in this city and while she desperately wants her hope of him to wane her hands continue to write letter after letter and her feet bring her to the mailbox each dawn. She is beginning to hate herself."

October
“And so she packs her valise. Toothbrush, hairpins, books of assorted colours. She hails a taxi and when dropped at the airport, steps over puddles. Her bag is high above her head, keeping the rain from her shoulders. She stands like this – reaching long and taking nothing, arms shaking ever so slightly – as she contemplates which plane to buy a ticket for. She cannot go where she would like (to him), and so, anywhere with a different tone to the air will do. Her feet follow her heart, every step takes her to her ghost lover.”

November
"The plane rocked her to sleep and she woke fully somewhere in the middle of the bus driver yelling out his window. She sits in the back bench along with the cases and boxes; she sees kittens in peeling boats out the side of the bus. Boats on the sides of the highways, pulled high against the stacks of crab traps. The kittens mill like ants, slowly and dazed, crawling over one another. She will go to the sea. ____________________."


To be continued ....