About Herstory
These are her stories; these are her battle cries.
Herstory: A Woman in History (short story/literary fiction) is a short story collection of historical and contemporary fiction, describing the lives of women throughout history, women presently, and imagined in the future. What began as a single short story evolved into the chorus of voices published here. Each story is centered around a single femme fatale, and is marked by the time period in which her journey takes place.
Chapters
Preview Each Short Story
Chapter 01 - Cold, War Kids.
Past - Germany, WWII.
My mother was a German you know. The beautiful kind, they say. She has the yellow, blonde hair and the glass blue eyes, from what I can remember of her. Her skin is fair, just like the beautiful German men and women. I guess I can never be beautiful like that.
Chapter 02 - 1122.
Future - Unknown.
“Hi there; hey, hey, shhhh. It’s okay.” A silent pause as my vision comes into focus. “Hi, Number 1122. Hi, there. It’s going to be okay.”
I have this feeling that I am something; coming from nothing, I am forming into something. A weighted feeling stretches from bottom to top; I don’t understand.
Chapter 03 - Paint.
No is a word I do not hear often. When the world is yours – your existence the pearl at the center of the oyster – no does not commonly escape the lips of those around you. Those two potent and simple letters are rarely strung together, standing to deny me something or someone. It just does not happen on this side of the street.
Past - Catalina Island, 1922.
Chapter 04 - Frost.
Annabel
The flames lick, even during the storm. I can see them crawling up and over the walls, rapidly burning through the hollowness of the dried out yellow grass. While it pours outside, nothing is safe in the wake of the wicked fire. The viciousness of the firestorm knows no limitations, no bounds of Mother Nature, as we look on, wondering why the rain will never seem to thirst its quench.
It knows no limitations. I am trapped in this little wooden house, out on the outskirts of this big city, and I am screaming.
Past - Chicago, 1861.
Chapter 05 - Love and War.
I don’t like being left alone with my own thoughts. I guess when I am left alone with them I come to find that I never really grew up. The inner child comes to play, and I start imagining the worst of everything, the most fearful situations out of the positive tunnel I had once created for this journey. “Don’t leave me alone with them,” I begged him. He tried to comfort me, tell me I was his strong girl, but still, he left me alone with them. That was the day the rain came, the first rain of the heat spell of the summer.
Past - California, 1969 (Vietnam War).
Chapter 06 - Defying Gravity.
She closed her eyes and tightened her grip on the thick stems of the flowers in her hands. Inhale, exhale; methodically, she repeated these simple actions. Her eyes would open, close, and the grip would tighten, followed by the soft, systematic breathing - inhaling and exhaling.
Past and Present - Long Beach, CA, 1980s.
Chapter 07 - Round of Three.
Inside, the flickering lights and static sounds of a rundown, highway-plagued bar. Amidst the shuffle of lazy, afternoon feet, the buzzing sound of neon lights illuminating the letters that spelled "Coors Light," and the ticking sounds of a flickering Open sign. Outside, every surface covered in the chalky dust of the desert; the heat of stagnant, dry, sparsely-populated air. At this moment, the picture: the life of a highway-side bar at two o’clock in the afternoon.
Present - I-15 Freeway, between California and Nevada.
Chapter 08 - FrankenGirl.
Present/Future - Unknown.
And so, she turned. The dull edge of the butcher's knife was very real, as jagged cuts started at the corners of her mouth, up the sides of her cheeks. The right side of her face seemed slightly collapsed, where the brute force of the knife came crushing down to burst the structure of her booming smile. Blood dripping, scars formulating-- the face of the betrayed; the face of the midnight terror; the face of the emotionally forged monster.
Chapter 09 - Amour.
Past - Cold War USSR, Early 1980s.
It was the threshold, where the lungs sting with immense pain, the thighs begin to shake under the pressure of supporting the rest of the body. It was that moment where the mind is well aware of the commands it is sending to the rest of the body, but for that split moment, it beings to doubt its reasoning. The body temperature rises sharply, yet the iced chills begin to break out as sweat pours over porous skin. All systems are go; yet for that one second, that one split instant, the systems begin to quiver, to shake, to question, and the systems that flashed a green light look for the red light; the emergency break, something to make it all stop.
Chapter 10 - Manning the Maiden Voyage.
Future - A Supermassive Blackhole.
Catching her breath – sounding as if she had been sucker punched in the throat – she scratchily radioed into Mission Control: “Mission Control” – she coughed – “Mission Control this is 1122, Mission Control, do you read?” Pure static on the other end of the communications system. While her heart momentarily fluttered with panic, her brain tried to reason with her hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis that she and Mission Control had prepared for this moment. They anticipated that comms would go out if she were successful; if the supermassive accepted the 1122 into is existence.
The (I)mporium.
Future - An Unknown Technological Civil Society.
At the exact moment he reached the entrance door to this wing of the Synapsis outstation – The Axon – the light he felt made itself known. An incredible, piercing blue light filled the body of the hall, filling itself in Jack’s eyes. In that moment, all he could see was that incredible blue as the hall trembled and then exploded, as if a series of strategically placed explosives all ignited at the same moment. Jack felt his body fly with the force of the explosion – as the chaos ensued, all he could hear was please don’t forget about me.