Month: December 2013

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Dancing In Heaven

by Miles Rost

The ringing of the phone told him it was time.

“Hello?”
“Gabe? It’s Jennifer.”
“Jennifer! Hello! Are you calling to say you’re ready?”
“Everything is done. How long will it take you to get here?”

After telling her it would be about 15 minutes, Brian “Gabe” Gabrielson exchanged the last pleasantries with the girl he had wanted to be with for so long. Ever since he saw her fixing her shoelaces in 8th grade gym class, he felt that Jennifer Cross was the girl he was meant to be with. Finally, after 7 long years and many classes together, Gabe was about to get his wish.

He hung up the phone, looked around the room, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Then he jumped in the air and gave a loud “YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAWWWWWWWWWW!”

He grabbed the keys from the board and ran out to his vehicle. He slid across the hood, doing his best impersonation of Luke Duke while praying he didn’t plant his face in the gravel. With luck, he landed on his feet and hopped in his 1971 Oldsmobile 442.

Within a minute of hanging up the phone, he was in his car. Within 10 minutes, he was outside her place. Within 20 minutes, she was in the passenger’s seat and they were tearing down the highway heading out from Las Cruces. Tonight was going to be a blessed night, and one for the ages.

“Are you ready to do this, Jenny?”
“I’ve been waiting for this for many years, Gabe. I think our first time should be really special.”

Gabe smiled and blushed just a bit, as he blasted down I-25, and onto a paved but relatively deserted county road. The sun was still high in the sky, but within two hours, it would be dark. And that would be where the fun began.

They drove for a long while, talking about what they were thinking about doing after college, and how the 7 years they knew each other flew by. Jennifer played with her hair, curling it around her finger, while Gabe kept running his hands through his own head of hair.

Finally, after a long drive through the craggly Southwestern landscape, they finally turned onto another paved road, where they would meet their destiny. A sign in front of them greeted them:

WELCOME TO SPACEPORT AMERICA!

They stopped the car at the terminal, and they waved to the waiting cameras as they filmed them walking through the terminal and out to their new vehicle, “SpaceShipFour”. Reporters tried to ask questions, but were held back by a team of skirts and suits. They just smiled as they entered what looked like an oversized commuter jet.

“Dancer 1 and Dancer 2, are you ready to go?” the pilot asked them.”Seat belts fastened. You got the gravity generators ready for the room?” Gabe responded.
“That’s been taken care of.”
“Our other guy is on the plane?”
“He’s strapped into the room. Once he gets the green light, he’ll be able to walk around. Cameras will also be operational there.”
“Then let’s do this thing.”

The control tower squawked their clearance, the pilot responding with a “roger”, as they taxied to the edge of the runway. With a short boom, SpaceShipFour blasted down the runway and took off at a high rate of speed. Cameras rolled as it quickly buzzed east through the skies.

Within 10 minutes, the sub-orbital was past the Karman line. Within 15 minutes, the vehicle was orbiting at around 300km above Earth’s surface. The signal was given to Gabe and Jennifer to unbuckle and to float towards the door to the other room. Doing so, and avoiding bumping into anything, was a bit more difficult. They both made it into the room, and closed the door. After holding onto a railing near them, the lights came on in the room and a whirring sound filled the space. Their feet landed on the ground with a short thud.

“Gravity has been set,” Jennifer said, as she walked over to the flat, vertical platform where their guest was. After unstrapping the man, he proceeded to pull out a notebook, and walked over to what looked like a music system.

“Alright, you know the rules as we agreed. Once the cameras start rolling, the song with start playing, and within 10 seconds, you will have to start dancing,” the man said, with a nasal intonation, “After the song is finished, we will certify the results, and we’ll get ready to land. Are you clear on this?”

Both of them nodded.

“As a member of the Guinness crew, this is the first time this has ever happened. Let the cameras sync!”

After a second, the cameras turned on and the music started to play.

This night, Gabe Gabrielson and Jennifer Cross would make history as the original holders of the Guinness World Record for Highest Elevation Dancing. They would “bossa nova” 300 kilometres above the earth.

