NaNo Ongoing

Okay, so I’ve been plugging along on my NaNo novel. I’ve not even broken 10k, and this late in the game I’m sure that I won’t make 50k by the end of the month, but I’ve decided I’m okay with that.

I am actually liking my story, and liking where I think its going to go.

I say where I THINK its going to go, because I’m only 5 chapters into it, and it is not what I thought it was going to be about.

My original idea was that my MC was going to be turned into a werewolf (by accidently scratching herself on the tooth of a werewolf’s skull). Her sister was going to be a werewolf hunter.

Now there is suddenly a young girl in the mix, a deserted town I didn’t plan on, and I think that both sisters might already be werewolves.

The title of my novel is “Moon Time” Here is a bit from it.


Chapter Two
Welcome to Teffton Community

The place was a ghost town. The buildings had all been boarded up and abandoned. All it lacked was a squeaky swinging tavern door, and a lonely tumbleweed blowing down Main Street.

Amanda wondered how places like this came to be. It was not a real ghost town, left behind by gold prospectors or coal miners when the mines went dry.

There never had been any mining around here. There had been some lumber camps, but that was deeper in the woods. Besides, a lumber camp did not even come close to resembling the forgotten town she was in.

So, what would make a small town build up, then dry up and blow away?

WELCOME TO TEFFTON COMMUNITY

The large sign at the beginning of the town looked newer than anything else. Had it been built at the end, a last ditch effort to make people come in.

Welcome to Teffton Community, please stop here and shop here. We have a shoe store and a farmers market. We have a gas station with competitive prices. Please don’t drive through without stopping or our town might blow away on the draft your car leaves behind.

She did not know what she had been expecting of Teffton Community, but she had not been expecting a dead down. People did not call her in to rid dead towns of their ghosts.

Surely Teffton Community had its share of ghosts, but there ws no one around to be haunted by them.

She had parked her car by a gas station at the head of Main Street. The place called itself Kuntry Joe’s Git ‘n’ Go. She’d thought she might ask for directions there.

Sure, she thought, I was just going to waltz right in, introduce myself as Amanda Embry, the ghost hunter, and ask if they knew where the haunts were.

Laughable.

It had all been a joke, of course. She didn’t advertise herself, but somewhere down the line some prankster had heard of her. Someone who found it laughable to send her on a wild goose chase to a deserted town.

“Hello!” She called out. “Mr. E. Are you here?”

Mr. E? Why hadn’t she realized that before. Surely no other proof was needed that this was somebody’s idea of a joke.

“Jackass,” she muttered under her breath as she turned around to walk back to her car.

Night had falledn solidly and she could no longer see her car parked at Kuntry Joe’s Git ‘n’ Go (home of the competitive gas prices) but she knew it would still be there.

After all, who was there to steal it? Mr. E’s ghost maybe?

How could I have been so stupid, she mentally chastened herself again.

She must have been half crazy with excitement, desperate for the job. Things were slower with her job than they were at her sister’s gallery.

“We should move here,” she told the town. “The Embry sisters could move in and revitalize Teffton Community.”

She laughed, and her laugh echoed back at her from a dozen different directions.

The emptiness of the town was so pure that when the streetlights suddenly came on, revealing a person sitting on the hood of her car down at Kuntry Joe’s Git ‘n’ Go, she squeaked with supirse.

Like her laugh, her squeak echoed back at her from a dozen different directions.

Whoever was sitting on her car lifted a hand and waved jauntily toward her.

She waved back, then jobbed to the car.

The person on her car was a man. The lighting of the gas station wasn’t very good, so she couldn’t tell much more than that about him.

“I thought this place was deserted,” she said. “I was just about to leave.”

“Of course you were,” he said, then held out his hand. “I’m Eric. Eric Edison.”

“Mr. E I presume.”

He smiled, she thought she could see a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, which was impossible in the dark.

“That would be me. And that would make you Amanda Embry, ghost hunter, dispatcher of demons, and all around good sport.”

“So, Mr. E. Mr. Edison I mean. Did you call me here for a real reason, of just to get your jollys watching me wander empty streets calling out for nobody? Maybe you wanted to see what kind of deranged person not only believes in ghosts, but believes in them enough that they call themselves a ghost hunter?”

