Noner's Notebook

Distress Signals

2010-05-21T17:08:00.001-04:00

This is what I'm currently working on. Maybe one day I'll actually finish somthing instead of having a billion works in progress...

-----

It was in there.

She felt it when she woke up, before she even opened her eyes.

It was always there anymore, hibernating. Sometimes she felt it in her stomach, sometimes in her chest. It was heavy when it was asleep. A weight she had to breath through.

Today it moved. It wasn’t awake, at least not fully. It would be soon though, awake and gnawing, clawing, twisting. It would burn when it was awake, as it moved up from her stomach, up from her chest, forcing its head up her throat, out of her mouth.

It would happen soon, and she did not feel strong enough anymore to swallow it back down again. This time she thought it might actually escape.

This time she thought she might actually let it.

Not now though, because somewhere in the house a baby was crying. Her baby. Her big boy.

He was always crying. It wasn’t what she thought it would be, motherhood. It was louder, wetter, harder.

She hadn’t meant to get pregnant. She had been happy about i because she thought she should be happy about it. They had been married four years now, and he wanted a baby. Her friends said she should want a baby. She didn’t have a career so she needed a baby. Child birth would define her as a woman.

So she told everyone she was pregnant and she celebrated it and he had come screaming into the world, and hadn’t quit screaming since.

She thought it would come naturally, being a mother. It was what women had been created to do after all. Right up there with cleaning the house and spreading their legs when it was called for. Motherhood was demanded of women by nature and by society, so it would have come naturally.

It was hard.

Whenever possible she ignored the fact that her body had produced this tiny alien thing that she was supposed to not only know how to care for but also want to care for. She missed their life before. She missed her own life before most of all.

And inside her chest it moved again as her door opened, the crying got louder and her husband said, “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” then he and their child diminished down the hall again and she took a deep breath and tried to pull herself out of bed.

I don't have a copy of this one.

2010-03-27T14:28:00.001-04:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

NaNo Novel thus far

2009-11-15T17:12:00.001-05:00

Current wordcount: 2332

“It stinks in here,” Ricky said.

“Smells like an old empty shack,” Simon said finally turning around to blink at its shadowy interior.

Ricky knew the smell of old buildings and had to disagree that this was the same smell.

It reminded him of the smell of animals, and of sickness. Like the way the dog house had smelled when the puppies all caught distemper and died.

Maybe some animal had been sick in the shack. There was a large pile of pine needles and leaves in one corner. Something like a raccoon or an old possum might have curled up there to die.

Or maybe even something bigger, like a stray dog or even a coyote.

He thought about digging around in the pile for a skull or any bones but decided not to. It did not smell like dead things, but he would hate to stick his hands in the pile and into something fresh dead.

“This place is neat!” Simon said. “I bet nobody knows its here anymore. It’d make a neat clubhouse.”

“Did you know it was here,” Ricky asked. “Is this where you were heade3d today?”

“No. Never seen the place before.”

“How come? Don’t’ you come hunting out here all the time?”

Simon walked over to the pile of debris in the corner and kicked some of it around. A moth fluttered out of the mess, but nothing dead was revealed.

“Never been this far before,” he admitted. “I think I got turned around somewhere. I usually come out in the Deacon’s pecan grove.”

“You mean we’re lost!” The youner brother had yelped. Suddenly he felt like crying and really wished he had stayed home.

Neither boy had spoken again until the rain let up and they started walking again.

Now they stopped to rest under a large tree, night was coming on and Ricky felt like crying again.

“Don’t start that,” Simon said, “Its not like we’re lost in a jungle or something. All we’ve gotta do is keep walking and sooner or later we’re going to come out in somebodys cow pasture or soybean field.”

“But we’ve already been walking all day and haven’t come out anywhere yet!”

Ricky sat down in the wet pine straw at the base of the tree they were resting under. His bottom lip began to tremble. He didn’t want to cry. Only babies cried and he didn’t want Simon to call him a baby, but suddenly he just coudln’t handle it anymore.

He begain to wail.

“We’re lost and I’m wet and I’m hungry and I’m thirsty and its getting dark and I’m getting cold. I.... want.... to.... go.... HOME!”

“Get up and quit crying like a big baby.” Simon said. “We’ll get home, we’re not lost forever. Tomorrow we’ll just spend all day walking back the way we came today and we’ll be home again. You’ll see.”

“Tomorrow? What about tonight.”

“Its getting dark. If we keep walking in the dark we really will get lost. So tonight we’re going to go back and stay in that shack.”

“It stinks.”

“But its dry isn’t it? And warmer than sleeping out here on the wet ground.”

Still sniffing and very unhappy, Ricky followed his brother back to the shack. He curled up in a corner far from the smelly pile of leaves and fell asleep with his tummy growling for want of supper.

NaNo '09 Days 5 and 6

2009-11-07T12:16:00.001-05:00

NaNo Update: Day 5 = 363 words Day 6=444 Total so far: 1765 I can't get any writing done because of my husband and I'm about ready to give up.

--

Of course she could not think of any reasonable reason for someone to be in her house, uninvited. Strangers did not usually break in just to sit and rock in old rocking chairs. Strangers broke in to steal things.

Maybe it was not a stranger at all. Maybe someone she knew had dropped by for a visit in the middle of the night.

Sure, she thought, and maybe its Nannie herself down there, sitting alone in her rocker waiting on me to come down. I will sit on her knee like a child and she will sing me lullabyes just like old times.

Appealing yet unlikely.

Below her the old rocking chair gave another hushed squeak, then groaned in protest.

Whoever had been sitting down there had just stood up. Her time to flee was running out. She tried to make her legs unfreeze so she could retreat upstairs, but they did not want to obey her.

She strained to hear footsteps, to hear if her visitor were coming closer or leaving but her carpets swallowed whatever sound might have been made.

Then she saw him. A black silhouette at the bottom of the stairs. A man shaped shadow standing with its arms by its sides, chin tilted up, looking towards her.

Did he see her?

She thought for a moment that the deeper shadows of the stairwell might keep her invisible if she could stay motionless.

Then he spoke.

“Why are you afraid of me?”

So much for him not seeing me, she thought.

She puffed out her chest and tried to make herself feel braver than she really was.

“Who are you?” she called down. “Why are you in my house?”

The man shadow took a step up the stairs towards her.

“I can smell your fear.”

“I’ve already called the police.” she lied. “They are on their way. You better get out of here.”

The man shadow moved up another step, then another. He could almost reach out and touch her. Still, she stayed frozen on the stairs.

“You smell like a trapped animal. A dainty little fox in a great big bear trap, about to chew off her own leg to escape.”

Suddenly the power was back on. She kept a dim light by the stairs so she wouldn’t break her neck in the night, but even its slim light was almost blinding.

The man below her seemed almost to still be a shadow. He was dressed in black pants and a shirt with long black sleeves. His hair was black too, and his skin a dark tan.

She could not make out the features of his face. Her eyes were drawn down to the one bright spot on his body. Below his upturned chin a clerical collar seemed to glow bright white.

He did not advance another step upwards, but reached one hand towards her.

“Why are you afraid of me?” he asked again.

Then he faded away.

This time Molly did come awake slowly, morning light softly lifting her lids.

Odd dream, she thought briefly before tucking it away in the back of her mind.

****

The forest dripped with moisture from the recent rain. Drops fell from leaf to leaf, causing tyhe greenery to talk to itself in wet whispers.

It was near dusk, the sun falling low, already unseen behind a curtain of clouds. Two boys moved among the bushes, trying to stay as dry as possible.

“I can’t believe you got us lost,”the smaller of the two boys complained. “Lost and rained on.”

“Hey!” the bigger boy defended himself, “I didn’t make it rain. Rain just, you know, happens!”

“But you DID get us lost,” the smaller boy reminded him.

“You didn’t HAVE to come, Ricky. I was gonna make you stay home, but then you would have just tattled on me.”

“Would not!”

Early that morning he had caught Simon headed towards the woods. He was wearing his hunting clothes, camouflage so old it was almost all faded to grey, and he had his bow with him.

Ricky, who was doomed to a day full of monotony, saw his chance.

“Where we going,” he had asked his older brother.

“Nowhere,” Simon had mumbled. “Just gonna shoot at some squirrels. Go back to the house.”

“Awwwww, Simon,” Ricky had whined. And he really had not planned to tattle, but Simon had quickly changed his mind anyway.

“Never mind, you can come. But you’ve gotta do what I say and be quiet.”

Ricky adored his older brother and was overjoyed to be invited on the hunt.

Except Simon did not seem to really be hunting anything. They just kept walking deeper and deeper into the woods. The squirrels they were supposed to be hunting scampered overhead and alongside them, unmolested by Simon or his arrows.

Ricky, who had hardly ever been deep enough in the woods to lose sight of their house, was lost quickly. Positive that his older brother knew where they were, and how to get them home again, he never worried.

Then it had started raining.

Neither boy had come prepared for a downpour, and soon both were soaked. There was nothing they could do but trudge along.

Ricky had stayed quiet just like Simon had told him, until he saw the shack.

“There’s a house, Simon,” he had yelled and ran ahead of his brother for the first time, into the dryness offered by the old building.

They had huddled in the door way for a while, watching the rain come down. Ricky had been the first to turn around and go deeper in the shack.

“What is this place, Simon?” He asked, but Simon hadn’t answered.

The shack only had the door way they had come in. There were two windows, neither with glass in them. Rough wooden shelves had been nailed around the walls. A bird had nested on one of them, the rest were empty.

Day 4

2009-11-05T15:47:00.002-05:00

NANO UPDATE: Day 3 count = 0. Day 4 count = 182 Total = 928

Of course she could not think of any reasonable reason for someone to be in her house, uninvited. Strangers did not usually break in just to sit and rock in old rocking chairs. Strangers broke in to steal things.

Maybe it was not a stranger at all. Maybe someone she knew had dropped by for a visit in the middle of the night.

Sure, she thought, and maybe its Nannie herself down there, sitting alone in her rocker waiting on me to come down. I will sit on her knee like a child and she will sing me lullabyes just like old times.

Appealing yet unlikely.

Below her the old rocking chair gave another hushed squeak, then groaned in protest.

Whoever had been sitting down there had just stood up. Her time to flee was running out. She tried to make her legs unfreeze so she could retreat upstairs, but they did not want to obey her.

She strained to hear footsteps, to hear if her visitor were coming closer or leaving but her carpets swallowed whatever sound might have been made.

NaNo '09 - Day 2

2009-11-03T17:50:00.001-05:00

Day 2 Word Count:354
Total Word Count: 776
I'm sooooo far behind

--

Day 2's Writing:

A soft creak, like a tread on a stair, only she was on the stairs all alone.

Only one other thing in her house creaked like that.

Downstairs, sitting in front of the same big picture window that was letting in the moon light, was a wooden rocking chair. Old, but not old enough to be an antique, it had belonged to her grandmother.

As a child she had spent hours sitting in her Nannie’s lap while the old woman rocked and sang soft lullabies. The songs were always accompanied by the chair, whose left rocker had a squeak.

It was a sound she would know anywhere. She was willing to bet she could even pick it out of a room full of other squeaky rockers.

Now, in the unknown hours of the night, in her powerless house, someone was sitting in her Nannie’s rocker. Whoever it was was not rocking, just sitting, waiting. Only a tiny shift of their body and an old rockers squeak told her anyone was there.

Nervously she chewed her bottom lip, unsure what to do.

Her cell phone, she was sure now, was downstairs on the table beside her computer. She could go for it, call for help.

But the old rocking chair, and whoever sat in it, would be facing the stairs. She would not get down without being seen and would not be able to call for help in time.

She could go back upstairs as quietly as possible and barricade herself in the bedroom. The power would be back on eventually and she could call for help from the land line then.

Unless they came up after her. Nothing in her house was heavy enough to hold a door forever.

Neither option was very appealing.

That was all assuming whoever sat in her favorite chair downstairs meant her harm at all.

She did not know how long the power had been out. She did not know how long the person had been sitting downstairs. Maybe they did not even know she was here at all. Maybe some other reason had brought them into her house.

NaNoWriMo '09 - day one

2009-11-02T07:48:00.001-05:00

“Why are you afraid of me?”

Sleep did not leave her in slowly shed layers as it usually did. She woke suddenly and fully, eyes flying open to a still, dark room. Dream fragments danced away from her, shattered by her sudden waking.

She blinked at the darkness around her. It was still night then, or early morning. The sun was not up yet. Dark, but too dark. No light shine came in her windows from street lamps outside. There was no minute red glow from her alarm clock’s face.

The power was out on her street again. Probably the whole neighborhood.

The only reliable thing about her power company was its unrealibility.

Groaning, she reached out in the dark and groped on her bed side table for her cell phone. She would have to call in the outage, then sit around in the dark waiting on them to fix it.

If they ever did.

Meanwhile, by the time they restored her service it would probably be time to get up anyway.

Why did these things always happen on work nights, she wondered, then I could just sleep through it. And where was that phone?

Probing blindly in the dark her fingers had encountered the useless alarm clock, her glass of water, and the spine of the novel she had been reading before bed.

No phone to be found.

Downstairs then.

Silently she cursed having never brought a flashlight upstairs, or even some candles. Even a scented aroma therapy candle would be better than the darkness offered by the center of the house.

If I don’t kill myself going down, she thought, it will be a mirical.

She paused briefly at the top of the stairs. A thin grey light filtered in from the large picture window. Moonlight, she realized.

Something so rarely seen in the city. Normally its white light was overshadowed by the harsher yellow lights of the street lamps and dozens of homes and businesses burning their thousands of electric bulbs.

Natures flashlight, she thought, and started down.

Halfway to the bottom she froze with one foot on a step and one foot hovering in mid air. Her right hand gripped the railing tightly.

