Creative Book of 10 Best Short Stories Page 5
Resting on the carpet, a shot rings out followed by the sound of exploding wood. This is a sound I am familiar with after years of diligence: gunshots.
I race to the balcony of the second floor to see the intruder, a man dressed in a casual, striped sweater, look up to spot me. He heads for the stairs as Susan slams the bedroom door locked.
“Nadine,” she whispers. I turn to see her silently fling open the closet doors. Our plan, in the case that this was to ever happen, is to ascend the ladder through the panel in the ceiling of the closet for the attic. From there we would leave out the window and onto the rooftop. Susan ushers me up the ladder. I shake my head for her to go first but she pushes me. She eases the closet doors shut just as the man breaks in.
We climb silently, but the closet doors soon shake due to the force the lock is under. My knees on the floor of the attic, I lean down to watch Susan climb, pleading for her safety. Shots ring out as a gun smashes its way through the wood. Susan scampers through and quickly hoists the ladder up. I can hear the closet doors give way under the man’s weight. I help her up. She shoves me away and places herself on top of the panel. Our eyes lock and I notice she is bleeding. How did I not notice this before? She climbed as if she was unharmed.
Our attic was made for storage and is easily seven feet high where the roof bends skyward, more than enough room for me to stand. Over the years, Susan and I have loaded it with boxes, furniture, and garbage bags full of extra belongings we both realized we didn’t need when we bought the house. This is our first house together in the suburbs. Before, we had lived in an apartment. The boxes are filled with my souvenirs from school and the garbage bags are stacked full of the memories of our being together.
Susan’s breathing is labored; her hand clutches her side. With her free hand, she indicates the window.
“Go,” she mouths.
The man pulls open the door. He gazes up. The panel is heavy but with a final thrust he manages to move it, only to result in a blow to the head. He jumps back, poised, gun in both hands. A body has fallen through the opening and lies on the ground. It is a woman.
After some fumbling, the intruder manages to climb into the attic. It is empty. The window is open facing the alley. After a few moments of listening, he climbs outside.
I emerge from behind the old television and sofa chairs: He is gone. I check the window and see his retreating figure. I crawl over to the opening of the panel. Down on the floor, Susan lies still staring at the wall. I carefully lower the ladder to avoid touching her. I scamper down quickly. I think, Susan. Please be okay.
Before I touch her I know. She is warm but not moving and not breathing. She has a dead pulse. How can this be? She has lost so much blood. It pools on the ground beside her, seeping into her clothes.
“Susan you’re bleeding into the carpet,” I cry aloud. I can’t believe this. I’m on my knees. My mind is in a whirl: the dichotomy of a bullet wound into the lethal and the nonfatal. Susan. Susan. Her form is a statue lying on the floor. She is as beautiful as she was in life, now ethereal in death.
She smells like the detergent we use. I can close my eyes and see us waking together in the morning. I should call.
The sun flies over the sky, drawing the purple curtains over the day. It is dusk now.
I can hear it behind me. The neighborhood was silent and undisturbed. The trash bins sit where they were that morning before the attack. He grew suspicious and returned. I couldn’t leave. I should have. Because of Susan I stayed. My hair curls across my forehead as I fill with apprehension. I hear his footsteps before his shoe interrupts my field of vision.
My hands are tied behind me, around what feels like a cold metal pole in the dark. The cuts, and the gashes I imagine on my back cause me to wince against the surface of the metal. I am stripped of all but my underwear. My mouth has been gagged and my feet also tied to the pole. The dark of the chamber is suffocating and the sound of footsteps overhead is frequent.
Men with rough accents yell at me, “American spy!” over and over.
Through the pain all I can concentrate on is where Susan must be.
At the academy we met: The both of us, never really accepting the fact that we were, in a manner of speaking, American-spies-in-training. We became friends, her in tight pants and always a dark sweater. Her attire never seemed to change. She asked me out. She admitted to me through roses, of her bisexuality. I remember the roses, they were white. I still wonder how she acquired them. She never told me. We shared science classes together. She was the slacker, that casual overachiever, always willing to answer the teacher but without raising her hand, never afraid to touch mine. We spent junior year in closet together, never confessing to our peers.
I remember Susan leaning against the counter of our lab station. She looked at my paper, comparing our answers without my consent. This was before I knew her. When I touched my notebook, she smiled at me. A cocky smirk but at the same time friendly, telling me she sensed my worries and meant to reassure me. Before she could speak the bell rang and Susan was out the door without another word.
“They are for you.” I looked at her. The petals of the flowers hid the bottom of her face. “Do you like them?”
I couldn’t believe it. She was making the first move. She was unbelievably bold, unbelievably competitive Susan. Did she sense my feelings? Can she read my mind? I touched the bouquet. We are lesbians. We are lesbians together. I smiled in the dark, illuminated only by a single street lamp.
A door behind me slams. In the shadows the gag is removed and liquid is forced down my throat.