“Oh no, Amanda, I called you here for a real reason. We have a valid boogie man here in Teffton Community. Though I will admit that I’m doubtful of your ability to help us.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, Amanda, that you are one woman. One, lonely, petite, little woman.”:

“Excuse me!”

“Now, don’t get like that. You ARE just one woman, and you ARE a tiny little thing. We knew you were a woman, but we were expecting a whole team of people. Equipment. Weapons. Something a little more grand. We’re not sure that you, alone, will be able to handle it.”

“Us? We? Mr. Edison, I don’t know if you noticed or not, but the only we our us anywhere around her is you plus me, and I’m not any part of you’re we. Do you hear voices? Multiple personalties in that head of yours? Where are you getting your we from?”

He slid off the car then, and came to stand in front of her. She was shocked to see how tall he was. She had to tilt her head up to look at his face.

For a moment she was a little afraid of this crazy man in this empty town.

“We are a town, Amanda. Not you and I we, but WE are a town.”

He spread out his arms and turned a quick circle, looking rather silly.

“Then were is the rest of your we, Mr. Edison?”

“That’s why I called you. How long do you think Teffton Community has been empty?”

“I don’t know. A while. Not too long. The vandals haven’t discovered its empty yet. Maybe the last people left a couple fo months ago?”

“Try a week.”

“A week?”

“I left a week ago, and when I left everyone was still here.”

“Maybe they all moved?”

“Ion a week?”

“Its possible. I mean, they could move a whole town in a week if they wanted to get away from you bad enough.”

She smirked up at him.

She didn’t like this man. Eric Edison, also known as Mr. E. She didn’t like him because he had gotten her to come out to Teffton Community using such a horribly fake name. She didn’t like that he wanted her to believe that Teffton Community had been a busting burg only a week ago.

She also didn’t like that he called her Amanda, not Ms. Embry, just Amanda. As if he knew her. As if they were friends.

“Come with me, Amanda,” He stressed her name as if he had read her thoughts. “Come here and let me show you something.”

He walked away, not turning around to see if she came with him or not.

He moved like most tall and lanky men. His stride wasn’t clumsy, but wasn’t even remotely graceful.

Why was she watching the way he walked anyway?

He went to the glass door of the gas station and stopped there, fumbling at the handle. She assumed he had a key. For all she knew he was Kuntry Joe himself, owner of Teffton Community’s Git ‘n’ Go, home of the competitive gas prices.

Owner or not, he got the door open and disappeared inside.

Amanda pulled her own keys out of her pocket, meaning to get in her car and leave. Meaning to make like the locals and get ‘n’ go out of the town and away from Mr. Eric Edison.

Then the lights of the station came on and she stood frozen again as he came out, holding up a large rin of keys like a trophy.

“I’ve got a key to Joe’s. Joe has a key to every business in Teffton Community.”

“Is that smart?”

“Smart? Joe OWNS every business in Teffton Community. I guess he’s got a right to have keys to the places.”

“No, I meant was it smart of him to let you have a key to his place.”

“Listen, Amanda, if you’re not going to take me seriously, then you should just get in that tidy little car of yours and leave. I need HELP here, not some smarmy bitch who comes in and starts taking cracks at me. You don’t even KNOW me, and you’ve not even stopped to LOOK at this place.

“I just want to know where my friends went. Where my family is. I want to know what HAPPENED to this place.”

He stalked away then, huge ring of keys hanging from his right hand, clinking and clanging in the dark. For a second she felt bad, started to go after him, but changed her mind.

Something about Mr. Eric Edison, sometimes known as Mr. E, rubbed her the wrong way.

She was miles out of Teffton Community before she noticed she’d been left a gift on her back seat.

Whats Under the Sheet

What’s under the sheet?

The thought played slowly through her head. It was a fuzzy thought, one of a woman still mostly asleep.

Don’t wake up, she told herself. Her eyes cracked open anyway, squinting at the window.

The glow in the room was no glow at all. The room was shadow on shadow on shadow.

Still dark. Still time to be asleep.

Why was she awake?

Lying comfortably, her barely open eyes watching her bedroom curtain dance in the window from her open window, she remembered her first fuzzy thought on waking.