Something was wrong in the house.

It is just quiet, she told herself. You are just hearing the night noises.

Still she did not move, just strained to hear what she thought she had heard.

Nothing.

She was about to start down when she heard it again, and knew what it was she was hearing.

NaNoWriMo Kickoff

2009-11-01T10:14:00.001-05:00

Its November 1. NaNo is officially a go. And I semi-officially have an idea now.

I told my husband, "I know, I'll write about a priest who is actually a werewolf. That's never been done, right?"

He said he thought it sounded familliar, and I started laughing.

See, Stephen King's "Cycle of the Werewolf" and thus the movie "Silver Bullet" was about a priest who was a werewolf.

Well, so far I know my novel will involve a priest and a werewolf and a woman, but I have no idea how they will all connect and I still don't have a title.

PS....I'm also Trying to do NaBloPoMo this month. Call me crazy.

NaNoWriMo 2009

2009-10-30T20:55:00.001-04:00

Here it is again. November.

Every year I look forward to November. I look forward to NaNoWriMo.

For those who have never heard of it, NaNoWriMo is the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel, from scratch, in a month.

I've participated every year since 2004. I've never reached the finish line, but every year I go a little further. One year I'll make it. Maybe.

Meanwhile, this year I'm planning on doing it again. Despite the fact that not only is it holiday shopping season, not only is work killing me, not only do I not have any time to write, but I'm due to have a baby on Nov. 20th, which means I can pop at any point between now and then, and I'll be sleep deprived and full of new-mommy-ness.

I'm nothing if not committed. And might end up BEING commited.

Oh, and did I mention I don't have an idea. Not one single solitary idea. No plot bunnies bouncing around in my head.

I don't even have a title picked out!

So.....

Anybody got a title I can borrow?

From the Sky

2009-10-08T21:51:00.001-04:00

From the Genre Shorties prompt: It rained today but it wasn't raining drops of water. What was it that was falling from the sky?

She sat in the stall farthest from the entrance, with her feet up against the door.

They hadn’t figured out doors yet. It had only started raining that morning, and they were still becoming whatever they were going to become.

The yellow-green stuff that fell like rain, had gathered in puddles in the yard. Before she had retreated to the bathroom she had looked out and saw some of them down on all fours, drinking from those puddles.

She could hear them as they shuffled against the sides of the building.

It was going to be a long night.

Surprises

2009-09-23T22:14:00.002-04:00

Daily Writing Practice
Prompt: Write about a time someone surprised you.
From: "A Writer's Book of Days"

--

The world is full of places, small dark and secretive, where surprises might hide. There are deep closets with squeaky doors that wont stay closed, and dark under-beds where dust bunnies breed.

With each place of hidden surprise comes a thing to deliver that surprise. An empty pocket of a stored winter coat might hold a folded five dollar bill. The other side of the corner at the end of a long hall might just hide the little brother who wil jump out and yell "Boo!"

The most surprising of surprises however are usually not even in the small dark and secretive places of hiden surprise. The biggest surprises have often been right with you the whole time, pretenidng not to be surprises at all.

Virvinia was threated to such a surprise one morning when her cat decided to talk to her.

She ws in the bed, trying hard to stay there until her mother came to get her. She was always the first to rise on a Saturday and both parents often scolded her for waking them too early.

She was determined to avoid another such scolding this morning.

The cat was sitting on the windowsill, washing its whiskers.

It was a fluffy white cat and had a great many whiskers, which it spent much time washing. Virginia was trying to decided if it was the dirtiest or the cleanest cat in the world. As much as it washed it surely had to be one of the two.

Watching a cat wash its whiskers wasn't terribly thrilling, and she was just about to get out of bed and risk another scolding when it stopped washing long enough to say, "The barn cats say the rats want to speak with you."

"Rats can't talk," Virginia told the cat. "They are vermin."

Right then she was so surprised she had forgotten to be surprised at all.

"Most rodents are vermin," the cat agreed. "But you have rodent royalty in your barn. You really should speak with them."

With that the cat leapt down from the windowsill and padded out of the room.

"How rude," Virginia said to herself. "He didn't even say goodbye."

It wasn't until later, when her father ungraciously booted the cat out of the kitchen for meal time that she remember that she should be surprised that the cat had spoken at all.

Short Story Writing Contest: "Rain Stories"

2009-09-16T22:04:00.000-04:00

http://www.bookrix.com

Short Story Writing Contest: "Rain Stories"

We are proud to present the 3rd writing contest for English books: September 15th 2009 to October 15th 2009

Summer is about to end? Autumn is knocking at the door? Stormy weather and rain predicted? It is time to read a book or even write one. Take advantage of the unpleasant rainy weather and enter the latest BookRix Short Story Writing Contest for free: Tell us your rain story, turn your wordsmith powers into positive cashflow and fame. Write a story that has anything to do with rain, or Mr. Rain, or a dog named Rain, whatever.

Key Facts:

Anyone registered at our BookRix.com website can join the contest (except citizens of Germany, Austria and Switzerland).
Authors and readers can enter the competition for free and win cash money.
Enter a book about rain that you have already written and published or write a new rain story.

Prizes for authors:

First Prize: $1000
Second Prize: $500
Third Prize: $300

Prizes for readers:

10 Amazon vouchers each worth $20 will be raffled for free among all readers taking part in the voting process.

more information

Conditions of Entry

Space Madness

2009-06-04T11:24:00.001-04:00

The cosmonaut opened his eyes to the glowing room and whispered, “How long?”

Instead of telling him how many decades had passed in cryogenic darkness the computer said, “June is here this morning, and the sun is shining hot.”

Of his worries before launch, it had never been a fear that the computer would suffer space madness before he woke.

“What year is it?” he asked, trying for a more direct approach.

A siren alarmed with orange lights.

“You’ve said the magic word!”

He decided to go back into cryo before the computer dumped green pudding over his head, or something.

----

This was a combination for this weeks Titled Sentences Challengs and Genre Shorties.

The fun part was fining a way to get it from its origional 148 words down to 100 or fewer.

Worth 1000 Weekend

2009-03-20T02:00:00.001-04:00

Image by Hamed Saber

RULES
1. Look at the picture about.
2. Write about the picture above.
3. Post your writing to your blog or at The Written Word
4. Please only leave a link in the Mr. Linky IF YOU HAVE POSTED A RESPONSE ON YOUR BLOG.

Worth 1000 Weekend

2009-03-13T02:00:00.000-04:00

Image by: *honest*

RULES

1. Look at the picture about.
2. Write about the picture above.
3. Post your writing to your blog or at The Written Word
*If you post to your blog, feel free to share a link

Script Frenzy?

2009-03-12T21:36:00.002-04:00

Having never before written a script of any kind, and having never mangaed to complete one single nano novel, am I nuts for thinking about attempting Script Frenzy?

Of course I have to get an idea.

Well, I kind of HAVE an idea, which will be about the same quality as some of the B rated horror/sci-movies like "Ice Spiders" or "Snakes on a Train" or other movies you might see on the Sci-Fi channel at some point.

Of course I'm open to ideas.

PLEASE give me ideas. -grin-

Worth 1000 Weekend

2009-03-06T02:00:00.000-05:00

Image by: Mikelo

RULES
1. Look at the picture about.
2. Write about the picture above.
3. Post your writing to your blog or at The Written Word
*If you post to your blog, feel free to share a link

2009-02-27T02:00:00.000-05:00

By: stephcarter

RULES
1. Look at the picture about.
2. Write about the picture above.
3. Post your writing to your blog or at The Written Word
*If you post to your blog, feel free to share a link

Worth 1000 Weekend

2009-02-20T02:05:00.000-05:00

Image by Raindog

RULES
1. Look at the picture about.
2. Write about the picture above.
3. Post your writing to your blog or at The Written Word
*If you post to your blog, feel free to share a link

Post-it

2009-02-18T13:41:00.000-05:00

Inspired by a combination of THIS prompt from my blog, and this weeks prompt at A Thousand Words

--

It started with an albino pigeon.

Miranda had never seen an albino bird before, and she just had to take a picture of it.

Apparently the young man on the red bike had never seen an albino bird either, because he was looking at it also, instead of where he was going. He never saw her before he ran into her.

He never saw her after he ran into her either, hopping back on his red bike and pedaling away furiously fast, as the crowd started congregating around the downed woman.

She was ministered to by strangers.

“Should we call an ambulance?” One person asked. “Do you want to go to the infirmary?” another one chimed in.

She let someone help her to her feet, checked herself over. Bruised thigh, bruised ass, bruised ego, but no blood, no breaks.

She assured everyone she was okay. The crowd, having gathered at the prospect of crushed skulls and leaking brain matter, disappeared quicker than it had formed.

The albino pigeon was gone too, only one fluffy feather dancing on an unseen air current left of its oddness. “I wonder if the picture took,” she thought, following the feathers lazy dance until it landed silently beside a bit of crushed equipment that looked a lot like her.....

“That freak!” She screamed, realizing that the crushed machine she was looking at had at one time been her blackberry.

Life, as she knew it, was over.

“It’s not that bad,” Tao assured her. Tao was her best friend, her roomate, and the only anti-cell phone Miranda she had never met.

“Not that bad!” she wailed. “My whole life was in there. My photos. My datebook. My phone numbers! That guy I met that that party on Saturday? His number was in my phone! What am I going to do if I need to write down someone’s number?”

Sighing, Tao tossed a yellow cube of paper at her. “Use post-its.” she said.

And thus, through a white bird, a red bike and a good friend, her sticky yellow nightmare began.

Worth 1000 Weekend

2009-02-15T12:42:00.000-05:00

RULES
1. Look at the picture about.
2. Write about the picture above.
3. Post your writing to your blog or at The Written Word
*If you post to your blog, feel free to share a link

Btt #1

2009-02-12T11:43:00.000-05:00

Do you read any author’s blogs? If so, are you looking for information on their next project? On the author personally? Something else?

I've never really found a blog by my favorite authors. I've never really LOOKED for one though. I've found some author websites (Stephen King, Dean Koontz). News sections no blogs to speak of.

First Lines To Novels We Won't Ever Finish Writing

2009-01-30T23:30:00.000-05:00

I have nothing to write. I share with you instead:

First Lines To Novels We Won't Ever Finish Writing
Or might if only we had more hours in the day...

#01
With a lilt in his step and a song in his heart, Zachary strolled onto campus eager to start his first accounting class of the semester.

#02 Timothy was a dragon-slayer at heart. He could feel his intensity boiling his blood. He glanced down at the twelve-sided die. "You have taunted me for the last time," he muttered under his breath.
("One day, one day...")

#03
James had always wanted to fly.

#04
Beth was bored with her life. She figured the only thing possibly more boring than her life would be reading a book about it.

#05
Milton had never even dreamed of being a mushroom farmer until the day a mysterious stranger arrived in his village.

#06
"Actually, no, I'd rather stay here in the nursery," Wendy said to Peter.

("Well, fine then. Here's your thimble back.")

#07
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be ready to mingle!

("Another shot of tequila, Mr. Darcy?")

#08
It was the best of times. No, seriously, the best. The best ever.

(A Tale of Two Valley Suburbs)

#09
Call me Bob.

(Ok, Bob.)

#10
Even though he was phenomenally wealthy, had a beautiful wife and two children, and had successfully cured all forms of cancer, Dr. Tucker couldn't help but feel like there was more to life.

The Gonk

2008-11-19T19:48:00.001-05:00

The following was a quickie written for the yahoo group Lucid Lit Lines

The prompt was: Take three songs titles and use them in one piece.

-----

Friday night, they were all at The Gonk as they always were. Not because it was a particularly great place to be, but because it was the only place they had in town to go.

"So, what the hell is a Gonk anyway? It sounds dirty. Or stupid. Dirty and stupid, like boys. Boys are stupid."

Preston rolled his eyes, but otherwise ignored the jab.

"Cassie, I think you've had enough to drink. Here, here, hold on to this for me okay?"

Devin propped her friend up against the nearest stable object, which turned out to be a pinball machine. The machine blinked and whirred and gonged, and Cassie lay her head against the side of it, closing her eyes.

"That was a song, right?" Brittany asked. She blew a huge pink bubble, then popped it in a series of snaps and cracks that Devin had never manged to accomplish. "Like, you know, at the end of that one movie with the zombies. It was creepy fun-house music, like.
Carnival music you know?"

Preston reached over and yanked on Brittany's blond ponytail.

"No," he said. "We DON'T know. Nobody ever knows, LIKE, anything you're talking about."

"Guys," Cassie moaned from her spot against the pinball machine. I don't feel so good."

"RED LIGHT INDICATES THE DOORS ARE SECURED!" the machine proclaimed as
Preston dropped in his quarter and stared banging the paddles.

"You remember that thing that looked like a walking trash can in the Star Wars movie? THAT is a gonk. A gonk droid."

"So," Devin said, "They named this place after a walking trash can?"

"Eww...." Brittany offered, before rattling off another round of bubble pops.

"Preston," Cassie said from a little lower down the side of the pin-ball machine "I think you are a Gonk. No, Pres, really, you are THE gonk!"

Someone came up to them, stepping between Cassie, now on the floor, and Brittany, who had another huge bubble blown covering the lower half of her face. His hair was slicked back, and looked wet. His face was plastered with a huge grin more suited for a car salesman as
he approaced Brittany.

"I bet you look good on the dance floor," he said.

"Guys," Cassie said, before bending forward and letting out a stream pizza colored spew all over the pseudo salesman's shoes.

His smile melted quickly, Brittany's bubble popped in one loud bang instead of a million tiny ones. Devin squealed and leaped backwards, managing to avoid the splash zone.

