In the red glow of a heat lamp, she turned the faucet on, and stepped back as the room filled with steam from the hot water hitting the cool base of the shower. She cautiously stepped under the water, letting it burn and sooth her aching body.
She needed this time, a shower in the night, to relax and reminisce. Without her thick, tortoiseshell glasses, the reality around her was a blur, and the fast heat against her withered skin created a sensation that allowed her to escape into her mind.

She's standing on stage, young and vivacious, her arm crossed over a slender microphone stand, and dark red lips almost kissing against the top. Sliding her free hand slowly up her hip, she presses against the tight, blue silk of her dress. The crowd of men before her whistles and howls like hungry dogs as she moves further and further up her body, pausing right before her chest. She bites her lip teasingly and chuckles, gracefully moving her hand away from herself to the head of the mic stand.
This one goes at to all those fellas who miss their hunnies real bad," she purrs in a soft, sultry voice. The band behind her starts playing a slow, jazzy tune. She hums along with it for a moment, waiting for the catcalls to finish. Her eyes catch the sober gaze of a handsome Italian man, his dark hair hidden mostly beneath a black fedora, which shadowed beautiful dark eyes. She looks away, returning to seduce the crowd, and starts to sing deeply into the microphone.

The song breaks for a moment as the men cheer, and she catches his eye once more. She tries to smirk at him, but he smiles before she can. It's so sincere, unlike smiles that her boys have aplenty, and catches her off guard. She misses a beat in her song, but quickly resumes.

The band increases its tempo and volume, and she shakes and sways her body to the music, unsettling her brown hair to fall forward to her face. When she looks up, she sees that the man had walked closer to the stage, his hat tilted upwards so that the lights makes his eyes twinkle. Her voice cracks as she hits the next line.

Her heart beats in time with the drums behind her. She quivers. She can't hear the men catcalling her to dance, to wink, to entertain them. She only stares into his dark, Italian eyes, while the words of her song trail from her lips to his.

The band winds down to close the song. She closes her eyes from her seducer, humming along with the ending. She pauses a moment after the last low sequence of the sax plays, then opens her eyes, and… he's gone.

A knock on the door brought her back to reality, and she turned the faucet off. Her skin was more wrinkled than usual, and she realized that she had been in the shower for a very long time.
She pulled open the curtain and stepped out, careful not to tread too much water on the floor. She grabbed the fluffy white bathrobe hanging on the door and put it on, just as another knock resounded.
Yes?" she called through the door.
You all right?" his voice responded.
Oh, sorry. I'm fine." She opened the door. "I was just… lost in thought."
Thinking about me, eh?" he joked, and playfully ran a weathered hand through her gray hair. She looked away for a fragment of a second, stealing a glance at her face in the mirror.

She looked back into his light eyes and smiled. "Always," she said. He smiled back.
















Kendra's Round 1 Entry for The Red Pen Summer Tournament



Location, location, location," that's the number one rule in real estate, he always told me. Sure, it's a fine rule, but a more realistic idea would be, "Don't believe anything." Because, chances are, someone's lying to you. We were best friends. No, I shouldn't say that. He was my best friend, and I was his patsy.

There had only been one left; the rest had fallen out with the jerking of the plane. He knew it, and I knew it. If we took it together, there was a higher chance that it wouldn't save us, but at least we'd have the same chances. I turned around for just a second, just a second, and he was putting on the 'chute.

What are you doing?" I asked him, grabbing on to the back of my chair. The helicopter was shaking out of control and it caused me to bite deep into my lip when I spoke. He turned around for a second, nearly slipping over the edge. I wish that he had.

Look, I was planning on taking all the money anyway," he had said. I knew about his overseas account, but I'd figured that he needed to keep money away from his wife. They were going through a harsh divorce at the time. Maybe that's what made him turn. "This will just make things easier on both of us," he said. There wasn't any doubt in his voice, but maybe that was just part of his act. He was an amazing liar. That's why we made such a good team. He schmoozed at the open house and I'd finish the paper work before they could change their minds.

I didn't find him until today. It's been two summers and one winter since I last saw him alive. I don't recall if the pilot's quarters exploded before or after he jumped, but it must have been after, since he still had most of his clothing. My guess is that a shard from one of the little windows blasted through the air and caught him in the neck, causing him to bleed out. His face is decayed, but there's flesh left on his body, definitely more than there should be. I knew it was he because of the one-hundred-percent Egyptian cotton label on his suit. "Anything else chafes me," he had said. I told him not to worry about the price, that the budget could handle it. As if he was worried.