I must have had a nightmare, she thought.

Sure, that must have been it. She had nightmares a lot. Just because she didn’t remember it, didn’t mean it hadn’t been.

People dreamed every night, but hardly ever remembered their dreams.

Satisfied, she closed her eyes and sunk swiftly towards sleep again.

Teetering on the edge of nothingness, she felt something brush against her leg. The skin of her leg.

If it was touching the skin of her leg, that meant it was under the sheet with her.

She opened her eyes, sat up in bed and saw the lump under the sheet, beside her legs, as it moved against her legs, on top of her legs. It rushed foward, a lump with no real definition, no way of her knowing what it was unless she uncovered it.

What’s under the sheet, she thought again. This time it was a clear thought. A crisp thought. A though by a woman fully awake and scared half to death.

She threw back the sheet, as the lump continued to rush forward, setting it free just in time for it, whatever it was, to launch itself at her face.

It forced her back, smacking her head against the headboard of her bed, knocking her unconscious as the thing that had been under her sheet slipped off of her bed and back out of the window it had come into, leaving the mystery of what was under the sheet unsolved.

Between Dusk and Dawn

It was easier then, after the sun went down.

Not that it was ever truly easy. Her brain refused to let got of the
things it latched on to. There was also the stress, the depression,
the horror of the new day looming, but at night the screaming that
refused to stop faded a bit and she could focus on the world around
her.

In the time between dusk and dawn, she never slept. She refused to
give even the smallest minute of her respite time away to then
nothingness of sleep.

Plus, sleep brought the morning faster, and with the morning those
voices in her head would raise their volumes again until they were
back at their unbearable level.

She thought, occasionally, that she might be insane, but always talked
herself out of it. Certainly everyone had those voices in their
heads. The insane ones were the ones that tried to cut them out, or
chew them out, or drown them out, or shut them up with drugs.

There was a trick, she was sure of this. A trick to living in peace
with the voices to the point that they gave you access to the volume
control and they let you let them know when you needed them to be
soft, and when it was okay for them to be loud.

Until she learned that trick she settled for living for the night.

What the Neighbors Saw

They saw me digging the hole, and walked over to the fence.

"Thats a deep hole," they said to me. "What are you planting? A tree?"

"My dog died," I told them. "I'm planting his body."

"Oh," they said. "We're so sorry." and they wandered away.

Maybe if they had stayed the would have noticed that the figure
wrapped in the blue tarp was too big to be my dog. Maybe they would
have noticed that my dog was laying on the back porch, asleep.

The neighbors saw me dig the hole, but the never witnessed me bury the body.

To Touch a Dream

I've never seen his face,
or felt his touch,
smelled his fragerence,
or heard his voice.

I have no proof that he is real,
And that is how it will be
forever, for always
you can never touch a dream.

JulNoWriMo '06

Very much like NaNoWriMo, only its in July instead of November. The goal, to write 50,000 words in a month.

I've tried, and failed, for several Novembers at this. Now I'm trying in July. I don't know why I think July will be any different, but at least the holiday season hasn't started yet, so I wont have that stress to contend with like I do in November.

The biggest problem is that I'm drawing a blank. Like I said in my last entry, I need oil. LOTS of oil.

-sigh-

I need oil

I told someone today that my mental machinery was rusty from disuse. Or maybe I said my creative machinery. It all boils down to the same thing.

I'm in yahoo groups where I get daily prompts. I save these prompts to "come back to later."

Later never comes.

I spend all of my free time playing with my blogs. Just not this blog.

Its sad.

I love to write, yet I'm avoiding writing lately.

Its a trend that's got to stop.

Swan Dive

It happened at the pool.

It was winter, the pool had been drained months ago, but he went there daily to skate. It was illegal, of course, but there were no skate parks in the town, and he had to have fun somewhere.

He didn’t notice her to start with. It was only in the middle of catching the most amazing air of his life did he realize he wasn't alone. The result was him, lying flat on his back in the bottom of the empty pool, looking up at her.

She was on the high-dive, dressed in a gray sweatshirt that matched the clouds above her. Below the legs of her jeans, her feet were bare. He could see her toes sticking over the edge of the board. Her hands were fisted, tangled in her shirtsleeves. The wind was blowing her hair in strips and strands across her face.