"Scummy," Cassie said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

--

Song titles in this piece:

The Gonk (from old dawn of the dead soundtrack end title) no lyics
Red Light Indicates the doors are secured by the artic monkeys
Lyrics:http://snipurl.com/5qead
I Bet You Look Good On the Dance Floor by the artic monkeys lyrics:
http://snipurl.com/5qebf [www_lyricstop_com]
Scummy by the Artic Monkeys lyrics: http://snipurl.com/5qe9j

I might be a NaNoWriMo dropout

2008-11-09T18:37:00.000-05:00

So, my NaNoWriMo novel decided it didn't want to be a teen drama story but wanted to be more about betrayl and murder.

I'm cool with that.

But I've had NO time to write it. I've got a word count right now of 3022. Thats all.

All my free time has been filled up by the list of house painting related chores the hubby has been leaving me.

If I do still keep plugging on, I doubt I'm going to make it anywhere near the word count.

NaNo Day 1

2008-11-01T23:42:00.000-04:00

I'm off to a slow start, thinking about skipping ahead and working on some future chapters, but the story as it stands right now is at 904 words.

Chapter One
Halloween and Swing sets

Fall. Autumn. Halloween. Pumpkins carved into jack o lanterns, and leaves raked up into big piles to be jumped. Later they would go trick or treating. After that they were going to build a bon-fire and roast hot dogs and make s’mores.

Halloween was her favorite holiday, because she got to be whoever she felt like being. Sometimes they would get to go home for her to change costumes.

Bryant did not like having to go home though, so they might not get to do it anymore. He said that having to go home for a costume change took away from candy getting time and that just was not acceptable.

All that was later though. Right then she was trying to get a kitten to quit wiggling so she could dress it up in her doll’s witch costume.

She was also watching the movers take things out of the big truck across the street.

Ms. Callabra used to live over there.

Ms. Callabra had a small white dog that barked a lot. The dogs name was Muffy, and Ms. Callabra boiled chicken to feed her. The house always smelled like boiled chicken, and Muffy was always barking.

Sari had not liked Muffy very much, but she had like Ms. Callabra. She was a little woman who always wore a blue dress and had a lot of big hats. Sometimes she would go over and play dress up with Ms. Callabra’s big hats. Her favorite one was blue, like Ms. Callabra’s favorite dress, and it had a big purple bird on the front of it, with big purple feathers on the back of it. It looked that the birds tail was poking out of the back of the hat, and it always made her smile when Ms. Callabra wore that one.

But one day the ambulance had come and taken Ms. Callabra away. Mommy had told her that Ms. Callabra had been taking Muffy outside, and had fallen down the steps.

Sari had fallen down the steps before, and it had just skinned her knees. Mommy had put a scooby doo band-aid on the scrapes and it had been all better. She offered to take Ms. Callabra one of her band-aids.

Ms. Callabra had never come home. The dog pound had come and taken Muffy away, and the house selling people had come and put a big sign in front of the house.

FOR SALE, meant that Ms. Callabra was not going to be coming home again and that had made her sad for a little while.

Eventually the house selling people had come and taken away the sign, and now the big truck was there, moving different things into the house that used to be Ms. Callabra’s house.

Sari was very interested in the things coming out of the truck. Most of them were boxes of stuff, so she could not really tell what they were. There was some furniture too, some of it looked fun. Not like Ms. Callabra’s old brown sofa.

She was looking for things that might mean the family moving in had a kid. She hoped the new neighbors did have a kid. A little girl, her age.

She did not really see anything that would mean a kid though. Just brown boxes and furniture.

She finally got the witch dress buttoned up the kittens back, and the witch hat on its head, the elastic strap keeping it in place.

“There,” she said, sitting the kitten down. “Now you are a little witch. You have to go knock on all the cats doors tonight and say, ‘trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat.’ If you do that then all the kitty people will give you candy.”

Sari tilted her head to the side, her short brown hair falling over into her face and her forehead wrinkled in furious childhood concentration as she thought.

“No,” she told the kitten. “That is not right. Kittens do not get candy because it might make you sick. They will give you mouse tails. You like mouse tails right?”

“MEOW!” The kitten said, then it ran a few steps and shook its head. The witches had twisted sideways, pressing the kittens ear flat to the side and making it look very, very funny.

Sari laughed as the kitten ran away, its black tail waving in distress from the back of the dolly witches dress.

Then the most amazing thing that had happened all day happened right at that moment.

The men who were taking things out of the big truck took out something that meant one hundred percent that there was a kid moving in next door. They brought out a swing set!

Sari had learned a few things in her life, and she knew that grown ups just never did get on swing sets. Even Bryant almost never got on the swing set any more, and he was only just almost grown up.

She loved her swing set. Daddy had built it for her, and it was HUGE. It had a metal slide, and a tree house, and swings and monkey bars. It was the best swing set ever.

She used to have one like the one coming out of the truck next door though. It was all metal, and the side was plastic, and if you swung too high it would tip and tip and even fall over.

Just Around the Corner

2008-10-31T19:53:00.000-04:00

In roughly 4 more hours I'll begin pounding out the first chapter of my NaNo novel.

I've decided to go with the dramatic/teen angsty novel.

I think I'm going with "Suddenly, That Summer" as my working title instead of "Anatomy of a Life"

I'm plot-deficient at this point, but I know its going to follow her from the time her best friend (Gabriel) moves into the neighborhood.

Yep....thats all I've got.

I will share here as it comes out.

Yes/No Questions about Your NaNo Novel

2008-10-23T23:07:00.001-04:00

I stole this from Nichole's Writing Space

As of right now I think I'm going with the Teen Angst novel, so these answers are for Anatomy of Life

Romance? Yep
Adventure? not so much
A fight for power? Sort of
A war? No.
A king? No.
A queen? No
Jealousy? A whole slew of it
Backstabbing? That I’m trying to avoid.
Forbidden love? Yes (well, a lot of people consider it forbidden)
Hatred? a little.
A death? There will be at least one death. Maybe two.
More than 1 death? maybe 2
More than 2? no
More than 3? no
MORE?!?!?!? deffinately not

Paranoid character? Semi
Low self esteem? yes, in the MC
long hair? Yes.
no hair? yep
black hair? Maybe.
centaurs? No.
faeries? No.
dragons? No.
a world other than our world? Maybe (there may be ghosts, or maybe just flashbacks)
other creatures (unnamed)? No.
A mystery? no
More than 5 subplots? I don’t think I can managed more than 1 subplot
Yummy food? Food, but its not central
gross food? just bad cooking
Magic? No.
A plot point where the background music would give you chills down your spine? no.
blackouts? yes.
omnipotent force? (gods, fate, etc.) No.
A really annoying character that it nearly killed you to NOT kill him/her? No.
A really annoying character that you killed :P? No.
A character that you killed or will kill in the future? No.
Really cool names? (not commonly used, i.e. Eragorn) Um...there will be a Gabriel, an Antony, a Summer. Don't think they are TOO unusual, but I really like Gabriel.
Really nice people? Yes.
Really cool people? Yes.
A plot point thats REALLY confusing but is understandable in the end? Not so much

Thursday Thirteen

2008-10-23T11:52:00.000-04:00

Thirteen Things about NaNoWriMo

1. NaNoWriMo means National Novel Writing Month
2. Since it takes place in November, before I started doing it, I used to think it meant National Novemeber Writing Month
3. NaNoWriMo challenges you to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.
4. To accomplish that you must write a minimum of 1667 words a day.
5. Writing 1667 words a day is harder than it sounds like it would be.
6. I've participated in NaNoWriMo for several years.
7. I've never reached the goal.
8. There is a forums section at the nanowrimo web page. I spend too much time lurking and reading the forums instead of writing.
9. One of the most popular forum is the Dares Thread.
10. I have 2 ideas for novels this year. The first one is about a winged cat and inspired by The Last Flight of Bastet.
11. The second one is called "Anatomy of a Life" and is a teen drama.
12. I don't know which one I'd rather write. HELP ME!
13. My name on NaNoWriMo is Nonersays if you wanna be writing buddies.

NaNo Uh-Oh

2008-10-01T20:29:00.000-04:00

Today, being the 1st of October, is the day that NaNoWriMo starts winding up. The challenge doesn't start until November, but the excitement starts long before that.

When I tried to log in today, NaNo told me my account didn't exist. When I tried to get them to re-send my password in case it was wrong they said my e-mail wasn't in their system. (I know it is cause I've been getting e-mail from them for all the years I've participated)

I tried to make a new account but it told me it would be "pending review."

Have I been kicked off NaNo? Maybe not.

I tried to go to the NaNoWriMo web page just gone, and got this nifty message:

In the wee hours of October 1, after running like a brave champion, one of our two database servers, Lekempti, had what looks to be a very grave hardware failure.

Lekempti is off-line now, and is getting new android guts installed.

In the meantime, we're working on installing back-ups and relaunching the site with a single, smaller server, the adorable Djimmah.

Until we get Lekempti back online, things will be pokey. We apologize for the inconvenience, and look forward to the resumption of awesomeness soon.

In the meantime, we invite you to browse the exciting NaNoWriMo donor goodies and ogle the devilishly good-looking models in the NaNoWriMo store.

Your friends,

The NaNoWriMo staff

Alas...we've had a NaNo Uh-oh.

Good thing they launch the site a month early, huh.

Apples and Apples

2008-09-20T19:33:00.000-04:00

Picture from Just Creative Design

"When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. " --Charles Evans Hughes

"Its like apples and oranges."

"More like Apples and apples. Comparing apples to oranges is like comparing humans to apes. They're both fruits, we're both mammals, and that's where the similarity ends. But, when you compare, say, a green apple to a red one, that's more like comparing people to people."

"So, which one of us is the green apple and wich one of us is the red one."

"Oh, YOU are definitely the red one. You're all bright and fiery and everyone knows you. I'm like the green one. Some people don't even know there are green apples!"

"So, what is our baby going to be? A fuji?"

"Think of what would happen if you took one green apple and one red one and cut them down the middle. Then you took a staple gun and stapled one green half to one red half. That would be our child."

"Oh, great, I'm giving birth to Frankenapple!"

The Only 13 Writing Rules You’ll Ever Need

2008-09-20T00:14:00.001-04:00

I found this list online and had to share:

1. If you write every day, you get better at writing every day.
2. If its boring to you, its boring to your reader.
3. Get a writing routine and stick with it.
4. Poetry does NOT have to rhyme. Poetry does NOT have to rhyme.
5. Resist stereotypes, in real live and in your writing.
6. Writer read. Writers read a lot. Writers read all the time.
7. Make lists of your favorite words and books and places and things.
8. Ther doesn’t always have to be a moral to the story.
9. Always bring your notebook. Always bring a spare pen.
10. Go for walks. Dance. Pull weeds. Do the dishes. Write about it.
11. Don’t settle on just one style. Try something new.
12. Learn to tell both sides of the story.
13. Stop reading this list. WRITE SOMETHING.

The Last Flight of Bastet

2008-08-22T21:06:00.000-04:00

> Notes: From prompt "Egypt." from lucid_lit_lines group

"Bastet has wings."

The vet tried to stay calm, act like every third cat she'd seen that
day had wings, but she wasn't fooling me. Cats just don't have wings.
Never did. Never would.

"She didn't have them last week" I told the vet, tugging on the leash
attached to my cat's harness, trying to pull her back down to the
ground. She was intently stalking a housefly that had gotten in.
Stalking in mid-air. The birds didn't stand a chance.

"I'm sorry." She said. "I don't know if I can do a wing removal on a
cat. It might be inhumane. I could clip the feathers though, keep
her from being able to fly."

"That would be nice" I agreed.

Together we managed to pull her down from the ceiling. She pouted
through the process, and pouted more when she tried to lift off and
coudln't. Finally she gave up and set upon grooming herself. She
spread out one wing and began preening its feathers.

"How did this happen, exactly." The vet asked.

"Mummy curse."

"Oh," the vet said, as if mummy curses were as common in her office as
winged cats.

"I have a cousin, works in Egypt, digging in the pyramids and stuff.
He found a gold collar on a kitty statue, said the statue looked like
Bast. He's not supposed to give away stuff, but he hid it in a bunch
of trinkets he bought, nobody knew."

"And now Bast has wings." she finished for me.

"Exactly," I agreed. "Now Bast has wings."

"Sooooo...." she said. "I won't charge you today, but come back when
she needs it."

I agreed, and tucking my newly grounded cat under my arm, started the
walk back home.

Breakfast

2008-08-14T23:05:00.000-04:00

Martha was sitting at the table when I woke up. The newspaper was scattered all around the dining room. The comic lay on the floor by her feet, Garfield grinning his kitty grin up at her as she bent over the crossword.

Despite the early hour she was perfect. Make up applied just so, her auburn hair piled and pinned and teased into an updo worthy of an evening gala. The only flaw was the cigarette she held between the first two fingers of her left hand, while the tapped the pencil against her lips with her right hand.

Seeing me out of the corner of her honey colored eyes she asked, “What is a five letter word for Rose’s beauty?”

I made my way to the pot of coffee she had made and poured myself a healthy dose of it in my favorite coffee mug, as old and chipped as it was it was large. Large was important.

“What’s it start with?”

“B”

I sat down across from her and pushed the sports section of the paper aside so I’d have a place to sit my mug. “Bloom” I told her, reaching across to take a chocolate covered doughnut out of the box she had set in the center of the table.

I ate in silence, staring at her as she worked her way though the word puzzle. She sipped her coffee, nearly white with cream and sugar, from a pink mug that sat on a bright blue saucer. They were not mine.

“Nice coffee set”

“You like?” she beamed. “I found them at a tag sale. From two different sets, the last of their families. They’re perfect together really. Perfect.”

