We have moved!
If you would like to read more or take part in The Great Cake* Experiment, you’ll find our new home is just over here. Do come visit, we’ve made tea especially.
End of Round One
The winner of the first ever round of The Great Cake* Experiment was:
Elaine Doyle (www.thedragontrack.com)
Congratulations to Elaine, and to all the incredibly talented writers that took part. We’ll be back here in November for Round Two!
Happy Endings
My mother loves films with sad endings. The double suicide, the abortion gone wrong, the terrible decision that leads to an inescapable, unhappy marriage or a life of quiet, unfulfilled desperation. She spurns the typical Hollywood movie with its tacked on, cheerful resolution and deliberately seeks out obscure, slow-paced Chinese and Russian dramas, where the only way you can tell the movie is over is because everyone is dead. She watches them late at night on a small, black and white television, almost as if doing penance.
The happy ending is, to me, largely a Hollywood construct. It rejects reality, where things are never black and white, in preference of the fantasy. It elevates fantasy as the goal, as the ideal, saying “if we’re playing pretend here inside this theater, we may as well give it our all!” It is obsessive compulsive in the way that I myself am obsessive compulsive - I cannot close a book on a sad note. I cannot let my eyes fall at last on a word not entirely hopeful, entirely upbeat. Whatever came before, I must end happily. It would be flirting with disaster to do otherwise.
There is a silent film from 1924 called The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann), by German director F.W. Murnau. The triumph of this film, and why it is still talked about, is that Murnau made it almost entirely without intertitles. Every bit of the story is told wordlessly, through pantomime. Every bit save one explanatory title card, and then this: There is an intertitle toward the end that says
“Here the story should really end, for, in real life, the forlorn old man would have little to look forward to but death. The author took pity on him and has provided a quite improbable epilogue.”
The protagonist we last saw jobless, forlorn, hopeless and sleeping in the bathroom of the hotel he used to work for is now shown inheriting a huge sum of money and treating himself and all his friends to champagne and caviar. It is absurd, and the director communicates how absurd it is by finding it so worthy of mention he seems to apologize for it in the intertitle. In fact, Murnau wanted his film to end in that bathroom. Instead, he was forced to add this false ending for economic viability.
I will tell you right now that I love happy endings, if that weren’t already obvious from my obsessive compulsive habits with the closing of books. The happy ending always rings false to me, it always seems like a cop-out, yet I yearn for it. I am a child of America, where we are taught from birth that if we just work hard enough, we can do anything, in this land of milk and honey where the streets are paved with gold. And more importantly, I am a child of Hollywood, which has taught me that what is ugly is evil and what is beautiful is good, and the beautiful and the good will always triumph over the ugly and the evil in the end.
We know this isn’t true, though. Life teaches us that this is a lie. We all know something beautiful but ugly, or ugly but good, or beautiful but evil. We know life isn’t like it is up there on the screen. We know it, yet we long for it. We want it to be true, if only in that two-dimensional universe of narrative inside the cinema. That universe that follows rules, that makes sense, that is predictable and therefore brings us comfort.
We know that, just because we’ve completed twelve weeks of a writing project, that doesn’t mean we’ll keep on writing. Hollywood would have us all end this project and learn some deep life lesson from it, and we’d all go on from here to write, every day. One of us would keep a meticulous and engaging daily journal, and in the epilogue we’d learn that this great diary would be discovered hundreds of years from now and held up as one of the best contemporary documents describing life in the 21st century. One of us would go on to be a successful critic for the New York Times, and that biting analysis and razor-sharp wit would be quoted for years to come. Several of us would go on to write the great British, Irish, and/or North American novel, and twelve year olds would begrudgingly begin reading our work for school, only to wholeheartedly love us by the end.
I once had an idea for a movie I wanted to make, when I was around eighteen years old. It was about a girl who lives in New York, or really any big city. She becomes frustrated with her life and how it seems to be going nowhere, so she takes to the open road. She’s heard about this wonderful place in British Columbia, a sort of Shangri-La for artists where creative people disgusted with modern life are building a community all about art and music and poetry and fanciful architecture (I was 18). Along the way she meets a cast of characters who are also frustrated with modern life, and have all heard bits and pieces about this wonderful place in the middle of the forests. They all become buddies and band together on this long, winding road trip to get to this magical place, where their lives are suddenly going to be fulfilling and they’ll live in gingerbread houses and paint pictures and eat marzipan animals and recite poetry every day. It will be grand.