I trace the veins on her left wrist. The sun has baked the concrete all day and left it pleasantly cool in the dying sun. Sitting on the sidewalk, Susan’s bare foot strokes my own. Her toenails aren’t perfectly trimmed. I can see her cuticles like dying weeds attached to the planks of a fence. Her eyes flick to my face. I stare back and she smiles. She takes my hand, holding the rose she gave me---this one is red---and gently waves the bud in the air.
“Why do you give me roses?” I ask. And why are they always unopened buds? Do you like roses? Are they your favorite flower? She smiles, looking off to the side and glances down to her folded arms on her knees, before she looks back at me. I know a wisecrack is coming my way.
“Because roses are red, and violets are blue, life is crud, but I’m attracted to you.”
“Life is crud? That doesn’t rhyme.” I say. I know it’s cheesy. The look in Susan’s eyes stops me. She is staring at me with an expression one would use to view the sky when it is pink or the ocean pierced by a narwhal.
Before I can continue, Susan’s fingers brush my jaw. Through a series of snapshots I can see her bring herself toward me. The flutters of her eyelashes as she closes her eyes the moment before her lips reach mine.
When I waken, I am in a hall, hands bound but feet no longer tied and mouth not gagged. My tongue is in frenzy and my words cannot form or I slur trying. I am clothed. A man behind me pushes me forward. I notice the men and women are all wearing what appear to be the dim smears of business suits. My blurry vision begins to clear further as a woman opens a door.
I need to know what place this is, their numbers, their strengths, and above all what it is I was brought here for.
I am brought into a room, a conference room with a round table surrounded by eight chairs. As soon as I am set on a chair and my hands unbound, I am taken off guard by what I realize is a Taser. I lie on the table, feeling my insides shiver from electricity, as a man speaks.
“Agent Bird, I suppose you wish to know why you were brought here and I‘m sure you will soon understand.” He spoke with an accent I could only place as having had an education in the Europe. Afterwards he left, locking the door behind him with a click.
A second woman enters the room. What surprises me, is not the view from the floor length windows which reveals the building to be the Empire State Building of New York, NY. What doesn’t surprise me is the suit she is
wearing: a black formal suit, double-breasted. A suit I am well accustomed to. A uniform. What does surprise me is the tie. Instead of what I expected, a royal blue tie with a gold clip as worn by all graduates of the Academy, the tie is green with a distinct pattern of tiny squares. It doesn’t surprise me that the suit is unbuttoned, the style with which it is worn, the tie. But how?
Her head moves up slowly to rest her gaze on my eye level. Her hair is cut in a fringe to the shape of her jaw. Those beautiful lips curl into a half-smile. How?
“Hello Nadine.”The woman speaks.
“I thought you were dead.” She crosses her arms and shakes her head mockingly with a small smile.
“But I’m not.”
“And all the world will be here to see it.” Susan cocks her head toward me, her arms outstretched and hands splayed on the glass of the window. She has just told me more than I could ever believe, but at the same time it is undeniable that this is Susan. She is that competitive girl who furtively cut lanes during track to be first. The child to laugh at others’ derisive responses at the results she presented in the conclusion of her presentation. The one who casually took materials from her classmates’ lab stations in the contest to be the most accurate. This is the girl who received the Award for the Most Success in Undercover Missions, as I was seated on a metal folding chair along with all the other graduates, but still grew envious watching the other recipients, or so the telltale signs told me.
At eleven thirty, fifteen minutes from now, they intend to unleash a bomb to destroy the Empire State Building and recreate the chaos of September eleven, 2001. She says it is too late even if I do attempt to prevent the attack on my country’s complacence. The timer has been set and I am to die with it. I do not understand. The drug suffocates my thoughts.
“Susan,” my voice takes on a note of incredulity, “why?”
She turns to look at me. “I’ve told you why.”
The door to the hall opens, “Ten minutes.”
Susan smiles and heads for the door. I reach to grab her shoulder but she swiftly turns and catches me, throwing me to the ground.
“Susan.” She stops as if with more to say. Outside in the hall I can hear voices conferring. Susan turns and walks for the door. She slams it shut behind her. My drugged mind struggles to regain myself from the dizziness of having the air knocked from me. I can’t get up. I clutch at the carpet, steadying myself. I smell as if I haven’t washed for days. I don’t know what to feel. I feel everything at once. I feel hate, but above all I feel hurt and confusion.
I know why I have to go. To die. The disbelief of it all. The home of two agents intruded upon and one shot. It was a story too ridiculous to ever tell superiors. The truth I couldn’t accept. Susan had a hand in this. She led them to our doorstep. She was the mastermind. She staged the shot. She pretended to be dead to fool me. It must have been a covertly-developed neurotoxin, or maybe I hadn’t checked closely enough. It must have numbed the pain of the bullet. I couldn’t leave her.
A failure that traces back to my education at the Academy. I can hear the voices of my professors through the fog of my vague thoughts. It is not enough to act the part. Live like an agent, Nadine, live with your safeguard. She is Paranoia.
A commotion occurs outside the door. It is thrown open. Multiple muffled gunshots ring out.