Giving up on the crossword she looked up at me, grinning her most perfect supermodel grin. “So,” she said. “How have you been?”

I couldn’t take it anymore and nearly shouted at her, “What are you doing here, Martha? You can’t just come in here any time you want to. I’m married now. What if Susan had come out here before me?”

“What if?” Martha said, and laughed. I didn’t like the sparkle in those beautiful eyes, then they darkened. “She’s pregnant isn’t she, you fertile little bastard. Well, I’m pregnant too. Twins. Twins, a boy and a girl. Blue and pink and unwanted.”

She set her pink cup down on her blue saucer, and milky tan coffee sloshed out and onto the crossword. Down the hall I heard Susan brushing her teeth.

“Martha, you need to leave. Now.”

“They’re yours,” she said. “You know they are.”

“Leave. Now.”

She stood up calmly, brushed out the wrinkles in her slacks, tugged at the hem of her jacket. She started to say something, then decided against it.

While I stood by the remains of my newspaper she let herself out the side door. I made a mental note to move the hideaway key.

“Who was here,” Susan said as she slumped into the kitchen still wearing her pajamas. Her short brown hair stood up in a million different directions and she had a smear of toothpaste in the corner of her mouth.

“Just somebody from work,” I lied.

“This early,” she asked, eyeing the pink and blue coffee set with a glazed doughnut untouched on the side of the plate.

“Have a doughnut,” I said, changing the subject. She chose one covered in bright sprinkle and tore into it while I poured her a cup of coffee then cleaned up the now soggy newspaper.

Moon Time (working title)

2008-07-24T19:32:00.001-04:00

A snippti from my JulNoWriMo novel.

This is a rough draft. Grammar and spelling have not been corrected. Names are subject to change.

---

Geh stood still in the hallway, trying to remember where everything had been when the light had gone out. In the blackness even the castles heavy furnishings became his enemy.

Something became solid in front of him. Something like a face, almost. Green eyes and purple lips floated, disembodied. Sharp teeth as well, dropping foam and saliva. He could not see the rest of the beast and was sure he did not want to.

Maybe he just had too much imagination. IN the dark the insubstantial fears could become manifest.

However, his night terrors had never before smelled like wild dog and spoiled meat. A nightmare had never before breathed on him or dripped its vicious fluids with soft but audible patters on the floor.

He wanted to run. He NEEDED to run, but where could he run to? He was lost in the dark of this giant castle, and the creature in front of him surely knew every passage and cooridor well. Maybe it could even seen in the dark, as if the candles had not suddenly gone dark.

There was the baby too. She was here, of if not here then the woman who had taken her was, and he would find out where the baby was kept. He had sworn to his grieving mother that he would not fail her as his cowardly father had. He would return the girl child to her waiting arms, or he would not return.

In front of him the greed eyes held steady, the purple lips still surrounding the wet white teeth. Where there were eyes and a mouth there was a head and a head made a suitable target to aim for.

Geh tightened both hands around the end of his sturdy wooden staff.

The staff had seemed like such a strong weapon on the Forrest road, but it seemed no more than a mere walking stick in front of this apparition. He wished for something stronger, sharper.

What he did not have would be of little use to him though. What he did have was his wooden staff and his failing courage. He would have to make them both count.

Slowly, hoping the creature could not see or sense what he was doing, he raised the staff above his head, behind his shoulder. The green eyes followed its upward arc. The beast could see in the Darkness. It would be expecting the attack.

Would it duck and dodge? Would it leap and attack?

He was afraid, possibly more afraid than he had been before in his life. He could feel his heart beating a rapid tattoo, like a rabbit caught in a snare, already aware it would soon die.

His whole world shrank until it was only the size of a face, and filled only with a set of green eyes, a pair of purple lips and those sharp and dripping teeth.

In the dark he barred his own teeth at the beast. Ahead of him the eyes and fangs lowered as the beast prepared to strike. Geh took a deep breath, filled his mind with a memory of his mother and tensed his body to swing. In front of him the eyes and fangs lowered as the beast crouched for its own attack.

“STOP!”

The powerful voice filled the room, coming from nowhere and everywhere. The room filled with a weak yellow light as a woman carrying a lamp decended a set of stairs that Geh did not remember seeing there before.

The beast swung its head to look at the newcomer. In the dim light it was horrid to see. Massive and shaggy it was like a wolf, a bear, a human all in one animal. They eyes and leps set in a humanesque face, separated by a broad wet nose. Its arms and legs were thinck and strong, each hand and foot ending in fire digits. Each finger and toe tipped with thick black claws.

The wole animal was covered in a brown red fur that looked as if it might be soft to hold, silky to touch. He had no urge to reach out for or to hold it.

“Good girl,” the woman on the stairs crooned. “You did well. Go now, find your sisters.”

The beast ducked its head and made a mewling sound, wagging a shaggy tail behind it, then it dropped to four legs and ran into a darkened corridor elsewhere.

“You’ll have to exuce Mandala. We never get company up here and she’s forgotten her manners.”

The woman was tall and slender, her long black hair was streaked with silver and fell in a wild disarray around her shoulders. She wore a simple cotton dress, much like the women in the town below wore. She did not look like someone who lived in a castle and lorded over people with fear.

She must be a servant then, or more likely a slave. Surely no person would work of their own free will in a castle occupied by beasts.

“Of course, she continued, “You can’t be too harsh on HER manners considering your own. It is not exactly polite to come into someone’s home uninvited and brandishing a weapon.”

She turned her eyes, which seemed to glow amber in the candel light, toward his staff, which he still had raised over his shoulder, ready to strike.

He realized and ache had set into his arms and shoulders and his fingers had turned white in their grip.

The woman smiled as he lowered the staff, but as somethign snarled in the shadows nearby he still held it tight in his hand.

The woman frowned.

“Please Miss,” Geh begged as he stepped toward the woman. “You must help me. Your mistres has stolen a child. My sister. You must help me find her. My mother....”

“Hush!” The woman snapped. She holed up her hand and Geh noticed her fingers all seemed to be too long. Her word had been harsh but he thought he could see amusement in her eyes.

He stood silent, hoping that he had not made a mistake and judged this woman wrong. If this woman were not a slave, but was loyal to the lady Aramanth, then all was surely lost to him.

In the silence he thought ht heard a footstep, a sound of claws on stone. Very nearby somethign growled and barked a low coughing bark.

“Him again,” the lady muttered, as if talking to herself and not her visitor. Then she moved quickly. She grabbed Geh by the arm and snatched him foward so quickly he lost his grip on the staff.

It clunked down on the stone floor and he tried to go back for it, but the woman’s grip was strong and unrelenting.

“No time,” she said. “Its so very late and Castle Aramanth isn’t so friendly at night. It gets hungry in the dark. Not all the sisters listen to me as well as Mandala. Not when they are so hungry.

“He’s come out tonight too, and we certainly can’t have you meeting him. No, that wouldn’t do at all.”

They moved quickly as she talked. She drug him up the stairs she had come down. Left up one hall, right down a second hall. More stairs. More and more hallways. He was quickly lost and left wondering how he would find his way out again. How would he find the lady Aramanth and return his sister to their mothers arms?

Finally htey stopped. The woman threw open a door and shoved him into a room. She thrust the lantern into his hands and said, “You’ll stay here tonight. It is a safe room to sleep. IN the mornign we’ll see what to do about your trespass.”

She swept out, swinging the door closed behind her. He heard a latch fall into place and then there was silence.

Sorrow has Wisdom

2008-06-01T22:14:00.000-04:00

I took the journal prompts from todays Inspired to Journal newsletter (http://www.inspiredtojournal.com/daily.prompts.html) and created this. Its rough, but at least I acutally DID write soemthing today. (go me!)

----

Sorrow has wisdom, recorded inside tears
so that memories don’t lie languid.

Eyes are the windows that let in illumination
so the wisdom can grow where planted.

Oh, they swim, how they sang, now they pant in the void
While they implant themselves on tears

Memories can mesmerize, also metamorphosis
one day you find the stagnant jewel has changed.

Sorry has wisdom, thoughtfulness majestic
but sorrow turns memories to joy.

2008-05-24T21:51:00.000-04:00


This Week’s Theme: Conspinkey. Don't look that word up, because it doesn't exist. But you're going to use it in your entry. "He's adorable!" the girl squealed. It took me a little off guard. When I was walking my pet I was used to people squealing, but adorable usually wasn't what they squealed. "What's his name?" "Uh...well..." I coudln't beleive that the one time someone had asked about him instead of ewwing away from him I coudln't remember his name. "Does he have a name yet? Or did you just get him? I had one time. I named her Squiffy. Actually, Messiah Squiffy, but that seems to insult some people." She just kept talking, and I still coudln't remember his name. It wasn't helped by the fact that the girl talking to me had the biggest, brightest blue eyes I'd ever seen before. They would have struck me speachless even if she hadn't been asking me such hard questions as what my pets name was. "Are you okay?" she asked, her forehead crinkling. She was starting to get the look that most people got with they first saw.... "Conspinkey. His name is Conspinkey. He's not my first though. I've had rats for years. I couldn't imagine not having one." The wrinkles of fright disappeared from her face and she said, "I haven't had one since Squiffy. I miss her sometimes." "Would you like to hold Conspinkey?" "Could I?" And thus a relationship was born from a rat named Conspinkey.
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Macabre Parade

2008-04-07T21:02:00.001-04:00

I’m not resisting my disgrace anymore,
falling down and crying on the floor
release this poison, let go of this pain
broken and hopeless, when will I feel whole again?

My body is broken, my mind not far behind
I wonder sometimes if I will make it out this time
The phone is ringing, a sound that I barely hear
Whoever is so far away, I need someone more near

I feel like I’m not human, just a puppet on a string
just moving to the motions of someone else’s dream.
I’ve lost my inner drummer, lost my special muse
I lost myself somewhere back when I came unglued.

Eventually I’ll stand up again, dusting myself off
I’ll drink a cup of coffee, maybe go out for a walk
Get ready for another day, another glass charade
marching to my missing drummer in my own macabre parade.

National Poetry Month Day 5

2008-04-05T22:53:00.000-04:00

From a prompt today I wrote:

When life hands you lemons, consider
the taste of hot chocolate in winter
and in the summer how mother made
the cold cranberry lemonade.

Then for fun I started playing with: http://www.sporadicity.com/flashfun/magneticpoetry.swf

and created:

Shiny sound I might hear
whisper yellow basking lust
madly fall happy in love

Poem for April 4th

2008-04-05T22:30:00.001-04:00

Bad haiku for you:

Small child screaming.
“You shut up right now,” says mom.
Silence is golden.

Its World Rat Day

2008-04-04T23:52:00.000-04:00

On top of it being National Poetry Month, today was also WORLD RAT DAY!

Yes WORLD RAT DAY!

And, because I’m the Crazy Rat Lady, only I would know that...right?

Due to the fact that I was lazy and have not edited the poem I wrote today, I will share with you instead a poem I DID NOT WRITE, but its about rats, and this is WORLD RAT DAY so......there.

Ode to a Rat
By: -JcsJanie (found online)

Always poking, always peeking,
Climbing, jumping, sometimes squeaking,
Twitching whiskers, cunning faces,
Hiding in the strangest places!
Nibbling here and napping there,
Always finds the time to spare
A fuzzy "kiss" upon my cheek.
Sometimes I wish that you could speak!
Bright eyes shining full of love,
A furry gift from up above.
Always glad to have me near.
Such a treasure! What a dear!
Folks can have their cats and dogs,
Horses, snakes, and even frogs.
For me you stand out from the rest.
No doubt about it- a RAT'S the best!

And if you like it here is a WHOLE PAGE OF RAT POETRY.

End Times

2008-04-04T13:06:00.001-04:00

I had company most of yesterday evening, so the poetry writing didn’t happen till later, and then it got all thunderatious around here so I had to log off the computer.

So here is yesterdays poem:

End Times

It is how they have always said would be done,
signs are now showing that end times have come.

Perhaps, in fact, the truths have always lied,
the end times have already passed on by

The world was found wanting in every land
so even the faithful were left in the sand.

There is waiting and wanting and prayer for the end,
but perhaps its not coming, not ever again.

Abbreviated

2008-04-02T23:34:00.000-04:00

There is a strange and empty hollow
stop
no spot.
Left of full is left unfilled
thrill
on you.
Until I spill apart unglued.
Thick
No trick.
My mystery has come up quick
empty
and short.

April is National Poetry Month

2008-04-01T23:12:00.000-04:00

So says

National Poetry Month FAQ
and the all mighty Wikipedia

I’ve decided to try a NaPoWriMo (because the world needs more WriMo’s in it.) And write a poem a day, every day, for April.

Granted, my poetic skills are weak, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Plus I’ll be getting practice.

Todays offering is:

April 1st

First April day,
day of All Fool’s
no fools here only
manic, manic morning
rushing hard ahead
another day.

Stormy Weather

2008-03-03T21:30:00.000-05:00

Prompt: Write about stormy weather

---

The wind was howling outside, thrashing the limbs of the pecan trees. Plenty of nuts on the ground tomorrow, Laura thought.

She stood at the front window, holding her curtain to the side so that should would watch the storm rage around her.

The wind forced fat drops against the window, giving even the harshest parts of the storm a soft and dreamy look. Lightning flashed with a brilliant blue, and as she watched a limb exploded off one of her trees in a shower of sparks.

Laura let the curtain drop back into place and stood looking at its simple floral pattern, hardly backlit by the dark storm outside.

She never had cared much for lightning. She didn’t mind the wind or the rain. She didn’t even mind the thunder, even when it rattled the windowpanes. Because thunder couldn’t hurt you.

Lightning could hurt you. Lightning could even kill you.

Things that hurt and killed were bad. Even the Bible said so.

