I've realized a lot of ways I wand to edit this piece since I finished it, so eventually I plan on making some pretty major changes, probably adding a lot more, and cutting a lot of what I already have. Anyways, here's the end of what it is for now:
“And by tracing it twice/I fell through the ice”
=====The velvet moonlight bathed the frozen surface of the lake with a pale glow. Russell and Jeremy sat in the car, parked a dozen feet away. Jeremy continued to furiously drum on the dashboard, accompanying his pathetic attempts to imitate David Burne’s spacey tone on “Once in a Lifetime.”
=====“Let’s go outside,” Russell half-yelled, necessary to crack through the walls of sound from the blaring speakers.
=====“I’d rather not freeze my balls off,” Jeremy replied without skipping a beat in his drumming.
=====“I’m going outside either way. You can wait here.”
=====“Suit yourself.”
=====Russell exited the car, and was welcomed by a gust of icy air, wrapping a thin chilled film across the exposed skin of his face and arms. He could hear the thumping of the music from the car still, even though he’d closed the door. Slowly meandering onto the surface of the lake, Russell scolded himself for not bringing shoes with better treads, the smooth surface of the worn down bottoms of his sneakers sliding on the slick surface of the ice with each step, threatening to disrupt his delicate balance.
=====He wandered farther out into the middle of the lake in a sort of meditative trance, one of the few times in his life that his head was completely devoid of thoughts; the internal silence mirroring the quiet surrounding him; the only sound the whispering of the wind through distant trees, and the almost audible dance of the moonlight across the glittering frosted-glass of the lake’s surface.
=====Russell suddenly found himself dancing in the middle of the lake, whimsically skipping across ice. Russell never danced. At least besides when he was in his room late at night by himself, with the curtains closed on a head full of weed. He could feel the music coursing through him—not that of a particular song, but some strange abstract concept of music, vibrating through his muscle fibers and impelling his limbs to move in a coordinated, continuous motion.
=====Russell felt something stirring beneath him, a slight creaking beneath his feet, but paid it no heed. The profound stillness of the night was broken by a jarring explosion of sound as the glass gave way and the lake opened up to him. The rush of sensations as he plunged into the water was so intense his system shut down; he didn’t feel cold, only numb. The thought of trying to move didn’t even occur to Russell, and even if it did it was unlikely he could’ve moved his frozen limbs.
“The only strings that hold me here/Are tangled up around the pier”
=====Russell was confused as he suddenly felt motion. He heard the sound of a person groaning from exertion behind him. Then he was on his back on the ice again.
=====“What the fuck were you thinking you idiot?” Jeremy asked him, sitting next to him on the ice, his chest dramatically rising and falling as he tried to catch his breath. “No, don’t even answer, let’s just get back to the car before you give yourself goddamn hypothermia or something.”
=====Russell managed to get back on his feet, even though the sensation still had barely returned to his legs. Jeremy helped support him as they made their way back to the car. They shut the doors, turned on the heat, and sat in silence for a few minutes.
=====“You could’ve gotten yourself killed, you know that?” Jeremy asked, Russell detecting a tone of annoyance.
=====Russell nodded.
=====“You’re fucking lucky I saw you dancing out there like an idiot and decided to come make sure you were okay,” Jeremy went on, the anger gradually heightening in his speech with every word. “Or that we both didn’t fall in and freeze to death out here.”
=====“I know,” Russell replied. “Thanks for pulling me out.”
=====“It’s not like I was just going to let you fucking die out there or shit.”
=====Jeremy shook his head, and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “Are you okay?”
=====Russell’s face split with a giant smile. “Never been better,” he said as he turned the key in the ignition. The car was revived with the pounding vibrations as the music turned back on, ricocheting off the walls and windows and filling the car with a bewildering orchestra of auditory sensation.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Alice (part II)
“Set me adrift and I’m lost over there”
=====Russell should have known from the slight hesitation in Alice’s phone message, the stop-and-go rhythm of awkwardness a dead giveaway. But he didn’t realize until he saw the look in her eyes right before she said it to him when they met.
=====“I don’t think it’s working out between us.”
=====He only heard scattered fragments of the rest of what she said—it’s not anything he did…he’s a good guy…still be friends, etc.
=====“I’m really sorry Russell…” Alice said, and Russell could tell from the look in her eyes when she briefly met his gaze before dropping them back to the ground that she meant it too.
=====He couldn’t remember what he said to her before he left. Not even a trace of any of it was left in his mind. All he remembered was the drive back home: blasting excessively loud music not to drown out his thoughts, but to fill the empty cavity inside his head with the vibrations—with anything.
“And I must be insane/To go skating on your name”
=====“You just have to let it go man,” Jeremy said before exhaling a cloud of smoke. “It’s the only thing you can do. It sucks, but that’s all there is to it.”
=====“It’s only been two days,” Russell muttered, taking the bong from him.
=====“The sooner you get over it the easier it’ll be.”
=====“Easier said then done,” Russell picked the lighter up from the ground.
=====“I hear you,” Jeremy settled onto the carpet, propping himself up with his elbows. “Nothing else I can tell you though. No short-cuts for this shit.”
=====Russell inhaled deeply, removing the slide and sucking in every last particle of smoke as he cleared the chamber. He held it in steady for a few seconds, and then relaxed his diaphragm, the smoke lazily snaking out from his barely opened lips.
=====“I’m really sorry though man,” Jeremy said.
=====“Thanks,” Russell replied flatly.
=====They remained silent, staring off into their respective spaces.
=====“I need to do something,” Russell said, breaking the stasis.
=====“Wanna watch something?” Jeremy asked, starting to move towards the cabinet with various DVD’s by the television.
=====“No, I mean like something different. I don’t want to just sit here.”
=====“Like what? It’s two in the morning, there isn’t shit to do.”
=====Russell paused, musing on what to do. “Let’s go to the lake.”
=====“The lake?” Jeremy asked skeptically.
=====“Yeah.”
=====“It’s cold as fuck out.”
=====“So what?”
=====Jeremy took a slow breath, in and out. “I guess we could.”
=====“Let’s go then.”
=====“I don’t think I’m up for driving honestly.”
=====“I’ll drive.”
=====Jeremy eyed Russell up and down slowly, inspecting his condition. “Are you sure you’re okay to?”
=====“A hundred percent.”
=====“Alright.”
=====Russell slowly opened to the door to the hallway, then eased it shut behind them. Jeremy opened his mouth to speak, but Russell shushed him as a reminder. “Don’t wake my parents up,” he whispered, Jeremy nodding in response and dropping whatever it was he was going to say.
=====They crept through the hallway and out the front door. Jeremy was right: it was cold as fuck. They rushed to the car, and both let out relieved sighs when Russell started the car and the heat kicked in.
=====A few minutes later found them gliding down the highway towards the lake. Jeremy was beating his hands on the dashboard, pounding in synch with the drums to the first song on Remain in Light. Russell’s eyes were stapled to the road, staring ahead vacantly, the knuckles on his hands white from his death-grip on the steering wheel.
=====Russell should have known from the slight hesitation in Alice’s phone message, the stop-and-go rhythm of awkwardness a dead giveaway. But he didn’t realize until he saw the look in her eyes right before she said it to him when they met.
=====“I don’t think it’s working out between us.”
=====He only heard scattered fragments of the rest of what she said—it’s not anything he did…he’s a good guy…still be friends, etc.
=====“I’m really sorry Russell…” Alice said, and Russell could tell from the look in her eyes when she briefly met his gaze before dropping them back to the ground that she meant it too.
=====He couldn’t remember what he said to her before he left. Not even a trace of any of it was left in his mind. All he remembered was the drive back home: blasting excessively loud music not to drown out his thoughts, but to fill the empty cavity inside his head with the vibrations—with anything.
“And I must be insane/To go skating on your name”
=====“You just have to let it go man,” Jeremy said before exhaling a cloud of smoke. “It’s the only thing you can do. It sucks, but that’s all there is to it.”
=====“It’s only been two days,” Russell muttered, taking the bong from him.
=====“The sooner you get over it the easier it’ll be.”
=====“Easier said then done,” Russell picked the lighter up from the ground.
=====“I hear you,” Jeremy settled onto the carpet, propping himself up with his elbows. “Nothing else I can tell you though. No short-cuts for this shit.”
=====Russell inhaled deeply, removing the slide and sucking in every last particle of smoke as he cleared the chamber. He held it in steady for a few seconds, and then relaxed his diaphragm, the smoke lazily snaking out from his barely opened lips.
=====“I’m really sorry though man,” Jeremy said.
=====“Thanks,” Russell replied flatly.
=====They remained silent, staring off into their respective spaces.
=====“I need to do something,” Russell said, breaking the stasis.
=====“Wanna watch something?” Jeremy asked, starting to move towards the cabinet with various DVD’s by the television.
=====“No, I mean like something different. I don’t want to just sit here.”
=====“Like what? It’s two in the morning, there isn’t shit to do.”
=====Russell paused, musing on what to do. “Let’s go to the lake.”
=====“The lake?” Jeremy asked skeptically.
=====“Yeah.”
=====“It’s cold as fuck out.”
=====“So what?”
=====Jeremy took a slow breath, in and out. “I guess we could.”