Then they arrive, and they’re standing on the edge of the forest, at a clearing. You’ve been thinking all along, this place can’t be real, they’re never going to find it. But they have. The camera pans and it’s this incredible, glorious fantasy of a place, all laid out before them. Except there’s been a colossal fire. It’s deserted, it’s gutted, with just faint outlines remaining. It WAS there, and it was glorious, but it’s gone.
I wanted to leave it there, them standing and staring in disbelief over what once was, but is no longer. I wanted to defy the Hollywood happy ending, to face up to reality as I feel my mother is attempting when she forces herself to watch all those sad movies. But just as the Hollywood happy ending often seems false, just because something is sad, that doesn’t make it true. And if I made that movie now, I’d do it just the same, except for one thing. I’d have them stand there in silence for several minutes, but my last shot would be of them all, as one entity, begin picking up the pieces and rebuilding that place. It would be slow, it would be hard. There would be arguments and disagreements and there would be moments where everything felt easy and everyone burst into song. It would be life.
I think that’s what I hope for us all. Nothing unrealistic or instantly life-changing. But a subtle, internal growth over the course of this project where we’ve learned we can do this. We can write. We could write every day, but we probably won’t. We could write a brilliant novel, or a life-changing poem, or even an oft-cited article on Wikipedia. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. But whatever we write, there are at least fourteen other people who would love to read it.
Happy Endings
There are long, long stretches of road here. Sometimes the only punctuation is the sign for a happy endings massage parlor or the crackling through of Christian talk radio. I’m not a Christian, but I like listening to Christian talk radio. Just the same: I’ve never had a happily ending, or any other kind of, massage, but I like looking at the signs.
I drive a great deal. I have been driving for many years. People assume cars must all look the same from the height of a cab. They don’t. But people assume a lot about a truck driver.
One of the first rounds of inoculations, after a biological disaster, would go to interstate truck drivers. There’s a nobility to that. A job like that shouldn’t just be for people who want cheap, happy endings, or cheap, happy salvation.
But then I do like the signs, like I said, and even the radio ministers. I like when they quote from scripture. That’s like an anchor, in Christian talk radio. You can stray from it, but not too far. There’s a special pleasure, too, in hearing the word of God change cadence: now stentorian, now pleading, brutish, nasal, soft.
Coming into Tifton I ease off the road. I stand, for a minute, under the brutal sun, looking at a sign for happy endings—not the Christian kind. Looking at the sign, it’s easy to think them cheap, like I said. You can see through a sign. In the heat the corners curl up, where older signs haven’t been scraped away. But people are different—a body is different. Maybe I’m wrong to think that cheap. Maybe that’s all there is. Anyway, it’s not the kind of thing you can keep thinking about, not under the sun.
Happy Endings
She was grateful for the shoes, but it wasn’t really her style. She hadn’t chosen them for herself, after all; her family had thrust them upon her, but it wasn’t a version of herself that she recognised. She thanked him for his attention, gently – but firmly – steered him towards the door, and went back inside. She would make her own life, out of the cinders of the old. No shoes – however pretty, or delicate – could substitute for standing on her own two feet.
****
He had always known that he wasn’t like the other boys. He had hated everything about himself: his stiff limbs, and the gangly way that he moved. He wanted to be other. He wanted to remake himself.
And yet, when the time came, he stopped. He looked at himself in the mirror, and finally, he saw. He saw what Gepetto had always seen. He had no bonds of debt or servitude: he had no strings at all, really, to hold him down. He moved of his own volition: neither hunger nor physical hurt could stop him. He would not die of old age. He would not die. He was immortal. He was a god.
****
She could never have predicted what her life had become. But then, who ever could? She lived an unorthodox life, she knew. A commune of sorts; a fluid relationship of modest means. They were her precious rocks, her stability, her joyous escape.
When a boy came knocking – not her usual type, but nice – she patted his cheek, and came home. She didn’t need anyone else. She didn’t need to be rescued.
Seven for luck, and she counted herself lucky.
****
When she was told to give up her voice, she laughed out loud. What kind of idiot would do that? For all that she loved him, she was not an idiot. She would come to him as herself, or not at all.
Sometimes, it felt as if she were deep underwater. Sometimes, it felt as if she was out of her depth. But she knew that it was fine. It was just fine. For she had a voice, and she intended to be heard.