"Hey," he shouted. "You shouldn't be here."

She didn’t say anything to him. She didn't even seem to notice him, but she was looking down toward him, toward the bottom of the empty pool.

The girl made his skin crawl. There was something wrong with her, something wrong about here. He was there to skate, sure. What was she there for, on the high dive?

"Holy shit," he shouted, before tucking his board under his arm and running as fast as he could toward the small building that housed the campus security.

When he told them what he had seen, he expected to be busted for his own breaking and entering of the pool, but for once the fuzz seemed more concerned about one person's welfare than his own delinquency.

He gave them a few minutes, and then followed them. He wanted to see the girl better, to find out who she was so he could tell everyone he had ever met, and even a few people he didn't know.

The campus cops had been joined by what looked like half of the towns police force. The area around the pool had been blocked off by yellow tape, and they wouldn't let him close enough to see him. But the ambulance had its light off, and no one seemed to be in a big hurry. He though he heard someone utter the words, "She's DOA." into a microphone, but couldn’t be sure.

Later that week he ran into his buddy, and was about to brag about what he had almost seen when his friend said, "Did you hear what happened to Christina?"

"Huh? Who?"

"Christian Applegate. She killed herself. Took a swan dive into the asphalt."

He suddenly ached somewhere deep inside. He had known Christina. She helped him pass geometry.

"Why would she do something like that? She was perfect."

"Yeah, a perfectly flat pavement pizza. Wanna catch some air?"

He declined. For once the though of skating was repulsive to him. He dug out his wallet and pulled out a card. The school shrink had given one to just about everyone saying, "If you need to talk, about anything, come to me, Okay. Dont keep it inside."


There was a number on it, but he didn’t want to call someone. He wanted to talk to a real person. Getting directions from the front desk he went to the counselor’s office.

It was the first time he had ever gone to the school counselor, but the man smiled at him like and old friend, offered him a seat, then sat in a chair across from him, not behind the desk, but somewhere reachable, like they were eating lunch or watching TV together or something.

He didn’t talk to start with, just looked around. There were pictures around of a smiling family. A shelf with some books. A small desk in the corner with a computer on it. The screensaver was currently a haunted house.

“I knew her.” He said, finally. “The girl that killed herself. She was sort of my friend.”

“Sort of?”

“She tutored me. In math. I was having trouble in geometry and she helped me pass the final last year. Kept me from repeating a grade. I never did really thank her. I was just wondering if you could tell me…what I mean is…why would she do something like that. Why would anyone do something like that?”

“Christina had problems, just like everyone does.”

“What kind of problems?”

“I can’t tell you that. It was personal. Between her and me. But sometimes she felt like they were overwhelming her. We can’t really say why a person would kill themselves, but sometimes, when a person thinks their problems are bigger than they are, they feel it’s the only thing they can do.”

They talked for a while. About Christina and about other things. The counselor asked for him to come back. He said he would, and he thought that maybe he really would.

This Week is Broght To You By

My current renter is Dawn from Reflections and More.

She has a beautifully designed and well written blog. What more can you ask for?

If you ask for photos, she has those too.

She is a personal blogger, telling you about her cats, her projects, her day at work. All wonderful to read.

Please, take a moment to visit her by clicking the screencap over there to your right. Its sure to be worth your time. If you like what you see, leave her a comment. Everyone loves comments. And tell her Noner sent you.

Boys Games

The day was bright and hot, but in the woods it was cool and comfortable, and two boys played there.

In the shadowy woods, a dark haired boy stood motionless as he looked down at a shaft of an arrow. Its fake colorful feathers rippled slightly in a wind and made it look festive.

Beside the boy’s foot was his bow, which only moments before had held the arrow with its brightly colored feathers.

The boy’s left hand hung by his side, his fingers curled and uncurled, seeking to wrap around something. Perhaps they wanted the bow back.

The bow lay partially in an ant bed, and angrily disturbed ants marched single file along its string, using it as a bridge from their destroyed nest to the foot of the intruder who had destroyed it.

A few of them crawled the other way, away from the foot, away from the bow, away from their ruined nest. Their antenna wiggled frantically, giving off chemical signals of retreat.

