Author Games: Tempest

Task One Entries: 1-8

Sam Michelson

Sam Michelson was born in the hands of ruin and built up from the arm of riches. His mother used to tell him stories about how hard they struggled when he was born. About how long it took his father to rise in the ranks to become the latest CEO of the Michelson Mobile company at only 35. Their family had to live off meager incomes and deal with high-stakes stress and publicity. They were attacked on all fronts and felt as though they were falling apart, his mother would tell him. Having a child made it worse, but they were determined to make their family better. They would love one another and raise him right. They would make his life better than their own. He'd owned the business for the past twenty-nine years, and at the ripe age of 64, was ready to hand off the business to his only son.

Sam knew the stories were shit.

And Sam also knew that there were multiple ways to lose his father's grace. The best way, he'd discovered, was when he started to date Daniel Casanaro--local fuck-boy and gentle lover of the passing ages. It was a slow fall from grace--each feather of his beautiful wings plucked before they tossed him off that golden throne. The sharpened green eyes of his father lost favor, the roughly-spoken 'I love you's' lost flavor, and their long and open talks became short and trite. His mother, though, was the worst to deal with her son's disgrace.

She never stopped smiling at him. Not when she told him to leave his boyfriend, not when she told him that he'd never be welcomed back, and not when she told him that she'd personally find him in hell.

So Sam Michelson, with the world at his fingertips, walked away.

It was romantic. It was rushed. It was beautiful and everything out of a movie--the two of them, running into the distant sunset with hands clasped and tongues tied. They were together and nothing, no one, could pull them apart. Who needed money? Who needed family? They had one another. They were their own family. It was perfect.

They spent the last of their money on a honeymoon--a trip to the exotic Caribbean on a ship called the Prospero. They booked a flight to Miami, waited several hours, and got on the ship headed to the distant south. Now, the two of them sat in their room within the ship, not feeling the rolling tide or the sway of the ship. Instead, they felt themselves and lay on the bed with Sam's head on Danny's chest. Danny caressed Sam's cheek and tugged at his hair with his long, pale fingers.

"You should grow it out," Danny said.

"My hair?" Sam laughed. "I'd look stupid."

Danny twirled it between his fingers. His voice was honey dripping from bread. "I think you'd look handsome."

"You say that about everything."

The two of them were silent and relished in the sound of each other's breathing. Sam knew nothing more than the way it felt...and the way his heart still had sharp pains going through it. He needed to take something to ease the anxiety. He needed to stop feeling and breathing and just become one with where he was and forget that he'd just lost everything--but he couldn't. He couldn't forget that his entire life was just taken from him. He couldn't forget that he was on a cruise ship with no money to his name, laying next to a man who's only signifier was the new name he'd taken on, wasting his potential all for...what? Romantic idealizations arisen from a lustful year of hidden sex, taboo kisses, and lies?

Sam was supposed to be happy now. Free from a world of perfection and cold love. Life was meant to show him the stupid montage of them building a new one together. A new world, a new home, a new identity forged in their desperation and love. Things were supposed to feel right, constantly, and there be nothing to drag him away or make him hate himself for his choices.