=====“Let’s go then.”
=====“I don’t think I’m up for driving honestly.”
=====“I’ll drive.”
=====Jeremy eyed Russell up and down slowly, inspecting his condition. “Are you sure you’re okay to?”
=====“A hundred percent.”
=====“Alright.”
=====Russell slowly opened to the door to the hallway, then eased it shut behind them. Jeremy opened his mouth to speak, but Russell shushed him as a reminder. “Don’t wake my parents up,” he whispered, Jeremy nodding in response and dropping whatever it was he was going to say.
=====They crept through the hallway and out the front door. Jeremy was right: it was cold as fuck. They rushed to the car, and both let out relieved sighs when Russell started the car and the heat kicked in.
=====A few minutes later found them gliding down the highway towards the lake. Jeremy was beating his hands on the dashboard, pounding in synch with the drums to the first song on Remain in Light. Russell’s eyes were stapled to the road, staring ahead vacantly, the knuckles on his hands white from his death-grip on the steering wheel.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Alice (part I)
(Note: all quotes from the song "Alice," by Tom Waits)
“And so a secret kiss/Brings madness with the bliss”
=====Russell stretched his legs out even further, the back of his head planted in the slightly stained tan cushion on the back of the couch, his back stretched across the seat; his legs and butt suspended in mid air, not actually making contact with the couch. His gray eyes wandered across the ceiling as he ran his right hand through the slightly tangled waves of dark brown hair piled on top of his head. A handful of people sat around him in a vague circle, sprawled on the other couch, chairs, and even a couple of them on the ground.
=====“Russell?” A voice to his right impatiently intoned.
=====Russell rolled his head to the right on the cushion to look, and saw Jeremy’s hand extended towards him, a joint wedged between his index and middle fingers, a thin curling trail of smoke dancing in slow motion through the air from its tip.
=====“Just take it man,” Jeremy repeated, shaking his head slightly.
=====Russell carefully extricated it from Jeremy’s fingers, taking care not to drop it. His fingers brought it to his lips, and he inhaled deeply, feeling the tendrils of smoke creep through the folded labyrinths of the walls of his lungs. Straining to hold it in, he could feel his heart pounding to the music from his Darrell’s speakers in every vein in his body, pulsing to the beat of the bass behind the screaming of Jimi’s warbling electric blues riffs. A cloud exploded from his mouth as he coughed, unable to hold it in any longer. He took another small hit after the brief coughing spasm tapered off, and held out the joint to his left as he exhaled. A fuzzy hand reached out in his peripheral vision and took it from his outstretched hand.
=====Russell was rather pleased with his current state of mind—several beers and lung-fulls of pot mingling, wrapping his brain in the a thick wool blanket of hazy detachment; all sensory input muffled, jumbled as it came through the layers of substance-induced insulation. A figure leaned over him in the center of his pixilated field of vision.
=====“Wanna come talk with me Russell?” a female voice emanated from the figure—it was Alice.
=====Russell willed his eyes to focus, and he could see the light reflecting off her dilated pupils, twin pools of jet-clack ink surrounded by the thin line of her deep-green irises.
=====“Sure. You can sit here,” Russell replied, gesturing to the empty seat on the couch next to him.
=====“Alone,” Alice said, extending a hand to help him up.
=====Russell stood up without taking her hand—he didn’t need any help—and followed her out of the room. Beads of sweat formed on his palms, and he could feel the beating of his heart picking up ever-so-slightly. Alice led him to a room down the hall, to her room. She sat down on the edge of her bed, and he sat beside her.
=====Russell became a bit disoriented, thoughts flitting past in his head before he could even process them—what should he do?...should he try to kiss her?...what if he sucked at it?...did she even like him?...what if she freaked out if he tried something?....did she want him to do something?...why was he so bad at knowing what to do with this stuff?...why was he so nervous?...what should he do? He felt he was watching a merry-go-round on crack spin in front of him, trying to focus on each animal as it flew past, but they were going by so fast he couldn’t even focus his eyes on one before it would disappear from his vision, never letting him get even remotely grounded.
=====His head spun faster and faster, until Alice leaned in and kissed him. He was too stunned to kiss her back.
=====She pulled away.
=====“I’m sorry…I thought—” She started.
=====“No…I do…” The words stumbled of his bewildered mouth.
=====“So you do want—”
=====“Yeah.”
=====Alice smiled, and he lost himself as they leaned in and kissed again.
“And so a secret kiss/Brings madness with the bliss”
=====Russell stretched his legs out even further, the back of his head planted in the slightly stained tan cushion on the back of the couch, his back stretched across the seat; his legs and butt suspended in mid air, not actually making contact with the couch. His gray eyes wandered across the ceiling as he ran his right hand through the slightly tangled waves of dark brown hair piled on top of his head. A handful of people sat around him in a vague circle, sprawled on the other couch, chairs, and even a couple of them on the ground.
=====“Russell?” A voice to his right impatiently intoned.
=====Russell rolled his head to the right on the cushion to look, and saw Jeremy’s hand extended towards him, a joint wedged between his index and middle fingers, a thin curling trail of smoke dancing in slow motion through the air from its tip.
=====“Just take it man,” Jeremy repeated, shaking his head slightly.
=====Russell carefully extricated it from Jeremy’s fingers, taking care not to drop it. His fingers brought it to his lips, and he inhaled deeply, feeling the tendrils of smoke creep through the folded labyrinths of the walls of his lungs. Straining to hold it in, he could feel his heart pounding to the music from his Darrell’s speakers in every vein in his body, pulsing to the beat of the bass behind the screaming of Jimi’s warbling electric blues riffs. A cloud exploded from his mouth as he coughed, unable to hold it in any longer. He took another small hit after the brief coughing spasm tapered off, and held out the joint to his left as he exhaled. A fuzzy hand reached out in his peripheral vision and took it from his outstretched hand.
=====Russell was rather pleased with his current state of mind—several beers and lung-fulls of pot mingling, wrapping his brain in the a thick wool blanket of hazy detachment; all sensory input muffled, jumbled as it came through the layers of substance-induced insulation. A figure leaned over him in the center of his pixilated field of vision.
=====“Wanna come talk with me Russell?” a female voice emanated from the figure—it was Alice.
=====Russell willed his eyes to focus, and he could see the light reflecting off her dilated pupils, twin pools of jet-clack ink surrounded by the thin line of her deep-green irises.
=====“Sure. You can sit here,” Russell replied, gesturing to the empty seat on the couch next to him.
=====“Alone,” Alice said, extending a hand to help him up.
=====Russell stood up without taking her hand—he didn’t need any help—and followed her out of the room. Beads of sweat formed on his palms, and he could feel the beating of his heart picking up ever-so-slightly. Alice led him to a room down the hall, to her room. She sat down on the edge of her bed, and he sat beside her.
=====Russell became a bit disoriented, thoughts flitting past in his head before he could even process them—what should he do?...should he try to kiss her?...what if he sucked at it?...did she even like him?...what if she freaked out if he tried something?....did she want him to do something?...why was he so bad at knowing what to do with this stuff?...why was he so nervous?...what should he do? He felt he was watching a merry-go-round on crack spin in front of him, trying to focus on each animal as it flew past, but they were going by so fast he couldn’t even focus his eyes on one before it would disappear from his vision, never letting him get even remotely grounded.
=====His head spun faster and faster, until Alice leaned in and kissed him. He was too stunned to kiss her back.
=====She pulled away.
=====“I’m sorry…I thought—” She started.
=====“No…I do…” The words stumbled of his bewildered mouth.
=====“So you do want—”
=====“Yeah.”
=====Alice smiled, and he lost himself as they leaned in and kissed again.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Landscaping (part II)
=====“They went to the bathroom,” Aaron replied.
=====“Oh, okay.”
=====“You want some Jake?” Aaron asked me, extending a bottle of champagne towards me. He must’ve gotten it from one of the early-teenage kids that walked around selling alcohol (the same way we got the wine earlier) while I was spacing out.
=====“Yeah, sure.” I held out my plastic cup and Aaron poured a sizeable amount in, the foam overflowing and trickling down the side of the cup onto the grass and my hand a little. I jettisoned the drink into my mouth, downing it in one gulp, and felt the liquid heat surge down my esophagus.
=====Aaron kept talking to the girls as I stared at my empty cup, debating whether to have some more. Their words buzzed around the background of my thoughts, relegated to white noise without the filter of my conscious mind to make sense of them. I looked up to ask Aaron for another glass, and all three of them were staring at me with a look of anticipation.
=====“What?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
=====“You should take her offer,” Aaron said to me with a smile.
=====“What offer?”
=====“I asked you if you wanted a French kiss,” Alyssa said in an incredibly matter-of-fact manner.
=====My mind went of like one of those Chinese fireworks, filling with the explosions of billions of neurons firing like crazy.
=====“How could you turn down a French kiss from a real French girl?” Aaron asked.
=====My hands were tearing out grass by the handful now.
=====“Umm…”
=====“We can do it better than any American,” Marin said, her smile a mirror of Aaron’s.
=====“Well?” Alyssa asked with an undertone of impatience this time.
=====“Uh…” My throat contorted, trying to resist allowing any answer to pass through. “Sorry…I…no thanks.”
