DREAMING DIFFERENT: A Short Story

The Isle of Shadows - Fantasy Faire (SL) 2020

Dreaming Different

by Judith Cullen

© 2020 

A gentle creak as the door opens, finding a light that should not be on, and a small head which should be asleep - her face turned up in surprise. 

"Mommy!"

"Hey there. What are you doing up, little one?"

The bed sighs with the added weight as two dark, curly heads come together. Two pairs of brown eyes, so much alike, gaze at each other with love and concern.

"I had a dream"

"Oh Honey, I'm so sorry."

WHEN IT IS TIME: A Short Story

NOTE: You can now hear me reading this story on MixCloud

When It Is Time

by Caledonia Skytower

© 2020 

In memory of Elizabeth Cullen

Time. Time. I wanted more time.

She cradled in my hands: fragile, imperfect, diminishing.  

Her bubble of being had once encompassed a broad sphere. At some point she became the object of my life, rather than its influence. In the fullness of time she began to shrink, her focus narrowed, her view spare.  

As with such certainties, it's easy to ascribe them to an undefined future: the inevitable that will happen in some comfortably vague tomorrow. I held her as delicately as I could, aware of the looming presence of that inevitability. It was time, and I wanted more of it.

SEEKING COMPANY - A Short Story

NOTE: You can now hear me reading this story on MixCloud

Seeking Company

by Judith Cullen

© 2020 

                   

"Is this seat taken?"

I dropped to the rough wooden planks without waiting for an answer.  I knew better than to believe the voices that mutter in the gloom of 3 am; the wolves that lurk in the dark beyond the edge of your bed, or under it, their panting breath summoning every doubt and fear from the hidden depths inside you. Their province is the pitch where "false" and "true" are hard to distinguish. 

I escaped outside to a land that was gloom itself, which perfectly matched my mood.  At least I'd left the wolves to gnaw and shred the blankets, while I sought what air and light I could. There was precious little of that - a weak moon and a greenish glowing of perpetual pre-dawn. A trio of skeletons sat at the end of a forbidden pier, fishing lines ending empty above the brown muck of the water. One was drinking. I could sympathize.  They seemed like company, albeit undemanding company, frozen in the timeless moments of their demise.

I wasn't expecting a reply. Imagine the surprise when one of them spoke.

ONE MORE RFL STORY: "A Thing with Feathers"

I wrote a total of 16 pieces of poetry and prose for the Fantasy Faire SL's LitFest Writing Challenge this year.  This is the final piece of the seven that were written with a specific dedication, for someone in my life who has had a direct relationship with cancer.  It has been a wonderful, soulful journey.

A Thing with Feathers

by Judith Cullen

© 2017

for Kathryn

"I brought the wine," she said.  She sat down beside me, deftly handling the two glasses and the bottle. The red wine poured elegantly.  Everything my friend Kathryn did was elegant, stylish, done with a certain understated flair that spoke of  intelligence and class.  She's the only woman I have ever seen gracefully maneuver timpani down a hill in two inch heels. She handed me my glass, and we watched the ebb and flow of the gossamer fish in silence.

"Not Butterfly," I said.

"Totally wrong for it," she replied.

"Maybe Menotti's The Last Savage. It would be a stretch," I suggested. "Or Vivaldi's Argippo?"

"Maybe," she sipped her wine thoughtfully.

After a moment she grinned and I knew she had found just the perfect piece, as she always did, "Bizet's The Pearl Fishers."

"Oh yes," I concurred. "Wouldn't THAT be splendid to stage." The gold-trimmed white marble and the translucent aquamarine water were a little high class for Bizet's subject. Yet with opera you can get away with a certain heightened theatricality.  Life, death, passion, revenge, hatred all on a grand scale - that is opera.

"Mind you, I don't think Bizet had this kind of market in mind. Have you seen these shops?  They are fabulous!"

She refilled our glasses, and rose, leaving the bottle nestled under the bench. I followed her, as always a little in awe that someone so stylish should choose to share company with me, Queen of the Rumpled.

