Friday, December 9, 2011

Birthday Stories

Birthday Stories
by
Bobby Derie

 
Today, a beautiful woman that you have walked beside for months will turn, and kiss you full on the lips. She will taste like honey and ashes, and leave you remembering her smile as she turns away, never to see you again. That was the last year of your life. Unnoticed, another woman will take you by the elbow, and lead you on again. Will you look forward, or back? Happy Birthday José!
¤
As you drive in today, the car behind you creeps closer and closer. No matter how fast you go, the car seems to stay right on your bumper, inching up. You try not to let it get to you, but as you go on, you feel the strain - what will happen when you stop? Will he hit you? - but you keep driving on, because you have somewhere to go, someone to get to. And when you finally start to slow, bracing yourself for the hit, you look behind you - only to see the macabre white grin of skull-headed Time. One bony finger raises to his temple, a gentle salute - on keeping ahead for another year.

Happy Birthday Ed!
¤
Today you will see two black birds. For a moment, they will fly together, but then one will pull off and go its own way, while the other flies straight ahead. Sometime from now, you will stop and think back about the two birds, and wonder where the other one flew off to. But not too often, and not for too long.

Happy Birthday, Henri!
¤
As a boy, you heard an old man play an old song, and the piece was strange and new to you. You left with the echo of that song in your bones, and it settled there with the echoes of every other song you had ever heard. And when you play, those echoes squeeze out from wrist and fingertip, and some of the old songs come through in new music, to be heard again. One day, you will play an old song for a young boy, and they will carry the echo of it with them forever.

Bon anniversaire, Ryan!
¤
The daimyo has called you, and like a loyal son you have come in your best kimono, sword sheathed across your knees. You can feel his eyes on you, but you stare resolutely at the floor while you await his command.

"You will have the honor of serving our clan." the old man said. "Happy birthday."
¤
The darkened stage. The hushed movement of the crowd. The curtain rises. Happy birthday, Dru.
¤
She screams, pain breaking her in two. Claws the bedsheets into wadded handfuls. Someone says "epidural." The mother to be falls back in on herself as the drugs work through her system, her mind tracing back through previous incarnations...as men, as women, on steam ships and on horseback, and settles on another self, squatting in the midst of a battlefield. Bronze-headed arrows flick around her, but she is more intent on the breach, the terrible tearing release as the babe is born amid blood and slaughter. Then she is back to herself, in the hospital, a dark-eyed child in her arms, and she wonders: is this her babe, or that other?

Happy Birthday, Elf!
¤
You're dreaming. You know you're dreaming. This couch is gone, this room - you haven't been here for a long time. You look over to your left, and your friend is there. You haven't seen him in forever. He smiles just like you remember. "Dude, you're old. Happy birthday."

You wake. But it's still your birthday.
¤
The party moves around you, eye of the storm. A slim waist catches your eye, the flash of a watch, a come-hither eye. So you grab your drink and plunge into the crowd, mouthing hellos to friends and gifting smiles to strangers like your purse will never run out. You shift to avoid a young couple, step over the peacefully sleeping drunk, racing after the pair of jeans ahead of you.

Then you're at the stage, staring up at the band, and the music stops. A pair of lips draws close behind your shoulder, warm breath on your cheek, in your ear. The crowd raises their glasses and plastic cups, a silent toast...for tonight, for this moment, this song, this dance, is for you.

Happy birthday Crystal!
¤
In the beginning, one tribe hunted the deer. One tribe ate of the grass. One tribe fished the sea. And then there was the not-tribe, outcasts of all others, and they were the thieves. They stole fish, and meat, and grain, and share all they stole with each other, and the tribes reviled them.

Then one thief grew tired of stealing from the other tribes. He belonged to no tribe, and to him, all people were as one. He wished to steal something to share for all. So he climbed the highest tree on the highest mountain, and grabbed the lowest-hanging star. And he set it on his head so he could climb down the highest tree on the highest mountain, and carried it back to the tribes and shared the gift of fire with them all, and ever after his hair was as the burning flame of the star, and so it was with all of his descendents.

Happy Birthday, J!
¤
The old man was on his way out, and you both knew it. But he smiled when you came in the room, and nodded a thanks he couldn't voice when you were done. You'd see him almost every day, a little paler, a little thinner, veins standing out in loose, hanging flesh. But he would smile when he saw you, and you'd smile back. That's what you remember of the old man. And when one day you went in there and he was gone, you stared at the empty bed, and wondered. Later on, they moved in a child. And she smiled when you came in. Most of them do. Happy birthday K.
¤
Somewhere above you there's a starry night, and you crane your neck, eyes skyward. The buildings form a concrete and glass canyon, blocking out all but a narrow slice--and that edged with light from the sleepless city, so you squint for the narrow band of blackness. You're still searching for it when comes the dawn. A cloud you never knew existed blows aside, and bright yellow rays cut through the early morning smoke, lighting up the top half of the buildings, leaving the streets in deeper shadows. You're at a cross-street, and you look north and south, to see the patterns there, where the light comes through on the east-west lines. Manhattanhenge. Something unique to carry you through another day, another year.