=====“What?” Alyssa leaned in slightly, not having heard my response.
=====“No thanks…” I managed to eke out, my eyes falling to the grass.
=====Alyssa and Marin looked confused by my response, but not quite as much as Aaron.
=====“Come on man,” He said. “As I said, how could you pass that up?”
=====“Why not?” Alyssa asked me, her eyes locking in on mine as I looked back up at her.
=====“I don’t know…” My grass pulling reached a crescendo, my hands trying to keep up with the frenetic pulsations of my heart. “I’m just shy…”
=====“Shy?” Marin asked.
=====“Why not?” Alyssa repeated, still confused.
=====“It’s nothing personal. I’m just...” My voice trailed off.
=====“He’s just shy,” Aaron interjected, mercifully ending that line of questioning. He paused a second, then turned to Alyssa. “I’d be glad to though, if the offer’s still on the table…”
=====“Sure,” She replied. They leaned in towards each other and made out for a few seconds before pulling away from each other. Marin gave Aaron a questioning look. He grinned, and then leaned in towards her as they repeated the process. My eyes remained fixed on my hands as they continued their gradual destruction of the area of the lawn directly surrounding me.
=====“Oh, okay.”
=====“You want some Jake?” Aaron asked me, extending a bottle of champagne towards me. He must’ve gotten it from one of the early-teenage kids that walked around selling alcohol (the same way we got the wine earlier) while I was spacing out.
=====“Yeah, sure.” I held out my plastic cup and Aaron poured a sizeable amount in, the foam overflowing and trickling down the side of the cup onto the grass and my hand a little. I jettisoned the drink into my mouth, downing it in one gulp, and felt the liquid heat surge down my esophagus.
=====Aaron kept talking to the girls as I stared at my empty cup, debating whether to have some more. Their words buzzed around the background of my thoughts, relegated to white noise without the filter of my conscious mind to make sense of them. I looked up to ask Aaron for another glass, and all three of them were staring at me with a look of anticipation.
=====“What?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
=====“You should take her offer,” Aaron said to me with a smile.
=====“What offer?”
=====“I asked you if you wanted a French kiss,” Alyssa said in an incredibly matter-of-fact manner.
=====My mind went of like one of those Chinese fireworks, filling with the explosions of billions of neurons firing like crazy.
=====“How could you turn down a French kiss from a real French girl?” Aaron asked.
=====My hands were tearing out grass by the handful now.
=====“Umm…”
=====“We can do it better than any American,” Marin said, her smile a mirror of Aaron’s.
=====“Well?” Alyssa asked with an undertone of impatience this time.
=====“Uh…” My throat contorted, trying to resist allowing any answer to pass through. “Sorry…I…no thanks.”
=====“What?” Alyssa leaned in slightly, not having heard my response.
=====“No thanks…” I managed to eke out, my eyes falling to the grass.
=====Alyssa and Marin looked confused by my response, but not quite as much as Aaron.
=====“Come on man,” He said. “As I said, how could you pass that up?”
=====“Why not?” Alyssa asked me, her eyes locking in on mine as I looked back up at her.
=====“I don’t know…” My grass pulling reached a crescendo, my hands trying to keep up with the frenetic pulsations of my heart. “I’m just shy…”
=====“Shy?” Marin asked.
=====“Why not?” Alyssa repeated, still confused.
=====“It’s nothing personal. I’m just...” My voice trailed off.
=====“He’s just shy,” Aaron interjected, mercifully ending that line of questioning. He paused a second, then turned to Alyssa. “I’d be glad to though, if the offer’s still on the table…”
=====“Sure,” She replied. They leaned in towards each other and made out for a few seconds before pulling away from each other. Marin gave Aaron a questioning look. He grinned, and then leaned in towards her as they repeated the process. My eyes remained fixed on my hands as they continued their gradual destruction of the area of the lawn directly surrounding me.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Landscaping
Here's (yet another) beginning to a story, but unlike the other ones, I actually know where this one is going now, so the rest should be up sometime in the near future.
=====I unsuccessfully tried to hide a wince as I gulped down another mouthful of cheap red wine from a tiny clear plastic cup. Two bottles for ten—sometimes quantity beats quality, fuck what they tell you in school. I was pulling up blades of grass one by one as my friends talked to the two French girls, pulling gently and gradually adding more and more pressure, trying to pull up the whitish bottom part—someone showed me how you could do that back in elementary school, ever since whenever I’m sitting on grass I find myself doing it; just another one of my endless nervous habits.
=====We were sitting on one of the long lawns that stretch out from the base of the Eiffel tower in a line, like the red carpet of a movie premiere, but green, and not continuous, but broken into segments. The last electric blue twinges of twilight had long since faded into a deep midnight blue bordering on black. Streetlamps lined the sides of the green, splashing us with just enough pale orange light to see pretty clearly.
=====I drifted back into the conversation. My friends—Aaron, Ivan, and Peter—were asking the French girls—Marin and Alyssa were the first names that came to mind, but I wasn’t sure whether I was remembering them correctly or just making those up—about Paris. The conversation was fairly amusing to watch, it’s always funny seeing awkward teenage boys trying to spit game at girls; not that I was any less awkward, I just didn’t even put in the effort to try most the time.
=====A sparkling light in my peripheral vision made me turn my head to the tower. Various lights were flashing on and off in a coordinated sequence all over it, a dizzying pattern of light dancing up and down the metal mesh frame.
=====“Does it just come on randomly?” I asked. It was the first thing I’d said in minutes.
=====“No, it, uh…” Marin (or whatever her name actually was) said. Her head tilted slightly and her eyes searched the top of the insides of her eyelids for the words. Her eyes re-descended. “It comes on every hour.”
=====I looked down at my watch: 12:00. “That makes sense.” I said, and then settled back into silence.
=====“I’m gonna go take a piss,” Ivan said as he stood up.
=====“Yeah, same here,” Peter seconded, and followed Ivan as he headed off in the direction of the bushes off to the side of the green.
=====“Where did they go?” Alyssa asked Aaron. We discovered early on in the conversation that if we said anything idiomatic, quickly, or softly (or better yet, some combination of the three), they had no idea what we were saying, since their English was pretty rudimentary (our French was non-existent, and neither of them spoke Spanish, so English it was). We took advantage of it a little, slipping fast-paced slang to each other when we didn’t want them to here something.
=====“They went to the bathroom,” Aaron replied.
=====“Oh, okay.”
=====I unsuccessfully tried to hide a wince as I gulped down another mouthful of cheap red wine from a tiny clear plastic cup. Two bottles for ten—sometimes quantity beats quality, fuck what they tell you in school. I was pulling up blades of grass one by one as my friends talked to the two French girls, pulling gently and gradually adding more and more pressure, trying to pull up the whitish bottom part—someone showed me how you could do that back in elementary school, ever since whenever I’m sitting on grass I find myself doing it; just another one of my endless nervous habits.
=====We were sitting on one of the long lawns that stretch out from the base of the Eiffel tower in a line, like the red carpet of a movie premiere, but green, and not continuous, but broken into segments. The last electric blue twinges of twilight had long since faded into a deep midnight blue bordering on black. Streetlamps lined the sides of the green, splashing us with just enough pale orange light to see pretty clearly.
=====I drifted back into the conversation. My friends—Aaron, Ivan, and Peter—were asking the French girls—Marin and Alyssa were the first names that came to mind, but I wasn’t sure whether I was remembering them correctly or just making those up—about Paris. The conversation was fairly amusing to watch, it’s always funny seeing awkward teenage boys trying to spit game at girls; not that I was any less awkward, I just didn’t even put in the effort to try most the time.
=====A sparkling light in my peripheral vision made me turn my head to the tower. Various lights were flashing on and off in a coordinated sequence all over it, a dizzying pattern of light dancing up and down the metal mesh frame.
=====“Does it just come on randomly?” I asked. It was the first thing I’d said in minutes.
=====“No, it, uh…” Marin (or whatever her name actually was) said. Her head tilted slightly and her eyes searched the top of the insides of her eyelids for the words. Her eyes re-descended. “It comes on every hour.”
=====I looked down at my watch: 12:00. “That makes sense.” I said, and then settled back into silence.
=====“I’m gonna go take a piss,” Ivan said as he stood up.
=====“Yeah, same here,” Peter seconded, and followed Ivan as he headed off in the direction of the bushes off to the side of the green.
=====“Where did they go?” Alyssa asked Aaron. We discovered early on in the conversation that if we said anything idiomatic, quickly, or softly (or better yet, some combination of the three), they had no idea what we were saying, since their English was pretty rudimentary (our French was non-existent, and neither of them spoke Spanish, so English it was). We took advantage of it a little, slipping fast-paced slang to each other when we didn’t want them to here something.
=====“They went to the bathroom,” Aaron replied.
=====“Oh, okay.”
Friday, October 19, 2007
Don't Tell (Revisisted)
This is a piece I wrote a couple years ago, and I've been meaning to make some major changes to it, so I finally decided to get around to it. It's probably not completely done yet, there's still a few things I know I should change, and also I'll probably continue to do some minor fine-tuning still. Anyways, here's where it is for now:
Don’t Tell=====“What’re you talking about?” Cory asks him.