We walked from shop to shop, her trademark heels clicked along the bright marble walkway.  My shoes did not.  She had to drag me out of the shop with exquisite Celt and Nordic inspired furnishings, "Hey!  I might need that for something."

"Come along, we are not shopping for scenery."

"What are we shopping for?"

"Arrivals & Departures" Film Released!

It's one thing to feel the satisfaction of you words in a finished composition. It's quite another when it stands up and walks about in front of you.  Even more overwhelming when it takes on a life all its own.  That's what happened to my short story Arrivals & Departures.

The power of it spoke to others, who also felt compelled to explore it creatively. It was a heady experience - like being in one of those transcendental productions where the entire cast loves doing the show so much, and the show is so good, that you truly regret the closing performance.

This was also a great medium for my writing, and I am hoping that more works may fit into this format in the future. If you would like to read the original story, you can find it HERE - the second one on the page. This was before I revised it for the audio recording which lead to the machinima. (i.e. film made "in the machine")

 Arrivals & Departures was released on 22 July, 2018 and is available on YouTube, Vimeo, SLArtist.com and AView.TV.

If you enjoy this machinima, please share it!

WAITING FOR A FRIEND - Another 2018 RFL Short Story

Marcus and I began our theater admin careers together back in 1993, and he was my friend. He was someone who was beloved, creative, and inspired so many people.  He was diagnosed in the fall of 2010 and gone by the end of March 2011.  And I miss him, a whole lot.

I think marc would have liked Fantasy Faire. It would have appealed to both the theater artist in him, as well as the clergyman.  So it was not hard to imagine being immersed in a blue land, and having his carroty head (as it was when we first met) pop up and be ready to truth talk.  Enjoy.

The Weeping Land

by Judith Cullen

© 2018

In Memory of Marcus Walker

I found myself in an azure land; as blue as my heart felt, filled with trees that mimicked my tears.  My footfalls felt empty, echoing on the stone path till I stopped, stood still, afraid the emptiness was more than I could endure.

There was a rustling in a bower of ferns to my right and an impish head popped up, bright ginger hair anomalous in this weeping land. 

"Aristophanes!" it shouted merrily.

"Gesundheit!" I replied and sniffed loudly, by long-practiced reflex. I had not done that in years, and there had only ever been one person I had shared that joke with.

"Marcus!  Is that you?" I looked to the bower of ferns. The fronds waved at me, mockingly empty.  I stood blinking at where I thought I had seen that bright, beloved head appear.  I couldn't be.  Marc was gone.  He'd been gone for a while.

HONORING A Friend of a Lifetime

This story from this year's Fantasy Faire SL benefiting Relay for Life, was written for someone I have known for a long time.  I cannot, in all honesty, say that our lives have run parallel, Kim's and mine.  It's more like two satellites in adjacent universes.

Our parents were friends, as kids, and we often played together.  We were aware of each other growing up, and then our trajectories separated.  I think I have actually seen Kim in-person once in the last 35 years.

Re-connecting with her through social media in the recent years, I have since learned a lot of things about her life that I did not know; some were things that happened when we were small.  And even though she and I have never been "tight", I found myself feeling for her as one does for someone who has been a constant part of the tapestry of your consciousness for as long as you can remember.

This is for her, with love.  ~ jdc

Take That!

by Judith Cullen

© 2018

for Kim

Her hand emerged from the nearly vertical cavern, and I reached for it immediately, helping her.  That bright head popped right up, the natural blonde of her childhood still visible among the gray.  Her skin, always Nordic-fair, was a little worn with living but still shone with vitality and energy.  She was in her element.

"Isn't Ardessa terrific?  I reminds me of home."

"Do you get a lot of Asian dragons and Elvin architecture in the Tieton suburbs, Kim?" I replied, unable to resist teasing someone I had known since early childhood - someone I could not remember not knowing. She glowed in the sunlight.

HONORING GRAMPA: The Steward of Tiny Town

Another of my RFL stories from this year's Fantasy Faire SL.  My paternal grandfather was sick most of my early childhood and passed away when I was four.  The combination of smoking and working in mills and industrial environments as a "saw-file" in the days before OSHA safety standards added up to rapidly advancing lung cancer in his 60s.  