“Bad to hurt.” She said. “Bad to kill.”

She turned away from the window and looked across her living room. It was dark in the room, but not pitch. The Storm had knocked the power out. Probably a tree branch broke off and took a line with it. It happened pretty often.

After storms Laura often had to clean branches out of her yard that had broken from her own pecan trees. Some of them were large enough to be trees themselves.

It a limb HAD come down on the lines somewhere it could be hours before the power came back on.

It didn’t matter to her. She knew her house well enough, and wasn’t bothered by the dark. Later, if she wanted some light she could light some of the candles that sat around her house in several spots.

“The dark doesn’t hurt,” she said. “I’m not afraid of the dark. Are you?”

Lightning flashed again, not a single flicker but a stuttering strobe of light that kept the room lit for several seconds. She could clearly see her guest in his chair across the room. His eyes were wide and bright and very afraid.

Thunder pealed, and the lightning faded away, leaving Laura alone with her guest.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “The dark doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t kill. Just stay there, I’ll come over to you. I’ll light a candle, you’ll like it better.”

She went to the candlestick closest to where her guest’s chair was and pulled a box of matches, lighting each of the white sticks it held.

“Better,” she said to her guest, turning to face him.

The candles light was tiny in the face of the storms darkness, but it was light enough to see that he was still tied tightly to the chair. His eyes were still wide with fear, and his face was streaked with tear trails that disappeared behind the tape she had wrapped over his mouth and around his head.

She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped the tears off his face.

“Now, now,” she said. “Its not that bad. Just a little stormy weather is all.”

From Prompt: "Write about love thrown away and love returned."

2008-02-07T14:55:00.000-05:00

He had been living in the streets for some time. So long in fact that it felt as if he had never lived anywhere else. Surely there had never been a nice house with good means and a warm bed at the end of a long day. It all had to have been a dream.

Only it wasn’t a dream. He could remember his family perfectly down to every single detail. He could even remember the way they smelled. The youngest one, his favorite, had always smelled like food. Most usually it was peanut butter.

There were plenty of smells on the streets as well, but most of them were not very pleasant. The worst smells were while rummaging through the garbage bins for his meals. Garbage bins, he learned, were always full of rotten smells.

Rotten smells or not, he had to eat. For a while he had begged, and people had given him food. After a while his begging quit producing handouts, and in the end he quit begging and started scrounging in the garbage bins.

People treated him differently now too, and he didn’t like that much at all. It wasn’t his fault his family had cast him out and he had nowhere else to go. He did the best he could with what he had.

Before the streets he had become accustomed to people remarking on how handsome he was, and how charming. The yong ladies especially had always oohed and ahhed over him. Now those same young women looked at him in disgust, and some even crossed to the opposite side of the street when they saw him.

He had found a spot some time ago and claimed it as his own. It was a small alley, between two apartment buildings. It was badly cared for, cluttered with garbage and there was a box there just the right size for him.

At night and when it rained, he slept in the box. During the say he sat at the head of this alley, hoping that his family would change their mind. He thought maybe, if he were patient enough they WOULD come back, because he had never done anything to deserve being cast away and surely they would realize that one day. Certainly the one who smelled like peanut butter loved him enough to come back for him.

Surely.

That hope had never left him, though it was fading slowly as he became hopelessly caked with street grime and smelled more strongly of the rubbish bins he lunched in. Stubbornly he hung on to that hope, but time was a thief. It stole his memory bit by bit.

He was trying to recall the exact scent of peanut butter when she came by.

He expected her to cross to the other side of the street like most young women did these days, reeking of fear while they did so, but she showed no fear and, even more amazingly, no disgust. In fact she made eye contact and seemed to walk right toward him.

In fact, she stopped right in front of where he was sitting and looked down at him.

“Where’s your family?” She asked him. “Do you even have one?”

I had one, he thought. I don’t think I have one any more, but I wish they would come back for me I miss them.

“You look like a handsome fella under all that nasty. Would you like to come home with me? I can give you a nice warm bath and I bet you’ll feel good again.”

He hadn’t been fond of baths before, but now he thought one sounded nice. It would probably take care of all the biting bugs that had taken up living on him. It would be good to not itch, and to not smell like a rubbish bin.

Her name was Juliet Snodder, and she was very nice. She talked to him constantly. When he started having doubts about leaving his spot, because this just MIGHT be the day his family finally came back, her voice soothed him.

The bath felt wonderful, and after that he found out why she had approached him.

“I run a rehab,” she said. “We get a lot of volunteers. A lot of donations. We get on the news sometimes, and then the donations really fly in, and a lot of homeless get homes that way.”

She dried him and brushed him and gave him a big bowl of food and let him lay on her soft and comfortable sofa.

While he drifted off to a comfortable sleep, she picked up the phone and dialed her friend at the local news station. “We’ve got another news worthy one here, Barb,” she said. “He so sweet and was cute even when he was dirty, but after he got a bath you should see him. Someone is sure to fall in love with him quick! He’s a golden retriever and he looks like a champion!”

Untitled Part 3

2008-02-06T00:09:00.000-05:00

Read Part 1
Read Part 2

People, on the whole as a species, knew the world was going to come to an end.

Nobody ever thought it would happen in THEIR lifetime, but everyone though it would probably happen before their grandchildren died.

Some thought it would be a super bug. Some virus cooked up by the army to make warfare safer for us and nastier for whichever "them" was being fought at that time.

Others thought it would be nuclear war.

There were other theories as well, as many theories as there were people, and most of them led back to the government.

The government part was true, but that could hardly be avoided because by the time the world ended, the government had their fingers in more pies than even THEY could keep track of any longer.

It was the how of the whole things that everyone had been wrong about.

When you thought of the end of the world you never thought of sweet little girls clutching well loved stuffed animals to her chest, looking terrified in front of the dozens of cameras on the podium she was standing behind.

She was one of the spectacular wonders of the world, but no one ever noticed her.

At least not until Godzilla, the REAL Godzilla attacked Tokyo.

Then people were ready to listen.

From the Prompt "Write about black hearts and pirate lovers."

2008-02-05T23:06:00.000-05:00

The sea was a swollen, sick looking thing
roiling and boiling with grey slag and death.
The ship was a pearl, but a bad one
rotten heart as black as the sky
She saw neither ship nor sea
just the silhouette aboard deck,
not looking toward shore for she,
just back toward the endless boil.

She never looked landward again,
just watched the unwell waters
waiting for her lover, like lovers do
Though others loves may come to them
and sweep them off their feet
she held no such daydreams
just wanted one more glimpse of him
as he headed back out to sea.

Untitled - Part 2

2008-01-20T16:40:00.000-05:00

Read Part One

-----

Snoot made it to the house before any of them, and was sniffing his way through the think dust on the buildings porch. As the three of them caught up he gave a woof as if to say, “What took you so long?”

“We’ll have none of that now,” Rod said. “Showing off just because you got here first. I could have too, if I had three legs like you do.”

Snoot just panted and wagged his stump.

The house was small. A bathroom, a kitchen and living room together in one spot. The sofa was the kind that pulled out into a bed. It was in sofa form and covered with almost as much dust as the front porch, but Desmond didn’t mind. He curled himself into a corner and was soon asleep.

Bunny wanted to join him, but things had to be done first. She turned to the kitchen part of the room.

There was a small window over the sink, covered in limp grey curtains. She pulled them open but the dirty glass on the window didn’t let in much light. She ran a finger across the counter and it came up black.

“Housekeeping leaves a lot to be desired.”

She turned the tap on in the sink, not expecting water to come out and not being disappointed.

“Rod,” she said, “Go see if they have a hand pump outside.”

He gave her a jaunty two finger salute and went out, Snoot at his heels.

A drawer under the sink produced some rags, cleaning supplies underneath. There were two cabinets overhead, one full of dishes.

Rod came back in, a grin on his face and something behind his back.

“Good news is not only was there a hand pump, but there was a jug full to prime it with.”

“Good stuff,” Bunny replied. “This kitchen could use a lot of water based TLC.”

“Found this too,” he showed her hand hands, each one holding two small tomatoes.” There’s a garden out there. Tomatoes, okra, some squash. Everything weedy and small, but its fresh. How’d you come out? Is the cubbard bare?”

“Not quite. We’ve got canned peas, a few other canned goods. A bag of corn meal. Also found ab ag of honest to god coffee right here. Best of all, we have a wood stove.”

“What’s in the fridge?”

“I wasn’t brave enough to look. Things you keep in the refrigerator tend to smell when they go bad.”

“So, you want to cook or clean first?”

“I want to sleep.”

“I know that feeling, Bunny. I know it to my bones. Is there a bedroom here or do we have to get Desmond up long enough to pull that one out?”

“Maybe its behind door number two. I haven’t opened that one yet.”

“Bedroom or closet, I’m gonna curl up in it and sleep.”

It was a bedroom, as dark and dust covered as everything else, and full of mirrors.

“Funny,” Bunny said. “All these mirrors and not a single photo of themselves. That must mean something.”

“Something,” Rod agreed, then they both slept.

She dreamed, and heard Rod cry out once so she knew he dreamed too. Once she thought she was awake. She was sure she could hear Desmond talking to her, but wasn’t able to answer him.

She finally opened her eyes to a dimly lit room and Rod standing over her with a steaming cup.

“Well now. You had the three of us awful worried. Even Snoot thought you were gone for good this time.”

She sat up and rubbed her face, cringing at the feel of the dust on it. These sheets would have to be washed before night. Hopefully the heat from the wood stove would dry them while she cooked supper.

“Worried? I’ve only been asleep for a few hours. The sun’s still up.”

“Not still up. Up again. You’ve slept all through one day, one night, and half of another day.”

“No. No! You don’t think? I can’t be, right? The pills! I’ve been taking them.”

“Relax. You were just tired. Desmond slept nearly as long. Here...”

He handed her the cup he was holding.

“Coffee. Desmond found a jar of pasta sauce out there, and some noodles. He’s made some spaghetti, and I’ve made some fried bread. There’s still a tomato too if you want something fresh.”

“I want to pee.”

“I put an old bucket in the bathroom, and there’s plenty of bushes out back.”

She looked toward the ceiling.

“Have there been any fly overs?”

“Not today. Not yesterday. Not here.”

“I’ll go outside then. Can you get Desmond to heat me some water on that stove? I would kill for a warm wash.”

“We’re ahead of you. The tub is full already. Lukewarm cause you slept so long, but we can re-heat it if you want.”

“No, warms okay. I don’t have to boil.”

As she squatted outside to relieve herself she couldn’t take her eyes off the sky. Snoot stalked a lizard in the garden.

Inside again, she sank with relish into the tub of lukewarm water. There was only a curtain to separate it from the kitchen, but that was okay. Rod and Desmond’s soft conversation didn’t bother her.

Down past her shoulders, her ears, only her nose above water. Some of it slipped past her lips. It tasted warm and metallic. Organic and alive.”

She recalled a time when she would be in a similar position, burring her head under water. During those times it was her husband on the other side of the door. She would rock gently in the water so that it lapped. The lapping would drown out her husband as he ranted and raved.

A peaceful, perfect world.

Except sooner or later she would have to come up for air.

No matter how bad things became she was never able to bring herself to breath in a lung-full of water and be done with it all.

When she surfaced now, some of the water on her face were her tears, and Desmond stood over her.

“Desmond,” she said, “It’s not polite to walk in on a lady in the tub.”

“I was afraid.”

“Rod’s out there, isn’t he?”

“Yes. I’m not afraid now. When you were asleep you were dreaming and I was afraid.”

“Would you believe that once there were billions of people in this world, and that every night they dreamed? Would you believe that dreams were nothing to be afraid of?”

Desmond shook his head.

“Well, its true. Now get out of here and let a lady bathe in peace.

Untitled- From Prompt: Write about the sun rising behind you.

2008-01-01T22:56:00.000-05:00

The sun was rising behind them, causing shadows to grow outward from their feet.

Their shadow selves stretched out and raced forward with far more enthusiasm than their travel weary human companions.

Bunny hunched her shoulders and watched the dust puff up and around her feet. Her shoes were the color of the road now. SO were the cuffs of her jeans. She thought her lungs would be too, she’d breathed so much of the road dust in.

To her right Desmond coughed. She glanced over to see he was almost asleep on his feet. She couldn’t even see a sliver of his blue eyes under his heavy lids.

Rodney was ahead of them, Snoot limping along beside him. The sun behind them reflected off the scar on the back of Rod’s head, making it glow bright pink.

He turned around to look back at them, walking backwards he never missed a step.

“Sun’s coming up,” he announced as his shadow raced ahead behind him.

Snoot sniffed at something in the road, stopping his limping for a moment, then he sneezed once before running ahead, racing the daybreak shadows.

He had once been a white mongrel, but now he was also the color of road dirt. Bunny was beginning to wonder if there had ever been another color.

Snoot’s stub of a tail disappeared down a hill she couldn’t see from where she was.

“House down there,” Rod said. “Nap time.”

Desmond stumbled, his dragging feet catching a rock in the road. Bunny caught him and lifted him over her shoulder. It wasn’t a graceful way to carry him, but the only way she could manage. He was almost too heavy for her to lift anymore.

She sincerely hoped they could get the long rest they all badly needed.

____________________

PS. You may notice my comment section no longer allows anonymous comments. I'm sorry if that causes any problems for my regular readers, but I can't stand people who leave negative comments and are to afraid to show themselves.

I don't mind negative comments. I've gotten plenty of them in the past, and not just insulting my writing. I remember someone once called me an ass.

So, negative comments I can deal with, I just can't abide cowards.

I’ve been flattered.