=====“Do you remember what I fucking told you?” Damon hisses, and grabs Cory by his left shoulder.
=====“I….I…” Cory stutters. He tries to pull back from Damon’s grip, but his hand tightens around Cory’s shoulder. It hurts, his nails are digging into it.
=====“I told you not to tell nobody what you saw you little shit!” Damon’s yelling now.
=====“I didn’t!” Cory says, he’s shaking. “I didn’t tell nobody, I swear Damon!”
=====“Oh yeah?” Damon asks, and Cory can see his hand reach into his sweatshirt pocket. It comes back out; a gun’s in it.
“I didn’t tell, I swear, please, I didn’t! I didn’t!” Cory screams, he’s flailing around, trying to escape Damon’s grip.
=====Damon holds the cold barrel of the gun to Cory’s sweat-soaked head. “I told you not to tell, just one damn thing. I told you I’d kill you.”
=====“Damon, please!” Cory pleads.
=====“Damn fool,” Damon says, and he pulls the trigger.
=====Cory wonders why he always has to do this. He’s hunched over under the weight of his backpack, his feet move reluctantly over the cracked and worn sidewalk. He lifts one hand from the strap of his backpack to itch the back of his head; it always itches a few days after he shaves it; when the black stubble is barely visible on his coffee skin. He’s always hated walking alone, he wishes his mom could be there, wishes she could walk by him and hold his hand; wishes she could walk between him and everyone he passed to shield him like she always does when they walk around here.
The old man who’s always on the middle of this sidewalk asks him for some change, lifting his arm sheathed in a torn jacket to raise the old Styrofoam coffee cup in his constantly shaking hand, the few coins in it clanking. “Sorry,” Cory says as he passes him, he doesn’t bother to respond.
=====But it’s not the beggars or the addicts (or both—most the time they’re the same) that bother Cory the most, but the men on almost every street corner in this neighborhood. They stand, or sit on the stoops, wearing loose shirts or jackets and jeans. Even as Cory walks down the block towards the corner at the end he can see a few people pass them, two old black men in threadbare jackets and pants stop to exchange crumpled bills for a few small glass vials: Cory’s seen it enough times to notice them moving between their hands, even though they try to do it discretely.
=====Cory finally comes to the corner, and by the time he gets there both of the old men are already gone; they have what they came for. He walks by the men on the corner—it’s hard to call them men though, two are only a few years older than Cory. One of the younger ones sitting on a stoop says “red caps, ten a piece” as Cory passes, he’ll say it to anyone, young or old, black or white, rich or poor, it doesn’t matter to him. Cory doesn’t open his mouth; he keeps walking on.
=====His mom knows as well as anyone else that she shouldn’t let Cory walk home alone. Cory thinks about when these walks alone started. He can’t remember for sure, but he thinks it’s probably when his dad left, when his mom started having to work late. That’s not when it started he realizes though, Damon used to walk him home. He’d always come pick Cory up at school, Damon’s school was a couple blocks away. It’s been a while since those times though. At least a few months. Now Damon never walks him home, even though their mom thinks he does; Damon told Cory he had to keep telling her so, they both know she doesn’t want Cory walking home alone. Now Damon always comes back a couple hours later than him, probably hanging out with his older high school friends, Cory thinks, doesn’t have time for twelve year olds any more.
=====He misses those walks with Damon. They’d talk about school, mom, anything on their minds. It’s been a while since they’ve talked like that though, Cory’s not sure why. Damon’s been around less, he comes home just a bit before mom does, and he’s always up in his room or out with friends at night. But it’s more than that. He’s more quiet, never talks about school and his teachers and friends at dinner anymore, doesn’t hang out with Cory, watching TV or playing video games or just being there with him like he used to. Sometimes Cory tries to talk to him still, once he asked him about why he comes home late. He yelled, “Mind your own damn business!” and shoved Cory in the shoulder. He never used to shove him like that; Cory hasn’t asked him again since.
It’s as he’s thinking this though, that he hears it: the sickening crack.
=====He turns around, and sees two figures shrouded in black hooded sweatshirts holding metal bats. One of the men from the group on the corner he just passed is lying on the ground, clutching his shoulder. The two that are still standing lunge at the hooded attackers, trying to get the jump on them, but two swings later and they join their fallen companion. The bats rain down on them, blow after blow, dull thuds and loud cracks and blood splattering all over sidewalk and the brick walls of the building by them.
=====“Serves you right for being on our fucking corners, bitch!” one of the standing figures shouts at the fallen bodies, punctuating it by raising the bat over his head and smashing it into one of their backs—Cory thinks he can hear a rib breaking.
=====Cory is about to turn and run when one of the figures notices him. He looks at Cory, his crimson-coated bat suspended mid-swing. Their eyes meet. They freeze.
=====The second figure turns. “Come on, we gotta get the fuck outta here!”
=====The first figure remains still for a second or two, his gaze still pointed towards Cory. “Listen, don’t tell nobody nothin’ about this Cory,” he yells, his voice just barely wavering, “you do…I swear I’ll fucking kill you. You hear me?”
=====Cory remains silent, his mouth dry; he can’t open it to say anything.
=====“You hear me?!”
=====“Damon!” the other one screams.
=====“Shut the fuck up, I’m coming man!” Damon shouts back, and the two run off around the corner and out of sight.
=====Cory remains still for a few seconds, unable to move, unable to tear his stare from where his brother had stood a moment before and the three bodies. They writhe around on the ground, moaning in pain, holding varies body parts. One is crying as he holds a shattered kneecap. Finally, Cory takes his eyes away from the corner. He runs all the way home, his eyes darting around. His hand searches his pocket for his key as he goes up three worn wooden steps to his front door. He rams the key into the hole, turns it quickly, and bolts inside. The door slams shut behind him, and he locks it. He walks the last dozen feet to the couch and collapses onto it, panting for breath.
=====Cory stares at the black of the TV screen, unblinking for a while, until he finally thinks to turn the TV on. He starts to search the ground around the couch with his hand for the remote, when he hears the sound of a key rattling in the door. Must be Damon, he thinks. The door creaks open, and he can hear footsteps coming towards him.
=====“Cory, Damon, where’ve you guys gone off too?” Cory can hear his mother’s voice say from the kitchen. That’s odd, he thinks, she’s normally not home until at least two or three hours after he does, and it can’t have been more than a half an hour at most. He glances down at his black watch: 6:17, its been three hours.
=====“I’m in here mom!” Cory yells.
=====His mom walks into the room, and pauses in the doorway, one hand on the doorframe. “What are you up to?” she asks.
=====“Just about to watch some TV”
=====“Was school good?”
=====“Yeah, it was fine.”
=====“That’s good honey. I’m gonna go make us some dinner.” She takes her hand of the doorframe and turns to leave the room, but pauses to ask, “You know where Damon is?”
=====Cory pauses for a minute, the image of Damon standing there with the blood-stained bat in his hand flashes through his head. Don’t tell nobody. “No, I don’t, he’s probably just off with some friends and forgot what time it is or something.”
=====“That boy better be back soon is all I have to say” Cory’s mom says, and walks off into the kitchen. He can hear her turn on the stove and hears some pots rattling. He picks the remote off the floor and turns the TV on.
=====Cory’s mom is still in the kitchen, and the credits are rolling for the show Cory had been watching when the door creaks open again.
=====“Damon, that you?” His mom shouts from the kitchen.
=====“Yeah.” He says.
=====“Where you been at?”
=====“Just hanging out with some friends, sorry I’m late, none of us had no watches.”
=====“It’s okay this time Damon, dinner still ain’t ready. But you better not make this a habit, you hear me?”
=====“Yeah, I hear you.” He says, and goes up the stairs to his room. About a half hour later Cory hears his mom calling them for dinner. He turns the TV off and walks into the kitchen, his mom’s just putting the dinner out on the table. Damon comes down from his rooms a few seconds later and sits next to Cory in his chair.
=====“So, how was your day Damon?” their mom asks as she sits down.
=====“Good.” He says, popping open a can of coke and taking a sip.
=====“Any tests or anything?”
=====“Nah.” He takes another sip. “Or, yeah, just one in math.”
=====“How’d it go?”
=====“I don’t really wanna talk about it,” he says, his eyes fall to his plate.
=====“Not again boy, I told you you gotta start working harder again.”
=====“I know.”
=====“What’s been happenin’ with you Damon, you always used to do so well in school?”
=====“Look, can we just not talk about this right now?” His eyes remain stuck to his plate. A minute goes by with the sound of forks and knives on plates, of mouths chewing.
=====“How was your day Cory?”
=====“It was fine.”
=====“That’s good.”
=====“Hey mom, can I be excused?” Damon asks.
=====“But you haven’t eaten half the food on your plate.”
=====“I ain’t too hungry.”
=====She pauses. “Fine, go ahead.”
=====“Thanks,” he says, and puts his plate next to the sink before leaving.
=====Cory keeps looking down at his plate, his fork’s in his hand but he hasn’t eaten a bite in a few minutes. “Hey mom, I’m not hungry either. Can I be excused too?”
=====She sighs. “Yeah, fine, go ahead Cory.”
=====“Thanks.” He brings his plate to the sink and walks to the door. “I’m really tired, I think I’m gonna go to bed.”