But he was an incredibly talented and clever man, who was an insatiable reader. and perpetual tinkerer.  Many is the time I wished I could speak with him, talk about the beauty of natural materials and the wonderful functionality of engineering forms.  But that's the great thing about fiction, isn't it?  And Kayle Mazerath's "Tiny Town" would have been a great place to have that conversation.

The Steward of Tiny Town

by Judith Cullen

© 2018

In memory of Al Bell, my Grandfather

Impossibly bright. There's no other way to describe it.  I thought I had seen this sort of exuberant rainbow before, but I was wrong.  This town had a vivacity about it, a constant happy industry. It's brightness was irresistible.  Wootberries squishing under tiny gleeful feet.  The jubilant hum and clank of the great waffle press, and the buoyant splashes of color everywhere.

I pressed my hands to my cheeks. What was this new sensation?  I was smiling - smiling so wide and so fully that my face hurt.  The essential energy of Tiny Town was infectious, and I knew at that very moment that it was something from which I never wanted to recover.

THIS WEEK: A Moment of Danger and Grace *New Story*

A new story for a chilly winter, this week . . .

One More Night

by Judith Cullen

© 2018

It was freezing cold, and the windows rattled as the wind ricocheted down the street, bouncing off every house and shaking every tree.  Freezing was not an exaggeration.  This was the American Mid-west at winter's height, and Dee only had to get within a few feet of any window to feel the deep chill.  In her little apartment, a few feet from any window didn't leave much of a warm zone.  Still, it was warmer in here than outside.  She rummaged through the small cupboard and the old fridge for soup makings, listening to the rock and roll of the wind.

When she'd come here for graduate school, she had chosen not to live on campus.  Dee was ready to be independent.  She'd come over 2000 miles to make an everyday adult life of her own, while she studied.  It hadn't worked out like she'd hoped.  Her "convenience" apartment was only slightly larger than her dorm room had been in undergraduate school. The convenience, Dee mused, was that you weren't more than a few steps from anything.  You had to go outside to change your mind, she liked to joke.

A NEW YEAR: New Stories

A promise to myself whose fulfilling has begun: write. I begin this still fresh and shiny new year with a brief musing on the nature of gifts.

The Bag

by Judith Cullen

© 2018

It was not really what I had in mind when I asked for a small purse.  For years it has been my habit to carry something clutch-sized, smaller when I could, and have a larger bag in which I carried all the stereotypical what-nots that the "prepared" woman is reputed to have at her fingertips: sewing kit, flashlight, Band-Aids, aspirin, tiny hand tools, battery-operated devices to fold space and time.  You know the litany.  I would carry these supposed accoutrements of womanhood in a larger bag - the small purse inside it -  and when I went into stores and such I would take the purse out and only carry that.  Likewise, if I ventured out and was only going to a single store destination, say the grocery, I would leave the bag at home and only take the purse.  This was my pattern: agile and flexible.  I had worn out decades full of large bags, and small purses, with this modus operandi. 

I needed a new purse.  The current one had been make-do for longer than I intended, and its strap (for wearing bandolier style, my preference) had long since broken.  I never really even liked the color, an unimaginatively dull navy that pretended like it wanted to be a light black.  My larger bag was also showing signs of wear, but it would last a while longer. So, I dared to add the request for a small leather-like purse with a shoulder strap to my Christmas wish list.

ETERNITY'S TEST is now available on Amazon!

NOW Available on Amazon for Kindle! CLICK HERE

What started out as a simple request from a colleague turned out to be an incredible journey.  I had the spark of an idea immediately when Eleseren Brianna (aka Donna Kantaris) invited me to write a companion piece to her own short story, written in support of an installation of 2D and 3D virtual art, "The Curio."

She specifically ask me to do a story from the perspective of the colossal stone and metal "Enkeli" figure that she had created and spun a story about. "Enkeli" is the Finnish word for angel.  How does and angel end up in the wilderness, as the one in Eles' story does?  And what could that mean?  Research, followed by several weeks of brooding contemplation amidst the turmoil that was last fall's U.S. presidential campaign followed, and in the aftermath this story came flowing out like an emotional imperative.

