My characters are getting all Samurai-Princess on me. (That’s two boys, by the way. Axis is just a really small and adorable dude.)
Two people with a fated connection. A rendezvous in another world, part dreamscape, part prison, part question, part answer. But who are we to demarcate the lines of truer and less true realities? The world they think they know has only just begun to open its elevator doors.
I looked at the stairs—then decided to take the elevator. I piled in with a couple of very gross-looking guys. Some people, you just look at and think, “You have sex with pillows.” There was nothing overtly wrong with them but I have freak-radar.
The elevator reached 5F. I hurried out, trying to put some distance between me and pillow-sex guys.
And smacked into somebody. Because on top of possible-harassment-or-possible-death-threat, what I really needed in my day was a good old fashioned case of embarrassment.
The room spun before the pain in my head actually registered, and then I was on the floor and then I hurt some more. I just looked at the ceiling for a weirdly long amount of time, like I forgot that I had arms and legs and assumed the floor was just going to pick me up and put me upright again. I vaguely noticed pillow-sex guys stepping over my body.
Somebody did grab me and pulled me up, though, and for a moment, I was the luckiest guy in the world.
Let me start with the face. Long. Big, dark eyes. Hair bleached just to tea-brown. Nice size to his hands, nice width to his shoulders, not too large, just right. All this was pleasant, but when he spoke, it was in this sweet, sexy Japanese accent, layered over pitch-perfect American English:
“Hey, are you all right?”
When I realized that this was the guy I’d crashed into, I felt dizzy all over again.
From my 2011 NaNovel, Heavy Light. You can visit me at the NaNoWriMo website.
