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 ^{(it's beta!)}

Hello from Brisbane, Australia.

It's been a long, long time since I last posted. When I did I mentioned I wanted to do a series of short stories following the time line of a boy. I'm still testing this theory and here is another very, very brief bit. I basically just want both positive and negative feedback from you guys, constructive preferred but it's your choice. I really want to make this work and for that I need your help.

Thanks

~

He saw the girl for the first time in his drama class. He had fallen in love with her immediately in the typical “Girl next door” love story. She was tall and slim with a smile that could melt the heart of any man. He was only twelve, and according to society, his parents and the church he was therefore incapable of forming an acceptable opinion on women and any attraction to the opposite sex was merely a ‘cute crush’. The feeling he had whenever he saw her merely demonstrated in his mind the ignorance of a society dominated by unjustified laws and ignorant guidelines of previous generations. She was the unique kind of girl who was always around you, but never actually with you. She seemed to look at you in a unique way, until you see it moments later directed towards someone else. And those few moments where your eyes meet hers are hardly mesmerizing, but purely petrifying…it was fantastic.

She was skipping around in her backyard and he was watching her as he kicked a soccer ball repetitively against the fence behind his parent’s run-down shit-shack. His thoughts regarding her only momentarily interrupted by the penetrating CLANG of the plastic ball on the steel fence. Suddenly, she paused, and glanced over to him. A slight smile tweaked the corners of her mouth and she moved in his direction. His heart froze, then like an elevator, it slowly ascended into his throat as she reached him. Everyone always says when they experience ‘love’ that everything seems to move in slow motion. As far as Marten was concerned, that was a load of shit. The coming moments seemed to Marten to have faded as quickly as they had arrived. Marten was broken out of his trance as she leaned over the fence into his yard, waiting politely for him to acknowledge her presence.

“You know, the noise you make with that ball is driving my mother crazy”, Kat said as she clutched her arms to her chest in the way only an innocent young girl can.

Silence hung in the air as heavy as the sweltering summer heat and the exhausting humidity. The visible waves of heat and the generic sounds of the local insects decorated the silence.

Marten felt his heart drop like a rock into a pond at these words, but still managed to maintain enough to composure to keep the conversation afloat.

“Yeah, I’m just bored is all…”, he said, drifting off into some talk about improving his skills. He looked up expecting an annoyed look, or for her to simply not-be-there at all. But instead, she stood, smiling at him warmly, her eyes locked on to his. Marten’s heart skipped several beats.

There was a long awkward silence as Marten fought for something to say … anything to say. He could think of nothing.

“Well….see you later then Marten”.

“Yeah, see you at school”. He watched her walk away, feeling as though he was going to faint.

As he forced himself to calm, his heart verged on an attack as she turned and waved at him, before disappearing inside. Marten waved awkwardly back, and as he turned to head inside his own house, he began to curse himself for not acting cooler. He had always promised himself that if he ever spoke to her, he would try and act just like “Hawkeye” from M*A*S*H. Marten, glanced once more outside towards Kat’s yard, and noting her absence, he headed back towards the gloomy darkness that loomed behind the squeaky screen door of his own run-down home. There a malevolent, silhouetted figure stood waiting. As he opened the door, the smell of bourbon and cigarettes hit him in the face, and his Father stood scowling above him.

~