2007-12-23T20:12:00.000-05:00

Nezha left the following comment for me: “Hey, i love your writing. I keep checking the site for new posts but so far nothing. Post something soon for us fans, would you?”

I think that might be one of the most ego-boosting comments I have ever gotten.

For those who feel the same, good news...

I’ve signed up for Blog365.

That means I must post SOMETHING in at least one of my blogs every day.

And since I plan on one of my “resolutions” for 2008 to be to write no less than 100 words every day...that means more bad fiction and worse poetry for you guys to sink your cyber teeth into!

I plan on posting at least once a week, possibly more often if I churn out good stuff.

As Angst Ages

2007-12-13T23:10:00.000-05:00

Give me an EMO boy
in skinny black jeans,
wearing mascara.
We’ll sit at home
watching porn together.
When they climax
we’ll scream out loud.
It is our agony
to never feel love like that.

I’ll be his Gothic Lolita
in fish net hose
wearing glittery pink skulls.
He will remind me
not to be so peppy
out in public.
I’ll laugh out loud
when I’m alone
to remember how it sounds.

I’ll never tell him
“Cheer up EMO kid,”
He’ll never tell me
“You’d be beautiful
if you smiled.”
Well grow old together
to be a well adjusted
He an investment banker
I a stay at home mom.

We’ll have an EMO daughter
in skinny black jeans
and multiple piercings.
We’ll have a Gothic son
who writes poetry about pain.
We’ll tell them
“Cheer up EMO kid.
“You’d be so handsome
if you’d smile.”

She isn't the type of girl who shows a lot of skin....

2007-11-27T22:35:00.000-05:00

Written from the prompt in the subject line. Alos influenced by the music at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dv-mE7Q6VY which was playing as I wrote it.

------

She isn't the type of girl who shows a lot of skin but the music got under her skin. When it pulsed she pulsed. When it beat, she beat. It rocked her body, it rocked her soul, it set her brain on fire and her skin followed.

She danced, closed her eyes and went where the music took her. It often took her places she would have never desired to go otherwise.

And it often took her out of her shirt.

It didn’t matter if she was at a rave or in a club surrounded by strobe lights and glow in the dark jewelry or if she was at home alone, dancing in her kitchen while supper cooked in the over.

Something about the music demanded that her skin be bare while it played. Perhaps better to find her pores and leach itself into her. Perhaps to let its vibration, its throb, caress her.

Bare skin made seduction easier.

She was never embarrassed afterwards. Never apologetic. She never made excuses, never said, “The music made me do it.” When the pulse and the beat let her free again she merely found her top and covered herself again.

She isn’t the type of girl who shows a lot of skin, but sometimes it just can’t be helped.

Poem (from prompt)

2007-11-15T01:57:00.000-05:00

The poundy, angry woman is alive inside
I want to *remove* her so that I might rest.
She struggles against the *inequality*
being less than the rest of the world
And the hatred, the anger the stupidity
its all around and its *poisoning* the tiny peace she has
So inside she rants and she roils,
the blood in her veins boils
And in loud yet silent words she cries out
*describing* all the agony we together have endured.
I cry, hot salty tear for her,
she is *obsolete* , this pounding angry woman
in me.

---

The prompt was to use all of the highlighted words in one piece.

Flesh Pillows

2007-10-28T15:24:00.000-04:00

“He’s currently caressing her flesh pillows.”

This announcement caused Nivea to lok over the top of the manuscript she was reading.

Amanda was holding the stapled sheaf of paper an arms length away from her, her face wearing a combination of mirth and misery.

“He’s doing what now?” Nivea asked.

“I said he’s caught the attention of the vixen and he’s giving her a good old fashioned second base groping.”

“Yes, but, ‘flesh pillows’?”

“Thats what he’s calling her breasts.”

Nivea rolled her eyes.

“Manda,” she said, “What exactly are you reading?”

“Some sort of anthropomorphic furrie fetish erotica thing. I think.”

“You think?”

“I’m sort of stuck on the whole idea of flesh pillows right now.”

“Who woudln’t be?”

“It makes me wonder why I keep reading this trash.”

“Because you put out a trashy ‘zine. One that people buy because they know it will full to overflowing with anthropomorphic furrie fetish erotica.”

“Flesh pillows, Nivea. Flesh Pillows.”

“Manda, if I can turn this stuff,” she waved her own manuscript in the air,” into something fit to sell in a badly photocopied ‘sines then I’m sure you, with all your fancy college education, can come up with a clever way to edit out the flesh pillows and still have the author happy to be in print.”

“Yeah. Okay. You’re probably right. But I swear to god, if I see the words ‘prodigious unit’ in here anywhere then this one’s going in the trash.”

“We’ve come so far in so short a time, eventually we’re bound to hit gold. Someone will send somethingi n so inspired it will make Moon Time a real glossy. No more copy shop special for you!”

“Nivea, I hate to be the spoilsport here, but if we’ve been doing Moon Time for this long without a diamond in our rough, its not going to happen.”

“Whatever, you pessimist. Just go back to your flesh pillows, and don’t let that prodigious unit catch you by surprise when it pops up.”

100 Words - "Night Terrors"

2007-10-27T00:01:00.000-04:00

Sleep escapes me, no matter how tired I am. Tossing and turning in the night I’m sent back to childhood, when the night meant dark and dark meant monsters under the bed.

Childhood monsters would be preferable to the adult deviants that haunt bed time. Though the fears could be chased away by the same thing.

Another person in the room.

Someone big and strong to hold me and protect me from the monsters, from the night terrors.

Having company is the kryptonite of both childhood and adult monsters.

Too bad I don’t have a superhero to lay with me.

NaNo Story Ideas

2007-10-24T23:35:00.000-04:00

Its just a few days away! JUST A FEW DAYS!

Are you ready?

I’m not.

It might be my downfall every year that I go into it having NO IDEA what I’m going to write.

This year is no different.

I have a couple of ideas, but none of them are fleshed out.

Moon Time....last years failed novel. I still like the idea. Thinking maybe of re-starting it and trying again. An all female werewolf pack takes in and protects a young girl (who may or may not also be a werewolf) from....I was never sure who the bad guy was other than it was a red wolf. Was it the girls mom? Maybe.

Home Again (this is the one I’ve put the most thought into)...a gay semi-romance. A young man feels he must leave his hometown after coming out to (and coming on to) his best friend. Follows his life from the time he leaves home until the time he comes home again. Along the way he meets and befriends several people (a truck driver who calls himself Cowboy. The son of a preacher, afraid to let his family know he’s gay. A famous (in the book) rock band. A photographer he sees everywhere he goes, but only sees her in graveyards), all who try to talk him into going home again.

Sooooo....what do you think? Which of the two would you like to read? -grin- Or...should it be neither of them?

My Writers Notebook

2007-08-16T14:14:00.000-04:00

Since this is called my Writers Notebook, I thought I'd give you a peek into my REAL writers notebook. Might share more pages like this is anyone is interested.

You can click the image below to see a larger version.

100 Words - "Sheep Dip"

2007-06-01T18:07:00.000-04:00

Warning: If you are a reader of mine, and are also a Christian, chances are close to 100% that the following will offend you.

Yeah, sorry about that....

----

“That’s fucked up!”

“Pardon?”

“I’m reading this funeral psalm thing, and I think he’s getting his bone on with the bodies.”

“What?”

“‘With thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me...’”

“Maybe he’s getting his bone on with the widow?”

“That’s less creepy, but equally as fucked up.”

“Could be worse.”

“How?”

“He could be getting his bone on with the sheep.”

“Ewe!”

“Exactly!”

“There’s a definite wool fetish going on there. You never see a picture of the guy without a lamb.”

“Doesn’t that also make him a pedophile?”

“Jesus is our necrophiliac, child furry loving Holy Father.”

“Amen.”

--

100 Words

2007-05-21T16:12:00.000-04:00

She's an unrepentant outlaw out to steal his heart.

She was a poodle, he was a bulldog. A star crossed love, never meant to be. Certainly her owners frowned upon it.

She was attracted to his dangerous side, his bad boy appearance, his spiked collar. He had such big teeth, and so many scars. She dreamed of the street fights he must have been in, the Dobermans and pit bulls he must know.

Disillusionment came when she saw him backed into a corner by a chattery squirrel.

She learned the hard way never to judge a dog by his collar.

100 Words

2007-05-20T11:13:00.000-04:00

“Its nothing but a rumor, that’s all it is.”

This was her answer to her daughters question, “What is love?”

“Love is an urban legend. It’s something that happens to someone else.”

“Weren’t you and Daddy in love?” the little girl asked.

She barked in laughter, not a mirthful one, but a harsh and soulless one.

“You, my darling little girl, were the result of forced fornication.”

She stared at her for a moment, wondering why she’d kept the result of her rape.

“Go away, you’re bothering me,” she said, then returned to the tax document in front of her.

100 Words for 5-3-07

2007-05-03T01:12:00.000-04:00

“If you keep doing that the police are going to catch us for sure!”

“Doing what?”

He was always doing things that would get us in trouble in the end.

Like currently he was holding the dead mans arm our of the car window, trying to smack the road signs as we passed.

He had hit two of them, and now the arm was missing a finger. It was back there somewhere, in someone’s front lawn.

I could picture the cast of CSI finding it and tracing it somehow back to us.

As usual, it would be all his fault.

100 Words for 5-2-07

2007-05-03T00:55:00.000-04:00

Great big clouds rose up.

In the distance birds took flight. They didn’t fly far before the flames found them.

Great big winds rose up.

The air smelled of burning flesh. People, pets, large farm animals as they flash fried in the fire.

Great big screams rose up.

They thundered up the mountain and down the valley, but they didn’t last long at all.

Then there was peace. A peace like the earth hadn’t seen since man rose to power.

Things were quiet for a short time.

Then a great big roach rose up, and the world was born anew.

100 Words for 5-1-07

2007-05-03T00:52:00.000-04:00

She came at me from the sugar as I stirred it into the pitcher of kool-aide. She assulted me with her memory.

We had matching coffee cups once, and we stirred our sugar into our drinks with soup spoons.

I know where she is now, and will be forever after. I wonder where our cups are now, and our spoons. Perhaps someone else is using them, or perhaps the cups have been shattered.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Broken ceramic chips turned underneath landfill dirt.

Then she retreats, her memory dissolving like the sugar into the water.

Goodbye, again.

A tribute to Alice in Wonderland

2007-04-06T17:57:00.000-04:00

Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite stories. Here I borrow the character of the White Rabbit, and mentions of Alice, to see if I can write in the same tone.

Comments appreciated.

--

(unfinished fiction)

Florence had been staring at the bush for quite a while, wondering what made it interesting enough to account for her extended staring, when she realized the bush was staring back at her.

Well, thats rather rude, she thought, and picked up a stone to throw at the offending bush.

The white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and carrying a pocket watch came out as quite a surprise. That was the very last thing she had expected to see, even though she had been taught to expect to see just that.

Queer, she thought. Maybe Auntie Alice isn’t as deranged as they all say she is.

“Oh dear, I fear we’re late,” the white rabbit said, taking Florence’s hand and pulling her under the bush. “Hurry along now Alice, why must you always be so slow. We haven’t time to hesitate.”

Florence protested that she wasn’t Alice, but the white rabbit wouldn’t hear of it, and all too soon she found herself falling rather unpleasantly down and unusually long rabbit hole.

“Pardon me Mr. Rabbit, but could you bother to tell me why it is so dark in here? Auntie Alice never said the Rabbit hole was dark.”

“Must you talk so much,” the rabbid scolded. “We’re quite late enough as it is.”

“See, its just that I’m not found of the dark that much.”

“Rubbish stuff and horrible untruth. You can see perfectly well girl, just open your eyes.”

“Mr. Rabbit, I hate to be a bother, but I assure you my eyes are open and it is certainly dark in here.”

“It’s only as dark as you think it is. If you think it is bright, then it will be bright. Open you eyes, Alice.”

“I’m not Alice,” Florence huffed, then said, “Fine. I think its light in here.”

No sooner than she thought the thought, the rabbit hole brightened considerably.

“Well, now that’s odd.”

Florence took a moment to look about.

“Rather plain though, isn’t it? Just simple dirt walls. Auntie Alice said there were shelves here.”

Shelves appeared.

“Did I do that mr. Rabbit?”

“Yes, you did. Now hurry along now. We’re very, very late, and getting later and very later.”

“So anything I think, anything at all, will show up. If I thought about a carthorse in a nightgown it would show up beside me?”

“Why certainly,” said the carthorse which had been the white rabbit seconds before. “Now could you not think quite so much, Alice, as you’ve always thought too much. Think much less, except to think us to the bottom of this hole? We’ve somewhere to be!”

I've Been Nominated

2007-04-06T16:20:00.000-04:00

The voting for my category is at http://www.thebestofblogs.com/2007/03/30/best-bookliterary-blog-vote-here/#comments

100 Words for 3/4/07

2007-03-05T00:58:00.000-05:00

Another of my daily 100 from 100words.com

--

Its not that way, the way you think.

Its not murder, its self defense.

Its not because I’m a freak, its because I’m special.

He just tripped and fell on the knife, over and over again.

She sits in the corner, her arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth, thinking up the excuses she’ll give when the police gets there. Everyone needs a good excuse, the thinks, and when you’ve just killed someone, you need a good excuse more than ever.

As police sirens drew near she finally decided on a golden oldie.

“The dog ate my husband.”

100words for 2/27

2007-02-27T13:46:00.000-05:00

Its not so hard to give up. You just stop. You stop caring, you stop fighting, you stop trying to be yourself and you be what everyone around you wants you to be instead.

You smile and you nod and you work and you sleep and you eat and you screw, but you quit smiling and you quit laughing.

It’s a small price to pay, really.

