Word count: 1,783
Rating: T/PG-13 (for mild swearing)
Genre: Fantasy/Paranormal Fiction
Background: Written in 2007/2008 and edited within the last year and a half, posted here now for enjoyment. This story came to me in the middle of the night out of nowhere; it's kind of cute, kind of strange, it's definitely got fey and also references the popular children's rhyme "Little Bunny Foo-Foo".
Link to the Short Story - Inner Journey
Inner Journey, by Kelsey Teresea
“I swear to god it was here yesterday!” Victor shouted as he stood on the sidewalk, arms dangling by his side, mouth hanging open, with frown lines creasing his forehead. He turned to the girl standing beside him, letting loose a sigh of agitation.
“Summer, you have to believe me! I was in that shop,” he practically shouted as he pointed to the dilapidated store front, “that shop, talking to a guy, just yesterday afternoon!” His worry lines deepened on his forehead; they made him appear at least four years older than he was, and he was fairly young.
Summer fished around in her little painted canvas bag, peering with feigned interest over Victor’s shoulder at the broken windows and the dark interior of the shop. Its dark blue banner still hung over the door - Inner Journey: Metaphysics, Magic, and Answers.
“Well?” demanded Victor, worried.
Summer lit a cigarette. She breathed out a plume of smoke before answering, “Oh, I believe you.” She took another drag. “I’m just not sure why you needed to come here.”
Victor absent-mindedly waved at the clouds of smoke, turning back around to stare at the storefront again. Placing his hands on his hips he said, “What I don’t understand is why it looks as if it’s been abandoned for several years. It’s absurd! I was here just yesterday. It’s completely absurd!” He began nervously straightening out creases in his jacket.
“Once again, I’m not sure why you needed to come here.” Summer drew her baggy red cardigan tighter, shielding herself from the slight breeze that had begun to pick up. Her cigarette protruded jauntily from her mouth.
Victor spun around intensely - it would have been comical if not for the look of angry astonishment he directed towards his female companion.
Summer took another drag from her cigarette, staring calmly at Victor.
“Are you kidding me?” He waited for a reply. She just stared at him, blowing smoke. “No, you’re not,” he sighed. “I came here to get answers.”
“Answers?”
“Of course answers! Those dreams bother me! I don’t know about you, but they really creep me out! Don’t they bother you?”
Summer shook her head softly but curtly. “Why should they?”
“Why should they? Why should they?” Victor began pacing, his hands shoved in the pockets of his freshly dry-cleaned slacks. Suddenly, he stopped in front of her. He leaned in close and pointed a finger at her, the immaculately clean nail glinting in the sunlight.
“I’ll tell you why they should bother you,” he said. “For one thing, we share the same dreams. Night after night, wherever we are, however far apart we are, we dream the same thing together. For another, I’m convinced that they’re precognitive.” His eyes turned dark. “We’re headed for some horrible things...but,” he paused, shifted his weight and took a breath. “I think that I can prevent those bad things from happening if I just find the answers.” Finished, he stared at her, waiting for some response, some acknowledgement for his efforts.
Summer brushed a strand of her lank and slightly greasy chestnut colored hair out of her face. “Why don’t you come up with the answers yourself?” Her tone was matter-of-fact, as if she were stating that the sky was blue.
Baffled, Victor opened his mouth, then quickly shut it again. He did that twice more before he blurted out, “Because that’s not what humans do!”
She raised her eyebrows. “It’s not, is it?”
“No!” Victor retorted back strongly, though his features said that he was unsure.
“Humans are not supposed to think for ourselves? Humans don’t have the power to create our futures?”
Victor shifted his weight and his gaze back to the shop again, seeming not to hear her. “Human beings need guidance. They need support. They need answers to life’s burning questions. The woman I talked to, she said that she would have the answers - she would interpret the dreams and tell me what I had to do to prevent them from happening, but you had to be here, too. But now I’ll never know!” He threw his arms up in a childish display of despairing anger and glared gloomily at Summer.
Summer dropped her cigarette butt. Victor followed, almost in slow motion, the end of the cigarettes’ journey to the ground. It sailed past Summer’s horizontally striped dress, past her brown woolen socks and boots to where it finally hit the ground, smouldering, until Summer crushed it with a stomp and a decisive twist of her boot.
She stared at him. “What if they’re just dreams?”
“But you could die!” Victor whispered, afraid.
She chuckled. “That’s going to happen one day whether you like it or not.”
A tiny light of comprehension flickered on Victor’s face for a moment and then disappeared. He straightened himself up and smoothed over the imaginary wrinkles in his jacket with his hands once again.
