Fatal Flaw (standard:Creative non-fiction, 1520 words)
Author: CloudBreakChick	Added: Sep 20 2004	Views/Reads: 3891/2213	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Sometimes things are too good to be true.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


We brought a camera one time.  I wanted a picture of the greatest place
on earth, to hold near me when I slept, so that maybe my dreams 
wouldn't be so strange.  He wanted a picture of me.  I sat on a log, 
right at the side of the stream, my bare feet splashing in the water 
and my jeans dirty, and he took my picture.  He must have used an 
entire roll of film on me sitting on that stupid log, and I loved every 
second of it.  Then, suddenly, the water had somewhere to be.  It 
rushed over my feet, shocking me with its newfound energy, and I 
laughed.  I felt something oddly cold on my back, then a rush of water 
came down the hill, toward my log, toward me.  I didn't move as it 
rushed over my back, my lap, my hair, soaking me.  I simply laughed.  
He stood there, taking pictures, telling me that I was beautiful, that 
he'd never seen anything like it, or known anyone like me.  He walked 
into the water, not caring that his worn black shoes were soaking 
through to his socks, that the water was creeping up his jeans, that we 
were a mess.  He wanted a better picture.  He wanted a picture of my 
laughter, my almost child-like delight, at the fact that I was 
completely soaked and without a towel. 

I don't know what it was about that place.  It was in this place that we
shared a stolen kiss, murmurs of devotion, a perfect friendship 
blooming into more.  It was in this place that he touched my soul with 
his charm, stole my heart and made it his.  In this place, everything 
was beautiful, everything was perfect, as it should be.  I'm convinced 
that it is the memories of this place that made me want to love him 
when we left. 

I still go, sometimes, if I'm feeling too crowded.  I go to try and
catch that solitude again, so I can gather my thoughts and be whole.  I 
try to catch the perfection, if just for a fleeting instant, of my 
past.  All I see now, though, is the dirty, rotting leaves littering 
the ground, lying still where they fell years before, untouched by 
anyone who cared.  I see the bare branches of winter trees, lonesome 
and ghoulish as they sway in yet another cold burst of wind.  The air, 
no longer clean and crisp, is tainted by the smoke from my lonesome 
cigarette as its acrid exhalation combines to make an off-key melody 
with the distasteful rotting of the logs and the stench of dead minnows 
floating downstream.  I feel like those minnows, damning those ever 
evasive waterbugs that skim the surface but never touch down long 
enough to catch. 

I know that I'll never recapture those times.  It was a fluke, a flaw in
nature's pattern, that allowed two kids to experience the depth of 
communication that he and I did.  The communication that only happens 
when two souls truly meet, converse, and return, knowing that all is 
well.  It was a blemish in plan, to allow me to fall in love with him 
in this place.  For outside of this place, where the world was gray and 
cold, stinking and nauseating, perfection is impossible.  No matter how 
perfect he was in this place, in the outside world he was just as gray, 
just as boring, just as normal.  Sometimes there is a fatal flaw in 
perfection.  Sometimes, things are too good to last.  Because when I 
expected the perfection to last, the meeting of souls to be an everyday 
occurrence, I was disappointed.  I allowed myself to be disappointed in 
him, in us, in what I thought it was that we had.  We didn't have 
anything, once we left this place.  The surreal experiences that we had 
there can never be matched, and we will forever be chasing waterbugs. 


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