There’s still coffee in the morning and sandwiches for lunch. You still go to work and the paycheck still comes, and the bills still get paid, but little else happens.

Life still goes on.

The One That Got Away

2007-02-25T20:11:00.000-05:00

She went down to the river, only it wasn’t really a river it all. It was a muddy, swampy, tree sheltered, root infested bit of water, but it certainly wasn’t a river.

There were fish in there, she’d seen them herself. She’d even caught one once, a surprisingly large catfish which looked laughingly small when her father insisted he have it mounted and hung it in his den right underneath the marlin he had caught himself.

He like to say he caught the marlin right down at the river too. A different kind of fish tale. The one he caught instead of the one that got away.

She still pretended to believe him, long after she knew that fish like that marlin never lived in the muddy river waters alongside the catfish she had caught.

Her father loved the river. Loved spending Saturday afternoons down there with his cooler and his pole, and his plastic can of worms.

She sat down on the bank now, unmindful of the mud soiling the seat of her jeans. She was at home here, with her cooler and her pole and her own plastic can of worms, just like her father had taught her.

Even though she wasn’t there to fish, she knotted a worm on her hook, apologizing to it like she had apologized to every one of its squirmy brethren since the first time her father taught her own to bait a hook.

She managed to get the hook in the water without catching it in the trees overhead, but doubted she’d get it back out of the water without snagging it in a root.

She lodged the butt of her pole in the mud, propped it up with two bricks nearby, brought down by some long ago man for just that purpose. Then she opened the cooler, first taking out a slightly soggy cardboard box, then taking out two beers. On beer she cracked open and took a swallow. The second she cracked open and sat in the mud beside the box.

She sat her own can in the mud and twisted it, then lifted it, sat it down, twisted and lifted again. Over and over she did that, making dozens of can sized circles in the sand, focusing on the shapes they left in the sand. Watching an ant walk in circles inside one of the circles.

Where am I, she imagined the ant thinking. Where did my road go? Where did this trench come from. She lay a twig across the circle, building it an ant sized bridge which it scurried over, wiggling its antenna in thanks.

Her dad loved ants too. Never would smush them, even when they bit him.

“Ouch, damnit!” she say, but brush it gently off. “I probably deserved that.”

He had told her once, “I’m gonna write a novel one day. One about ants. Ants are special, and my book will make other people know that. It’ll be one of them New York best sellers. Just you watch them headlines. I’ll even sign your book for free.”

Across the river, on the other bank that wasn’t really too far away, a man hooted. It could have been excitement, but was probably frustration.

“Whatcha catch Larry?” the mans friend yelled at him.

“Caught me the biggest damn acorn I done caught all day!” Larry called back, and the men laughed together, cracking open cold beers of their own, digging their short, stubby, dirty fingers into their plastic can of worms, baiting and rebaiting as often as they felt like they needed to. Pretending like they actually expected to catch a fish.

The river wasn’t for fishing. It was horrible for fishing. Many lines hung down from the bank hugging branches of the trees. They danced in the wind like spiderwebs, and looked like silver threads when the sun was at the right spot in the sky.

If you managed to get the hook INTO the river, getting it out was unlikely. Logs and roots studded the water, making it dangerous to wade across to the other bank.

So close yet so far away.

Not for fishing at all. Her father had told her so himself.

“This place is for sitting on a Saturday afternoon and getting drunk in the sun. Its for bullshitting with the boys. Its for getting away from the women.”

She was happy to be there with her father, happy to be sipping from her own can of beer, with him saying, “Take it slow honey, your mum’ll bust me one if I take you home drunk” every time her lips touched the can. Her father saying he came there to get away from the women hurt her feelings a little. She was a girl, after all. She’d be a woman one day. When she was grown would her dad leave her at home. Would he come here to get away from her?

Chuck, her dad’s best friend, must have seen her face fall. He’d gently knocked her chin with the large hairy knuckles on his right hand and said, “Don’t get your panties in a bunch doll-baby. You ain’t no woman. You’re just one of the boys.”

“Got a beer for an old man?” someone asked behind her. It was Chuck, as if her just thinking of him had made him appear there.

“Of course I do!” she said.

Chuck took a seat in the mud on the other side of the box, and took the beer she held out to him.

“That your daddy?” he asked, nodding his head toward the box. She started at him, thinking he should be an old man now, but he wasn’t. He looked like he hadn’t aged at all, except his head was bald, and his knuckles had more hair than ever.

“Yeah,” she says. “That him.”

For a while that’s all they say.

The river might have been a place to bullshit with the boys, to swap fish stories, to get drunk and badmouth your boss, but it wasn’t really a place to talk. It wasn’t a place for telling Chuck about her daddy’s last days, his dying days.

After a while she looked over at her daddy’s old friend and she noticed the tears on his face, but didn’t mention them. Instead she said, “Give him his drink, Chuck.”

Chuck opened the cardboard box and started to open the beer beside it, but she stopped him.

“He’s done with that one now, give him a cool one.”

She handed him a fresh beer from the cooler, and as he pried it open with his huge and hairy fingers she noticed his nails were clean. She noticed drips of condensation falling off the can, into the box, making dark spots on her fathers ashes. They looked like raindrops, or teardrops.

The Chuck poured the drink in, and it turned into a grey mud. A batter of burnt body and beer.

Now there were tears on her face too, but she didn’t cry out loud. She didn’t blubber. After all, she wasn’t a woman, she was just one of the boys.

“You better do it now doll-baby, before the box sogs up and your daddy falls out.”

She nodded, and carried the box to her fishing pole, where she lifted one of the bricks supporting it and dropped it in the box. Then she moved to the edge of the river, and giving it her best softball throw, tossed the box into the river.

As she stood there, watching the ripples around where her father had gone in, there was a sudden whirring, then her fishing pole flew by her, bounced on the water a couple of times, then disappeared into the water, drug along behind the fish she hadn’t expected to catch.

The man across the street hooted again. His friend called over to her, “Whatcha catch girl?”

“Nothing,” she yelled back. “That one got away.”

LUSUS NATURAE

2007-01-18T00:46:00.000-05:00

As night fell she peered at the wan pearl of the pale Moon and wondered....

It was a balmy night, scented heavily by the perfume of the small magenta flowers that grew up the spines of every tree she could see.

Flower Devils, the locals called them. They were beautiful flowers with a heavenly scent, but they were deadly. The leaves were thorny, the petals were poison, and their vines would strangle the life out of every other plant they touched.

When she was from the horrid things were not allowed to live, pulled from the ground once its thorny leaves sprouted, never its purple red bloom allowed to bud.

It was lying under the Moon, gazing up at the dead branches swallowed whole by the Flower Devils, that she began to understand what a truly wild place she had come to.

She was a long way from home. Impossible to get any further, she thought, since there was no home for her. A homeland maybe, but never a home again.

She took some comfort from the Moon, knowing that she and her sister Stars would be the same no matter where she went.

One planet. One sky, one Mother Moon and millions of sister Stars to protect her like overzealous aunties. Pick your deity, she thought. Or pray to them all. It made no difference, because the creation of time had been long ago, and now the one Moon and Stars all were deaf to the pleas of her land bound children.

What she wondered was if they had ever had ears at all.

Once such thoughts would have immediately caused her to say a quick prayer for forgiveness, but not now. Not with the screams of her family still loud in her ears, and not with the stench of dragons breath still soiling her hair.

It was a smell she feared would never come out, because it remained there after many drenches in icy rivers and filthy lakes. The stench of reptile breath, the smell of dead and rotten things, the smell of the Underside.

She shuddered and curled onto her side, pulling her knees to her chest, her chin to her knees, one hand held out to the side, fingers touching the hilt of the sword, always.

Her brothers sword, too heavy really for her to use, but threatening enough for her to brandish and bluff her way out of most petty scrapes, as she had done a few times since running from the burning farmland.

She closed her eyes and called it back in perfect clarity. Wheat burning to ash, her house an alter of flames. Somewhere inside her father and her mother still were. Her brother was in the wheat field, probably ash also.

And above it all the beast, great and black, its belly and long throat glowing with the growing of another fire. In the night sky it had looked much like a storm cloud about to burst. Only its rain was deadly and hot.

It was an Underside beast, no doubt. If it had been daylight she could have looked into the face of its handler, and then she could have gone quietly insane. Then she might have died in flame like her family.

Then she wouldn’t be laying in mourning with nothing but an unwieldy sword and blasphemous thoughts.

No good, she thought, this place is no good.

It was the flowers, she was sure. The Little Devils were making her mind sick with their perfume.

It was a soul poison they carried. Not one that killed the body, but one that would rot its core, kill the brain, destroy the parts that made one human.

No good at all.

She needed a shelter. Somewhere to hide from the sluggish wind that pushed around the flowers smell. Somewhere to lay, also, away from the Moon. She did not feel like lying to rest under the eye of an abusive mother that night.

There was nowhere, she knew.

The last town was many days behind her, the next one just as many ahead. That was, of course, if the map she had bought from a wandering merchant was a true map, and not one he had drawn for a quick coin in his purse.

There was a stream not far, she knew. If she followed the stream far enough she was bound to come onto a camp at its edge, but in these wilder lands strangers rarely offered to spare space in their tents.

There was a smaller chance of her following the road and happening across a small farm. No one would spare her a bed, but some sandy hearted matron might offer her a sleep in their barn. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d slept in hay.

Most likely, if she did find a home, it wouldn’t be a farmer. It would belong to one of the Maganese. They were not bad people, exactly, but they were less than human.

They encouraged the growth of the Little Devil flowers. Sometimes they brewed a weak tea from its petals and drank it. Sometimes, for a high fee, they would brew a strong tea and send it away with those in need of revenge.

They were doctors, after a fashion. They used many plants aside from the Little Devils. She’d heard tales of them aiding a woman in preventing a child from growing in her belly. She’d also heard of them helping women rid their belly of a child already there.

There was one Maganese very near where she lay. It was said that he had been gifted by the Goddesses.

He wasn’t just a Maganese potions dealer, they said. He was magical. He had a marks on the backs of his hands, and one hand could heal, while the other could take life away.

The mark on his healing hand was a tree, his arm its trunk, his fingers its branches. He wore a cloth around his killing hand, and the only ones to ever see the mark were never left to tell what it was.

He had a soft spot for children, they said, curing the young for free as he passed through a town, selling his potions only to the adults.

The story told most often was of the baby girl.

He had been taken to a baby girl freshly dead. Her body was still warm in her crib, but her breath was gone and her heart still. He had lain the back of his healing hand on the baby’s breast and she had breathed in a breath then cried out into the night with healthy lungs.

She would like to meet him, to ask how many coins she’d have to press into his palm for him to heal her aching soul.

He was a special case though, and she wanted to avoid the Maganese as much as possible.

You have to leave your bed and move before you can avoid anyone, she thought, knowing that she was still laying curled in the grass beneath the strangled trees, still breathing in the flowers scent, and not far from not caring anymore.

She’d never realized how strong it could be, the Little Devil. How little she had learned in the place where it was not allowed to bloom.

Her lids were heavy, her heart stony, and her arm tired. She pulled her fingers away from the hilt of her brothers sword, wrapping it around her herself. As her eyes fluttered shut she thought she saw something rush past her, toward the trunk of a vine covered tree.

Not smart friend, she thought, and then she slept.

NaNo Ongoing

2006-11-19T19:50:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-26T21:44:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-08T23:49:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-08T23:48:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-08T23:46:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-01T19:14:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-19T18:39:00.000-04:00

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

2006-03-14T22:19:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-01T13:43:00.000-05:00

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

2006-02-14T22:35:00.000-05:00

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...

2006-02-09T12:23:00.000-05:00

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

2006-02-05T20:11:00.000-05:00

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

2006-02-03T15:39:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-30T00:17:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-24T11:17:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-22T12:18:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-19T12:54:00.000-05:00

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

2006-01-17T21:13:00.000-05:00

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.

---------

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

2006-01-13T22:46:00.000-05:00

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.

Gingerbread Boys

2005-12-14T23:16:00.000-05:00

He had fallen asleep under the Christmas tree.

A tiny living doll, the lights painted him as colorful as the packages
he had curled up around. His day had been a full one, he was tucked
out. He didn't even move when his dad picked him up and carried him
to bed, carefully putting his Tigger under one pudgy arm and pulling
his Buzz Lightyear blanket up to his chin.

"I-onn-seeana" he mumbled in his sleep.

I want to see Santa, he had said.

They had spent the day making gingerbreat boys. Smaller than
gingerbread men, they didn't have jobs.

Making them, he had told stories about how they would come alive at
night and dance around the plate. They would go swimming in Santa's
milk, and Santa woudln't eat them, but would put them in his bag and
take them to the North Pole to help the elves make toys and candy.

They had ridden around the town, as they always did on Christmas Eve,
and he had gotten so excited over all the new decorations. An
airplane blinking a red light flew over head and he said, "We gotta
beat Santa home!"

Thats when he parked himself under the Christmas tree, sure that Santa
would be there any minute.

But his tiny boy biology beat him out.

Now, as he slept safely upstairs, his dad stuffed the stocking before
ploping down into his chair and absentmindedly biting the head off a
gingerbread boy while the lights on the tree blinked on and off and on
and off and......

The Poking Stick

2005-12-07T22:46:00.000-05:00

I accepted a challenge to write a flash fiction story of 200 words or less with "Gremlins!" as my inspiration.

What I'm about to share here is the 640 word first draft, which I then had to whittle down to 200 words or less.

For some reason I dont expect to win the challenge with my much less meaty story, but take courage in the fact that everyone else had to have 200 words or less too. -smile-
Anyway, as promised, here is my ROUGH draft.

