At the far end of the high school football field crouched the two young men, both wearing identical Puckish smirks on identical faces. They looked out over the bountiful wild shrubbery around the second-rate visitor’s bleachers, and spied in wily stealth on the group of sportsmen in practice below them. A biting wind snapped at their billowing clothing; teensy twigs clung to their curly mops of blond hair, and a thin layer of dust in the air—from the track field beyond the bleachers for home fans—gave them cause to blink wide blue eyes with the regularity that a cat twitches it’s restless tail. In contrasts between them, there was only one; the boy on the right wore a red-banded wrist watch around his left wrist, while the one to the left wore a blue-banded watch of the same kind on the opposite arm. They hunkered down in the bushes together amid the frosty weather, and watched the heavily-dressed football players tackle each other at the 40-yard-line. Though they discussed something privately, technique or a lack thereof was the last thing on their minds.

“Which one?” Red-strap whispered, leaning close to his mirror image. Blue-strap studied the team at length, and bit his stump of a thumbnail compulsively before admitting, “Number fifty-two. Black hair. The super-duper tall one.”

Red-strap cut his gaze across the field of players until he zeroed in on the man of the hour. Very tall, to be sure, and with a frock of hair that passed for black but could have easily been dark brown, hanging down over the tops of his tiny ears. “Lupa,” he announced promptly, dropping back to his haunches to look at his brother. “Lupa Michael. Plays quarterback, and he’s on the basketball team in the off-season.”

“That’s the one! Y’hear about his track record?”

“Don’t play dumb, Jamie, I told you his track record.” Red-strap’s voice remained soft and alight with innocent amusement. “But yeah. He’s notorious.” After his first comment, the second went unheard.

“Don’ call me Jamie,” Blue-strap said as a light pink painted his cheeks; he shuffled to his backside and crossed his arms over a tiny chest, pouting his thick, pink lips childishly. “I hate that, Mark. You know I do.”

“Lemmie get hanky to wipe your tears,” Markus—the red-strapped one—teased with a grin from ear to abnormally large ear. His brother’s lips parted again, brows slanted down steeply; Markus intervened with a salesman’s speed, knowing from sixteen years of life that this battle could be fought as long as televised professional poker. “Simmer, James, simmer,” he instructed. He still had a subtle tone of condescending glee beneath his front of sincerity, but surely it was overpowered enough that his blue-strapped twin wouldn’t catch it. “Don’t go off on something silly like a nickname now. What about that secret lover of yours? Weren’t we talkin’ about him?”

Bam. Back on track in the time it took to whip candy out to soothe a crying toddler. James required little prompting.

“Lupa Michael,” he breathed airily, pressing a hand over his heart and swooning back onto the overgrown angel-hair grass. “D’you think he likes me, Mark? Do you? Oh, do you?” The false yearning in his voice tasted as palpable as the dust coating Markus’s tongue, and he laughed outright in spite of himself; it sounded sweet as dewy-wet berries in springtime.

“Well, gosh and gawlly, I sure hope so, James. But,” he added, after a moment’s pause for ‘thought’, “you do have quite the barrier to overcome to win his heart.”

“You mean that trivial little thing called homophobia?” James asked, bearing his pale white teeth in a wicked little grin. “I can break him outta that.”

***

“Quinn, I want you to run to thirty yards, get the ball to Edwards and come back for another toss-up. Do this right, and it’ll be the last drill of the day.”

Sweat glistened off the players’ shining pates in the weak Oregon sunlight and ran down their necks in tiny rivulets of sticky human sap, despite the nipping nature of the air around them. Lupa Michael, the God of his band of disciples, stood squarely on the 50-yard-line, chest heaving as if he’d just ran four miles without rest, no doubt because he’d just ran four miles without rest, in full gear and glory to top it off. For this, the lanky twins could admire him with true reverence, never having run a full mile without collapsing at the finish line.

From their new hiding place—burrowed deep in the dense foliage level with the home team’s 40-yard-line, James and Markus giggled like dainty schoolgirls as they watched the object of their mischief bark orders and run drills with a fanatic’s fervor. “Wait for it, James,” Markus repeated, time and again, when James squirmed with giddy anticipation. “Wait for it.”

Another half-hour, they waited, while Lupa insisted in short intervals for just one more drill, just one more run. One more, one more, one more, until his team had all but collapsed to the prickly grass like a pack of wolves exhausted from a month’s worth of trekking over the icy tundra. The few that weren’t standing on wobbly legs looked incensed by ‘last drill’ number five. Finally, Lupa relented.

“Good practice,” he said, forcing approval into his weary tone. “Coach’ll be proud.”

The twins in the bushes heard various disheartening grunts and groans in reply to the quarterback’s weak attempt at pep. Undaunted, he went on a bit more cheerfully about their prospects for that weekend’s game.