=====“But its only—“ his mom pauses in mid sentence to look at the clock on the counter next to the sink, “—8:07.”
=====“Yeah, I know, just tired though.” He walks out and up the stairs to his room. He goes on his tiptoes down the hallway past Damon’s room. When he gets into his room he flips the lights switch off, gets in his bed, and pulls the blanket around himself. After trying for a while, he finally manages to get to sleep.
=====Cory is suddenly jerked awake by the sound of his door opening slowly. A hooded form walks up to his bed, in the dark he can’t see who it is. “Do you remember what I told you Cory?” he can hear the figure say. It’s Damon; he can tell from his voice.
=====“What’re you talking about?” Cory asks him.
=====“Do you remember what I fucking told you?” Damon hisses, and grabs Cory by his left shoulder.
=====“I….I…” Cory stutters. He tries to pull back from Damon’s grip, but his hand tightens around Cory’s shoulder. It hurts, his nails are digging into it.
=====“I told you not to tell nobody what you saw you little shit!” Damon’s yelling now.
=====“I didn’t!” Cory says, he’s shaking. “I didn’t tell nobody, I swear Damon!”
=====“Oh yeah?” Damon asks, and Cory can see his hand reach into his sweatshirt pocket. It comes back out; a gun’s in it.
=====“I didn’t tell, I swear, please, I didn’t! I didn’t!” Cory screams, he’s flailing around, trying to escape Damon’s grip.
=====Damon holds the cold barrel of the gun to Cory’s sweat-soaked head. “I told you not to tell, just one damn thing. I told you I’d kill you.”
=====“Damon, please!” Cory pleads.
=====“Damn fool,” Damon says, and he pulls the trigger.
=====Cory jerks awake in his bed. His pajamas are soaked in sweat; he’s shaking and he can feel his heart beating in every part of his body. His eyes dart around the room—it’s empty. He feels his head where the gun had been, there’s no hole. He takes a deep breath, then another, and with one last look around the room, he lies back down. He turns onto his side, away from the doorway, and curls up, pulling the blankets over his head. After a few minutes, he hears a knock at the door. His muscles tense up and he buries his head in the pillow and blankets.
=====“Cory, can I come in?” he can hear Damon say from outside.
Cory curls up tighter into a ball. The door creaks open, and Damon walks in, closing it just as quietly behind himself.
=====“Cory…you know what I said earlier today?”
=====Cory remains still, maybe if Damon doesn’t know he’s awake he’ll go away.
=====“Well…I just wanted to say…I’m sorry.”
=====Cory rolls over to face Damon, pulling the blankets from over his head.
=====“I shouldn’t’ve said none of that. I didn’t mean it, I was just scared. I’d never do nothin’ like that that to you. We brothers. You know that, right Cory?”
=====“Yeah, course we are.” Cory pauses for a few seconds. “You know, I miss those walks home from school we used to have.”
=====Damon pauses. “Yeah,” he says, his eyes fall to the ground, “Me too Cory.”
=====“Then why don’t you walk home with me no more?”
=====“You know it’s not that easy.”
=====“Why not?”
=====“Cause it’s not. You know mom’s been having a hard time paying for everything. I gotta help.”
=====Cory pauses for a second. “You mean she knows about it?”
=====“No, no, course she doesn’t. Most the time I slip it in her purse when she asleep, she doesn’t notice.”
=====“But why can’t you just work after school or something, why you have to be involved with…”
=====“You know it doesn’t work like that Cory. This here’s easy money, sometimes I don’t feel right about it, but I can’t just sit here watching mom worry about us all the time. It’s not forever, just for a bit.”
=====“That’s what everyone says.”
=====“I’m not like the others. This isn’t my world. You know that Cory.”
=====“Yeah, but Damon, today—“
=====“You didn’t see what you think you did.”
=====“Then what did I see?”
=====“Look Cory…nevermind, you wouldn’t understand.”
=====“Why?”
=====“You just wouldn’t. Listen, I gotta go, but…I just wanted to say sorry for what I said. Sorry for how I’ve been. For it all. Just…sorry.”
=====“Are you gonna stop?”
=====Damon pauses, his voice is soft when he finally speaks again. “No.”
=====“Damon—“
=====“—Look, I gotta get to sleep.” His voice is frail, Cory’s never heard him talk like this. He thinks he can see Damon wiping his eyes off with his arm in the dark.
=====“G’night.”
=====“Night.”
=====Damon leaves the room just as quietly as he entered, and Cory can hear the faint sound of his footsteps down the hall and his door closing. Cory stays where he was, propped up on one elbow on his bed, his blankets still wrapped around his body. He lies back down and rolls over onto his side. But he knows he won’t sleep tonight. Somehow he doubts Damon will either.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Fade to Black
=====At his level of exhaustion, everything began to blur together. The gray of the road melting into the black sky, his eyes tracing constellations between the pinpoint lights of the stars above and the streaks of white paint flying past him below. The cars streaking by him on the other side of the road blended together, a continuous mass of steel hurtling past. Tiredness demolished the walls that separated everything, and he lost himself in the unbridled speed, his consciousness drifting away as he became one with the motion that surrounded him.
=====Suddenly he became aware of truck. It was on the other side of the road, heading towards him. He couldn’t say why it distinguished itself from the chaotic blur of its surroundings, but he became fixated on it. His eyes slowly rotated to follow its path, leading it ever closer to him.
=====Something shifted. He didn’t notice it so much as feel it. It took him a few seconds to place what it was, but then it hit him: his trajectory had changed. He became vaguely aware of the fact that his hands had shifted ever so slightly on the steering wheel, almost imperceptibly, but just enough to skew the path of the car so that it intersected that of the truck. For a second, a thought fluttered across his mind, that maybe he should alter his path again, correct it. But he immediately rejected this idea. He could do nothing to alter the current situation—two steel cocoons hurtling inevitably towards each other in space. It had been pre-determined, pre-ordained, all he could do was immerse himself in the current of time and let it carry him where it would.
=====The truck honked, then seeing he had no intention of changing course, veered to the right to try to avoid him. He laughed at the sheer futility of the gesture; a pathetic, powerless act of rebellion against the laws of nature that had schemed to bring them together in this moment. His hands turned, his knuckles white from his tight grip on the steering wheel. The truck expanded in his vision, until it filled the entire windshield, its headlights flooding his eyes until he could barely see; but he still noticed the look of horror flash through the truck-driver’s eyes: finally, he too understood their fate.
=====The world exploded. Everything resisting the stop, torn apart by its desire to keep moving and the too-sudden necessity of stillness. Twisted metal and flying glass and broken bones and bloody mist. Pressure and pain and shattering and jerking.
=====The world exploded. And then it went black.
=====Suddenly he became aware of truck. It was on the other side of the road, heading towards him. He couldn’t say why it distinguished itself from the chaotic blur of its surroundings, but he became fixated on it. His eyes slowly rotated to follow its path, leading it ever closer to him.
=====Something shifted. He didn’t notice it so much as feel it. It took him a few seconds to place what it was, but then it hit him: his trajectory had changed. He became vaguely aware of the fact that his hands had shifted ever so slightly on the steering wheel, almost imperceptibly, but just enough to skew the path of the car so that it intersected that of the truck. For a second, a thought fluttered across his mind, that maybe he should alter his path again, correct it. But he immediately rejected this idea. He could do nothing to alter the current situation—two steel cocoons hurtling inevitably towards each other in space. It had been pre-determined, pre-ordained, all he could do was immerse himself in the current of time and let it carry him where it would.
=====The truck honked, then seeing he had no intention of changing course, veered to the right to try to avoid him. He laughed at the sheer futility of the gesture; a pathetic, powerless act of rebellion against the laws of nature that had schemed to bring them together in this moment. His hands turned, his knuckles white from his tight grip on the steering wheel. The truck expanded in his vision, until it filled the entire windshield, its headlights flooding his eyes until he could barely see; but he still noticed the look of horror flash through the truck-driver’s eyes: finally, he too understood their fate.
=====The world exploded. Everything resisting the stop, torn apart by its desire to keep moving and the too-sudden necessity of stillness. Twisted metal and flying glass and broken bones and bloody mist. Pressure and pain and shattering and jerking.
=====The world exploded. And then it went black.
Friday, October 12, 2007
One Page Novel
Here's a one page novel I wrote for my fiction writing class:
Searching for an Idea=====One day Quinn went to the supermarket, and standing in the checkout line with his groceries for the week, he was struck by the man in front of him. He couldn’t say why, he was completely unexceptional: average height, brown hair, brown eyes, his heavy black jacket and jeans completely appropriate for the chilly weather, everything about him only remarkable in its utter normality. But whatever it was, something about him made Quinn decide to follow him after he left.
=====For weeks Quinn followed him all day, on the subway to where he worked—a drab office building (which Quinn looked up and discovered was a mail-order office supplies store)—back to his home, a two story row house just like every other one on its block. On weekdays he woke up at 8 o’clock so he could get to the corner by the man’s house just before 8:45, when he would leave for work, and on weekends he’d sit in his car by the man’s house, trying to catch a glimpse of him in the window, and following him whenever he’d leave for any reason. He couldn’t say why he was doing all of it, but something in the back of his head told him that if he kept it up, a story would come to him.