“We are sorry but you seem to have made many sacrifices.” The door is locked again. This time it is bolted. I can tell by the series of metal clangs from behind the door.
Susan lies on the ground. She won’t look at me. She has been shot. How ironic. I try the door. In a futile attempt, I crash my foot against it and wind up in pain.
“Susan, how could you?”
She flaps a hand in the air before she turns to look at me. She manages that cold smile.
“How could I? It was all for the better.” For money. For her greed. I could have known better. I was blind.
“You know something,” Susan starts, grasping the wound in her chest. “you didn’t have to be taken. That was your mistake.”
I am silent. I can only stare at her. I am steady, inside the drug has eased its flow.
“You were so innocent. So naive,” Susan continues, her breathing is labored.
This is deja vu. I am on my knees again beside her. She has been shot, she is bleeding, except this time, she is speaking. For a while we are both silent as I plan ways of escape. I need to help her. She is still mine in ways I can’t begin to describe. I hold her head and attempt to see the depth of the bullet. Susan coughs and spits blood onto the carpet. Her hair is a disheveled mess.
“When he came back, he thought you had discovered our ploy. We meant to leave you behind. You would take the suspicion of having a fellow agent killed. Instead....” Susan’s voice fails.
We fell together out of the closet. We survived the Academy as friends. We made a living together. Many of my missions had been co-operations. We were friends. We are lovers.
I reach to unbutton her suit to check the wound. With surprising strength she holds my right wrist. The look she gives me is full of spirit, telling me to keep my distance.
“Susan.” My voice trembles unwillingly.
“In the spring of 1999 I met you at the Academy in Virginia.” Susan’s eyes look past me unseeing, her face distorted with pain. “I saw you were ambitious. You were just like me.”
I am bent over her form but her face is cast to the side. The white roses? The most early and innocent of our days? “Roses are red and violets are blue...” I falter. For the longest time, my words are followed by silence.
Then Susan turns her face toward me. “And I’m attracted to you.” This time her eyes make contact with mine.
The tears, I did not know I was capable of, fall. They land on Susan’s suit before I can wipe them away.
“Susan, I---” Susan cuts me off.
“Nadine there is still five minutes.” Her eyes look for the first time forlorn. Reality sinks like a stone in my stomach. Outside a helicopter flies across the skyline.
“Go.” She tells me for the second time in my life.
“I love you,” I said. And I did.
Adios
Smriti Krishnan
Adíos
Amidst the laughing, chattering crowd, Gabriela Flores stepped confidently onto her porch. The talking morphed into admiring whoops. Her mother and father accompanying her, the fifteen- year old made her way to meet the priest waiting to advise her. Wise-eyed Padre Roberto led Gabriela to the pavilion and quietly spoke to her about the responsibilities of adulthood. Gabriela listened attentively, and accepted a small gold necklace with a cross from her priest at the end of their conversation. Padre Roberto finally turned to the restless crowd and began to speak loudly so his voice carried: “I now present you a new young lady by the name of Gabriela Flores. Her quinceañera is a matter of pride to all of us. We have all watched her blossom into a demure young lady.” Turning to Gabriela, he continued, “Señorita Gabriela, you have now crossed a threshold. You must find yourself one day, mija, and your place in the world. Now let the fiesta begin!”
Gabriela eagerly stepped off the pavilion, and made her way into her house, where the celebration was held. All doors of the house had been left open, inviting the warm air. Inside, decorations matched the tablecloths in bright bursts of colors. The glass plates of the chandelier glinted, polished to a fault. Delicate portions of food lined the tables on either end of the spacious room. Muted light fell on Gabriela’s face, as she walked through the doors. The band struck up a lively tango. Once on the polished wooden floor, Gabriela made her formal curtsy to her father. But the debutante was only half paying attention to these proceedings. Señor Flores, a tall and distinguished man, noticed nothing, as he gazed with love and pride at his only daughter while he whisked her gracefully around the polished wooden floor. Señora Flores beamed from the center of a throng of women, her hand unconsciously tapping the rhythm of the well-rehearsed dance.
As the last chimes of the song faded, Gabriela’s father stepped back to let her corte de honor and her next dance partner take his place. The band poised themselves for the next song, waiting for just the right moment. But her dance partner seemed not to be there. The other couples lined up, the girls smoothing their skirts, the boys nervous. Embarrassed by the situation, Gabriela strained her ears for any footsteps. Señor Flores made ready to step in as his daughter’s partner again, his face tightened by anger. But suddenly, behind Gabriela’s back, the crowd parted for someone.
Out of nowhere, someone tapped her on the shoulder. As she spun around, her face was illuminated by her wide smile.
The musicians played with a new vigor now that the debutante’s anxiety had been abated. With fresh enthusiasm, Gabriela moved around the dance floor, whispering to her partner.
“Eduardo, why are you late? You promised to be here on time!”
His handsome face broke into a smile. Gabriela looked into his dark eyes and her heart skipped several beats.