The retreating ants crawled over an open book.

Their small black bodies were well hidden as they marched across the printed words, but they stood out strongly against the brightly colored illustration on the second page.

The art was printed in shades of yellow and red, the same bright colors as the feathers on the arrow shaft.

It showed two boys under a tree. One boy stood with his back to the tree. He had an apple on his head and a smile on his face.

The second boy in the picture stood away from the tree, facing the first boy. He was not smiling, but looked serious and in thought. He had an arrow notched in a bow and pointed at the first boy.

The wind blew a bit harder and caught the pages of the open book. It flipped them rapidly and tossed the disgruntled ants farther away.

The same wind wrapped around a bit of spittle from the dark haired boys open mouth and plucked it away. Unanchored the drop fell down, past the feathers, past the arrow, and landed soft and silent on the cheek of a little blond haired boy.

The little one didn’t notice. He laid as still as ever, his right arm up and under his head like a pillow. His left arm lay stretched away from his body, palm up towards the sky, fingers curled towards the palm.

Neither arm moved to wipe the drop of drool off of his face.

Even the corners of his lips curved slightly upwards. His mouth held the tiniest tender smile. IT was the innocent smile usually reserved for infants and toddling children, or for the comely face of the Mona Lisa.

He gazed up into the branches of the tree the boys were under. One of his blue eyes watched the patterns of light and shadow made by the leaves of the tree as the wind passed through them.

Here the wind forged shadow art in the form of a laughing face. There it carved out a boot. And the boy watched with his blue eye and his gentle smile and the yellow and red feathers on the shaft of the arrow still danced in the wind that blew through the cool comfortable woods on the bright hot day.

Those red and yellow feathers, jaunty and playful, blocked the view that would have been seen from the blond boys second blue eye. They might have apologized for this and moved out of the way, but being stuck to the arrow, and the arrow stuck in his eye, they had little ability to do anything but dance in the wind.

As with the drool from the mouth of the dark haired boy, the blond one seemed not to mind that the wind blown feathers were blocking the view of one of his eyes. Neither did he seem to mind that an arrow had replaced one of his eyes.

Still wearing his Mona Lisa smile, he seemed content to lie like he was forever, watching the wind play in the forest canopy.

When the wind blew very hard a pair of the trees branches parted and one shaft of the bright hot sun was able to reach down. It touched the top of the blond boys head, but did not shine in his face.

Just above his head the natural spotlight touched a splash of red.

It was an apple, a beautiful red apple that could have been the perfect fruit if it were not for the ants crawling on it. Ants, which had been scatted from their bed by the bow, had found it and had set upon it.

They worked hard on carving it into ant sized bits and carrying it away, back down into the tunnels below the remains of their destroyed bed.

One ant reached the very tip of the apples stem and paused for a moment before going back down.

He thanked the god of ants and insects for the bounty they had received, and for the dangerous games boys play.

Thanks for your participation...

I’d like to thank everyone for sharing their opinions with me on my last post.

You’re opinions were varied, as I expected them to be, from those who agreed with me, those who disagreed with me and those who REALLY disagreed with me (they didn’t leave a url so I couldn’t link back to their place.)

The most interesting comment, though, was from Steven Sweet who said in part, “I think it's even scarier that the dad let his son be taken away.”

I urge everyone to read the post in question, and to read the comments left on it. You can still leave your own. I like reading everyone’s points of view.

-----

To those who come here to read my fictions, I promise I'll have another one up eventually.

Teen horror writer committed him to a psychiatric ward

Minnesota high school student David Riehm bristled at his creative writing
teacher's stinging comments at the bottom of his assignment.

"David, I am offended by this piece. If this needs to be your subject matter,
you're going to have to find another teacher," Ann Mershon's
critique
began.

The 17-year-old's satirical fable concerned a
boy who awoke from a wet dream, slipped rear-end first onto a toy cone, and then
had his head crushed "in a misty red explosion" under the tires of a school bus.

"I'm actually a little concerned about your obsessive focus on sex and potty
language. Make a change — today!" Mershon warned.

Read the whole article HERE.

As a writer, the attitude of this teacher disturbs me. She's trying to tell him what he is and is not allowed to write. I don't like the idea of a teacher trying to smother a young persons creativity, morbid though it may be.