“I - I think I should just wait here, just in case the lady comes back for something,” Victor stated distantly, turning to face Inner Journey once again.
Summer’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “So,” she whispered, advancing towards Victor, “that’s what it’s going to be, then?”
“What do you mean?” Victor asked, turning back around to face her, eyebrows raised high.
“I mean you’re just going to sit here and wait for someone to give your life meaning, to tell you what it’s all about?”
“Well, yes! Because that’s what humans do! Why can’t you comprehend this?”
“Suit yourself,” she shrugged.
Victor stared at her for the briefest of moments - Summer caught the confusion and the fear in his eyes before returning his attention back to the shop.
Summer could not help but laugh. “You are absurd. And completely mental.” She shook her head. “See ya, Vic.” With that, she turned and began walking away.
Victor only noticed that she was no longer near him when she was about twenty feet away from him.
Naturally, he panicked.
“Hey!” he uncharacteristically shouted. “Come back! Where are you going? Summer!” He started to advance towards her, managing about two and a half steps before realizing that he was two and a half steps away from the shop, which had all the answers, which he did not want to let out of his sight.
He opened his mouth to call her name again but amazingly SUmmer had stopped walking.
Victor watched her light another cigarette...
...and then she continued to walk away from him!
Victor’s panic magnified tenfold.
“Shit!” The curse was punctuated with a flailing of his arms.
He looked at the shop.
It was dark and dismal.
He looked down the street towards Summer’s retreating figure - eclectic and vivacious.
A sudden recklessness seized him.
“Shit!”
The moment he made the decision, he could feel an almost physical tearing, a sort of rending of what could only be described as his perception of reality that was quite liberating. Or maybe it was the uncharacteristic running in his freshly dry-cleaned suit that felt so liberating. None-the-less, he sprinted after Summer, shouting her name.
When he caught up to her, he grabbed her shoulder, stopping his forward momentum as well as her own in the process.
She merely removed the half-finished cigarette from her mouth and stared at him as if her were something the cat brought it.
“Please,” was all he could say. And, “Don’t go.”
“Why should I wait for you? You’re a brainless foo-foo,” she said, knocking lightly on his head with her knuckles.
Victor opened his mouth.
But Summer, narrowing her eyes, said, “Do you ever think about what it would be like if all you ever knew in your life, about your world, was fake? Well, I can tell you now that your life, the one you are leading now, is real. Does it scare you to think that you cannot get away? That I’ve shattered all hope of this being a dream? Let me tell you that you needed to come to terms with it at some point because you cannot possibly live your life well if you think that someday you will magically wake up from it, into something better. There is no better. You make it better. There is only an is when it is made. Your life will not magically be better by itself until you make something happen. This is important. You and only you make your life what it is.
So, tell me, Vic, why should I wait for the likes of you?” Her cigarette end she flung viciously over Victor’s left shoulder while her eyes narrowed dangerously.
Victor was trembling. Whenever Summer was this angry with him, she seemed all the more etheric, otherworldly, transcendent. Especially in comparison to his drab reality. He realized how hard he was breathing so he caught his breath for a millisecond then blurted out, “Because I love you!”
“So take control of your destiny!” she hissed, her deep forest green eyes flashing.
Victor’s stomach lurched but he forced himself to stare into her intense eyes. He could stare into her eyes for forever - it was like looking unto the sights of the edge of a forest, places of deep beauty and mystery tucked away behind dense foliage; food for the soul.
“Please,” he said again. “You’re the only light in this darkness.” He wasn’t sure where exactly that particular sentiment came from, but it was true none-the-less.
Summer, characteristically, rolled her eyes. Victor knew he was back in her good graces, then - he had come to understand that her eye-rolling was a sign of affection towards him. He smiled.
Summer sighed and rapped once more on his head before saying, “Vic, I swear...I swear to god... You’ve got one more chance, y’hear me? One more chance or I’ll turn you into a goon! I swear to god I will!”
Relieved, Victor grinned. “Good! Third time’s the charm, eh?”
“It is indeed,” Summer mumbled, a note of defeat in her voice.
Yet she took Victor’s hand in hers and smiled at him warmly.
Victor smiled back.
Hand in hand, the two walked on down the street. Unbeknownst to Richard, who was grinning like a fool and looking at some cars across the street, Summer glanced back at the metaphysics shop. As she knew it would, Inner Journey had repaired itself and yet another lost soul was headed towards it and the fiercely eclectic woman who had emerged to leer at Sumer.
Summer merely stuck her tongue out at the other fey and then quickly turned her attention to Victor. She said, “My little bunny foo-foo - shall we get us some gelato?”
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