nekare: (Night Watch)
I FINISHED MY COLOR CUBE, OMG YAY!!

I owed [livejournal.com profile] moonix this, since we're having a scraps exchange.

First, the original fiction ones:

1.
Acapulco en la Azotea
Original - 626 Palabras

Las antenas de televisión forman carreteras negras sobre el crepúsculo, y Jorge se acuesta en la azotea con la grava suelta pegándose a su camisa, un libro entre sus manos que está bastante seguro que no leerá. Su madre lo llama desde la cocina, Chiquillo malcriado, ¿dónde te metiste? Jorge ríe un poco ante los cambios de humor de su madre, ese limbo menopáusico que la tiene llorando en comedias. Clava los ojos en las nubes que se pintan moradas como su lengua después de una paleta de mora azul.

Tiene una tanga en el bolsillo, esa prenda íntima que le robó a Judith como souvienir, aún cuando ella se enojo de sus suspicacias, y todavía sonríe cuando recuerda el día que se la vio puesta.

El libro junto a él es Blanca Nieves, y sabe que se muere si alguien en la prepa se entera de sus sentimentalismos, infantilismos y demás ismos no aceptados en sociedad para alguien con un nombre propio tan rimbombante como lo es Jorge Rocallez Miravar, heredero de la CocaCola Company mexicana; ¡y Dios nos guarde si la propia Judith se entera! Suspira un poco, se pierde en ese bosque donde esa princesa con una manzana atorada reposa bajo llave, y sin saberlo, muy lentamente, se queda dormido.

Esmira, la muchacha del aseo, lo encuentra al día siguiente a las diez treinta, y Jorge le tiene que dar tylenol para que se le pase el susto. Él recuerda que no incineró la caja de juguetes viejos como era su intención, y maldice al pensar que tendrá que hacer la pira ritual algún otro día, para deshacerse de esos viejos cómics de gárgolas y arpías y el patético osito de peluche sin un ojo que todavía esconde debajo de la cama.

Quiere deshacerse de su infancia, quiere empezar la segunda versión de su vida y quiere, ah, como quiere, que su mamá deje de decirle Amorcito.

Otro día, otra hora, otra semana y Jorge vuelve a estar en la azotea, de costado sobre una manta, prendiendo y apagando el encendedor cada tres segundos, ojos fijos en la caja adornada con globos azules. Le falta un poco de anestesia en sus venas, un calmante que le permita realizar este ritual de adolescencia aún cuando a veces todavía extraña al señor Café, el osito tuerto.

Un gato negro lo salva de la decisión cuando salta a la azotea con una cacofonía de voces sin rostro y promesas de arañones en cada uno de sus maullidos, y Jorge se siente extrañamente contento y aliviado mientras se siente en el consultorio del doctor media hora más tarde para recibir la vacuna contra el tétanos después de las 35 cortadas que le hizo el gato.

Pasa un carro nupcial en el camino a casa, y ve desde la banqueta mientras se rasca la curita en su mejilla, y cuando reconoce a la novia, esa prima suya que nunca la habló, se pregunta si no debería estar indignado.

“He resucitado,” le dice alegremente a Judith el siguiente día mientras le enseña sus heridas de guerra, y ni siquiera las nuevas complicaciones en cálculo integral le bajan el buen humor cuando piensa en la caja de su infancia zozobrando en el mar de sus calcetines sucios debajo de su cama.

Esa noche saca la chamarrita amarilla de cuando la incertidumbre de que si era niño o niña todavía estaba latente, y le sorprende de cómo no encogió en la lavadora.

Sufre una regresión más tarde, se pinta las mejillas con rojo indio y sale a la azotea con una revelación en la cabeza. Acepta el pasado, y lanza un grito de guerra por arriba del mundo.

(No se siente tan guerrero cuando amanece con resaca, pero aún así sonríe.)


Acapulco on the Rooftop
Original - Translation - 751 Words

The television antennas create black highways against the twilight, and Jorge lies down on the rooftop with the dirt sticking to his short, a book between his hands that he’s pretty sure he won’t be reading. His mother calls for him from the kitchen, You little scoundrel, where did you go to? Jorge laughs a bit at his mother’s sudden mood swings, that menopausic limbo that has her crying during comedies. He sets his eyes on the clouds that get painted purple as his tongue does after having a blue berry icicle.