I remember the first real fiction piece I wrote in 6th grade involved a radioactive wolf that ate babies. My teacher saw the creative effort and encouraged at, he didn't chide me for being a bit morbid.

As for the story he wrote in retaliation, I would much rather see our young and angry teenagers writing stories in retaliation rather than coming into the schools with guns shooting up the place.

Again, in my own personal life I've often written short fictions and/or poems where I murder, maim and mutilate whoever I'm angry with. I'm 24 years old currently, and I've managed to not physically hurt anyone yet.

I would enjoy hearing your opinions of the article, as well as the original essay which you can see (along with the teachers notations) HERE with links to others at the bottom of the page to other essays if you follow the links at the bottom of the page, and the teachers statement HERE.

Personally I think the teacher should use her job.

Mystickal Incense & More

My current renter is Stephanie of the Mystickal Incense & More blog.

Why should you vist her site?

1. She gave blood and didn’t even get a t-shirt. (When I gave blood all I got was a bandaid....her calander is better swag, even if its not a t-shirt)

2. Contests! She apprantly has them alot. The current one is a maze, in which prizes are hidden. Can you find one?

3. I caught me a gazoo there!

4. She showed a little sympathy for a retail clerk being shouted at. (While mostly she just wanted to get through the checkout line herself, as a retail clerk I tip my hat to those out there who take even a little pitty on us.)

***

New fiction will be posted whenever I think of anything good to write. In the meantime, feel free to read and comment on any of my past fictions.

Night Reached Out Her Hand

When night reaches out her hand, how could I not accept it, take it, shake it and close the deal at the end of the day?

I wasn’t a young man anymore.

I wasn’t so old that I could say I barely remembered being young, but I was old enough to be made nervous by the ever shortening distance between now and my permanent end.

The newspaper ad had piqued my interest.

“Volunteers needed for medical experiments,” it read. It explained the experiments on nutrition and sleep and exercise to “increase fertility, longevity and extend youthful vigor.”

All, of course, for a handsome sum of money.

Was I looking for immortality when I dialed the number?

I told myself I only wanted the money. At most I hoped to lose a few lines from my face and possibly stave off impotence for a few more years. The most outrageous of my thoughts might have even included a cure for my receding hairline.

Immortality?

A few non-invasive medical experiments did not make man into a god.

The telephone interview was embarrassingly thorough. Before they gave me an address and a date and time to be there, they knew my entire medical history, the schedule of my bowel movements and all of my sexual encounters of the past six months, including acts of self gratification.

After the phone call I was almost too embarrassed to go where they had told me to go.

Though he had been nothing less than professional I couldn’t imagine meeting this man who knew so much about me and shaking his hand, acting like a polite stranger.

I did go.

It was a newly constructed private medical facility, where the receptionist picked up the phone and announced my arrival even before I introduced myself.

A nurse appeared, led me to a room and instructed me to strip and that the doctors would be with me shortly.

Yes, doctors, plural, not doctor, singular.

There were six of them and by the time they had finished with me I had endured embarrassments which made the telephone interview seem as tame as exchanging hellos with a coworker in the hallway.

I had barely had time to put my pants back on before another man came in.

My mind cried out “no more doctors” and I felt on the verge of tears at the prospect. Somehow I managed to offer the young man a weak smile and ask, “Which part of me are you here to prod?”

He leaned his head back and laughed. I hadn’t been attempting to make a joke and was perplexed by his reaction.

Once done laughing he gave me the bad news.

All of the advertised positions had been filled.

For a week they had been filled.

In two days I had been more completely embarrassed than ever before and he was telling me it had all been for nothing. Maybe a sick joke at my expense that they had let me go though it all?

He must have sensed my imminent volcanic explosion because he started telling me about a private experiment he was conducting.

Perfectly legal, he told me, just not funded by the government or any of the medical colleges.

He believed that if a person entirely avoided the sun that they could double their lifespan.

He said that he was curious exactly how long a life could be extended on someone who had already seen the sun, but he was really hoping for the babies.

He was a rich man, he told me. He was going to serve as caretaker for two generations, maybe three.

