Liralen Li's Stories

U-Turn

2008-03-23T00:11:02Z

“Well, what about this?” he said and we suddenly slewed around in a sharp 180 degree turn.

“You can drive?!?” I cried out.

“Get down!” he cried out as well. The pop pop pop of what I’d first taken as backfiring, was… oh… gunfire?

I got down, and the rear window and the passenger windows both starred into and opaqued craze of cracks.

“Ouch,” he said, and rubber screamed as we fled.

His engine roared and he took a corner hard enough to fling me against the straps of my seatbelt.

“Ouch,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said, sounding contrite enough that I patted his dashboard.

“It’s okay. You saved me,” I said quietly.

“Saved my skin, too. I don’t want to get chopped down for parts,” he said, sounding shaky.

“Oh! We have to warn the other racers!” I said. “Can you call 911 and get some help?”

“Oh, sure!” He sounded happy to be of help.

I told the dispatcher where the car jackers were. She thanked us and contacted the race directors as well. They shut down the race.

At least we didn’t lose.

Rally -- Stage One

2007-12-26T22:51:08Z

My heart was going a hundred beats a minute as we lined up at the starting line. I knew it was a rally, not a speed race, but when that flag came down my foot went down and we roared from the starting line and showered the road behind us with gravel.

“The target miles per hour for this leg is only 35 mph,” his gps system said, quite calmly.

His tone calmed me. His instructions came at exactly the right moment for me to understand them and then execute. After the first couple of corners, we synched up exactly and I was able to drive the way I thought we really could.

Our turns smoothed out, our braking got more and more exact, and I got my shifting smooth and clean. When we arrived at the first check point, the official gave a low whistle when he marked our time against our start time.

“Good going, lady. You’re within just minutes of the target time. Here’s your next set of steps.” He handed me a memory card, and I fed it into his input slot.

We lined up for the next leg, and the flag came down.

Cold

2007-12-18T23:31:20Z

The Vat was cold.

It’s always cold. Sometimes I think it gets colder with each replacement I take. That slow, sinking feeling as the Vat fills with gel. I always hold my breath, even knowing that it’s no use, I still do it until the gel covers my head and my lungs feel like they’re going to burst. Then I finally breath it in, and the cold fills my chest, my lungs, my heart.

Then my body realizes that it’s getting oxy from the gel and I don’t have to breath. Then the Doc gets to work.

It’s good that medical technology can now just turn off all the pain sensors and let the others alone. Then there’s no question about them accidentally messing with function. They just fix it when they break it instead of going back in.

I hated the eye replacement, though. Muscles just tingled, bones just ache a bit, and the ears were just a sliding scale to test the hearing. The eyes… I felt the pop when they came out of the sockets. Ugh… but I like my pretty blues, now.

Pretty, ice blues.

Five Things I Don't Say About Me

2007-12-18T23:25:30Z

1. I’m all masks, switching to what people need or want or say they want. hiding so that no one can see me and hate me for it. But… I’m realizing that a lot of folks do this, too. So why be a mask for a mask? I still have to work that out.

2. I am infatuated with nearly everyone at least once.

3. Writing is a way of letting other people know they’re not alone. A side benefit seems to be that I figure out I’m not alone, either.

4. I can do just about anything. The hard part is figuring out what it is I really want to do.

5. The hardest thing for me is to open myself up for the creations that come through me. To really say yes and be disciplined about following the path to making things.

Maintenance

2007-12-18T16:23:03Z

Of course, we got a bit disillusioned with each other after the first eager runs around town.

There my first mistake in traffic and I accidentally scraped his bumper down to the metal against a hydrant I hadn’t seen, and he wouldn’t open the driver door on the first try for a week.

Then I let the interior go for a bit, letting the dust settle into the dashboard and all my school stuff got dumped and left in the back at night. He didn’t seem to go as smoothly from the stops or stop as attentively at the lights.

I’d complain about him to my friends, about the maintenance and the work and how much gas cost.

But when Linda asked if I was going to trade him in, I thought about it and stopped complaining quite so much.

Someone keyed his door one night, and I just knelt down and cried. And then spent hours sanding, priming, filling, and then repainting the damage. He seemed to purr the next time we went out together.

We’ll do fine in the long run. I guess I just needed a reminder of what’s important.

Offering

2007-12-17T21:43:59Z

The light there was opalescent, like being inside a giant shell, and the floor was as smooth as pearl.

I walked further in, parting curtains of golden thread, or was that… hair?... that obscured the walls and shape of the place. The sounds of the subway, the voice of the girl faded away behind me.

“Hello?” I called out. “Anyone here?”

A low feminine laugh answered me, nearly purring, throaty in a way that made me shiver not unpleasantly. A whiff of something wild and sweet, almost salty as the sea, came to me. I followed almost blindly, now, pushing through in the direction I thought she was.

Then, suddenly, I pushed through to a cleared space. An table set low, surrounded by candles, and holding a single, golden apple was set in the center. Behind the table sprawled a velvet clad couch. Within the couch was a woman.

She was to women as that girl’s hair had been to compared to the unruly, split ended, greasy, uncombed reality of hair. Unreal. Perfect.

She eyed me. “Are you my offering?”