“Now?” James wheedled.

A simple nod from Markus was all it took, though his Cheshire Cat smile bolstered James’s skyscraping glee tenfold. The blue-strapped twin poked his head out of the bush and called, loud and proud, “He-ey, sexy!” His voice hit a musical pitch not often accessible by the male vocal chords, and the pitch alone gave enough cause for every football player to turn his head; the flirty nature of the catcall gave them pause to swallow their fatigue and look appeasing to any member of the female race. When they saw the source of the catcalls, however, it was revealed to be not an attractive young lady come to tease the team, but two chuckling young men who had promptly risen from the bushes, and had the sole goal of teasing one player, in particular.

Lupa Michael’s face looked very suddenly like a smacked infant’s. If he was notorious, James and Markus fit the bill for infamous; where they materialized, destiny wrote trouble among the stars in irrefutable inscriptions of wily centaurs and clever kings. Overworked and bone-weary, Lupa and his teammates couldn’t even muster the brawn for a swift, sound pummeling. Markus had planned it that way.

Fearlessly, he and James perched on the edge of the field, wearing grins that spoke of their intentions without pointless words or gesticulations. Markus’s impulse drove him to add the first kindling to the fire, but one glance at James’s eager face, and he held himself in check. Barely.

“Luuupa!” James crooned amid the cruel derogatory mutters of the football players; their comments only fueled his impassioned mirth. “Luuupa, do you looooove me?”

“We’ve had our eyyyyyes on yo-ou!” Markus trilled in sugary harmony, unable to stand in silence a moment longer. Hand in hand, he and James skipped merrily closer to the players on the field, though their eyes bore a feral glint contrary to all their pretenses of innocence. Lupa Michaels backed away, glaring at them viciously, while the rest of his teammates cleared a straight path between the twins and their quarterback. They each thanked their lucky stars that they weren’t the victims that day.

Lupa growled. “You fags, fuck off.” Despite the fatigue that trembled in his knees, he balled his meaty paws into fists as a means to ward off the oncoming menaces, but on the menaces came.

James finally closed the distance between them with two jubilent bounds, dodging a pathetic punch in the same movement and twirling to a halt at Lupa’s left. With the smug smirk of a naughty child, he slung an arm up and over Lupa’s shoulder, leaning against him as one might lounge against a wall. “Y’know, we’ve heard some things, lover,” he said before the football player had time to react past a strangled cough of shock.

Markus spun into his own place at Lupa’s right and forcibly hooked arms with him. “True that,” he agreed with a sharp nod. “Y’been talking mean about us, handsome?”

“Terrible thing when people talk mean about us,” James said as he shimmied closer to Lupa; the quarterback seemed to have been siezed by rigor mortis, frozen as he was. James continued. “But we forgive you, sexy. Matter o’ fact, we really like you.” His words were smooth and buttery over his lips.

“We really like you,” Markus cooed, adding a sensual layer to the skin of his words. James stood on tiptoe and leaned closer, making smoochy noises just beside his victim’s neck. Lupa Michael’s statuitory state shattered like glass on granite.

“Get the hell away from me, faggots!!” he bellowed, face reddening at a dangerously rapid pace. The fatigue in his legs had, quite obviously, begun to ease; his stance grew solid, and his clenched paws hardened. The twins could feel it in his arms. Even the rest of the football team, dragged back to attention by their quarterback’s scream, stood solidly in small groups. Their eyes lazily devoured Markus and James both like a fresh catch ready to be skinned.

The twins met each other’s gaze and nodded almost imperceptibly. Abort mission! ABORT MISSION! The volcanoe blew in t-minus ten seconds, and in that ten seconds, they had to be gone, gone, gone baby.

Still lounging across his arm, James chirped, “if you say so hot stuff, but not without a goodbye kiss.” Lethal grins tore across each twin’s face, and the both of them stood proud and tall, and dropped a kiss each on Lupa Michael’s cheeks before turning on a dime and running across the field like the next gold-winning Olympic track stars.

In their haste, and in the barrage of ear-shattering curses issued from the foul pit of Lupa Michael’s mouth, they didn’t here his snarled, sickened vow: “Mark my Goddamn words, you two will PAY FOR THIS!!”

You think the subject line is exaggerating something? Well... Actually, it is. There is no slaughter of anything today in this café; only my best friend trying to assauge my nitpicky fear of flying and failing miserably. And how, one may ask? With logic and reason. Science will be to blame for my premature heart attack.

And again, I lie. But that's beside the point.

The point is, who doesn't want to believe that a plane hitting the infamous turbulence in clouds is actually being bounced gently around in a sea of surrealistic fluffballs? Now I'm forced to accept that turbulence is actually the soulless attack of wind from all angles, hitting in the middle of a sea of mist that is, and will always be, nothing more then suspended moisture.