He has a thong in his pocket, that intimate cloth that he store from Judith as a souvenir, even when she got mad, and he still smiles when he remembers that day that he saw it on her.

El libro junto a él es Blanca Nieves, y sabe que se muere si alguien en la prepa se entera de sus sentimentalismos, infantilismos y demás ismos no aceptados en sociedad para alguien con un nombre propio tan rimbombante como lo es Jorge Rocallez Miravar, heredero de la CocaCola Company mexicana; ¡y Dios nos guarde si la propia Judith se entera! Suspira un poco, se pierde en ese bosque donde esa princesa con una manzana atorada reposa bajo llave, y sin saberlo, muy lentamente, se queda dormido.

The book next to him is Show White, and he knows that he’ll just die if someone from high school finds out about his sentimentalisms, infantilisms and the rest of isms not accepted in society for someone with such a pompous-sounding name as Jorge Rocallez Miravar is, heir to the Mexican CocaCola Company, and may God deliver him if Judith herself finds out! He sighs a bit, looses himself in that forest where a princess with a piece of apple caught on her throat rests locked behind glass, and without him realizing it, slowly, he falls asleep.

Esmira, the helping lady, finds him the next day at ten thirty, and Jorge has to give him some Tylenol to get her through the fright. He remembers that he didn’t incinerate that toy box as he meant to, and he curses at the thought that he’ll have to leave the ritual pyre for another day, to get rid of those old comics of gargoyles and harpies and that pathetic stuffed bear that’s missing an eye and that’s still hiding under his bed.

He wants to get rid of his childhood, wants to start a second version of his life and he wants, ah, how he wants his mother to stop calling him Sweetie.

Another day, another time, another week, and Jorge is back on the rooftop, lying on his side over a blanket, turning on and off the lighter every three seconds, eyes set on the blue-balloons ornamented box. He lacks some anesthesia in his veins, a sedative that will allow him to see this adolescence ritual through even when he still sometimes misses Mr. Brown, the one-eyed teddy bear.

A black cat saves him from the decision when he jumps on the rooftop with a cacophony of faceless voices and the promise of scratches in every one of his cries; and Jorge feels strangely content and relieved as he sits on the doctor’s practice half an hour later to get a shot against tetanus after the thirty-five cuts the cat opened on his skin.

He sees a car branded with a large ‘just married’ on his way home as he scratches the band-aid on his cheek, and when he recognizes the bride, that cousin of his that never spoke to him, he wonders if he should be angry.

“I’ve come back to life,” he says cheerfully to Judith the next day as he shows her his war wounds, and not even the new complications in integral calculus can get him off his cheery cloud when he thinks of the box of his childhood sinking in the sea of dirty socks underneath his bed.

That night he gets out the yellow jacket from when the question of whether he’d be a boy of a girl was still unanswered, and he surprises at how it didn’t shrunk in the dryer.

He has a regression later, paints his cheeks with Indian-red lines and goes up to the rooftop with a revelation in his head. He accepts his past, and throws away a war-cry on the top of the world.

(He doesn’t feel like a warrior when he wakes up hangover the next day, but he smiles the same.)


Okay, this needs a bit of explaining. 'Acapulco en la azotea' is an expression used in here whenever somone doesn't have enough money to go to the beach, and ends up tanning on their rooftop while sipping piñadas and doing their best to pretend it's sand and not concrete what's underneath them. I wrote this story for my writing class last semester - the assignment was to start writing whatever we wanted and every two minutes, the teacher would say a word and we'd have to wriggle it inside the text - and I've always been fond of it. It's not until I re-read it today, though, that I realized how utterly Mexican it is. I had to change a lot in the translation, since there were things that the English language clearly wasn’t supposed to do.


2.
Original - Words
Edgar duerme con una mano puesta firmemente sobre el pecho, el eco de sus propios latidos arruyándolo a la inconciencia, necesidad de sentir su vida entre los dedos en la forma más literal posible.

Se sienta solo en una banca en el patio de la escuela el siguiente día, viendo sin ver la pared azul deslavada con mil y un mensajes en marcador permanente de las generaciones pasadas. Un gorro negro cubre su cabeza rapada, el único requerimiento de su madre antes de salir de casa, “Para que no se te enfríen las ideas,” había dicho.