I could be a part of it, he said. I was older that what he thought of starting with, but I could be an interesting experiment unto myself.

All I had to do, he told me, was agree to never go out in the daylight, never see the sun again.

I am not a young man.

In fact, I am older than most.

My hair is still thin and I still have lines around my eyes.

I haven’t seen the sun in 50 years. My children never have. Their children never will.

My wife misses it sometimes. She says she can still remember the way it felt to stand on a beach with your face turned toward the warm summer sky.

I have no regrets.

The night reached out her hand and I shook it firmly.

Immortality?

Its not likely, but its not inconceivable.

Not anymore.

A Year After Your Death

A year after your death I still run into you in unexpected places.

Once, shopping, I saw you two aisles over. You were laughing and talking with someone I didn’t know. I called out to you but you didn’t answer me. I wanted to run to you, to grab your arm and turn you around, to MAKE you look at me but I didn’t.

I’m glad I didn’t.

Because you are dead.

I saw you once in the back seat of a car at a gas station. You had your head leaned against the window and you were crying. I couldn’t hear you, but I knew. I’ve seen the way your shoulders shake when you cry. And I saw the tears on your cheeks. I wanted to run to you again, to open the door, to drag you out and hold you until the tears were gone and you were happy.

But I couldn’t have made you happy.

Because you are dead.

One time you were in our house. You were standing over me while I slept and you had the sweetest smile on your face. My darling, darling guardian angel. You looked like you wanted to reach for me, to touch me. To make me happy again.

But you didn’t.

Because you are dead.

I cannot touch you because you are dead.

You cannot touch me becasue you are dead.

A year after your death, and sometimes that is still hard to remember.

This Weeks Sponser

Written by Mik & Carolyn, and sometimes by Mik OR Carolyn, Nonsensical Flounderings won out of 4 bids this time around. With post titles such as "Flirty Flasher," and entries about peep-show detours, they appeal to my “dirty old may side “ (Never mind that I’m neither dirty, old, nor a man).

Then they have the posts about hamsters living in harmony with the snakes intended to eat them, and cute rodent wheels that look like motorcycles. That appeals to the side of that loves the small and furry.

There are also paintshop pro/photoshop tutorials which would appeal to my image editing side...if such a side existed. (All my image eding needs are covered well by the paint program that came with my computer.)

So, you should click the link over there to the right and visit my renters blog. I’m sure you’ll find posts that appeal to all your sides as well.

Snowfall

It snowed the day she died.

I remember because I had been with her, sitting in the chair beside her bed reading to her.

We were reading Alice in Wonderland. The mad hatter. The tea party. The doormouse.

It was a grey day, full of threat and promise. We had the curtain closed so we could look at the Lion King curtains instead of the grey clouds. The entire room looked pink becaue of the pink shade on her bedside lamp.

For a long time I had hidden in Alice in Wonderland. Traveling along with Alice, I didn't have to think about MY Alice, laying there, listening to me.

I only stopped reading becasue my eyes hurt. The words had run together. I was crying.

I think somewhere, subconciously, I knew. While I read, I must have heard it happen.

I closed the book, marking the place with her Snoopy bookmark, and set it on her night table, careful not to knock over the various medicine vials or her Cinderella cup full of apple juice.

She looked peaceful.

I pulled her sheets up to her chin. Simba smiled up at me.

Her sheets matched her curtains.

I brushed her hair back, kissed her moist head.

Then I walked to the window and opened the curtain.

Even the grey outside light was enough to dilute the pink from her lamplight.

I stood at her window, looking out, crying harder now, and the snow began to fall.

"It's snowing." I told her before shutting the curtains.

I turned off her lamp on the way out of the room, and pulled the door shut behind me.

I went outside and made the call in the falling snow.

Haunted House Dressing

I’m taking a moment here to be a good BE landlord and introducing you to my renter.

Haunted House Dressing

Jeremy welcomes you into his blog home by saying, “Hello, welcome to Haunted House Dressing. This is a place where toasters run free and hippos climb trees.”

There’s more to it than that, of course, but you have to go there to read it.

And while you’re there you might as well check out his Review Contest, his featured artist of the week, and his webcomic titled “Recycled.”

Just click the box over there on your right, and enjoy.