Happy birthday John!
¤
Behind you, there are bloody sneaker-prints on the sidewalk. Each step squelches a little, your legs shake and skin shivers at the trickle down your leg. You cut through a yard of unmowed grass, and back over asphalt again, through a patch of fine, dry dust, trailing blood. And in the grass little Aztecs build their temples to repeat the sacrifice, and in the road the tiny swarming survivors come, fighting for the prize with homemade weapons and scavenged armor, and necromancers howl as tiny monsters of blood and dust roar into tiny, vibrant life. Each bloody footprint a world a-borning, and you walk on.

Happy Birthday, John.
¤
As you drifted off to sleep, glasses off and staring into the dark, a part of yourself went walking a little ways into the future. Even as you lay there, pinned to the bed by the weight of history, a part of you walked past the sorrows of tomorrows yet to come, harsh words and heartaches, strange pains you'd never felt before - and the farther you got, the more you thought "I'm old, I'm old." Then you sat for a while, and there was a young man beside you, struggling with the notes on the page in front of him. Tired and achy as you were, you helped him through the lesson, and when it was done he went his way, and you started on your way back through time to where you still lay in bed, the years falling off you, the aches gone away until you passed that way again, and you thought to yourself "One day, I'll teach Coda how to read music."

Happy Birthday Andy!
¤
Once upon a nothing, there was no time. The stars shined ever overhead in eternal night, the creatures of the earth and sea and sky slept without dreaming, and the wind was still. No one knows who sang the first song, but the sound of it set the world in motion, each beat defined a new moment to be. The first song still plays, beneath the background of life, and somewhere someone keeps the time. Happy Birthday Dan!
¤
Foot to the ground, pushing against the air, breathing ragged, you hit the wall. Your body seizes like something vital has drained out of you, the world goes black around the edges and it's everything you can do to put one foot down in front of the other, the weight of the world in each step. Legs pump like dead mechanical things, iron horselegs of the locomotive churning on residual steam. Then you remember to breathe again, push on through it. Lift your eyes to the horizon again, see the marker: 4k. One more to go. You keep on moving. Happy birthday, Chris!
¤
The party ends, the last hurrah chokes off to a dying cackle and then a gentle snore, the last body able to move on its own shuffles off out the door, wishing a final congratulations and farewell for the day that was. The years hang heavy on you in the dark and quiet night, cleaning up bottles and collecting glasses in the sink, discovering with scant surprise the little presents your friends and loved ones have left you. And in the early morning hours when all the work is done, you shuffle off to your own bed, and fall into it...and through it, head never hitting the pillow, and the wind rushes past you as you fall into the inky night, and then you bank and fly off toward the distant moon-lit horizon and the waiting clouds. Happy Birthday, Rand!
¤
"...and when you were three years old, I whispered into your ear a secret, that you should carry it with your always in your heart and that it should be a part of you. When those others shall pretend to some greater wisdom, you will take comfort from that secret knowledge, and in that calm a confidence to carry you through the turmoils and trials of your life. Never will you forget that secret, but it shall be such a part of you that you will almost forget that it is a secret. Some day I shall die, and the secret will be yours alone - and some day you will have a child, and when they are young and easily hurt you will whisper your own secret in their ear. Think long on it now, so that you will be ready." Then your grandparent tucked you into bed with a kiss, and left you to stare alone into the darkness, looking at the shadow where they had been, holding their secret in your heart.

Happy Borthday, McQ!
¤
There's a beat from shackled feet, a stamping rhythm marking time, a circle of close-pressed bodies all chained in a line. The dancers spin and spar, touch and break bloodily away, then sweep in again with fist and foot again. The final blow comes quick, a body falls to the sand, the rhythm breaks around you, and in the silence between beats someone says "Even slaves have something to fight for."

Happy Birthday, Luke!
¤
The streets are littered with broken condoms, dirty needles, and rusted dreams. You pick your way past the jobless, the hopeless, and the insane, waving their signs and wearing their tread into the sidewalk. Shadows stalk the alleys and monster bastard cars crunk down the streets, blood drying on their grills. There are monsters out tonight, werewolves in the park feeding on rapists to savor the flavor of their sins, and worse things waiting in the dark corners of clubs to take advantage of the young, naive, skinny people there from over the bridge and tunnel. Somewhere up above in the glass-fronted heavens, a bastard in a suit looks down and pisses against the glass, imagining what he's doing to all of you.

Then you get home. The laptop opens. A message pops up from her. And you forget about the city for a while.

Happy Birthday, David!
¤
      The key lies heavy in the hand, a great black thing chased with silver and gold. The devil was loathe to part with it, even at the price offered, but it was wrested from him finally, leaving the tiny dying light of a soul behind to mortgage it. There is a tightness in the chest as the chalk outline of a door is drawn, a heart stop moment as the key unlocks that door, and the first step into the lands of fantasy are taken. The devil sits outside the gate, soullight leaking through clenched fingers, eyes only on the radiant, closing portal. Forced to wait, wondering if this one will come back to him.

Happy Birthday, J-W!
 
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