Interrupting Prose (moo)

I am hesitant to post this here, as it doesn't belong here. But I was touching it up for my creative writing class, and I figure it's not too far off the road from where my head's at now.
This is something I have wanted to say lately, but this is the only way I can say it without epic failing. :\ Um, yay fiction.

"Repeat after me, verbatim."

"No." I could not; not in a million years, not anymore, at least, and he was poorly misinformed to think that I could. It was neither flattery nor scholarly encouragement; it was not even an attempt to shame me into compliance, for I was already as docile as a well-kept finch. No, it was simply a mistake on his part, an honest one. But he had not been the first to make it, and so I was not quite as forgiving as I should have been.

"Excuse me?" His smooth pace along the stage hitched.

"Excuse me." I grabbed my coat and fled from that place.


~


Throughout the day, I imagine and forget many things. Sometimes, this makes it difficult to discern things that have happened from things I have thought happened. The differences are very obvious at first. First, I am walking. Then, I am imagining you beside me. I know I am imagining it because I would not be able to keep such a pace if you had really been there.

But perhaps I hear the bell tower; perhaps I am late for class. And if I walk just a bit faster, then all things will be confused: later, when I throw my coat onto my bed, I will think of you, and how fast I had to walk to keep up with you, and the things I have done and the things I have not will be too similar, and I will be too tired to care much in differentiating them.

And it will not really matter, anyway, whether you were there because of a meeting or because I'd gotten bored on the long walk home and decided to put you there. We talked, and I felt better; that is all I will really want to remember, anyways.

You were very beautiful to me then, though I do not believe this to be objectively true. You seem to me many things--a horse, a bull, a gawkish bird--but you are vary rarely a man, and even then, you do not seem very much of one. I mean no insult by this. I do not say that you are an ugly horse, or an ugly bull; and as for the bird, there is a certainly a charm about its gawkishness. Is it wrong that I think of a cow's muzzle mumbling over the grass when I talk to you? I mean simply that I see you as all these things before I see you as a man. Which is perfectly fine, really--you are much more interesting to me in these sorts of shapes.

What would you be to me as a man? Nothing. Ah, let's not talk about it--I am passing the bell tower and I do not want to think about it with that great grandfather so close by. He would laugh to hear the theories I've made, the shapes you've been. You would laugh, too--laugh yourself right away. No, I don't know that you'd laugh. But I've never asked. And I won't; it's not the sort of thing you ask of a person, not in public, not to their face. If it must leave the lips at all, it is the sort of thing I should whisper to the back of your neck. Then you would not even know what to do with it, and you could not imagine how pleased that would make me.

But look how much time I have wasted talking about things I cannot say--we are almost at my house, and one of us will be leaving soon. I suppose I shouldn't say it like that; it sounds as if one of is will be dying. I will not be, sir. And you--well, you have no business with death, though you certainly enjoy circling the drain. Do you live there, I wonder? Between my sink and the underworld, which is just beneath the garbage disposal, of course.

What a strange thing you are; what a strange living you must make there. I don't think I've seen you work an honest day in your life, despite the job you've held for, what--ten, fifteen years? (I've no idea, because remember, these are the questions we didn't ask--questions of time, questions of shape.) You enjoyed that job far too much for it to have been honest work. No, there was nothing honest about it. Honesty hurts. Honesty is the safe word; honesty is release. There was nothing honest about the way you relished every one of those days. Those are the workings of a lie; and lies are the workings of a game. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I shake my keys from my pocket. All these years, and you couldn't tell me until I got to my front door? The light was on and I was being waited on. You mumbled something before bolting off to your meeting, or around the corner; somewhere away from my redirected attention.

I did not say goodbye or otherwise acknowledge your leave taking. I have already broken enough rules of the game; I am an impulsive and therefore clumsy player. But I'm getting better. Not as good as you, of course. I sometimes wonder if you have ceased being a player and become some part of the game itself. But no, I don't think so; I'm more inclined to believe that I'm just becoming a better player myself.