****
Afterwards, it felt like waking up. It was as if she had been in a deep slumber, far away from everyone she cared about.
At another time, in another life, she would have waited to be rescued. Surely someone could and find her? Outside, there were steep hills, thorns, years of overgrowth and neglect. How could she possibly hope to escape?
But then again escape, when it came, was not what she expected. No shining knight, no deus ex machine plucking her from her tower.
She grew.
She grew taller, and stronger, and faster. She grew, so that the thorns seemed smaller. She grew, so that she could stride over tangles that once loomed high above her.
And it turned out that her happy ending was entirely her own.
And it turned out that her happy ending was everything she had hoped it would be.
Happy Endings.
His face reddened with barely contained fury, Klaus stormed in to the cottage, leaving the front door open, and looked around for something to throw. His eye lighted on a smallish vase which he scooped up and, in one motion, flung to the floor where it shattered in to pieces. Ben looked up, an eyebrow arching over the top of his spectacles. Klaus met his gaze and held his hands out, his body flexed in a shrug, his eyes wide, his entire posture an interrogative. Ben sighed, nodded once at the fragments of vase on the floor, and turned back to the newspaper.
“I hope you’re intending to clear that up.”
Klaus appeared to ignore this comment, “What the hell was that?” he demanded, angrily.
Ben sighed again “I think you were there, Klaus, you probably saw what I saw.”
Again, Klaus showed no intention of responding to Ben’s remark. He flung his hands, clenched in to fists, towards the floor. “I mean, what the fuck!?” Ben shook his head,
“Look, there’s no point being cross…”
Klaus cut him off, “No point being what? Cross? Fucking cross, Ben? Is that what you said? I’ll tell you, pal, I think it’s worth everyone’s while being a damn sight more than cross,” he paused a moment, his face registering utter astonishment, to see if Ben would look at him again. No reaction being forthcoming, he cast around for something new to shout. After a moment, he settled for “I mean, seriously; what the fuck!?” and stomped off towards the corner to stare balefully out of the window.
Ben shook his head, trying to concentrate on the paper. Sunshine streamed in through the sparkling clean glass of the cottage’s front windows. He tried not to think about how grimy they had once been. Through the open front door, Klaus heard some of the other lads engaged in discussion about the events of today. Lifting his eyes from the paper, he eyed once again the plates and plates of canapes and triangular sandwiches lined up on the table in front of him. Some of the bread was already beginning to curl at the edges. He wondered vaguely if anyone would make him a cup of tea. The thought depressed him slightly.
A gentle cough by his elbow startled him. He looked up in to the red-rimmed eyes of Gordon who had evidently recovered sufficiently to creep downstairs again. Ben smothered his first instinct (which had been to punch Gordon in his damp-looking face for making him jump) and smiled warmly,
“Hello, Gordy, you alright?”
Gordon nodded sadly and sniffed again, he looked over to the scattered shards of porcelain on the floor, “What happened to the vase?”
Ben shrugged, “Oh, Klaus was just making a point,” from his position by the window, Klaus harrumphed pointedly. Ben put an arm on Gordon’s shoulder, “you feeling better, though, Gordy?”
Gordon took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, letting his cheeks puff out in such a way as to make it very clear that he was being Very Brave Indeed. Ben once again found himself fighting off an urge to punch his friend,
“Yeah, I’m ok, thanks,” said Gordon, stoically, “it’s just, you know; funerals”
This was too much for Klaus who rounded on the two at the table.
“Funerals? What fucking funeral? There wasn’t a fucking funeral was there? Oh I mean, there was going to be a funeral wasn’t there? Oh yes, there was going to be one. Why else would we have scraped together all the sodding cash we had in the whole fucking World to lay on catering and get that fucking ridiculous… ,“ he waved his hand vaguely towards the door, apparently indicating everything that lay beyond its threshold, “…thing built didn’t we? All on the understanding, that yes, Gordon, there was meant to be a fucking funeral only it turns out that one of the major players, the centrepiece, if you like, wasn’t exactly in a fit fucking state to be fucking buried didn’t it?”