Nadie lo molesta. Nadie le habla, tampoco, y él presta oídos sordos a los usuales rumores que recorren las bocas de sus compañeros.

Dibuja sobre sus brazos durante clase de algebra, su camisa blanca arremangada hasta los codos, garabatos de marcador negro sobre piel pálida que remarca el mapa de sus venas verdosas. La hermana Marie-Claude lo descubre todos los días, lo encuentra con las manos en la masa y los dedos llenos de tinta chorreada, en su rinconcito de la parte de atrás del salón. Cada día lo descubre, cada día lo obliga a lavarse los brazos hasta que quedan rojos e hinchados, a carne viva, y cada día Edgar vuelve a pintar su mural efímero de circulitos y dientes, calaveras y ojos acusantes.

Se sienta bajo un árbol de guayabas por las tardes, los brazos adoloridos y el cerebro adormecido, y la ropa se le impregna del dulce y penetrante olor de guayaba amarilla madura mientras escribe poesía depresiva que hasta él sabe que apesta. Mete el cuadernito en una bolsa de plástico y lo entierra entre las raíces después, por puro dramatismo. Se duerme deseando que alguien lo encuentre.

(Pero no esta seguro si quiere que encuentren el cuaderno o a él.)

Las monjas mandan llamar a su madre cada mes, y ella se sienta en la oficina con un pañuelo entre los dedos, sus labios temblando, y sin falta, al salir, siempre le pide a la madre superiora que rece por el alma de Edgar. Él levanta los ojos al cielo, y la plegaria en sus labios es por la sanidad de su madre.

Translation – Words
Edgar sleeps with a hand firmly against his chest, the echo of his own beats lulling him to unconsciousness, the need to feel life between his fingers in the most literal way possible.

He sits alone on a bench in the school’s yard the next day, watching without looking the washed-off blue wall with a thousand and one messages in permanent marker, from generations past. A black hat covers his shaved head, the only requirement from his mother before he left home, “So your ideas won’t get cold,” she’d said.

No one bothers him. No one speaks to him, either, and he pays no mind to the usual rumours that go from mouth to mouth.

He draws on his arms during algebra class, his white shirt rolled up to his elbows, doodling with black marker over pake skin that remarks the map of his green veins. Sister Marie-Claude catches him every day, finds him infraganti with his fingers stained with ink. Every day, she catches him, every day, she forces him to wash his arms until they’re red and swollen, raw, and every day Edgar paints his ephemeral mural of little circles and teeth, skulls and accusing eyes.

He sits under a guayaba tree on the afternoons, his arms sore and his brain numb, and his clothes get impregnated with the sweet and penetrating scent of ripe, yellow guayaba as he writes depressive poetry than even he knows that sucks. He gets the little notebook inside a plastic bag, and buries it under the roots, for drama’s sake. He goes to sleep wishing something will find it.

(But he’s not sure if he’s the one that wants to be found instead.)

The nuns send word for his mother every month, and she sits in the office with a handkerchief between his fingers, lips trembling, and before going out, always, she’ll ask the superior mother to pray for Edgar’s soul. He rolls his eyes, and the prayer on his lips is for his mother’s sanity.

As always, it’s a bit frustrating how untranslatable Spanish is. Whenever I translate, the English version always ends up sounding more monotonous, especially because one has to keep on saying who’s doing the action instead of letting the verb talk by itself like in Spanish. *sigh* Also, the word ‘it’ sucks the fun out word games. That is why if I’m writing in English, I’ll keep to English, and vice versa. It’s no use to try and think in the other language. Err, is the word for guayaba ‘guava’? I don’t have any idea if the fruit exists somewhere else.

3.
Original – 281 Words

El cuarto esta a obscuras, pero el brillo de la pantalla de la computadora no deja que Laura duerma. Joaquín se hunde en sus cálculos, murmura ecuaciones sin levantar la voz, saborea cada golpeteo de lengua contra los dientes para formar las sílabas. Las incógnitas se reflejan en los vidrios de sus lentes para vista cansada que ocultan sus ojeras, moradas como sus labios cada vez que pasas horas para que se acuerde de prender la calefacción.

