Finish the story, earn 3 steembasicincome shares + SBD! Week #4

f3nix (59) in contest • 7 years ago (edited)

Finish the sentence - earn SBI shares and upvotes!.v3.png

Hello friends! Week n. 4 has come and I'm excited to introduce you to a fiction story based in Venice, Italy.

A contest with a pot of 3 @steembasicincome shares + the SBD payout? You're in the right place!

I write a story, you finish it, you get rewarded. Everyone will get a reward and enjoy each other stories! Not bad right? :-)

Check my previous post for further details. And here's the story..

In the morning mist, the cries of the seagulls were brush strokes against the canvas of a mannerist landscape painter.
A barge slid slowly over the Grand Canal with its cargo of goods destined for the wealthy clientele of the prestigious Molino Stucky. A German shepherd sat next to the man driving the barge. The sailor moved the rudder carelessly and seemed to be made of fog himself, layers of damp solidified in a solemn creature of the sea, insensitive to the perfidious wind of that morning.
From the island of Giudecca, an ancient tongue of silent land populated with vegetable gardens, one could see the Dorsoduro district and thoughtful mothers along the fondamenta, their children swallowed by the school's gate. Venice is a geology of souls and endless stories. A mosaic of heaven and earth and something else that you can never embrace till the end. The streets are calli, the squares campi and campielli, the districts sestieri, the foundations are still made of trunks embedded in the seabed.
Time had honed his senses. He could see a lot from the window, although the glass looked like a translucent placenta that separated him from that vibrant world.
Those glasses encrusted with saltiness had been his cross, then with time he had ceased to feel troubled. On the side of Calle del Pistor the windows were cleaner and he could see more clearly than from those faceing the Canal, due to the lesser aggression of the weather. The view however was not equally interesting.

Thoughts washed by time, slow gestures, daily rituals repeated to infinity, loss of structure and meaning. In the dim light of that damp attic, all that remained was his memories and the incessant spectacle of life out there, through the glassy and salt-encrusted placenta. Memories faded but life out there could not fade, even if it diverged more and more from the threshold of his perception.

The days passed and he kept watching from the windows. He waited. He remembered and waited.

If in a quiet system an event lasts t seconds, the same phenomenon lasts longer in a reference system that moves almost at the speed of light in a uniform motion.

How many seconds did an event last in that dimension where he was now?
He had been a good physics professor, before everything happened. His students had always appreciated his lessons and surely, now that they were esteemed professionals, they remembered him in their memories and anecdotes about university time.

Lost in the viscous broth of his thoughts, he did not even notice the click of the door opening. Finally.
A figure was outlined against the rose madder wallpaper of the corridor outside the apartment. Slowly the figure moved forward with light cautious steps on the carpet of the attic.

The result will be out on Monday 26th March, avg. 11 pm, UTC +1 (i.e. California is UTC -8). There will be time for everyone to develop the fiction idea.

If you like this contest..SPREAD THE GOSPEL! I'm grateful for your resteeming and word of mouth. Please keep it up as I'm just a minnow like you with enthusiasm and passion for writing and making friends :-D

contest steembasicincome giveaway isleofwrite fiction

7 years ago by f3nix (59)

$1.28

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giddyupngo (57) · 7 years ago

So many possibilities. :-) Here is mine. Thanks f3nix.

“Signore mi scusi, I come for rent?” The professor turned slowly to look at Signora Battista. She was a dark haired woman in her fifties, hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun. The professor nodded and moved towards his checkbook. He wondered briefly why she never knocked. Possibly because she knew he wouldn't answer the door. She was right.

The attic was shabby and cluttered, he cared little for appearances. He plucked the checkbook from a pile and began writing the check. He could feel her eyes on him, a mixture of pity and fear. His writing was almost illegible, he had to focus to complete the check properly. As he handed the check to Signora Battista she noticed the small white blisters on his palm. “Hand OK?” she asked. He had fallen into the habit of holding his palm over a candle flame when the memories immobilized him. Only when the pain of his seared flesh surpassed the pain in his soul, could he continue to function.