====

THE POKING STICK

The thing in the basement made Roddy forget about his brother’s mood for a while.
It was about the size of a squirrel, greenish brown, with large eyes the color of honey. Bald, except for the stripe of coarse hair that rose down its spine, it hunched in a corner of the basement, made by boxes of his Dad’s old stroke books.

Roddy crouched down to get a better look, and the creature lifted one small, rodent-like hand up and out toward him. He was just beginning to reach back towards it when something hard and sharp stabbed him in the back, reminding him what he had been dong in the basement to begin with.

His brother, Nelson, was in a particularly evil mood today. Having gotten in trouble for failing all of his classes, he had gotten his poking stick from its hiding spot and had been tormenting Roddy all day.

“Stop Nelson!” Roddy said, but his brother only continued poking him.

The torment stopped suddenly.

“What is THAT thing,” Nelson bellowed, shoving Roddy to the side and leaning over the creature, which was trying to make itself smaller.

“Just a frog.”

“That aint a frog.” Nelson leaned closer. The creature started to shiver. “I think it’s a gremlin! It’s a gremlin, like what Granpa told us about!”

Then he raised the poking stick, and poked the creature with it.

The first gentle poke caused it to blink its eyes. The second one, a little harder, made it mewl. It sounded like a baby animal.

“Don’t do that.” Roddy said.

“You jealous?”

Nelson poked Roddy twice, hard and quickly, causing him to scoot backwards. He bumped into his Mom’s recipe boxes, and a thin dust rose around his head, causing him to sneeze.

Nelson resumed poking the gremlin. Roddy heard the creature mewl again and, between Nelson’s laughter and his own sneezes, thought he heard the thing growl.

He tried to tell Nelson to stop, but couldn’t talk for sneezing.

His eyes were mostly closed, but he saw the creature rise up on two legs, saw its coarse back hair stand up straight and sharp like a porcupine’s quills. He didn’t see it get the stick away from Nelson, or how Nelson ended up on the ground, backed into a corner of his own, but by then the sneezes had stopped.

The gremlin had the stick, and was poking Nelson. A jab here and there. Nelson had wrapped his arms around his head and buried his face. Where the skin of his arms was exposed, Roddy could see small pinpoints of blood.

He said, “Stop it.” But the creature didn’t stop, so he screamed, “STOP IT!”

It stopped, and it turned to face him.

Nelson made his escape back up the stair, crying.

Somehow, Roddy knew, the brat would get him in trouble for this.

Roddy’s back was in the corner, the gremlin between him and the stairs which were his only way to escape, but he wasn’t afraid. He and the gremlin had common enemies.

“Give me the stick!”

Looking ashamed, the gremlin shuffled forward and handed the stick to Roddy before dropping back down to all fours. It looked innocent again.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” He scolded, as he heard footsteps on the stairs. “Now shoo.”

The gremlin was gone, hidden away, by the time his mother reached him. Her face red and angry she shouted at him, “Roderick, how DARE you hurt your little brother that way. He’s bleeding, Roderick. Do you know what that means?”

She snatched the stick away and threw it into a corner, and slapped him hard across the face.

A small greenish brown hand reach out and sweep up the poking stick.

Naughty little gremlin, he thought, but secretly, he smiled. Their time to be the bullies would come soon enough.

Disordered (NaNoWriMo Novel) part 1

2005-11-15T17:40:00.000-05:00

We met in June and it wasn’t love at first sight. This is not a love story.

My head was full of sick people and tragic diseases that start in the brain but kill from the outside in.

Being a neophyte in this psychiatric world I didn’t know if he was a doctor or a patient and if I should be flattered, worried or outraged when he said to me, “You have the cutest face. You look like a chubby little cherub.”

That night I went home and ate an entire frozen pizza, 2 corn-dogs and 4 pudding cups. Afterwards I vomited as much of it as I could before scrubbing the toilet with bleach.

Otherwise it mildews.

No, that wasn’t the beginning, or the middle, or the end, but it was around that time that I started going to AA meetings for moral support.

I never stood up and said, “Hi, my name is Amy Winters and I’m an alcoholic. Mostly I just sat in the back and listened.

I wasn’t really an alcoholic and the meetings never really helped much. I kept going maily to please my doctor. She had read about the AA thing in some medical journal and wanted it to be the miracle treatment that cured her patient.

I quit going to the meetings after I got my first sobriety pin.

I felt like a hypocrite because I had no intentions of ever giving up my alcohol.

Vodka was my liquid womb.

Before AA, before Horace, he of the mid-June chubby cheeked cherub comment, before bleach battles with mildew over the ownership of the toilet, there was a brief time when I wasn’t disordered.

Stranger in the Dark

2005-10-06T16:14:00.000-04:00

In the darkness her eyes flew open, scanning into the shadowed corners where she coudln't actually see, but she didn't have to see to know.

He was back. The murders, the rapist, the monster, the child killer.

He was back. He was with her.

She had to get rid of him. Now. Once and for all.

She didn't turn on the light. She didn't want to frighten him away. Rolling slowly over in the bed, she groped on her nightstand to find he weapon. Her fingers touched her alarm clock, her bedtime glass of water and the base of her lamp, but not what she was looking for.

She had left it in the kitchen then, on the counter while she was washing dishes. Just in case he came then.

Since last time she had sworn to never be unprepaired, and until tonight she never had been. Of course, that was when he came.

She would have to go after it then, and hope he didn't notice that she had noticed him, before she got to it.

In the dark her house was a stranger, but she slid her feet along the capet, her fingers along the wall. Kitchen was there, at the end of the hall. The small light over the stove had been left on. She hoped it woudln't be too much.

The hallway seemed to strech forever, as she struggled to stay calm and quiet. She wanted him to still be there when she got her hands on her weapon. SHE wanted to be the one to do him in finally, and not have him go away on his own.

Finally, she was there, the kitchen, and her tool on the counter, between the coffee pot and the empty cup waiting on her first morning cup.

She nearly dashed the rest of the way, grabbing the handheld recorder and pushing the proper button. She began to speak.

"Her eyes flew open in the darkness," she said, "and she knew she wasn't alone. She struggled to see the shadows in the shadows that might hide someone, but it was useless. Still. She knew he was there, the one that had been in the news. The one they called the Monster."

Smiling now, because she had finally caught him, the writer contiuned to tell his story as she pushed the button that would start her coffee.

She had him in her grasp. There would be no more sleep tonight.

Room With a View

2005-09-15T23:47:00.000-04:00

The wind breathed fire, brushing invisible lounges of flame across her
face as she stood on the balcony and looked down at the highway.

The apartment was an expensive one, advertised especially for its
"beautiful view." In this case having a beautiful view meant it had a
very large window and a very large balcony that looked out over a busy
highway that led in and out of a busy city.

Her idea of a beautiful view would have involved trees and a lake and
maybe some mountains in the distance.

This was here though, and the apartment was nice.

She closed her eyes, turned her face toward the sun, let the dragon's
breath of summer blow across her sweaty brow, where it was almost
cool, almost a comfort.

"Well, what do you think?" the realtor said from behind her, in the bedroom.

"I hate the view." she said, then turned and walked back inside.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to slip his sensible
shoe on over his sensible brown sock. His toupee had come off and he
hadn't bothered to put it back on. The top of his bald head was red
from the exertion.

"And it smells like bad sex in here," she said. "Keep the panties. I
don't want them anymore."

She left him sitting there, his soft and pudgy face open in surprise
as she walked out of the apartment.

She took the stairs down, because no one ever took the stairs. Her
footsteps followed her down.

It was hot in here too. Hotter, because even the hot wind didn't
reach the inner caverns of the apartment building. There were no
small balconies with beautiful views of hurried commuters.

On the stairs that led from the 3rd floor to the second her sin caught
up with her.

He grabbed her arm, swung her around, screamed in her face. "You
bitch. You rotten, rotten bitch!" His eyes bulged out, his faced
turned an alarming shade of crimson. She could picture steam coming
out of his ears, his nose popping off like a pressure release valve.

She giggled.

He slapped her.

For a moment there was silence. They stared at each other, each
angry, aghast at what the other had done.

A door opened, closed. Footsteps approached.

"You left your hair in the bedroom" she told him, and turned her back again.

This time she made it outside without him and the dry heat wrapped its
arms around her like a willing lover, a sooting mother, a soul
cleansing sauna without the humidity.

She would cry later, while the children were doing their homework and
she cooked their supper. Her husband might would notice that the soup
was a little salty, but he wouldn't know why.

Eventually she would leave him.

"I looked at a very nice apartment," she would tell him. "I'm moving
out on Wednesday. I will do ever other week with the kids, if you
insist, but they better not mess up my place.

Yes, eventually she would leave him, when she finally found the perfect place.

Perhaps I'm using the wrong real estate agents, she thought. Maybe I
should use a woman next time.

Things Yet to Happen

2005-09-08T22:11:00.000-04:00

She woke up and knew it hadn't happened yet.

That knowledge gave her no peace.

It would happen. It would happen that day. Nothing could stop it.

Nothing could change it. It was coming.

She could only wait.

She got out of bed and got dressed, smiled at her mother, kissed herfathers cheek when he went to work.

Then she went to school.

It still hadn't happened, but it was going to. Its future happening buzzed in her head until she thought she was going to go crazy.

For once she was glad to have been branded a freak, to be friendless.If she had friends she would be tempted to tell them.

Telling them woudln't change anything.

Then it happened.

She felt it when she happend. The buzzing in her head suddenly stopped. Her stomach dropped. Her heart screamed.

The secretary called her to the guidance counclers office at 10 after10 that morning.

"I'm sorry, Ivy." they told her. "It was an accident. A horribleaccident. No one could have seen it coming. Nothing could have stopped it."

"I know." she told them. "I know."

And she did know. She always knew, and it always happened.

Dirty Feather

2005-09-08T20:47:00.000-04:00

I found a feather in the mud,
took it in and washed it up.
Stuck the feather in my hat,
would you have a look at that.

Birdie feather, bright and blue,
no more mud, as good a new.
Much like people that we know,
clean them up and they will glow.

High Beams

2005-09-02T15:57:00.000-04:00

She sat where she was, looking down at her hands folded serenely on lap. She wasn’t looking ahead, but she could still see the high beams headed toward her. They were still distant.

"I can see you," she thought, "but you can’t see me."

It felt ironic to her. Her very invisibility to the world was what had brought her there.

The lights came closer.

She hummed a song.

A warm breeze stirred, making the dry dirt of the road beside the tracks dance in a dirt dirvish.

"I should feel something," she though.

She felt nothing at all.

The high beams were almost blinding now, even though she still couldn’t see them. The train blared its angry horn at her.

She waited for them.

So Sorry

2005-09-01T22:13:00.000-04:00

I’m sorry I was not sad enough to please you.
I’ll try harder next time
to squeeze out crocodile tears.

I’m sorry if I did not mourn
the millions I did not know.
I must have an evil soul.

I’m sorry I am not happy
like you are happy
with the life I was dealt.

I’m sorry I put my own suffering
before I put the suffering of strangers
in must have a rotten mind.

I’m sorry I did not cry for them,
but not sorry that you will not cry for me
when I’m gone.

Insignificant Thing

2005-08-27T20:30:00.000-04:00

It has lived in the darkness for years. Flitting from mind to mind. It giggles hysterically at it's play things.Its a small thing, insignificant mostly.

It plays with your head,alters your memories, fills that space behind your eyes with imigianedslights and faults.

Some minds are not right for it, will not harbor it, and soon it iscast out to flit and flitter its way to a new mind, a new chance totake root.

Occasionally it finds a home. A perfect match. A mind already fullof rot, a soul ready for suggestion.

Then it begins.

The nightmares, the visions, the pain. It never ends.

Sometimes there is insanity. Sometimes there is murder, but alwaysthere is the thing, small and mostly insignificant, unless it finds the right host.

Season of Harvest

2005-08-24T20:53:00.000-04:00

When autumn finally arrived, the towns children were buzzing with excitement.

In their evenings they no longer played video games or watched television. They all gathered in the gazebo at the town square and stuffed the scarecrows.

There wasn't any laughter, not any joking and very little talking. The air was full of the sound of corn husks and the tangy and almost unpleasant smell of the same.

To the few people who were strangers who passed though that little town square, the children looked somber, not excited. But the townies knew better.

The adults watched their children, with small smiles on their faces. Some of the children’s relaxed enthusiasm rubbed off on them.

They felt the joy of the coming of autumn, but sadness as well, because they knew that the scarecrows were not for the fields.

By the time the last of the leaves fell from the trees, hundreds of scarecrows were in the gazebo, and surrounding it. Even the gazebo's roof was covered with the stuffy men.

Autumn was easing into winter, and the night had come.

Bonfire night.

The children stood in a huge circle around the scarecrow filled gazebo, gazing at it with hungry smiles in their eyes, as the youngest of them walked up and was handed the gift of a burning stick.

Fire. Most days of their lives they were told to never play with it. On this night they got to use it.

The youngest would touch it to the foot of the nearest stuffy, and soon they all lit up.

When the fire was nearing its peak all the children were sent to their homes, but the adults would stay by the fire.

The children never complained, never tried to stay, because the fire, once large, frightened them, as did the screams they sometimes thought they heard as they lay in their beds, trying to sleep while shadows from the stuffy bonfire danced on the walls and ceilings of their rooms.

Life has four seasons, they are taught.

Spring is the newborn babies, fresh and new.

Summer is the children, still young with plenty of time left in their year, but no longer fresh, no longer new.

Fall is for the adults, aging, fading, growing dry and discolored like the leaves on the trees.

And then there is winter, when you die.

When fall finally arrives, winter soon follows.

Every night, after the stuffy fire, the children watch their parents sweep up the ash and rebuild the gazebo, already preparing for next years harvest of those in the winter of their lives.