Tax, Silence, Sailor

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

She could hear only the wind and the waves. Standing at the lighthouse, she looked out as the light behind her flashed a silhouette of her figure to all watching sailors. Tonight there was no storm.

When she closed the glass door of the lighthouse, for a moment, there was only silence. Silence and the spinning light.

For months she watched and waited. The rocky dirt all around the small island undisturbed but for a patch about six feet long and three feet wide. She missed her husband but not his drunken behavior. Perhaps a sailor would come ashore and give her the attention she required, though she wasn’t eager to pay the heavy tax of a relationship. A tryst was all she longed for.

Sun or moon. Fog or rain. She kept the light shining. The work, however taxing, still left plenty of time for her mind to be pulled to her husband. A strange mix of righteous indignation and guilt. The men of the sea seemed never to suspect that a woman could be anything but warm respite from waves, rain, splinters and scurvy. She would do better with the next man, guilt has a queer way of turning one into a saint.

As the sun dipped into the ocean, she noticed the lights of a ship approaching from the dark side of the sky. Ahead, in a dingy, rowed a sailor approaching her rocky haven. She clutched her knitting needle and thought, I will no longer accept a drunk fist but I’ll welcome a gentle caress.

Feminine, Dramatic, Solution

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

He kicked the dust and shoved his hands into his jeans. She slammed the hood of the car down and dabbed at sweat on her forehead. Pulling a cigarette from a pack, she let it hang from her lips and crossed her arms on top of her head.

“Shit.” He kicked the dirt again, sending another cloud of dust toward her.

“It’s not the oil, she’s just an old car. We’ll wait for someone to drive by and hitch a ride. Relax.” She lit her cigarette and put her arms back on her head, her hands dangling on either side of her face.

He stared at the hair coming out of her armpits and curled up his nose. She caught his look of disgust and laughed.

“Bitch, what’s your problem?” She flicked the cigarette at him and pulled out a gun. He stepped back. She walked around the car, stopping at each tire to shoot a bullet into the rubber. The car sat lower now and the sun was getting higher.

“There’s two left in here.” She tapped the gun. “I’m not going to use one, so why don’t you shoot yourself twice and end your insecure, sniveling misery.” She tossed him the gun and turned around, grabbing her purse from the car.

He watched her walk down the road. Not a car passed until her image started shimmering and wavering with the heat coming off the asphalt.

A Peterbilt blew past him and the gun, stopping just after her image on the horizon.

“Fuck it.” he said.

Just before she shut the passenger side door of the Model 567, she heard two gun shots. She hoped for his sake he had not missed the second time.

“Did you hear that?” the trucker spat out his dip and pulled his cap lower. “Sounded like gunshots.”

“Nothing that dramatic, probably just some loser on the side of the highway putting an end to his misery.” She rolled down the window and rested her hand on the ledge.

“Where to?” the trucker shifted the rig into gear.

“Do you ever get engine troubles in this thing?” She pulled out another cigarette and pressed her red lips around the filter. She lit it and slipped the butt in between his lips.

“Sure, sometimes it can be a bitch.”

“Well, what about a ride along mechanic?”

Flame, Famous, Shy

3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator

She went on to do great things. Invited to universities she had never attended to give graduation speeches. Invited to television talk shows so her admirers could see she was really like everyone else but in the most glamorous way. Her name was leant to movies, books and T.V. shows as a way to further promote them. She made trips to congress to speak bout issues in which she was passionate. She was loved and adored. Her personal life, however, did not exist.

Her name meant many things to those who followed her but to herself it had lost all meaning. her quiet demeanor was misattributed as humbleness and her few choices of words marked as the attribute of a great speaker, rather than to her shyness.

Long after her body existed, she would live on in the memories of the collective conscience. They would make meme’s of her on social media platforms that generations after would look at and attribute new meaning.

And, of course, she was heralded as a great voice for women all over the world. Though she never directly spoke of women’s rights, her image was used as an example to all women.

To this, she had her doubts. Am I a tool for another’s agenda? Do I belong here for my ideas? Or will I always be a female body with ideas, doomed never to be separated from my anatomy.

These questions would arise in her mind but to them she also rebutted, as long as my ideas are sound they will rise above all superficialities, in time.

She got older and wiser, the political climate changed and issues came, went and came back again. Her image came and went with them.

Now as she neared the end of her life, with only a handful of years to walk this earth, she noticed the same things.

“Here is an example of a woman who has risen above it all to achieve great things, despite.”

“This woman has to rub it in everyone’s faces that she is a woman, just focus on the ideas, lady.”

She had heard the same criticisms all her life, on both sides, calling her woman. They were not wrong but they were miles away from the truth.

As she spent her final days in a house of a quiet neighborhood in some lazy suburb, she would look out the window and watch the world go by, still with that same flame, passion and will. To all of you, she thought, that say I am more than a woman or just a woman, I only ever wished to live as I am.