Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Manifesting

When the coffee and donuts were finished, Pyre began hinting that it was time for him to go. Both his body and his mind were screaming at the concentration required to manifest for this long all at once, and he was afraid that he would accidentally un-manifest at any moment, leaving her all alone at the table.

When he suggested that he had "places to be," Becca asked him one simple question. "What are you doing tomorrow?"

He should have said he was busy - maybe that he had classes to attend. Except that the next day was Saturday, and Pyre remembered at the last moment that the college had no classes on the weekends. He couldn't think of any other excuses; his experience of lying off-the-cuff was very limited. So he told the truth instead. "I figure I'll just tag along with you wherever you go."

Apparently that was the perfect thing for him to say, as far as the fledgling artist was concerned. She laughed, squeezed his hand, and told him to meet her at the part at 9:00 in the morning.

All the way back to his motel, Pyre cradled his hand in his arm, taking pleasure in the tingling of her warm touch against his cold flesh, which seemed to linger long after they parted company for the night. He was so captivated by strange - and undeniably human - feelings, that he did not even see or notice the homeless man, who sat on the sidewalk waving at him and chanting over and over, "Jack Jack Jack."

If anyone had asked him, Pyre would have said that the next few days went by like a whirlwind. He would have said that they dragged on like a prison sentence. He didn't know what to think of those days, except that every night he simultaneously dreaded and eagerly awaited the dawn.

The first day was a misery. For seven hours straight Pyre manifested while he and Becca walked the streets of the city, stopping at malls and craft fairs and markets. They rode the subway from one end of the city to the other, and Pyre was jostled constantly by complete strangers, who - he discovered - never gave him a second glance, even though he felt entirely alien among them. The mental strain of manifesting for that long was almost too much to bear. Three times during the day the strain grew so great that his hands began to tremble. Each time Pyre excused himself and went into the bathroom to sit, un-manifested, in a toilet stall with the door locked behind him.

The first day was a misery, yes, but it was also a pure delight, for Pyre was astonished to discover an awakening of previously hollow senses. A jelly donut was no longer simply something to stick in his mouth and chew methodically; it was a source of sweetness and fluffy texture that melted in his mouth. The voices, and the car horns, these were no longer a simple cacophony of meaningless sound; they were woven together into a magnificent urban symphony Pyre had never before recognized.

And the sights. He had always seen the buildings, the sidewalks, the bustling people, the blue skies with clouds skittering across; he had always seen these things with his eyes, but now, to his great delight, he was really seeing them as humans saw them, recognizing the beauty, the ugliness, the austerity, the glory, of all the world around him.

He began to understand why Becca was so eager to paint.

That night he slept more soundly than he ever had, in his tiny little motel room near the freight yard.

The next day, Becca dragged him to church with her, and though he dreaded the experience, he discovered there an entirely different sort of glory. It was the glory of stained glass and gilded pictures, the majesty of ultimate sacrifice made by the god-man they worshiped, the beauty of music that was completely unlike the urban symphony, and the wonder of a people who had the strange yet undeniable hope that there was more to this life than simply...life.

Plus, whenever he got tired of manifesting, he could drop out for a few seconds during a prayer, or when everyone's attention was on the man up front delivering the homily.

But in all of this, he was no closer to understanding what held back this cheerful, wonderful woman from realizing her true genius with the brush.

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