After letting it steep and revise, it still has that imperative feel about it, which lead to me deciding to publish it as a stand alone story, instead of tucking it into another collection.  It deserves its own focus.

Not everyone likes ir reads Kindle, I understand that.  but I am offering a special deal for folks on my mailing list, so if you are brave enough to READ MY NEWSLETTER announcement of this release, you can take advantage of the deal offered my subscribers!

If you enjoy it, don't forget to leave a review of Eternity's Test on Amazon.  Every little bit helps!

Coming in July and August - several event appearances, and more short stories.

COMING THIS MONTH: "Eternity's Test" for Kindle

With all the things going on in the world, and in my life these days, I have decided to release December's story of a near fallen angel and the lessons he learns encased in stone and metal in the wilderness over millennia.  It seems like just the right thing to do.

So, keep an eye out for ETERNITY'S TEST to be released this month in Kindle only through Amazon as a stand-alone piece of short fiction.  The time has come: be ready!

For those of you who read the original last year, you may remember that this story was inspired by a virtual world sculpture by Eleseren Brianna (Donna Kantaris).  She also write a story about "The Curio" in which some 19th Century vacationers come upon its compelling presence deep in the Scandinavian wilderness.  Her story was very much one of observation and supposition, done in the format of a 19th C diary.  She asked me to consider creating a story from the sculpture's point of view.  And that, as we say, is that!

More coming, so stay tuned!

"The Curio" by Eleseren Brianna, created in Second Life

A Final Story for 2016

I was invited by Eleseren Brianna (Donna Kantaris) way back in September to write a companion story to her own "The Curio," composed to accompany her 3-D artwork creation in Second Life ®.  I was immediately inspired, did a MESS of research, reading, and took a raft of notes.  Then the story sat as the rest of life intervened, asserting itself over the necessities of fiction.

But, miraculously here the story is! It seems appropriate to be sharing it as 2016 draws to its thankful, inevitable conclusion. Enjoy, and please accept my wishes for a fresh and delight-filled New Year.

Many Blessings to you all,

~ Judy

Image by Inara Pey, of "The Curio" 3-D Artwork by Eleseren Brianna

Eternity's Test
by Judith Cullen

©2016

The sun was warm on his armor.

Again. 

Just as it would be cool by moonlight, again.  So long had his form been bent in this fashion that heat and cold no longer mattered. It was another unimportant detail of occasional, casual notice.  "Oh, it is cold once more."  It was no different from noting the green of the grass, the iridescent glow of snowfall, or the perpetual motion of tiny creatures all around him.  He had long since ceased noting the constants, but waited for the one inconstant to reveal itself.  He bent, hoping for resolution, praying to once more have the power to move and act.

Poised over his tiny scrap of rock and sand, the voice would come to him every now and again.  Just when he believed that he was forgotten, it would murmur in his head, "Wait.  Not yet.  They are not ready."

WORDS & PAINT . . . A Project Inspires a New Story

In one of this life's incarnations I made my living by my brush. I still have the skills, but my knees are not what they once were.  Still every now and again a project comes my way that I cannot resist.  In this case, an old classmate from high school asked me to rehabilitate something she and her daughter had found in an antique store for the imminent arrival of said daughter's first child.  I was happy to help.

It turned out to be one of those projects that just sparks to life on its own, and I soon found myself talking to the object, a rolling toy box, while I worked on it.  I have to give partial inspiration to William Joyce and his book Ollie's Odyssey for some of this fancy, as well as for the notion of a "code" for toys.

Here is the result, a copy of which was given to the mother-to-be at her baby shower today, when the finished toy box was delivered. ~ Enjoy!

***

Charlie is Waiting for You

The toy box "before"

by Judith Cullen

© 2016

For Corrie Rydberg

He could remember things, but not very well.  He knew that the antique store was cold.  He knew that for certain.  He could hear the mutterings all around: memories of things worn and now discarded, has-been belongings placed for sale to collectors or people who were not put-off by fading paint or little bits missing here and there.  Of course, there were pristine things there in the chill: snooty glassware sparkling in self-aware stacks, extended families of china shining in the fluorescent light, rare teapots holding court on utilitarian shelves.

