A bit of sunshine for LENNY LEE! plus my FRIDAY ROMANTIC CHALLENGE_I REMEMBER_CAN HEARTS SHARE?

HI, LENNY! HERE'S A PICTURE VICTOR STANDISH AND I THOUGHT YOU WOULD FIND FUNNY :


Down below is just "mushy" romantic stuff. Yuck!! Have a great weekend, Lenny!

CAN HEARTS SHARE?

The world traveller Denise Covey

and the ever fascinating Francine Howarth have challenged us for another Romantic Friday project : "I Remember."


My entry is 400 words exactly. It features my Ulysses of the French Quarter, Victor Standish.

He has gone to the cyrpt of Marie Laveau at midnight, for he has believed the lie that for Samuel McCord to live, he must die.


He has just met the eerie Alice Wentworth (think Jane Eyre with very sharp teeth).

She asks him what brings him to her cemetery and how he got those slashes on his cheeks.

(If you want to know about the slashes go to :

http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2011/05/rachels-and-callys-power-of-tension.html )


Victor has just discovered a skill he never knew he had and he decides to try it out again :



I jumped up on a marble slab and patted next to me. “Have a seat.”

Alice flowed like mist beside me. I reached out and softly took her hand, trying for an encore of the magic of earlier.

Sometimes in life you get more than you ask for.

I stiffened as the swirling sea of her loneliness, her joy at being in touch with another hurt spirit swept me up. I drew her into me,

into my memories of burnt out ends of smoky days laced with pain, of the withered leaves of others’ lies,

of the thousand pleas of my heart to the life-hardened hearts of others.

The autumn world of my days on the streets came up over the dark horizon of regret. Lost friends, mocking enemies, the haunted, loving eyes of Mother.

The yellowed papers of memory curled up around us from Detroit to Boston to that strange bus ride to New Orleans.

The light of hope shot through the black shutters of loneliness into images of me wandering lost through Meilori’s.

Dim figures of Billie Holliday and Daniel Webster wavered before us like ghosts of fear. My betrayal by Elu, my being an unwilling teaching aid for Strasser,

my losing everything as I decided that for Captain Sam to live I had to die.

The cry of Alice’s lonely heart calling out to me as she struggled to escape her own private hell.

Her spooky entrance into my life. My own loneliness reaching out to hers.

The circle completing its circuit. Rising from the waters of shared spirits as I gently pulled her hand from my chest.

Our fingers parting. The shiver of separation as her pale face looked at me haunted.

I shivered as our union broken left me soul-cold. Alice was shivering as well. My head was spinning. Something was wrong with my heart.

It wasn’t empty anymore.

What had I done to me?

Maybe you couldn’t see, really see, into someone without it changing you.

And you couldn’t show them the you that you really were without the two of you never being the same anymore.

A wild thought came to me.

I brought her cold, cold hand up to my lips and kissed it.

Alice’s lower lip trembled. “How could you?”

“C-Could I what?”

She softly traced the line of one of Strasser’s cuts on my left cheek. “Turn out so special?”

***