Gordon started to cry again, Ben patted him on his arm and turned towards Klaus,
“Now look, Klaus, I know you’re upset. We’re all upset, aren’t we Gordy?,” Gordon sniffed, “yes, I know, but really, Klaus, there’s no need for any of this. Yes, we paid a lot for the sandwiches and for the… other bits and bobs, but I’m sure we’ll be fine. And really, if you think about it Klaus, shouldn’t we be happy that she-”
Klaus cut him off, his face scarlet with incredulity, “WHAT!? Sorry, Ben, what was that? Happy? Fucking happy? You want me to be happy about this? Perhaps you could explain to me for a moment what exactly the fuck it is that we have to be fuck-titting happy about here?”
Ben continued, his voice calm and measured, in an attempt not to further distress Gordon who was now sobbing loudly, “Well, Klaus, I would say that we should be happy that she made a full recovery, really, and that -”
Klaus threw back his head and bellowed out a laugh, “A recovery? Oh, I’ll say she fucking did. Too bloody right she made a recovery. Could have recovered a bit faster though, couldn’t she? Like, maybe she could have made this miraculous recovery before we’d got the savings out? Fucking ridiculous. And what about the emotional trauma, mate? There’s Colin, did his absolute best, he did, with that … what was it he called it? The Hampshire manoevre?”
“Heimlich” corrected Ben.
“Whatthefuckever. There she was, collapsing and coughing and flailing about the place, Colin riding around on her back trying to fucking rescue the dozy cow for twenty fucking minutes, yeah? Put his back right out didn’t he, poor bastard. Plus then he tries that whole CPR thing when it looks as if she’s a gonner. Doesn’t look as if he’s saved her but at least he had a go, right? Got that big speech ready for today, didn’t he? Heard him practicing the last few days. Hero of the moment and all that,” he puffed out his chest and did a passable impression of their mutual friend, “‘she’d still be with us today if only my hands were bigger’ et fucking cetera and then along comes laughing boy, that fucking walking codpiece, breaks the hinges on that fucking bankruptcy out there and … what? Cures her? Just wakes her up?”
Ben realised Klaus was waiting for a response. He started to speak, but Klaus began again,
“Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never seen anyone recover from being fucking dead. Colds? Yeah. Broken arms? Sure. Even passing out, yeah, I’ve seen people shake that shit right off. But making a full recovery from being fucking dead? Yeah, right. Fucking faking wasn’t she? Just waiting around for His Royal Crotchbulge to hear the sad news and come give her one last kiss. Really great joke that. Had us all fucking going. Nice one. See you fucking round, yeah?”
Klaus stopped shouting for a moment and began kicking the table, making the plates of food jump alarmingly towards the nearest edge. Gordon began to wail. Ben held his hands out, entreating Klaus to be calm as a whole plate of tiny cheese-and-tomato sandwiches crashed to the floor,
“Now, Klaus, look, it really wasn’t that simple. You know she had all that trouble with her family; her dad’s remarriage and all that. She had some… issues she needed to work through and we should all just…”
Klaus rounded on him again, “Issues? Fucking issues? Who hasn’t got issues? I’ve got issues, mate, do you want to know what they are? I live with six other men in the middle of a fucking forest and the only fucking woman who’s any shown any interest in giving us a helping hand, if you know what I mean, turns out to not only have daddy issues, an obsession with bagging herself a royal but also a fucking death fetish! Oh, and did it escape anyone’s notice that Prince Tighttrousers out there thought she was fucking dead when he snogged her face off? So now she’s ridden off in to the sunset with an actual, honest to goodness necrophiliac hasn’t she? Yeah, I suppose that’s one way to work through your issues, right there. And so here we all are, six months later, having just got used to having her around, remembering what it’s like to live in a house that’s actually clean, you know, and off she pops. Just like that. One sick practical joke later and she’s up on the back of his horse like a fucking whippet and off tralaa-ing her way in to the countryside. Not even a goodbye and no fucking idea of how the hell we are meant to get by now! I mean… FUCK!”
Ben looked around at the cottage, the remains of the vase and the smashed plate of food… not to mention the plates still on the table that would need to be washed up at some point and that cup of tea he could really do with at the moment. He began to wonder if Klaus didn’t have a point.
A bearded head leaned in from outside, “Alright lads? Wondered if one of you might be able to give us a hand shifting this thing. We’re going to see if we can’t use it as a planter. Might be good for veg or something. Probably only take four to lift it, but my back’s a bit dodgy after… y’know”
Klaus responded over his shoulder, “Yeah, alright Col’, here I come, mate. Better than sitting about in here anyway.” He looked back at Ben, and shrugged “I will say this though. At least we’re shot of those fucking nicknames.” He gave Gordon a look of total disgust and stalked from the cottage.