He was a toy box with wheels, though it had been so long since he had been purposefully used that all he had were the ghosts of memories.  There had been careful hands that crafted him lovingly out of wood now pleasantly aged.  He remembered the squeal of delight when his first child - what was that child's name? - saw him for the very first time, gleefully filling him with all manner of toys before parading him around the room - pulling him by his horse head handle.  His child had grown, and there had been other children.  He could not recall much beyond the sparkle of playful eyes, the touch of small hands, and the joys of imagination.

PREVIEW: Liam Is Back!

Welcome to a preview of the next story in A trio of Irish Tales II.  Enjoy the newest book trailer, and then the first selection from "The Fairy Tree" where we meet young Liam Killough once more.

The Fairy Tree

By Judith Cullen

(C) 2015

“What did I say about “foostering” on the internet?”

Liam started, practically falling from his chair.  Rose McLane, was standing over him in the cool spring air that wafted through the office of his grandmother’s farm in County Wicklow.  Rose managed the farm, and Liam often used a spare desk in the office to do his homework. 

There was precious little space for him to do this in the farmhouse.  His dad’s office, where there was wireless internet in the house, was a “by invitation only” room. Grans and his Mom always seemed to have one project or another in progress, or about to be, on the kitchen table.  The dining room table was completely out of the question, and when he tried to work from his small bedroom he could not get a reliable signal.  He’d tried using his iPhone like a router, but something wasn’t working right. Liam got frustrated in a hurry, and he stayed that way.

So the farm office was really the only place where Liam could get any work done.  The first year they had lived in Ireland, Liam had gone to an online school, so this was a familiar drill for him.  Thankfully, he was attending a local academy now!  He couldn’t imagine spending all day in the office with Rose the way he had back then.

“I’m not foostering!” he said defensively, “Is that even a real word?”

PREVIEW: the Last Selection from "Patrick's Path"

W.B. Yeats by George Charles Beresford
from Wikimedia Commons
(Public Domain)

Patrick’s Path (Part 5)

By Judith Cullen

© 2015

“…I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,

Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;

Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,

Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!”

Pat paused and looked at Declan as he sat beneath the tree with his eyes closed.  There had not been a single “Crap!” uttered through the entire poem.  He waited silently for his teacher to respond.

“Well, you know the words sure enough, I’ll give you that.  The recitation was not without merit, and you’d not have embarrassed yourself at a poetry gathering. Look at the poem again, as if it were a story.  Look for the images in the words and try to bring them to life using only the sound of your voice.”

Pat reached for the slip of paper in his pocket.

“No, don’t look at the words!  The words are in your head, boy.  Find them there.  They are ideas, not printed type.  Take a moment.”

PREVIEW: More from "Patrick's Path"

Patrick’s Path (Part 4)

By Judith Cullen

© 2015

Declan sat on a boulder while Pat trotted up and down the strand reciting names of Irish Lords and Kings, in chronological order.  Every now and then the old man would bellow out questions randomly, and Pat had to respond with a basic bit of information.  If he paused at all, Declan would holler “Crap!” and make him back up a few hundred years or so and start again.  If Pat stopped jogging to think, “Keep moving! Keep moving!” rang down the beach and Pat had to back up his recitation again.  Last week it had been Gods and Goddesses.  The threat of Irish Saints was looming in the future.

Pat didn’t complain.  He found it as exhilarating as he did infuriating.  Even though the sound of “Crap!” made him want to punch something, he kept at it and kept at it until he could recite the entire list uninterrupted but for the unexpected questions which he fielded without pause.  Once he could achieve that, his teacher made him do it again five, six, seven times with no respite.  

The first time Pat had been able to complete the exercise undisturbed, he had felt the power of the knowledge within himself.  He felt like he owned the names, dates, and details and in the joy of it, his jogging broke into ecstatic leaps and spins.  His teacher grinned as he watched Pat careen across the sand and rocks, never once letting up his trial of the young storyteller. 