=====One Tuesday, Quinn stood on the corner watching the man’s house, sipping his coffee as he had every weekday for the last month. But the minutes kept slipping by. 8:45 passed, then 9, then 9:15, and still the man failed to emerge from the door in the center of Quinn’s vision. He had almost decided to give up and come back the next day, when at 9:30 he finally came out. Quinn followed him down the street, and was surprised when he walked passed the subway stop two blocks from his house, and kept stolling down the sidewalk. Quinn followed him for almost two hours as he kept walking, sometimes circling the same area several times in a row, sometimes walking in a straight line for almost a half an hour on end.
=====Finally, the man stopped in front of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse, in a run-down and seemingly uninhabited part of the city. Quinn stopped a block or so behind him, watching as he looked both ways, and then entered the warehouse. The minute hand made several revolutions on Quinn’s watch as he waited for the man to exit the building, before he finally decided to follow him in.
=====Quinn slowly turned the doorknob, cringing slightly as he heard the slight creak of the door opening. The air was stale, every breath caking the insides of his lungs with a thin film of dust, and he could barely see in the dim light. He took a few tentative steps inwards, when he suddenly heard an unfathomably loud popping noise, and felt a burning stab in his chest. He looked down at his shirt, and could see the faint outline of a liquid spreading across his shirt in the dark. Then he looked up, and could see the silhouette of the man standing in a doorframe a few feet away, the outline of what appeared to be a gun in his hand. And as Quinn felt his legs giving way beneath him, and the misty haze of sleep creeping into his consciousness, all he could think was…finally, I have the idea for my novel.
One Sentence Stories
Here's a bunch of one sentence stories I wrote for my fiction writing class:
After slowly starving to death for a week caught in a bear trap, the man couldn’t help but find it a little ironic when his head was bitten off by a grizzly bear.
He planned it meticulously for weeks, following his wife’s lover so his routine was burned into the back of his brain, buying a gun on the black market that could never be traced back to him, buying latex gloves so he wouldn’t leave any fingerprints, and spending hours upon hours thinking of everything that could go wrong, and how to avoid leaving any evidence behind no matter what ended up unfolding; it’s a shame he never considered his wife stabbing him to death while he was sleeping to run off with her lover a day before he’d finally settled on doing it.
His hair and clothing blanketing in white sheets of snow, he boarded the train with everything he owned on his back.
“Love is blind” was always one of Mary’s favorite expressions, at least until she married, and subsequently divorced, a blind man.
After years of grueling training, Oscar finally realized his goal of becoming an Olympic pole-vaulter, just a month before the bullet from a gun fired straight up into the air a mile away came crashing through his ceiling and painted his brains across the tablecloth of his dining room table as he was eating dinner.
Everyone he knew told him he should feel lucky, being one of only a few of the hostages that survived the shootout between the bank-robbers and the police, but even years later all he could feel was guilt.
They had told him the house was haunted, he was just surprised when he found out it was by a live pedophile who’d broken out of jail and taken refuge in the attic.
Sometimes, honesty is not the best policy, James thought to himself as he bled to death on his living room floor after his wife shot him when he told her he’d been cheating on her.
The scientist was horrified when he saw the hideous beast he had created in his laboratory, but at least it baked delicious cookies.
The hobo thought back on his illustrious and successful career as a movie critic—why did he have to give Gigli a rave review?
Just before the old man’s life trickled out of his pores and dispersed into the air, he looked pleadingly to the nurse and asked, “Couldn’t you at least give me some morphine?”
He’d always considered himself to be misunderstood, except of course by his best friend Franklin, the turquoise penguin that told him to steal people’s kidneys.
After years of writing, he was dismayed to realize that all he could write was morbidly ironic one-liners.
After slowly starving to death for a week caught in a bear trap, the man couldn’t help but find it a little ironic when his head was bitten off by a grizzly bear.
He planned it meticulously for weeks, following his wife’s lover so his routine was burned into the back of his brain, buying a gun on the black market that could never be traced back to him, buying latex gloves so he wouldn’t leave any fingerprints, and spending hours upon hours thinking of everything that could go wrong, and how to avoid leaving any evidence behind no matter what ended up unfolding; it’s a shame he never considered his wife stabbing him to death while he was sleeping to run off with her lover a day before he’d finally settled on doing it.
His hair and clothing blanketing in white sheets of snow, he boarded the train with everything he owned on his back.
“Love is blind” was always one of Mary’s favorite expressions, at least until she married, and subsequently divorced, a blind man.
After years of grueling training, Oscar finally realized his goal of becoming an Olympic pole-vaulter, just a month before the bullet from a gun fired straight up into the air a mile away came crashing through his ceiling and painted his brains across the tablecloth of his dining room table as he was eating dinner.
Everyone he knew told him he should feel lucky, being one of only a few of the hostages that survived the shootout between the bank-robbers and the police, but even years later all he could feel was guilt.
They had told him the house was haunted, he was just surprised when he found out it was by a live pedophile who’d broken out of jail and taken refuge in the attic.
Sometimes, honesty is not the best policy, James thought to himself as he bled to death on his living room floor after his wife shot him when he told her he’d been cheating on her.
The scientist was horrified when he saw the hideous beast he had created in his laboratory, but at least it baked delicious cookies.
The hobo thought back on his illustrious and successful career as a movie critic—why did he have to give Gigli a rave review?
Just before the old man’s life trickled out of his pores and dispersed into the air, he looked pleadingly to the nurse and asked, “Couldn’t you at least give me some morphine?”
He’d always considered himself to be misunderstood, except of course by his best friend Franklin, the turquoise penguin that told him to steal people’s kidneys.
After years of writing, he was dismayed to realize that all he could write was morbidly ironic one-liners.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Amnesia (working title)
=====I re-entered reality. From where, I couldn’t say. I was immediately confronted with a strange series of facts. I felt intense pressure on my body— I was lying, face down, on something hard and cold; and there was something sticky on the side of my face that was on the ground too. I opened my eyes, and for some reason, this was when I became aware of the intense throbbing in the back of my head. As soon as I became aware of the pain, it dominated my consciousness, the acute pain stabbing through my mind and blurring my vision.
=====I focused my eyes and saw the dull glow of cement bathed in pale orange light. The cloying smell of garbage and rot crept into my nostrils. I reached to examine the back of my head, and found that my hair was matted down on my head with the same sticky substance that was on the ground around my face. Even the light touch of my fingers made me wince in pain.
=====I pushed myself up with my arms, and all the disjointed pieces of sensory information began to fall into place: I was lying on a sidewalk, it was night, and I had been lying with my face in a pool of partially dried blood. My blood.
=====I sat down on the sidewalk and surveyed my surroundings. There wasn’t a single person in sight, it must have been very late. I had no idea where I was, this garbage and old newspaper strewn, weathered looking city block didn’t look in the least bit familiar. Scanning where I had been lying on the sidewalk, I was slightly comforted by the fact that the blood was only in a small pool where my face had been: at least I hadn’t lost that much.
=====What the hell was I doing here? I tried to think back on the previous day, but all I found was a blank, empty space in my head where I knew it should have been. Everything that lead me to this moment had been erased from my memory, the pages where it was written had been set aflame and all I could do is feel through the smoke that still remained. But it didn’t give me any better idea of where I was. Or why.
=====I focused my eyes and saw the dull glow of cement bathed in pale orange light. The cloying smell of garbage and rot crept into my nostrils. I reached to examine the back of my head, and found that my hair was matted down on my head with the same sticky substance that was on the ground around my face. Even the light touch of my fingers made me wince in pain.
=====I pushed myself up with my arms, and all the disjointed pieces of sensory information began to fall into place: I was lying on a sidewalk, it was night, and I had been lying with my face in a pool of partially dried blood. My blood.
=====I sat down on the sidewalk and surveyed my surroundings. There wasn’t a single person in sight, it must have been very late. I had no idea where I was, this garbage and old newspaper strewn, weathered looking city block didn’t look in the least bit familiar. Scanning where I had been lying on the sidewalk, I was slightly comforted by the fact that the blood was only in a small pool where my face had been: at least I hadn’t lost that much.
=====What the hell was I doing here? I tried to think back on the previous day, but all I found was a blank, empty space in my head where I knew it should have been. Everything that lead me to this moment had been erased from my memory, the pages where it was written had been set aflame and all I could do is feel through the smoke that still remained. But it didn’t give me any better idea of where I was. Or why.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Love Letter
Dear my radiant princess,
=====How I long to be with you again! To gaze into the shimmering sapphires of your brilliant blue eyes, to feel your soft whispers caressing my skin, to wind my hands through the silky, rippling curls of your auburn hair. I know it’s only been a day, but every second I am without you burrows into the crevices in my heart, and without your effervescent warmth, like water that has seeped down into the cracks in a rock and then freezes, these seconds excruciatingly expand, tearing my heart asunder. Every minute that passes without you being beside me, I fear that it will finally burst, and there will be nothing left but a cold, hollow space in my chest.