Gordon sniffled against Ben’s arm, Ben smiled at him.
“Ah well, Gordy, what do you say to a nice cup of tea? I’ll put the kettle on shall I?,” Gordon loudly snorted snot back up in to his nose and nodded. As he swung himself down from his chair, Ben asked, “any idea where she kept the teabags?”
Gordon considered, “Top shelf I think”
Ben stopped on his way to the kitchen. From outside came the noise of five men trying to move a glass coffin. He looked up towards the line of kitchen cabinets some feet above his head.
“Yeah,” he sighed, “figures.”
The Great Cake* Experiment, Week 12: Happy Endings
I went to a work colleague’s wedding last weekend. It was a huge, lovely affair, with well over 200 guests. When I arrived for the post-dinner party, almost half the invited guests were on the dancefloor giving it their all to the backdrop of funky Afro-beats. I was quick to join them.
Near the end of the evening, came the inevitable throwing of the bouquet. The bride wrenched the microphone from the DJ’s hands, and proceeded to whip most of the lady guests into a frenzy.
“I want all my single ladies up here! Come ON ladies! Cos I know! I KNOW. How hard it is to find a man! I know how hard it is to keep a man! I know how hard it is to get that man to ask you to marry him! Can I get an AMEN?”
I was more than a little surprised to hear most of the woman around me (for I had been dragged onto the dancefloor by one of my single colleagues who wanted some company) respond as one.
“AMEN!”
The bride went on.
“I’ve got my happy ending now ladies, and I want to make sure that one of my girls gets hers!”
She was sincere, ferocious, impassioned and indeed sober - for this bride doesn’t drink. She clearly meant every word. What she said made me think about how it seemed that she viewed a wedding as being the end of something, rather than the start. To her, and by the sounds of it, to many of the ladies on the dancefloor, the wedding signified the end of singledom. Whereas to me, a wedding signifies the next chapter of a partnership. But apparently to her it was a happy ending. And if it didn’t seem that way for all the ladies, then certainly it did for the very enthusiastic bridesmaid (one of seven; I did say it was a huge wedding) who leapt across the dancefloor to catch the aforementioned bouquet.
To me, a wedding is a celebration of what has gone before, but it’s also a celebration of all the good that is to come. I’m not sure that this *isn’t* what she was saying, but it certainly gave me food for thought - to go along with my pumpkin stew.
A Happy Ending
Krung adjusted the breathing apparatus, knowing full well that no matter how much he fiddled it would never fit properly. Well, properly enough that he could still breathe but not enough for it to feel a part of him rather than a hindrance. But it wasn’t a surprise that it didn’t and couldn’t fit. After all, this was his father’s space ship, the XR-949. A ship designed specifically for his father and forged in the depths of the Alpha system, a biomechanical confection that seemed to have merged with his very soul.
And it needed to. For Krung’s father was Hachoo, Destroyer of Worlds, Creator of Black Holes and Assassin of Dying Stars. In order to dispatch such mighty targets, the XR-949 was suitably equipped with a rather powerful weapon that could do just that i.e. destroy worlds, create black holes and assassinate (or simply remove) dying stars. The most impressive part of this was that the XR-949 was only the size of a grain of rice. Hachoo, a giant amongst the Pyongee people of outer Alpha Centauri, was miniscule. Entire solar systems containing billions of life forms had perished without ever knowing quite what had hit them. Nor how small it was. Why Hachoo and the Pyongee had to destroy worlds etc etc was never really discussed back home. It was just something that they had always done and always would.
Krung had assumed the whole rigmarole and destruction of worlds etc etc was somehow related to breeding. It appeared that only the largest and most aggressive males were chosen for these missions and thus acquired numerous females to perpetuates their broods. Krung was not large and had a tendency to whimper in the dark. All in all, he was a disappointment to his father who had chosen to shower his affections upon the remaining 27 other males he had sired.
Krung was now an adolescent and keen to prove to Hachoo just how capable he was. For years he had watched his father in XR-949, eavesdropped on the demonstrations given to the other sons before his inevitable discovery and ejection back to the remaining brood nest. How the most powerful weapon in XR-949 worked was unknown to Krung but he was aware that the large red button on the dashboard was some sort of ‘On’ switch. What he also found out was that the designers had assumed no one would be foolhardy enough to cross Hachoo so hadn’t really considered the intricacies of a security system.