PREVIEW: More from "A Trio of Irish Tales II"

Patrick’s Path (Part 2)

By Judith Cullen

© 2015

The pub was full to bursting this night; alive with energetically familiar greetings, merry introductions, and the scraping of sturdy wooden chairs on the well-worn floor.  Micheal Flynn, usually a reserved man, was vigorously weaving through the filled tables talking to people as he went, trying to find a place for the three of them close to the tiny stage in the corner.  Pat didn’t understand it.  His father was never pushy, but tonight he was actively negotiating to get a prime spot close to the entertainment.

“What’s Da up to?” Pat asked.

“Never you mind, son. Your Da has ideas of his own, and we who love him can best let him have his way this night.”

Pat looked at her like she’d grown another head.  She rarely let Da just go off and do what he pleased without her approval.  He suspected that she knew why he wanted them up front, but wasn’t about to tell.

He was about to ask outright what was going on, when his attention swerved violently in another direction.  Behind his Mum he saw Daimhim Finnegan.  She caught his gaze and smiled shyly.  Pat felt himself blush and, had he been speaking, he would have surely been stammering.  He returned the smile nervously and then looked elsewhere – anywhere!

They had been part of the same crowd of kids who had grown up together there on the Munster shore.  Pat had always been struck by her loveliness; even back when they had all been young children he’d felt drawn to her.  She wasn’t loud, she never flirted, but she had a quiet strength that he found appealing and comforting.  He noticed how she always made certain that people were taken care of.  A few years older than himself, she had become his ideal: the standard by which he measured all other girls.  Last year she’d started going out with James O’Brien, which had seemed to put her out of Pat’s reach forever.  Big, bold, popular James, who everyone flocked to, including Pat, seemed an unlikely partnering for the modest Daimhim.  Even though something had happened to that relationship in the last few weeks, Pat didn’t dare foster any hope for himself with herself.

WEEK #7 ~ More from "GORAK THE GOBBLER"

Special Note:  The selection from April 1st is still live, and you can still download and enjoy the audio sample of the slightly-famous "chore" scene  -  Click Here 

Our first view of Gorak as drawn by Rick Geary

Pizza, anyone? . . . 

GORAK THE GOBBLER - Part 7

by Judith Cullen

(c) 2015

“That was a quick trip!” Jamie’s Mom observed as he burst happily through the kitchen door.

“Hi, Mom!” Jamie gave his Mom a quick hug that had her gasping from its enthusiasm and the reality of how big her “baby boy” had actually become.  He was almost as tall as his Father, and the thought of it made her head spin.

“It was just a little errand.  It’s all taken care of now.  What’s for dinner?”

“Your Dad and I have an appointment tonight with Mr. Briggs, the accountant.  I’ve ordered a pizza for you.  It should be here in a few minutes. I ordered your favorite: sausage, pepperoni and mushroom. There’s plenty of juice and milk in the fridge.”

“Great.  Thanks Mom!” Jamie kissed her on the cheek, and left the kitchen.  She watched him head down the hall to the stairs.  She was engulfed in amazement.

HER OWN WORDS ~ Encore Live Online, Wednesday 10.23 @ 3pm Pacific

I'll be presenting an encore reading this story Wednesday, October 23rd live in Second Life (c) at 3pm Pacific Time at the Burn 2 Literary Camp AND also live, streaming on the web . . . CLICK HERE to be connected to the Shoutcast stream, which will go live 10 minutes before the posted start time.

Ever been haunted by your own words?  What if you were haunted by them literally?  A woman is pursued by words she wrote over 30 years ago, and struggles with how to end being haunted by HER OWN WORDS.  

IMPORTANT NOTE . . . In order to be able to listen on your computer or device, you may need to use an enabling application. Don't wait till story time!: CLICK HERE for links to helpful sites to make certain you are able to listen to streaming audio on your computer


This story is entered along with 11 others as part of author Lissa Bryan's Online Ghost Story Competition.  You can visit the "Ghostwriter" Ghost Story Contest Blog and vote for HER OWN WORDS, or any of the other submissions.  The winning story will be announced on Halloween!

Stories streamed on the internet are free.  Tips/donations for making these sessions possible are gratefully accepted.(see the donation button in the right hand margin)