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A new work of fiction is coming soon. Until then feel free to browse any of the old content of this Notebook. Comments are always welcome.

The Clean Room

With a great gasp of air, the man sat up on the stretcher. His eyes were wide and frightened at the sight of the equipment all around him.

There was a crackle of static, then a voice over a pa system.

"Its okay son, you're in a hospital. You'll be okay, but I need to ask you some questions. Do you know who you are?"

The man looked down at his body, crossed and crisscrossed with wires and medicle tape, IVs ran into both of his arms.

"Why am I here?" he asked.

"Do you know who you are?"

"What happened to me?" his voice was touched with panic. He'd never been in a hospital where the nurses only spoke over the PA. Maybe he had been infected with something, some virus. He'd read that it could happen.

"We will answer your quesions later, first you must answer ours. Do you know who you are?"

"My name is Daniel. Daniel Facet."

"Thats right. Very good." the voice answered, as if he were taking a quiz and passing.

"Do you know why you're here, Daniel?"

"I...." Daniel looked around the room. Sterile white walls, no windows, one door. It didn't look like a normal door at all. It looked secure. A clean room. Why was he in a clean room.

"Daniel?"

"I dont remember. I cant."

"Do you know where you're from, Daniel? Do you know your hometown?"

"Macon, GA" he said without hesitation.

"Do you know your parents names?"

"Molly and Gerald Facet."

"Good. Good. Do you know why you're here, Daniel?"

He was here because...becasue of something important.

His eyes went back to the door.

"Am I sick?" He asked. "Did I catch something. Some government bug?"

"We will answer your questions later, Daniel, but we need you to tell us why you're here."

Daniel jumped as one of the machines beside the bed begain to whir. He tried to stand up, but his legs seemed to be strapped to the bed. His eyes kept going to the door. The door.

His arms tingled where the IV needles went in.

"Daniel?" the voice asked.

"I'm here because I killed a girl." he said suddenly, suprising himself. "Her name was Amanda Peet. She was seventeen. Used to date my neighbors son."

"Is that true, Daniel? Is that why you're here."

The whirring machine shut off. Daniel closed his eyes, and saw the door. Him being led through the door by two men. Him laying down on the table. He remember the vial. The blue vial.

"No." He told the voice. "I killed her, but that’s not why. That’s not why I'm here."

"Why are you here Daniel?"

"I'm here for you to experiment on. I'm a guinea pig. A lab rat."

"Very good, Daniel, you're remembering well now. Do you know why you’re here?”

“I’m here because I killed Amanda Peet, and you came and told me that you wanted to use me, test things on me, and if I survived I would be a free man.”

“That’s right, Daniel. And did you survive?”

He closed his eyes again, saw the blue vial, the needle. They had to stick in in his chest, in his heart. It hurt. It hurt badly. He remember his body straining, he rememberd the men holding him down and he remembered...

“No. I didn’t survive. I died. But you brought me back. You keep bringing me back. You wont let me be dead.”

Daniel cried, sobbed until his chest hurt. Everyone would laugh at him if they knew how he cried, but they would never know. They wouldn’t know because he was dead. Over and over again he was dead.

“Did it hurt Dainel?”

“Yes.” He said. It hurt quite badly. But the blue one was better. Not as bad as the green one.”

“Good, Daniel. Good.”

The door hissed open and two men came in. One of them carried a case as white as the room. The case had a bio-hazard symbol on it.

“Do I get to go home now?” Daniel asked, knowing the answer already.

“No Daniel. Not yet. Not this time. But soon, Daniel. Soon. Just as soon as we get it right. The regeneration formula is imperfect yet. But we have to make a painless death to keep those human rights monkeys off our backs, or everyone will know something is not right at the executions. When you die a painless death and live again, then you can go home, Daniel.”

One of the men pushed Daniel down, and he lay back willingly, as the other man prepared the syringe. The vial was red this time.

He knew he would never go home. He knew that if it didn’t hurt, that if he died a painless death and came back, they wouldn’t let him go home, they would use him as a soldier, like the rest of them, or they would keep him in the lab and make him be a monkey in another test.

As the needle slid into his arm he prayed that it would hurt very badly, and that he would stay dead this time.