I don't care about the money anymore. It's kind of a ridiculous thing to care about when you're all alone in the woods. When my stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself, I couldn't satisfy it with a crisp green bill. I've eaten bugs, leaves, various plants, flowers, rabbits, and a squirrel. Those squirrels are too fast for me to catch, especially with only some sharp rocks and a stick or two to hunt with, but once I found a little injured one. I felt guilty eating it, and, overcome, I threw up most of it afterward. Then I tried eating it again. It didn't stay. That was during my more desperate time out here. Really, in those first few weeks, I would have tried to eat anything left on me. Fortunately, I didn't have anything to spare. Apart from blasting and cutting up most of my skin—I've seen my reflection in the puddles. I can't even… I can't recognize myself—the explosion shredded my clothes up badly, with huge tears in the top and all material lost in the pants past the pockets. It might have looked hot on a stranded young woman, but it was just disturbing for a thirty-two-year-old man with a beer belly. Still, it was just as well, as I needed to use the cloth for bandaging. Thankfully, the winter here—somewhere in Europe, maybe—was rather warm. It was strange, running around exposed. I'd never been so aware of myself. I could fee every gust of wind that chilled me and every leaf that slid across my skin. However, I've since gotten used to it, mind and body. My palms and the bottoms of my feet have grown hard and I'm muscular, especially in my torso, since I spend a lot of my time doing sit-ups and push-ups. If it weren't for the scarring and unkempt hair, I'd consider myself an attractive man.

That's a big if.

I was playing when I found him. People say that adults have no imaginations, that they lose them after their childhood, but that's not true. We're all just too busy, and far too embarrassed. But I'm alone here, with a year's uselessness in each day. When I get tired from exercising, and sick of thinking, I let my mind float away. I become someone else. Among many, I've been a pirate searching for booty, a prince winning a maiden's heart, a soldier fighting with nuclear weapons, and a vampire stalking in the night. On this particular night, I was a dragon.

I flapped my giant red wings harder and harder, but I couldn't get my scaly body off of the Earth. I roared angrily at the sky and furiously blew fire into the air. As I stomped my tremendous hind legs, I stepped on a smooth, slanted rock and fell backward down a hill that I didn't realize I'd climbed. When I stopped sliding down it, I saw down the ways, something catching the sunlight. It was just that angle, that particular angle from me lying halfway up the hill, which let me see the shine from his initials. I thundered quickly over to shine, bearing my long claws. Dragons are very protective of their land. When I was nearly there, I leaped the rest of the distance, further than I have ever roamed, roaring wildly at the one who dared to trespass.

I stopped playing when I realized what I had landed on top of; sick, squishy, blue flesh with dried blood around the neck and outer left thigh. His pungent cologne had warded off the wildlife for the most part. There was a pen in his pants pocket and a business card tucked in his shirt.

I scribbled in a new, more fitting career for him and tucked the card back into his pocket.

His briefcase was about seventy-five feet from his body, still closed, but the latch was broken. I snorted when I opened it. It contained one and one-half of a chocolate Pop-Tart and three boxes of dark brown hair dye and nothing else, which was quite silly, since Jay had a long lineage of lush, colorful hair and never ate sweets. Or so the fairytale went. I giggled to myself.

And yet, as I looked at the hair dye, rabidly devouring the remains of the Pop-Tarts, I wondered if maybe I could use it. Not on myself, but on the treetops. I reasoned that if I could rub it into the leaves, maybe mix it with some water, I might attract attention.

So now I wait in the night under my darkened trees, tired and praying that, come morning, someone will see my work and it won't wash away, someone whose pilot won't have a heart attack.

My name is Orlando Sellers, a fitting name for a man in my business. It is 6:23 AM on July 11th, 2009, thirteen days after I dyed the trees, and I am wearing a fire safety blanket inside of a private jet. I had watched the helicopter land. It looked just like one that had taken Jay and I. A curious couple of round-world travelers had directed their pilot to come down to let them look at the "beautiful black trees." They had not expected to find a bare man waiting under them.

If we hadn't seen how… beaten up you were… we probably would have thought you were crazy," the woman admitted to me. She has light skin and blonde hair with dark roots, a sight which made me dig my nails into my dark skin.

I will smile at her, but nothing else. They're persistant with their touches and conversation, their sympathy. Don't they understand? I wanted to be free. There is no more room among my dragons and fairy tales and the taste of wild blood for another love, and I've no will to seek it.