Tense First Encounters

Chapter 1: Yours

A/N: This is me playing around with POV and tenses. I really like to experiment, even though most of my pieces end up being 1st person or 3rd person past.  There is so much we can do with the English language. And besides, what fun would it be if we couldn’t play around with words sometimes. I’m going to (hopefully) post more than one chapter, with each being a part of the same story, but from different points of view and verb tenses. And maybe in different formats. I’m thinking normal prose, haiku, script, poetry, and everything and anything else. Tell me what you think of the idea in the comments section below!

Dedicated to CheyChar for getting me onto WattPad in the first place. :)

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Tense First Encounters by Melody Stringer

Written/Posted: May, 2012

Please don’t copy my stuff.

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//2nd Person, Present Tense

You wake up slowly, your eyelids sticking together a little. You must have fallen asleep with your contact lenses in again. You barely need them, anyway. The effect is mostly cosmetic. You wear yellow lenses so that your eyes will be green instead of the shocking blue they naturally are. 

Your name is Stephen. Stephen Johnson. And after taking in your surroundings, you conclude that at the very least you are in your own apartment. The last time you woke up like this… Well, that’s a story for another day.

You sit up slowly, pressing the heel of your hand into your eye and rubbing, getting the tears flowing at least enough to un-blur your vision. Your first goal is to get the damn things out of your eyes. They’re making your head hurt.

As you stand, you find that your head hurts for another reason: the hangover currently pounding through your temples. You stumble toward the bathroom – to your left, down a short hallway – and barely make it to the toilet before the contents of your stomach makes a repeat performance.

While you are praising the porcelain gods, you hear a faint humming sound. Somewhat like another person, but… not quite. Then again, you can’t hear much above the sound of your own yakking, so…

You break from what you were doing, since the entire contents of your stomach is now in the toilet in front of you. It’s been a long time since you got that drunk. As far as you recall, you’ve only been hung over three times, and only two of those times you puked, including this morning. And the other two of those times, you did something stupid the night before.

‘So what is it this time?’ You wonder idly as you hit the silver handle and the toilet flushes. You rise slowly to your feet and make your way to the sink on weak and wobbling knees. After you rinse and spit, you decide to find the source of the humming, which is still coming from… where was it coming from, anyway? You slowly shuffle into the living area again. You still can’t tell whether the sound is male or female, or if it’s even human. Your head is still pounding.

Your contact solution and case are in your master bathroom, which is a different bathroom than the one you were just in. It is just ahead of you, to the right. You were asleep on the couch in the living room, and your bedroom is right off of that.

Your living area is the center of your apartment. From there, each separate space branches off, some with direct doorways, and some with small hallways, like the entrance to your bedroom. It’s a simple layout, but you’re happy with it.

As you approach the short hallway to your bedroom, you notice that the humming is growing louder. Now you can distinguish that the sound is more feminine than masculine, but you still can’t tell if it’s human. You take a deep breath and push your way into the room.

No one is there. Confused, you look around. The door to your master bath is closed, and the shower is running. Oh, that’s where the humming is coming from, and that’s why it sounded inhuman. The notes reverberating off the bathroom walls had given the sound a tinny, hollow ring that your groggy, hung-over brain couldn’t pick out. 

Now that you know that the person humming is a human, and most likely a woman, you try to rack your brain for her identity. After all, you live alone, and no women have a key to your place. So who is she?

Then it hits you. She was the stupid thing. You shake your head; that sounded wrong. Every time you get drunk, you do something stupid, right? So, she’s the “something stupid”. You curse to yourself and sit down on the bed, rubbing your eyes again.

After a few seconds, the water shuts off. You brace yourself for a shock when you see her. But you’re pleasantly surprised. She walks out with nothing but a towel on. At first she seems a little shocked to see anyone else, but then you can see the realization of who you are on her face. She blushes and hurries over to a pile of clothes she left on the bed, far from you.

She’s actually very pretty, you realize. It’s hard to tell much about her hair, since it’s still wet, but from what you can guess, it’s a medium to light brown and super wavy, almost curly. Wet, it stretches well past her shoulders, which means it probably fell neatly at or slightly below her shoulders when it was dry. She has dainty features and very fair skin. You find yourself staring at her, surprised at her beauty. For something stupid, you sure know how to pick ‘em. She is staring back at you now, and you feel your face flush. 

You take this opportunity to excuse yourself to the bathroom to take out your damned contacts. Thank God you can pretty much see without them. You sigh as you pull the second lens out of your eyes, relief flooding your senses. Your headache seems much better now. When you look up into the mirror above your sink, you see her standing in the bathroom doorway, looking at you strangely. You laugh and turn to face her.

Her hair is still a little wet, but now she has clothes on. She is wearing a tight dress that is very short and very low-cut. Obviously, you two had been at a club of some kind last night. “Your eyes were green a second ago,” she says softly. Her voice is velvety and soft, perfect for your hangover headache.

“Colored contacts,” you reply simply, keeping your voice low. You don’t meet her eyes right away, kind of look at the ground, and then look up into her eyes from under your eyelashes.

She smiles. Perfect, that is exactly the reaction you were looking for. “Oh. That’s cool,” she says. She blushes, and her eyes turn toward the ground.

“What happened last night?” You ask, moving toward her. You lean against the doorway, your forearm against the frame above her head. Your gently tilt her head up, so she’s looking at you.

She hesitates for a moment, but then pulls away from you. “Oh, nothing,” she murmurs, almost too quiet for you to hear. “You were seriously plastered. I could never do anything with someone so out of it.”

You let out a slight sigh of relief. “Yeah, sorry about that,” you say. What else is there to say? You think hard about something, anything, more you can say to keep this beautiful woman in your apartment and talking to you. She looks thoughtful, too. “You want breakfast or something?” You ask blandly.

She gives you a look like, ‘Is that all you could come up with?’, but nods a little. “Sure. Do you have anything besides cold pizza and cereal?”

You laugh out loud. “Yeah, I’m actually a chef, so…” That is kind of a lie, but you really are a chef. An assistant to the assistant chef. At a restaurant where most of the dinners were just frozen food.

She looks straight at you. “Oh really? Then what are you going to make me?” She asks.

You walk over and take her hand, giving a small bow. “Whatever you’d like, milady,” you say, being as cheesy as possible. You pull her with you to the kitchen as she giggles like a schoolgirl.

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Alright, that’s the end of chapter 1. Hopefully you like it. Of course, the only way for me to know, and that is for you to VOTE AND COMMENT! So do that. Pretty please.

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