Laura lo mira desde la cama, sus pulgares pasando una y otra vez por el mismo punto deshilachado en su piyama azul, un agujero en potencia como el que se extiende entre ella y Joaquín.

“Ven aquí, olvida todo,” es lo que ella le decía al principio, cuando todavía creía que una mirada, un roce de piernas sería suficiente para retenerlo.

Ahora solo lo espera callada, queriendo envolverse alrededor de su cuerpo como un espiral, como la sección áurea (proporción perfecta, mezcla perfecta de carne) que tanto lo hace suspirar.

Ella espera, y el constante azote de las teclas termina por arruyarla.

---

Tres de la mañana y el colchón se hunda bajo el peso de Joaquín. Laura se mueve, todavía medio dormida, para dejarle espacio. Las yemas de los dedos de él presionan el espacio usual en la cadera de Laura, por debajo de su blusa, pulsando en código Morse la secuencia de Fibonacci, 1, 1, 2, 3 y 5 y 8 y 13 y de ahí al infinito; el único contacto que todavía sabe a familiaridad. Ella sueña con el lago salado que visitó cuando tenía seis, y él sueña con la inmensidad del pi (π = 3.1416...), moldeándose a su alrededor.


Translation – 273 Words

The room is dark, but the glow of the computer’s screen won’t let Laura sleep. Joaquín sinks into his calculations, murmurs equations without raising his voice, tastes every soft tap of the tongue against the teeth as he shapes syllables. The unknown quantities marked as ‘x’ reflect on his glasses that hide the bag under his eyes, purple as his lips every time it’s hours before he remembers to turn the heating on.

Laura watches him from the bed, thumbs caressing over and over again the same worn spot on her blue piyamas, a future-tense hole that extends between her and Joaquín.

“Come here, forget it all,” she used to say at the beginning, when she still thought that a look, a brush of legs would be enough to hold him down.

Now she just waits, quiet, wanting to wrap herself around his body as a spiral, as the Golden Spiral (perfect proportion, perfect mix of flesh) that makes him sigh so much.

She waits, and the constant tapping of keys lulls her to sleep in the end.

---

Three in the morning and the mattress sags under Joaquín’s weight. Laura moves, half asleep, to leave room for him. The pads of his fingers press against the usual spot on Laura’s hip, underneath her shirt, pulsing in Morse code the Fibonacci Sequence, 1, 1, 2, 3 and 5 and 8 and 13 and beyond until the infinite; the only contact that still tastes familiar. She dreams about the salt water lake she visited when she was six, and he dreams with the vastness of the Pi (π = 3.1416...), molding himself around her.


I really like this snippet, only, I’ve no idea where to take it next, and my knowledge of math and physics is really, really limited after all. It took me ages to figure out the English term for the ‘Sección Áurea’, one of the most important parts of both design and art. Golden Spiral doesn’t have the same ring to it, though. Also, this was a bitch to translate, because of all of the big, scientist-y words that I didn’t know how to say in English.

Now, let’s move on unto fanfic, shall we?

1.
HP – Remus gen – 230 Words

“I think I found something!” hollers Remus in the vague direction of the rest of the Order. He climbs over the remnants of the house, slipping with loose planks of wood; smoke getting into his eyes and making them water.

(A silly excuse that feels like a lie even to him).

The fire only stopped some minutes ago, and the echoes of heat remain on the street, burning the edges of truth also, like the letter Remus never got to send to his father before he died. A little hand is trapped amidst the rubble, and Remus digs frantically, cutting his hands and not caring (like his heart, that bleeds red from a thousand wounds, all caused by that menace called War), searching for the missing child, searching for a bit of sanity in this world gone to hell.

He moves aside a still steaming painting, oils melted into a horrid brown color, as if life had been sucked out of it. He moves it, and then the child’s face is visible, covered in plaster and dust, bruised purple as things crushed him. Remus checks for a pulse with shaky fingers, and meets silence inside not-quite-yet cold skin. Another body from the hundreds Remus has seen in a week, either maimed or unmarked, anonymous victims in a too stupid war.

Life must be ending, Remus thinks as he starts crying.

Written for some challenge HP community that never got to properly get off. It’s old, and bit… melodramatic, for my taste. But well.