=====Do you feel the same right now? No, why do I ever bother to ask that question? Of course you do! Even though you’ve never told me, I know the answer—when I am with you, all my senses scream it to me. Our feelings have long since evolved past the need for affirmation from things as petty as mere words. I apologize profusely for even having momentarily having doubted you! How could I, your essence so is filled to the brim with sincerity, sometimes I am afraid that it will explode!
=====But, I can no longer bear to write to you much longer. Every word I write on this page is a dagger I turn on myself, stabbing to the very core of my being with the reminder of these pent-up emotions I so wish I could hide! So, I must bid you adieu, my sweet love, and, god-willing, I will be able to hold you in my arms tonight—given, of course, that I manage to scrounge together the necessary funds; but I am sure that I can manage to find a mere hundred dollars by then (see, I even know the price by heart!).
=====Pray that I may indeed acquire the money in the remaining hours of the day, so that I may see you again!
=====How I long to be with you again! To gaze into the shimmering sapphires of your brilliant blue eyes, to feel your soft whispers caressing my skin, to wind my hands through the silky, rippling curls of your auburn hair. I know it’s only been a day, but every second I am without you burrows into the crevices in my heart, and without your effervescent warmth, like water that has seeped down into the cracks in a rock and then freezes, these seconds excruciatingly expand, tearing my heart asunder. Every minute that passes without you being beside me, I fear that it will finally burst, and there will be nothing left but a cold, hollow space in my chest.
=====Do you feel the same right now? No, why do I ever bother to ask that question? Of course you do! Even though you’ve never told me, I know the answer—when I am with you, all my senses scream it to me. Our feelings have long since evolved past the need for affirmation from things as petty as mere words. I apologize profusely for even having momentarily having doubted you! How could I, your essence so is filled to the brim with sincerity, sometimes I am afraid that it will explode!
=====But, I can no longer bear to write to you much longer. Every word I write on this page is a dagger I turn on myself, stabbing to the very core of my being with the reminder of these pent-up emotions I so wish I could hide! So, I must bid you adieu, my sweet love, and, god-willing, I will be able to hold you in my arms tonight—given, of course, that I manage to scrounge together the necessary funds; but I am sure that I can manage to find a mere hundred dollars by then (see, I even know the price by heart!).
=====Pray that I may indeed acquire the money in the remaining hours of the day, so that I may see you again!
With unfaltering and undying love,
John
John
Sunday, September 30, 2007
I Love You
=====“Will you just shut up?!” He screamed at her.
=====“You’re the one who started it!” The burning intensity that flared up behind her eyes with every word singed his skin.
=====“Don’t try to pin this bullshit on me!” If the pressure inside his head rose anymore, he was sure it would explode like an egg shot point blank.
=====“Why don’t you just admit you’re wrong?” She asked.
=====“Because I’m not!” He yelled back, even though somehow, he couldn’t even remember what they were arguing about anymore.
=====“You arrogant fucking asshole!”
=====“You needy bitch!”
=====“Self-centered jackass!”
=====“Conniving cunt.”
=====“Yeah? Well at least I can actually give you an orgasm!”
=====He felt a dull throb in his fist suddenly. She was lying on the ground, clutching the side of her face, and looking up at him with a mixture of shock and horror. He looked down at his fist. It was speckled with dots of red. Suddenly she had let go of her face and was looking at him with a sinister gleam in her eyes, and a smirk painted across her face.
=====He suddenly found his fists pumping, raining down on her as she lay there, still looking up at him with that smirk through all the blood that flew through the air. He saw a bat lying on the ground below him, and before he could even think to pick it up, it was in his hands. He hit her with it, the sharp clang of metal on bone ringing through the air, vibrating through his skull, bringing the pressure in his head to a throbbing crescendo; he hit her again, and again, trying to bash that grin off her face, but no matter how many times he brought the bat down again, it remained there frozen, mocking him. Blood and sweat flew through the air, he could feel them mixing together coagulating on his bare arms and face, plastering his hair to the top of his head. He lifted the bat, his arms straining, trying to lift it as high as he could; raising it for the strike of all strikes, to finally shatter that fucking smirk…
=====Scott’s eyes sprung open. He could feel his heart pounding, adrenaline pumping through his veins, the muscles in his arms seized so tight he could barely feel them.
=====“Are you alright baby?” Jennifer asked him, turning over in the bed to look at him.
=====He inhaled deeply, letting the air creep through his body and relax his muscles. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
=====“You sure?”
=====v“Yeah. Just a weird dream.”
=====“Alright.”
=====They lay there in silence for a few seconds. Jennifer wrapped her arms around him and smiled.
=====“I love you.”
=====“I love you too.”
=====“You’re the one who started it!” The burning intensity that flared up behind her eyes with every word singed his skin.
=====“Don’t try to pin this bullshit on me!” If the pressure inside his head rose anymore, he was sure it would explode like an egg shot point blank.
=====“Why don’t you just admit you’re wrong?” She asked.
=====“Because I’m not!” He yelled back, even though somehow, he couldn’t even remember what they were arguing about anymore.
=====“You arrogant fucking asshole!”
=====“You needy bitch!”
=====“Self-centered jackass!”
=====“Conniving cunt.”
=====“Yeah? Well at least I can actually give you an orgasm!”
=====He felt a dull throb in his fist suddenly. She was lying on the ground, clutching the side of her face, and looking up at him with a mixture of shock and horror. He looked down at his fist. It was speckled with dots of red. Suddenly she had let go of her face and was looking at him with a sinister gleam in her eyes, and a smirk painted across her face.
=====He suddenly found his fists pumping, raining down on her as she lay there, still looking up at him with that smirk through all the blood that flew through the air. He saw a bat lying on the ground below him, and before he could even think to pick it up, it was in his hands. He hit her with it, the sharp clang of metal on bone ringing through the air, vibrating through his skull, bringing the pressure in his head to a throbbing crescendo; he hit her again, and again, trying to bash that grin off her face, but no matter how many times he brought the bat down again, it remained there frozen, mocking him. Blood and sweat flew through the air, he could feel them mixing together coagulating on his bare arms and face, plastering his hair to the top of his head. He lifted the bat, his arms straining, trying to lift it as high as he could; raising it for the strike of all strikes, to finally shatter that fucking smirk…
=====Scott’s eyes sprung open. He could feel his heart pounding, adrenaline pumping through his veins, the muscles in his arms seized so tight he could barely feel them.
=====“Are you alright baby?” Jennifer asked him, turning over in the bed to look at him.
=====He inhaled deeply, letting the air creep through his body and relax his muscles. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
=====“You sure?”
=====v“Yeah. Just a weird dream.”
=====“Alright.”
=====They lay there in silence for a few seconds. Jennifer wrapped her arms around him and smiled.
=====“I love you.”
=====“I love you too.”
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Why is everything I write lately just the beginning to something?
Untitled (for now)
=====Anthony walked into the first café he saw. It looked liked any other, nothing about it was remarkable in any way. He ordered a coffee and sat down at a table by the window, taking small sips as he watched the raindrops thread their way down the glass. His eyes remained fixated on them, following one, then another, as they all slowly wound down and left his field of vision. He watched as they acted out the trajectory of his life over the past twenty-four hours, all of the pieces diverging, splitting apart and trickling away into nothingness.=====It had started the night before. Him and his girlfriend got in a fight, and not just one of the biweekly small spats they always seemed to have; a real one this time. She accused him of having cheated on her—which of course was the truth, he’d been nervously waiting for months for her to confront him about it. Not that she’d caught him or that he’d left any overt signs of it, but she knew him, and she was no idiot. He was almost relieved when she finally asked him straight-out, at least he didn’t have to wait anxiously for it to come anymore. There was more to the fight too though. He’d been working late a lot lately (both “working late” and actually working late), and in general was getting so caught up in work that he hadn’t been paying her much attention. Basically the fight was about the fact that he was an all-around-lousy boyfriend. Honestly, he was only surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.
=====Then the next day (right before he went to the café), at the end of work, his boss told him he was fired. Anthony’s first reaction was a desire to applaud the sheer irony of it all: his girlfriend broke up with him because he was too concerned about work, and then he gets fired. Of course, even he knew that wasn’t all the fight was about, but it struck him as a bit amusing nonetheless. Once he got over the objective comedic value of the situation though, the reality of it hit him. As much as it was a pain in his ass a lot of the time, he really did like his job; and the pay wasn’t too shabby either. He’d been working there for years, and had no idea what he wanted to do—find another job like it (where there even any others?), or find something else (not that he had any idea of what that something else would even be)?
=====After that, Anthony needed to go somewhere and sort out everything that was rushing through his head. Hence, the café. He took another sip of his coffee, becoming slightly irritated that it didn’t taste better. He even considered throwing it out and leaving, but then reconsidered—he’d paid for it already, he might as well try to enjoy it. He continued to watch the raindrops, his eyes now slightly narrowed, watching them mock him by mimicking his life in their downward spiral. He almost wanted to break the glass just to spite them, but he wasn’t in a bad enough mood to actually do something like that. Not yet at least.
=====And that’s when he met Jack.
=====“Mind if I sit here?”
=====Anthony looked away from the window and to the person who had spoken to him. He was tall and gaunt, with a head of curly dark brown hair, somehow completely dry despite the torrential downpour outside, and he was wearing a long dark-gray overcoat. But what struck Anthony most was his eyes: they were a dazzlingly light sky-blue, and there was something about them that simultaneously made Anthony want to immediately avert his eyes and rendered him completely unable to do so.
