Eliazar Montgomery - A Short Story

My little sister found this short story tucked away on her computer. I'd written it a few years back when I was bored, and now it's here for your amusement. :)

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   The meadow was bright, green grass and white wild flowers sparkling in the sunlight. Eliazar crouched behind the bush, his heart rattling in his chest. It had been a week since he’d last visited this spot. He’d tried to keep away, tried to forget, tried to bury himself in his work . . . but she’d told him to come back. She had cried . . . and he had promised. What kind of business man would he be if he didn’t keep his word?

  He swatted at a mosquito and wiped his brow. He felt foolish in his brown tweed suit, and loosened the green checked tie that he had so carefully adjusted this morning. After a moment’s thought, he took the tie all the way off and stuffed it into his back pocket, shoving it under his wallet. “Dad butt.” The thought flashed through his mind, and he grimaced in a moment of self-amusement. His dad had always kept too many things in his right back pocket, looking incredibly lop-sided. Like father, like son, right? 

Sketch Dump 1

These are my first sketches when I got inspired with my heretofore-unnamed story. :)

The Back Porch (#18)

   The sun slants amber rays across the backs of the trees, warming them and shining through the the thinning foliage. The tangle of fines and branches, deeply mysterious in its shadows, is back-lit with a golden glow.
  The faces of the bushes are cool with reflected light from the sky. The porch is dark with wetness, except for a paler section close to the building where it was sheltered by the roof's overhang. Another pale, thin line cuts across the middle of the porch, the stain worn away by the relentless pounding of wet drips from the overhang.
   It has been a mild, spring-like day, cool-winded and full of warm sun. There is no snow here, no icicles hanging from the edges of the roof, no icy puddles, no winter wonderland. Brown leaves carpet the ground, and the majority of the bushes have refused to shed their leaves whatsoever.
   A fluffy, white and grey dog runs underneath the back porch, followed by a dark woman with high cheek bones. Her many-braided hair is pulled up in a half-knot behind her head, the tails hanging down to the back of her neck. She steps back around the corner of the building, out of sight, where the back porch cannot see her.

The Back Porch (#17)

    The sun is beaming down on the little forest behind our apartment, highlighting the yellow leaves and the thin, newly-stripped branches. The back porch is in blue shadow, but faintly golden with reflected light. Between the bars of the porch railings, one can see a small bird pecking at the leaves of a bush, shaking its head as it grabs and attempts to rip off pieces of leaf for a snack. It's tail flicks as it hops down the small branch, disappearing into the dark depths underneath the covering foliage.
   The tops of the bushes sway in the cold wind, the leaves shiver, the clouds rush past. The back porch is still and quiet, sheltered by the building it juts away from, immovable by its nature. It is as untouched by the wind  as it is by the sun. Aloof and alone, it is content to sit back and watch the wild mob of leaves in their frenzied fight to fling themselves into oblivion.
   The little plant in its bowl on the back porch is not so unmoved. The sun does not touch it, and not one needle stirs in the breeze, yet unlike the stone of the porch, the little tree is filled with longing. It wants the sun. It desires the rain. It longs for the wind. It is alive. It will fight on, no mere observer, but a part of the race.

The Back Porch (#16)

   The world is drowned in blue, as if deep in the ocean, where only the longest wavelengths of light will reach. The sky is a flat blue-grey, a stormy ceiling without even the smallest crack to let the glory of the rising sun come through. The branches of the trees wave in the wind, as if the wild hedge were an unruly and misshapen kelp forest. The stone of the back porch is mottled as though coral and algea were slowly growing on its surface.
   The area underneath the bushes, revealed more and more by the falling of leaves, is dark and impenitrable to the eye, a cavern for a Moray Eel's eerie smile to peer from. If this were a coral reef, it would be a dead one. There are no shoals of fish here, no brightly colored shrimp, no many-fingered hands of the waving anemones.
   It has begun to rain, each droplet darkening the stone of the porch. How long must it do so before the world is truly drowned in blue?