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Friday Fictioneers – Pearly Whites

As per normal again, Friday Fictioneers! Here’s my contribution, after nearly 3 long months of rest and agonizing over grad school applications:

copyright - Douglas MacIlroy

copyright – Douglas MacIlroy

Pearly Whites

Bright lights shone across the sky.

The beam blasted from the tower into the room of one Marc Lavagneur, paparazzi extraordinaire and general pain in the butt.

“Gah! Can’t they just stop with the light already? I get the picture!” he yelled out the window.

He walked over to his phone and dialed up a number he never wanted to call.

“Hello? Creative Arts Agency? This is Marc Lavagneur. I give up. I’m done.”

The light stayed on.

“AND TELL LONI ANDERSON TO CLOSE HER MOUTH! IT’S BLINDING ME!”

The light suddenly went off.

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Everywhere That I’m Not

by Miles Rost

A small green light popped on. A buzzing sound rattled urgently across the dresser.

An arm reached up from the bed, thrashing around while trying to grab the buzzing phone that was going insane. After a few seconds, and a vase knocked onto the floor, the hand and arm grabbed the phone and pulled back under the covers.

“mmmmfrla…Hello?”
“Hi, honey!”

Paul sat up in his bed, hearing the voice of his insanely beautiful fiancee, her voice waking him up like a shot of espresso to the veins.

“Anna! I…I miss you!”
“I know, honey! I do, too.”
“Where are you today?”
“I’m  sitting on a beach, looking out over the tides in the Bay of Fundy.

Paul just shook his head, and chuckled.

“I thought you were in New York?”
“Not today. I was two weeks ago, remember? I had to deal with a mugger that day.”
“That’s right. I remember now…did he recover from his injuries?”
“Hey! I didn’t kick him in the nuts that hard.”

Paul winced a bit, in sympathy.

“So where were you last week?”
“I had to go to Tokyo. They needed my services taking care of a negotiation between Culture Japan and the Aomori city government for promotions.”
“I find it fascinating where you go, but I feel very…lost without you.”
“Why do you say that?”

Paul sighed, as he pulled on his pair of long sweatpants.

“Well, let’s see. You call from New York, where I’m not.”
“Yes?”
“You go over to Tokyo, where I’m not…”
“Yes?”
“You’re in Nova Scotia, but I’m not.”
“And what are you saying?”
“Yeah, you’re everywhere that I’m not. And I feel lost. I want to be everywhere with you.”

A giggle resonated through Paul’s ear, as Paul’s face twisted in frustration.

“What’s so funny about that?”
“I think it’s very cute that you want to join me on my adventures, even though your job doesn’t allow you to go anywhere.”
“I wish I could get a job where that would be the case.”
“You never know, you may actually get one soon.”

His eyebrows furrowed, as his twisted into one of confusion. This was unusual, not Anna’s normal words that he was hearing in his head.

“What do you mean?”
“Why don’t you look out the window?”

He ambled over to the window. Looking out, he saw the snow-covered ground of his rural Pierce County home, the lights of his neighbor’s Christmas lights, a Tacoma power truck. He was about to tell Anna that he didn’t see anything important, when he noticed someone waving. He blinked again, and saw a person standing on his front lawn.

It was his lovely Anna, holding up her phone in her hand.

“Anna!”

He ran out of his bedroom and bounded down the stairs like a boy at Christmas time. He opened the door, nearly ripping it off it’s hinges as he ran out into the cool air and the snow. He bounded over to Anna, and just as she opened her arms, he pounced on her. They fell, in a mass of tumbling brown and auburn hair and pasty, while legs.

“Anna! I missed you so much!”
“And for a second there you actually thought I would be sent to Nova Scotia.”
“It’s because you’ve been gone so…”

A look of shock rang across his face.

“Are you wearing my favorite outfit of yours?”
“You mean the dark green turtleneck and short black miniskirt that you bought for me on our trip to Vancouver last year?”
“That’s the one!”
“Then the answer is yes!”

Paul smiled as his beautiful fiancee beamed her relief at being home.

“How about we go upstairs and crash for the day. I’ll call into work and take a sick day.”
“I think we can do that, so that you can be where I am.”

Anna smiled at him, as he lifted her up and carried her from the frozen lawn into their house.