Random Word Generator #1

Random Word Generator: Six words, 20 minutes

frozen, cola, alien, improper, sparkle, lock

The glass was frozen. In space, but not time. It hung suspended in the air, the drops of cola with it, casting glittering light across the hard-angled shadows on the wood floor. The man stared at it as if he, too, had been caught in the moment, captured, a breathing photograph. He reached out a tentative hand, reaching through space, through time, fingers trembling as he brushed the frosted edge of the glass. Something resonated deep within him, a note, low and strong, and an alien sense of power surged through his very being, leaving him swirling along in its invisible eddies.

He reached out again, seizing the glass with one decisive swipe of his hand, and the spell was broken. The cola splashed wetly back into the shadows, and the glass was again no more than a glass in his hand, ordinary, unassuming. The improper laws of physics resumed, heedless of the new gravity of truth. 

He set the glass down on the floor almost reverently, admiring the way the frosted edges caught the sun and harnessed the sparkle of intangible life. An immense satisfaction filled him, and he sank to the ground beside the glass, leaning back on his haunches to survey his prize again. He flicked a stray lock of hair out of his narrowed eyes. The symmetry. The perfect symmetry. That must have been it. He pressed his cheek to the cool wooden panels, devouring the sight as his eyes slipped closed. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Time and Age and Distance

There's never enough time. 

Or maybe there's just too much of it, Cal thought, legs drawn to his chest, bare feet curling in the carpet. He fixed his eyes on the television, but his ears strained to listen in on the conversation behind him, the distant words crackling through the speaker, the low rumble of his father's reply. He picked absently at a rough strand of carpet fluff, twirling it between his fingers. Cal belatedly realized that the man on screen was frozen and had been so for some time.

Guiltily, he whirled around to look up at his father, who held the telephone loosely in one hand, the other setting the television remote down beside him.

Cal had come to appreciate these nightly telephone calls, the only connection he had across fifteen time zones to a dim memory of heritage. The words coming through the speaker were not reassuring, though. There were sad words and quiet words. Regretful words. Hospital words.

Cal tried not to remember hearing his mother screaming.

He turned back to the television and the sleeping dog that lay curled up in front of the subwoofer. The carpet fluff continued to unravel in his hand.

The words finally reached a lull, and Cal turned around again, unconsciously rising into a crouch. He reached out and took the phone from his father, pitching some happiness into his voice as the distance briefly disappeared, and he pretended he was still a child clutching his mother's hand on the subway before time and age and distance had come to take it all away.

He forced himself to laugh, high and breathy. He told stories about school and cooking and accidentally setting things on fire. And when he handed the phone back to his father, he meant it when he said, "I love you."

It had taken nineteen years.

The carpet fibers slipped through his fingers and fell, shapeless, back to the earth.