#16--Doors (doorways, door frames), red

She paid no attention to the lights that flashed their sequences, the ones that hadn't burned or shorted out. The helmet curtailed her peripheral vision, and as she passed, they ceased to exist anyway. The sound of her breath was all she could hear. The lights flashed silently. But the hatch hissed as its pneumatics worked, sluggishly, to lever it up. Instruments in her suit sampled, formulated, calculated. If she mixed suit air with the local, she might acclimate easier than gulping a full lungful when her oxygen ran out. Outside, her new horizon, under a red sky.

Good one, Beverly. Mine's girly, this time.
The doorway isn’t wide enough for both of us to be in the bathroom at once. And, even though we’re both going out tonight, she’s first. She always is. She’s like...the alpha, or something.
I stop myself from picturing some British commentator narrating the social structure of homo sapiens cripplensis , with some difficulty, considering all the anthro this semester.(We’re still working on the tool use thing. In a pinch, you can capture an errant birth control pill with a spoon though. I think that counts.)
Not that the less dominant female doesn’t have her uses. Stephanie turns her freshly lipsticked mouth to me. “Ok?” she says.

Like I know. “Um, too red.”

She blots, puts on the pink one
. “Go like that,” I say, smacking my own bare lips together in what suddenly feels like a provocative gesture. I’d never really noticed before, and I’ve been messing with makeup since I was twelve.

I have been entirely convinced he was a fake and entirely convinced his story was real, and am currently somewhere in the middle.

Kaspar Hauser is an entertaining case -- lots of details, but still not quite enough for definitive answers about what afflicted him. (Which is why I like to make him all articulate, and also because letters from someone with a major language disorder can be kind of hard to follow.) As Deb noted, it's now been reasonably established, via DNA, that he was the heir of the house of Baden, and a lot of the activity of his benefactors implies that plenty of people knew it at the time.

it's now been reasonably established, via DNA, that he was the heir of the house of Baden

Ah, I hadn't read that. Off to Google...

Okay, I'll admit it. I have no idea who Kaspar Hauser is.

Don't tell me, though. I'm going to Google. I want to find out on my own, and then I'll come strolling back to say "Oh, yes, the implications of the Kasper Hauser dialectic are even today affecting international detente."

Or something.

I don't think he deserves his own dialectic. He was basically The Man in the Iron Mask, except no mask and serious neurological deficits due to neglect. Also, Germany instead of France.

Okay, he was nothing like The Man in the Iron Mask.

Wasn't he Kevin Spacey? No, that was Keyser Soze.

Come the revolution, everyone will have their own dialectic. Rise up, my brothers and sisters! You have nothing to lose but, um, your non-dialectic thingies.

This is longer than 100 words - I remembered a dream I have, a little too often for my own comfort. I had it again last night. It fits the theme, weirdly enough, but I'm not word counting here. It hurts.

Often

He's gone again.

Last night I dreamed of him, as I often do. He was young again, fingers on the keyboard, smiling, the fragile charm shining, as it often did, through enormous brown eyes, set like beacons in a fragile face, calling me home again.

Then, in the way of dreams, the air between us thickened, a red-tinted mist. Here was the old jeopardy, regret turning tragic, loss beyond regaining. The door opened and shut behind him, as it often did.

I wonder, as I often do, what would have happened if I had stayed. I wonder if love would have survived between us. I wonder if he would be alive today.

I wonder, and I fight down the taste of tears, bile, salt. I often do.

She looks around again. She's alone here, unless you count it, and she's wont to.

It wasn't here yesterday, or any of the times she's been here before. But she's never been at the knollside at sunset. Red light bleeds over the horizon and sends every shadow reaching towards the new (or perhaps old) door.

She lets her fingers brush against it - they want to, and she doesn't feel able to stop them. It's warm - warmer than dead wood should be, on an evening where the chill creeps in with the shadow.

She didn't push it. Why is it opening?