Thanks, Ruth.

~Pesch

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Yes, it's chilly. Yes, my tummy is being an awful sport about the honey-drenched fruit I ate for breakfast this morning. But I'm sipping my own little cup of warmth and reading fond memories in the form of emails while the world travels in a lazy circuit around me. These are the little joys of a vacationer's early afternoon.

And that's really all I have to say.

~Pesch

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

So I've just realized something... My biggest motivation to journal comes when I have utterly no one to otherwise talk to. What does this say about me? I need interaction? That if I find myself void of conversation, I turn to LJ and delude myself into thinking that I've found companionship in a blank white box that documents whatever I say? In a sense, of course... I'm not actually talking, but I feel as though there's communication here, between me and this little blank screen. Especially with my handy little word-guessing function; I start typing something, and Mr. Little White Textbox rushes in and finishes the word for me. "I am listening!" it seems to say. " Look, I can read your mind! Type more, this is fun!!"

Or something like that.

Anywho, I'm thinking that's why I write, too. When there's nothing to do, nothing to say in the reality that is my life, I whip out the Almighty Laptop and make up engrossing conversations of my own. Pathetic? I say nay. Insane? ...perhaps. But what author isn't?

~Pesch

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Pesch here, posting from the bleachers at M. High School. Today's blackout day, and I'm the scandalous young woman in the little black dress and tights. And Vans. Around me, the silly people of MHS are trying to do the wave, at the most peculiar of times, might I add. The band's playing, beautiful compositions, but their musical, festively-dressed faces aren't what attract my eye. A woman in white (how droll on blackout day) stands on a small platform before the band, conducting them with a series of sharp, acute, yet poetic movements. She's like the puppetmaster, and around her fingers are the strings that, when pulled, bring to life the dancing waft of a trumpet, flute, drums. I would love to be that conductor... Wouldn't it be fun, standing up on that platform, having such intimate control of the intangible?

Meh, maybe I'm just silly. Aaand... They're doing the wave again. Curse my lack of school spirit. -__-

~Pesch

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

“C’mon,” Paul said, eyes glittering, an excited smile lighting up his face. Hand slipping from Misti’s arm to take her hand, he quickened his pace until the friends broke through the greenery. They found themselves on a grassy cliff that overlooked the ocean and the rocky shores of the small peninsula beyond. The crashing of the waves against rock was muted, but Misti found it deafening....
           ... A powerful wind blew towards her, buffeting her clothes, sending her raven hair streaming out behind her. Cold seeped through her navy blue sweatshirt, invigorating her. The cold didn’t bother Misti, and it never had. She leaned over the cliff’s edge and stared mesmerized at the churning black waters below. “Don’t you wonder how far down it is?” she asked in wonder.

            “Far enough,” came Paul’s anxious reply.

            How far is ‘far enough’? Misti wondered silently. Far enough to kill? To maim? Far enough for your heart to leap out your throat in those fleeting moments before you hit the cold concrete-like surface? Why would the poetic Paul give such a bland, vague answer? It was Misti who felt poetic at this moment, captivated as she was by the water, the rocks, the wind in her face. And how unusual it was! She had such an incredible urge to sing or dance, or maybe draw the sight before her, even though she knew her drawing skills to be much less than up to par.

Say hello to Misti and Paul, the main characters of the multiple-book project that I was telling you all about a few weeks ago. This is just a little excerpt from the middle of the second chapter, but I thought I'd put it up here, let my readers get a taste of my writing style. I like it, because Misti gave me a total excuse to give her a little mental tangent, which I get a kick out of. If I remember right, I wrote this on one of my little sister and I's escapades to the Starbucks in Barnes & Noble, where we usually go, get multiple grande caffinated coffees without telling momma, and write or chat our hearts out once a month. Lots of fun stuff comes out of my fingers when I'm in Barnes & Noble. Lil' A, as I'll call my little sis, figured out why pretty well one of the last times we went.

"I have my motivation here, Pesch," she tells me. "At home, I can be doing so much more besides writing. Guitar Hero, lacrosse, swimming... But when we come to Barnes & Noble, we're coming here just to write." 

And then, at home, she'll tell me in quite the amusing accent as we sit down to write,

"Where'sh my motivashion? I don't have no motivashion!" Followed by the dramatic pounding on the table. Lil' A never ceases to amuse.

In other news, the lovely Mrs. Perry did end up accepting only the first chapter of my novel to be graded. I can't even describe how wonderful that was, especially since I'm just beginning to near the end of chapter two. Cripes.

For now, I'm off to write more and finish that blasted second chapter, hopefully before the night is out. Right now, it is 9:09 pm. Let's get this chapter done by midnight. Teamwork, people!

One, two, three, BREAK!

~a.n.pesch