2.
HP – Originally, Remus/Sirius – 62 Words


It’s April eight, and Remus outstretches his left arm outside of the umbrella covered part of dryness amidst the washed out gray rain falling onto the street, his hand becoming a puddle, a lake, an ocean of fallen raindrops. The water claws its way up his tweed jacket, seeping into the cloth and darkening it just the shade of his own hair.

Originally written for [livejournal.com profile] wellymuck, but I never got to finish it.

3.
Narnia – Lucy/Mr.Tumnus – 129 Words

Lucy still dreams sometimes, of the endless green of Narnia’s woods and the pearly tone of the walls in Cair Paravel. She can keep the images out of her mind during the day, but the night shelters her memories; summons them, reliving them in that almost painful way of longing.

She still dreams sometimes, and the haunting presence of whispers against her grown-up lips ghost over her skin during the day, friendly and loving and feverish, all at the same time. She dreams of scarves dancing with the ocean’s salty air, of umbrellas under the snow just before Christmas, of tiny horns so sensitive to her touch.

Lucy still dreams, and still remembers, and she doubts the memory will ever leave her alone.

But above all, Lucy still misses.

I don’t quite remember if I ever posted this. I like it though. *shrug*

4.
X-Men Movieverse – Rogue/Bobby – 334 Words

After Alcatraz, there’s nothing else to Bobby and Rogue than flesh and nails on each other’s backs and shudders as they breath against warm skin. Pent-up desire, Jubilee says, but Rogue knows it’s more than that – it’s her being free from the cloth that keeps her prisoner, it’s her finally fulfilling a basic human need.

(And it is sweet on her tongue and shivering as Bobby’s fingertips leave frost on their wake and the ice melts quickly.)

It is addictive, touching, and they let themselves be consumed by it, out of grief at their losses, out of pure need for someone else.

A month since she’s been human, and the testing stick turns blue.

She’s pregnant.

---

They’re both only eighteen and college is only a step away, but they sit on the ground of Bobby’s room (on the half that used to belong to John, because they still feel a bit alone) a day after they find out, their knees touching as they sit cross-legged, and as Bobby’s hands go down Rogue’s shirt -- palms pressed against their child, and they realize they can’t undo this.

So they smile to each other, trying to be brave for the other one, and pretend they don’t see the looks the other students give them.

---

They’re watching a movie with the rest of the students, cuddled up in a sofa when one of the newest kids enters the room and changes the channel, paying no mind to the complaints, breathing hard. The cure is not permanent, the news say, and Rogue gets up from the couch wordlessly, goes up to her room and gets the box under her bed in where she keeps all of her gloves, dusty and moist-smelling from so much time of abandonment.

She puts a blue pair on, and she stares at her hands, eyes dry but her lips tightly pressed together.

---

The baby is born dead, and she can’t even curl herself around Bobby to cry herself to sleep.

I ten to write very scattered-ly, so you should know there was supposed to be a lot more in between this snippets. I loved this idea, as cruel as it felt, and I really wanted to play with it, but just couldn’t, for some reason.

5.
Supernatural – Dead!Dean gen – 182 Words

It’s two in the morning when the ouija’s arrow starts moving again. Sam is sitting on Dean’s bed, going through his father’s journal, trying to make some sense of the cramped handwriting, and then the board starts rattling, as if trying to get his attention.

When Sam finally sits on the floor, the arrow starts moving so quickly he can barely put the words together. “Choice? I made a choice?” Dean, what are you saying?” He frowns up to the empty space his brother should be filling, but the next phrase doesn’t exactly give him an answer.

“Not getting rid of me?” Sam reads, still frowning. He hasn’t slept properly since he woke up from the first batch of sedatives they gave him in the helicopter, and his head feels as if it was filled with cotton. “I don’t really get what you’re saying, Dean,” he says slowly, poking the ouija’s arrow with his index finger.

It doesn’t move again, and that’s the moment Dean’s heart stops beating.

----

“Time of death, 2:11 am.”

----

Dean says Boo, just because he can.

One day, I will write this. Really. I’m still madly in love with this idea, but I can’t seem to be able to actually put it in paper, when I have most of the story figured out in my head. *sigh*

Feedback would be absolute, absolute love.

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