=====“Go right ahead,” Anthony replied coolly.
=====“Sure I’m not intruding?” The man asked.
=====“It’s no problem. To tell you the truth I could use some distraction right now.”
=====The man sat down across the table from Anthony, and took a cigarette out of a carton of Newports from a pocket of his coat.
=====“You don’t mind, do you?” He asked, his piercing eyes locking onto Anthony’s. Anthony felt vaguely violated by the look somehow, as if the man was looking into him; his look penetrating through his skin and delving into his insides, inspecting his stomach contents and the state of his digestive tract.
=====“Fine by me,” he replied, and much to his relief, the man averted his gaze.
=====The man struck a match—a match Anthony swore he never saw him retrieve it from his coat or anywhere else—and lit his cigarette. He inhaled deeply, and then blew out a perfect smoke ring—it hovered out, then suddenly stopped, and hung suspended in midair completely still a foot or so away from the man’s mouth. It remained there, unwavering, until the man exhaled the rest of the smoke in his lungs, causing it to disintegrate and merge with the rest of the smoke, vanishing as it all dispersed through the surrounding air.
=====“The name’s Jack by the way,” The man said, holding out his hand.
=====“Anthony,” Anthony replied, shaking the man’s hand. He had a surprisingly firm grip for his lanky build.
=====“Pleasure to meet you Anthony,” Jack replied, his lips showing a faint smile before he took another drag on his cigarette.
=====And that’s how he met Jack; that’s when it all started.
Monday, September 24, 2007
The Morning After
=====Ryan woke up with hammers beating on the inside of his head, and no recollection of what had happened the night before. He rolled out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen, one hand shielding his eyes from the piercing light that streamed in from his windows. After downing a glass of tap water in one gulp, he refilled it halfway, and washed a pair of aspirin tablets down with it.
===== “Motherfuck…” Ryan muttered to himself, massaging his temples, then walked back into his bedroom and collapsed into the folds of his disheveled blankets. He remained there immobile for several minutes before willing himself to get up again. Maybe some food would ease his headache, he thought, and decided to make himself something to eat, even though he wasn’t sure if the faint rumbling in his stomach was hunger or nausea.
=====It was a simple breakfast—two fried eggs, a piece of toast, and some coffee—and only took him a few minutes to prepare, and only a few more to consume. He wiped up the soupy yellow remainder of the egg-yolk with the last bit of toast, and swallowed it after only a few chews.
=====Immediately he regretted the meal, all it did was further the discomfort in his stomach—it was nausea after all. After he emptied his stomach contents into his toilet, he washed his face with cold water, and looked up into his mirror. He looked like shit. He had well-past-five-o’clock-shadow, dark splotches under his eyes, and had the worn, disheveled look of someone who had slept outside all night.
=====Then Ryan noticed his clothing. He blinked a few times, and rubbed his eyes before he checked again to make sure he wasn’t just seeing things. But the crimson splatters, so dark he at first mistook them for black, still covered all of his sky-blue dress shirt, and even spread down onto his jeans a little too.
=====“What the fuck…” He asked, staring into his deep-brown eyes in the mirror; but try as he might, not a single memory of last night would come to him.
===== “Motherfuck…” Ryan muttered to himself, massaging his temples, then walked back into his bedroom and collapsed into the folds of his disheveled blankets. He remained there immobile for several minutes before willing himself to get up again. Maybe some food would ease his headache, he thought, and decided to make himself something to eat, even though he wasn’t sure if the faint rumbling in his stomach was hunger or nausea.
=====It was a simple breakfast—two fried eggs, a piece of toast, and some coffee—and only took him a few minutes to prepare, and only a few more to consume. He wiped up the soupy yellow remainder of the egg-yolk with the last bit of toast, and swallowed it after only a few chews.
=====Immediately he regretted the meal, all it did was further the discomfort in his stomach—it was nausea after all. After he emptied his stomach contents into his toilet, he washed his face with cold water, and looked up into his mirror. He looked like shit. He had well-past-five-o’clock-shadow, dark splotches under his eyes, and had the worn, disheveled look of someone who had slept outside all night.
=====Then Ryan noticed his clothing. He blinked a few times, and rubbed his eyes before he checked again to make sure he wasn’t just seeing things. But the crimson splatters, so dark he at first mistook them for black, still covered all of his sky-blue dress shirt, and even spread down onto his jeans a little too.
=====“What the fuck…” He asked, staring into his deep-brown eyes in the mirror; but try as he might, not a single memory of last night would come to him.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
A New Beginning
Following in the mold of the play-a-day project I did, I decided to start something similar with prose (and also other forms of writing occasionally). It won't be as ambitious or strict as the play-a-day, as I'm not setting out to write something every day, but I'm aiming on writing at least a few things a week, so we'll see how it ends up turning out. But anyways, I'll post random small bits of prose, (very) short stories, and hopefully even some larger stories (probably in multiple parts), and as I said, sometimes some non-prose writing too. I'm not really sure what I'm planning to do with this exactly, but it's been too long since I was consistently writing much, so we'll see what it ends up turning into. Also, I'm guessing that the things I post here will probably tend to be much more just fragments than the scenes in my play-a-day, so they probably won't be as complete and self-contained in general (or at least that's what I'm guessing now--we'll see how it ends up turning out). Anyways, without further delay, here's the first story (or at least the beginning of one):
=====I was so caught up in trying to remember more than just the faint impression I had of my dream that I didn’t notice I was alone in the bed for a several minutes—or, maybe I noticed, but it didn’t strike me as odd yet. When I noticed, I figured Lisa must have gone in to work early. But it was a Sunday…
=====I got out of bed and wandered into the kitchen. There was no sign of her. I was too tired to really think much of anything yet though, so I decided to make myself some coffee. As I waited for it to finish brewing, I leaned onto the counter and stared off. I could see through the window that it either was raining already or would be soon, the clouds had that ominous look of anticipation they always do before a storm. If I squinted I thought I could see small drops of rain falling outside, but I couldn’t tell if they were really there or if it just looked that way because I was expecting them to be.
=====The coffee finished and I poured it into a deep-crimson colored porcelain cup. I took the carton of milk out of the fridge and swished it around to feel how much was left, then poured the small amount that remained into the cup too. After I threw the carton away and made a mental note to stop by the supermarket later to get some more, I turned back to the fridge, and this time I noticed the yellow post-it that was stuck right at eye-level on the door to it. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it earlier—especially when I got the milk from inside—then walked closer so I could read it. It was Lisa’s writing, with that rushed-but-somehow-neat look to it, all the letters blending together but somehow still distinct and perfectly legible. The note bore a brief message: I’m leaving you. I’m really sorry. –Lisa.
=====The note could not have been more clear, but still I stood there staring at it for at least a minute. I couldn’t comprehend it, it didn’t make sense. She hadn’t said anything even hinting she was thinking of leaving me, and everything had been perfectly normal between us lately. Nothing was any different from how it had always been—but I guess it had to be, there was no mistaking what the note said.
Sunday Morning Message
===== It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust, the neon-red glow gradually forming the distinct lines of the numbers on my clock: 8:02am. My head felt like a freshly shaken snow globe, and I buried my face back into the softness of my pillow while I waited for all the debris to settle down. I must have had a weird dream; a strange sensation lingered in my head from it, but I couldn’t identify its source. Usually I at least can remember fragments, as nonsensical as they often are, but this time no matter how much I thought about it, all that remained was a blank canvas.=====I was so caught up in trying to remember more than just the faint impression I had of my dream that I didn’t notice I was alone in the bed for a several minutes—or, maybe I noticed, but it didn’t strike me as odd yet. When I noticed, I figured Lisa must have gone in to work early. But it was a Sunday…
=====I got out of bed and wandered into the kitchen. There was no sign of her. I was too tired to really think much of anything yet though, so I decided to make myself some coffee. As I waited for it to finish brewing, I leaned onto the counter and stared off. I could see through the window that it either was raining already or would be soon, the clouds had that ominous look of anticipation they always do before a storm. If I squinted I thought I could see small drops of rain falling outside, but I couldn’t tell if they were really there or if it just looked that way because I was expecting them to be.
=====The coffee finished and I poured it into a deep-crimson colored porcelain cup. I took the carton of milk out of the fridge and swished it around to feel how much was left, then poured the small amount that remained into the cup too. After I threw the carton away and made a mental note to stop by the supermarket later to get some more, I turned back to the fridge, and this time I noticed the yellow post-it that was stuck right at eye-level on the door to it. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it earlier—especially when I got the milk from inside—then walked closer so I could read it. It was Lisa’s writing, with that rushed-but-somehow-neat look to it, all the letters blending together but somehow still distinct and perfectly legible. The note bore a brief message: I’m leaving you. I’m really sorry. –Lisa.
=====The note could not have been more clear, but still I stood there staring at it for at least a minute. I couldn’t comprehend it, it didn’t make sense. She hadn’t said anything even hinting she was thinking of leaving me, and everything had been perfectly normal between us lately. Nothing was any different from how it had always been—but I guess it had to be, there was no mistaking what the note said.
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