He looked into her eyes, and her eyes widened. He avoided eye contact as a rule, but her small gesture had started a small crack in the dam holding back his ocean of pain. “I burn it with a candle” he said simply. She looked away, fumbling through her limited English for something to break the awkward silence. The professor continued to look at her, his bloodshot eyes boring into her like daggers. She put her hand to her face and whispered, “why you.... burn?”.

The dam broke.
He told her everything.
He had taken the students of the Physics Club for a train ride every year in the locomotive engine. He would explain train physics, and the students enjoyed the scenery outside and watched the engineer. That year the club had 6 students, and they were listening carefully as he explained how a train overcame inertia. Suddenly the engineer shouted and locked up the brakes. Time slowed down. A student lurched forward and bloodied her nose. The train horn was deafening. Sparks from the wheels flew gracefully past the windows. There was a fallen tree on the track, and 100 yards beyond were cars waiting at a traffic light.

Thoughts flicked through the Professor's mind, unbidden. He stared at the large tree, slavishly obeying the physics that gripped it tight to the ground, oblivious to the impending disaster. He instinctively noted the angle of the tree and predicted the resulting path. “Of course the cars wouldn't notice, the train always blows its horn” the Professor thought as the cars waited patiently for death. The train struck the tree and derailed, heading for the 8 cars in two lanes, waiting at the light. Inside the cars, heads snapped up and turned toward the train, mouths opened. Cars were slammed in reverse and started honking. The cars in front were trapped by the cars behind. Bumpers met and shards of plastic littered the ground like stained glass. One driver in front gunned the engine and drove across the tracks, trying to beat the train. He crossed the tracks only to reach the cruelty of the busy highway. Glass shattered. Air bags deployed. Cars and bodies unwillingly submitting to force and velocity. The train continued to nose towards the group of cars to the right, while whipping a dragon's tail of baggage cars off to the left onto the highway. Drivers abandoned their cars and ran, only serving to prevent escape to others. His memory parsed out to chilling still frames. The train continually striking cars and impossibly taking them with it, sparks flying, bodies struck and dragged under, blood on windshields, ambulances, body bags, a grey child in a carseat.

In the following months the various anchors of his life quietly detached. His job was first, then his wife and children, finally his friends. No one understood. The sheer mechanical brutality of physics. He had studied it and respected it so long, but would have traded anything to suspend its laws for those dreadful 38 seconds. Physics was so cold in its neutrality, indifferent to life, indifferent to tears, indifferent to beauty.

He told her he looked out the window because it was his only distraction. His intelligent mind invented and retained the names of all the “regulars” outside. He imagined their lives, the struggles, the victories, the defeats. He studied them day after day, plotting out their fortunes based on probabilities. It was his only distraction. He would run out of money in exactly 14 months, but could not stretch it any farther, even on his spartan diet of noodles and coffee.

Signora Battista was moved. She dabbed her eyes and embraced him. A shock went through the Professor's body, he had forgotten the warmth of human touch. She held him close, then excused herself and left. He stood in disbelief, staring at the door she had just left through.

next day a man in a uniform came to cleaned the windows. The Professor began to sob, his body shaking as the sun warmed his face. There was a knock at the door.

$0.03

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mtnmeadowmomma (55) · 7 years ago

Wow, this had me riveted to the end...awesome imagery. I felt like I was watching everything just from reading the words!

$0.00

Finish the story, earn 3 steembasicincome shares + SBD! Week #4

A contest with a pot of 3 @steembasicincome shares + the SBD payout? You're in the right place!

I write a story, you finish it, you get rewarded. Everyone will get a reward and enjoy each other stories! Not bad right? :-)

He strained his eyes in the dark to see who it was,but couldn't see a thing, maybe it was the spirit of his beloved for he had recently been hearing voices in his head in his sleeps.

He took the light beside the post to go and take a look when he saw the figure again, this time it stood beside the window and the image was clearer, it was shrouded and must be a girl, for it had those light steps of Annabelle, when she was alive.

He wouldn't believe in ghost,he told himself for this would be another of his imagination, just like before, he believed that atom could vibrate to a certain level where solid could pass through another solid, this had been the base of his research, but here was another dimension.

Struggling and groaning in pains, he picked up his pen to write, he knew he wouldn't make it,for she had severed his vital organs ,"She came" was the only words he wrote and died.