The Back Porch (#15)

HALF-WAY THERE!!! It's taken way too long to get to this point. Too bad I work so much. (That's not why. It's because I'm lazy.)
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   The blue sky is peeking from behind swift-moving, grey-bellied clouds. A large bird of prey is circling in the sky, its dark wings stretched to embrace the warm upward-rush of air.
   The trees have lost much of their green coverings, stretching thin, naked fingers towards the heavens. The little plant on the back porch mimics the trees, its spiny little leaves turning brownish and thin. Dead leaves are scattered thickly on the grass below, and a few have found their rest on the cold stone of the porch.
   The porch, too, is changing. Patches of sickly yellow-brown have replaced the thin smears of almost-moss that struggled through the summer. The cement has acquired new, darker splotches where someone was careless while painting a project.
   Between the thinning leaves, blue, brown and red flashes by as a train rumbles behind the concealing foliage. The trees shake with the wind of it, the bush branches tremble with the heavy sound.  The train is slowing, sighing and groaning as it pulls to a stop. The beginning and the end are invisible from my vantage point. The train is infinite, waiting for an unknown signal. The trees hold their breath, and for the moment, even the racing clouds have paused.

The Back Porch (#14)

As always, these exercises are taken from N.D. Wilson in his posts entitled So You Wanna Be A Writer. :)
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   The sun has burst forth in all its glory. There are no clouds to veil its face today. The back porch waits patiently for the shadow of the apartment building to slowly diminish as the sun blazes its way upwards and across the sky. The porch can afford to be patient. Barring some cataclysmic event, it isn't going anywhere. An advantage of being made of stone and iron.
   How different the temperament of the porch from its surroundings! A riot of life, of color, of shivering leaves and and dancing vines surrounds the cement landing. The porch is impassive. Calm. Patient. It sees time so much more slowly than the trees - and trees have long, long lives in which to watch the years pass by. But the back porch is made of stone. It has no seasons to mark the times by, no leaves to shed or sprouts to push up from the ground. It does not feel the cold in winter, is not moved by the heat of summer.
   For what does it wait? For what would  a slab of concrete, a hardened mash of stone and mortar, be waiting? I will tell you.
   It waits for the end of all things. It waits to slowly change from a hard, molded square, to a crumbled mass of broken rocks, to soft silt drifting down a river. It is part of the earth. It will return to it. It will wait.

The Back Porch (#13)

   A flurry of thin yellow and orange leaves blow past the porch railings, a slow-motion dance. The few remaining leaves in the highest branches of the trees are whipping back and forth in the wind, desperate for their turn to fly.
   Nestled in amongst these last few survivors is a strange object. The tree does not know what it is; it is not something shaped for high places, not something familiar to the wind and the sky. It is too large to be a nest, too still and cold to be an animal, too soft to be a rock. How did it get there? Why was it given up to the thin fingers of the trees? They will hold it until its owner reclaims it, or until time and decay send it on its way.
   It is undisturbed by the wind and the shaking branches. Its thin cotton cords are wrapped tightly in place, securing it against a fall. Not that a fall would hurt it. It is made of rubber and leather, and is empty in the middle. If it were to fall, the leaves muse, it would bounce - not like us. Perhaps it would like to fall. Perhaps it wishes to join us on our merry journey to the ground. Perhaps it would sleep with us, and keep us company. They wave themseles frantically at it, trying to ask its opinion, but it does not respond. They sigh to themselves.
  Shoes and leaves do not speak the same language.

The Back Porch (#12)

   There is a quiet feeling in the air, for now unbroken by the happy cries and playful yells of children. A breeze shifts through the long, over-grown branches of the bushes, tickles the dangling leaves that still cling precariously to the high tree branches.
   It is the sky that captures my attention today. A brilliant blue, a quiet blue, it has robed itself in the most ethereal, whispy clouds one might hope to find. Angel wings, I call them. If angels were made of gas and water, and not fire and terror. The clouds form a rough sort of map in the window between the trees. I can see Europe, Great Britain, and Spain before the wind - miles and miles away - shifts the shapes,m oh so slowly, into something else.
   The tree branches are beginning to shed their summer clothing, sticking skeletal fingers towards the angelic clouds. Of all God's creation, is there any other creature that decides to wear less in the winter, rather than more? And yet the practicality is still the same; the squirrels fill themselves up and sleep, wrapped in extra furry down. The trees drop their leaves and sleep, no longer needing to concentrate on producing food for themselves.
   The clouds never sleep. And if they did, of what would they dream? Of a day when the wind would no longer bully them across the sky? Of a day when they would not leak their sorrows on the earth, or ravage the landscape with electric rapiers and greedy, twisting fingers? Or perhaps that they would be allowed full reign to these designs?
   How peaceful they look. How dangerous they can be.