Earlier that morning Krung had unscrewed a side panel in the cockpit and hotwired XR-949.
He was now zipping across the universe, shaking slightly with fear. Whether at the prospect of the beating he would receive from Hachoo when he got home or at the inevitability of the death he would bring to billions was unclear. Krung wasn’t quite in the right frame of mind for some critical self-reflection. What he did want to do was try out the weapon before unleashing it upon an entire solar system. A small planet maybe, one that no one would notice was missing. The XR-949’s scanner had picked up just such a planetary body. Rather a new one, it seemed. There was no life on it just yet, just a whole lot of hydrogen and oxygen combined into liquid form. The whole thing looked like a blue marble floating in the darkness.
This was the perfect first target and in a discrete enough corner of the universe that it could be ignored if everything went horribly wrong.
Krung blasted through the atmosphere and the XR-949 made its way down to the surface of the ocean. He cruised above the swell, marvelling at the expanse of… expanse of… well, wateryness, before the breathing apparatus slipped off – AGAIN – bringing him out of his reverie. Focus, focus. That’s what Hachoo would do: focus on the terrible task in hand rather than admiring the scenery.
Krung leant forward and pressed the red button.
The weapon went “Phut”.
Krung went “…”
The XR-949 exploded and went “Pop”.
Poor Krung had been too close to his intended target by a good few light years. Another part of Hachoo’s knowledge he had missed out on.
The microscopic crumbs that remained of the weapon, the XR-949, Krung and his foolhardy ambition fell into the water. Seconds later they were spread around the planet by the explosion’s shockwaves that sent ripples hundreds of metres high across the ocean and back again. It would have been impressive if anything had been around to see it. On the plus side, Krung’s misadventure and the resulting chemical reactions between Krung and the water did bring about life on Earth.
So it wasn’t all a complete disaster. One could even call it a happy ending.
Tall Green Grass of Home
There’s a whole mess o’ trouble at the Choctaw Hill / Your sister didn’t make it but I bet you will
The world is a blanket of green, stretching to the horizon. Vicky pegs it down the gentle slope, towards the backyard of her family home: wide, broad, and on the other side of the tributary. Behind her, a rumbling crackle breaks the quiet of the plains. She can see Nicola, standing on the other side of the water, gesturing madly. And then the sturdy copse of trees bursts into flame.
Wash off all your make-up with a garden hose
She rolls awkwardly and lands with splayed legs. An instant glimmer in her eyes, and over to the faucet. The shot of water from the not-quiet-sealed hose attachment kicks her shin and runs down the spiral of a scar towards her ankle. The hose bursts into life, droplets flipping across the lawn and dowsing the slumbering dog in shining droplets. Across the fence comes giggling laughter, and Vicky races for the hose. The plains beyond are still blackened from the fire, the few trees now hollow stumps.
Watch the freckles sparkle down the ridge of your nose
Amy ducks away and, though flecks of water hit her face, the sponge sails harmlessly by. They’re panting on the lower foothills, the beaten up pickup a half-mile away. The sun darts through the forest leaves and catches Vee’s long red hair, which is tidy in a plait. Her face is lit up, like a classic frontier painting. The last day of school is an opportunity to celebrate the summer, celebrate both their families having made it through.
We’ll be off the radar, off the map
Amy’s arm is wrapped around Vicky’s as the boat drifts over the still lake. Vee’s skin is a constant surprise; it’s mottled and blasted like the lunar surface on one side and Amy can trace patterns along her arms. She’s enjoying the peace, the isolation and the company. On the far shore, the reeds give way to grassland, the prairie stretching north and west. They are a long way from any where. Good thing one of them learned to drive.
Stretched out in the tall green grass
They are holding hands. Amy’s blue wedding dress blends into the sky as Victoria-Vicky-Vee looks up. Vee’s emerald green dress seems slightly out of character - but they both loved the ceremony - and Vee wanted to be traditional. Amy gets down next to her, and nestles her head in the space between Vee’s neck and shoulder.
It’s only green, against the blue / It’s only me, against you
—
Note: The lines in italics are lyrics from a Cory Branan song, Tall Green Grass. I’ve been playing it over and over again these last few weeks, and had it in my head when thinking about what to write. The song’s story isn’t this story, but this is a story. Listen to the song here: http://www.myspace.com/corybranan
