99 Word Biographies

Thanks to Sarah Brentyn for giving me the heads up about the 99 word biographies prompt last week at Carrot Ranch Communications. I've been playing around with flash fiction for the last couple of months and having a blast. But this week's challenge was tough. Maybe it's because I already know my characters from Unbound so well that I find it hard to narrow it down to 99 words. Or maybe it's because I was daunted by the many amazing entries for this prompt submitted by other writers. Either way, here are my entries. 

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Mara was born in squalor. Traded for 50 bucks and a case of whiskey, she spent her childhood being used in ways best forgotten. A girl of shadows and whispers, no one knew of the strange things that happened on nights with a full moon. Rescued and recovered, Mara holds hope and fear with the same disdain. She loves fiercely, is loyal to a fault, and when no one is looking, smiles at babies and sunsets. She is wise woman, crone, rebel, romantic. She can flay with a look and strike like serpent. She will not suffer fools gladly.

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Stuart is all elbows and knees. Equal parts rogue and romantic, he has a way of making people comfortable with his discomfort. His laugh is hard to resist and it’s easy to forget the sadness he’s seen. Few knew of the men who died in his arms as he’d tried to carry them from the battlefield. Fewer still knew that he’d signed up for the war as penance for living a life that would never end. He loves beer and a good joke and in the end, wants nothing more than to be a decent man, worthy of love.

All Good Things.

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”  ― Gilda Radner

Last week I stumbled across a teaser for a Friends reunion show called "The One After the 10 Year Break". It took me about 30 seconds to figure out it was a hoax that had been kicking around the internet for awhile, enraging fans of the show who'd like to see the cast get back together again. And as a Friends fan, I agreed. On the heels of the spectacular Veronica Mars movie, I could totally be convinced that a 10 year Friends reunion might be fun.  But it has me thinking about endings. And how they seem harder to come by than ever before. And how I seem to be struggling, more than ever, to let things go when they end. 

But maybe it's not just me. Maybe we're all struggling with not knowing what happens next. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook allow us to keep up with our ex's latest escapades, no matter how painful or unhealthy it might be. Authors write mullti-book series that go on and on forever, seemingly unable to just End. The. Damn. Story. And even when the story does end, they sometimes write it all over again from another character's perspective. Thanks to Netflix, television shows can be watched and re-watched. And the ones that are cancelled live a whole new life in fan fiction. Can it ever just be over? 

I worry that we're losing our ability to live with the uncertainty of not knowing what happens next. That with the ever-present availability of information and our ability to  communicate effortlessly with each other, we've lost the bittersweet experience of knowing something is really, truly over. Can we be satisfied with not knowing? I'd like to try. Because in retrospect, I think the best moments in my life are the ones that can't be recreated over and over again. And I think some part of me likes the pain of wanting something that I can't have. And wondering about the what-ifs and the what-might-have-beens. Maybe all good things really must come to an end, or else they are no longer good.