Chorlie
from Philadelphia, PA is reading The Rules of the Tunnel October 3, 2011 - 10:17pm
I thouroughly enjoy passive agressiveness. Kuddos, sir!
Ben
from Australia is reading My Booky Wook by Russell BrandOctober 4, 2011 - 5:36am
My mother stood up suddenly and pushed past me, slapping my father across the face, before grabbing his collar and shaking him, crying, “Why? How could you do this to me?”
“I don’t have a choice, Cindy,” he said. “I’m sorry, but it’s the right thing to do.”
“The right thing!?” she wailed. “The right thing to do would have been to keep your fucking dick in your pants! The right thing to do would have been to not fuck that whore!”
“Cindy–”
“No, fuck you!” she screamed, hysterical. “Fuck you!” She slapped him across the face. “Fuck you!” She was punching him in the chest now, her arms flailing violently.
“Cindy, cut it out!” he said, “I mean it.”
But still she hit him, forcing him back into the wall. “Fuck you!”
This is a snippet from chapter 3 of the novel I'm working on. And by working on, I mean adding to every month or so when I find a few spare hours...
Axel Taiari
from Paris, France is reading Paradise LostOctober 9, 2011 - 4:04am
"The city-state of Nualla-Stem greets me with the stink of rot and ripe fruits. I reach the outer walls stumbling, snarling and starving, the migraine swirling in my head threatening to burst and splatter my brain's remains on the damp earth. I press on, hoping I will hold on until I find a cure.
The walls of the city soar from the ground and stand so high I have to squint to see the top. Black cannons and catapults watch over the wasteland at my back. This whole city is a monster. It strives and spreads as far as the eye can see, twisting the land and sky, bending them to its will. My home, Mog-Torpide, was nothing compared to this behemoth, this anomaly in the landscape. Back home, interconnected caves mazed their way around our underground lake, linking together low-rising dwellings and houses carved in bedrock, sulfur and lime torches nudging the shadows away. Big enough to house and nurture several thousands of my brethren, yes, but a speck of civilization compared to this. Sheltered from the light of day, we hid and fed and slept in our earthen tombs and never dared think of a place such as this."
Alex Kane
from west-central Illinois is reading Dark OrbitOctober 9, 2011 - 10:16am
From my current WIP:
After what might have been hours, or just as easily days, the world faded into being in grainy, photographic black-and-white.
Oran tried to blink, and winced at the fierce ache that blossomed behind his eyes.
At least the vision he'd experienced of the surface had only been a nightmare. That was something.
The room he'd found himself in smelled faintly of sterilization mist, and the bed in which he lay enveloped him like it had been custom-crafted to fit his form. A pair of buzzing fluorescents hung parallel to one another on the ceiling directly above him.
Cold metal restrained his bare chest, and on his left wrist was some kind of electronic bracelet. Its tiny display shed a lambent halo, but Oran couldn't make out anything it might be saying.
He blinked again. Once more it brought him anguish.
lynx_child
from Seattle is reading The Dresden Files seriesOctober 9, 2011 - 11:16am
I've been having a lot of trouble with the first chapter of my current WIP. This is my most recent opening:
A hay cart creaked and groaned down an old dirt road on a hot day. At its head, a fat old woman cracked a whip at a bedraggled pony. They had been traveling a long time.
Beside the woman sat a boy. He leaned forward with hunched shoulders and appeared to scowl down at the buckles on the front of the cart, but really he was trying not to cry. The old woman did not look at him but kept her weak eyes on the road ahead and her jaw firmly clenched. The sun was behind them, and the shadows made the wrinkles on her face more prominent and the hollows of her eyes darker, so that she looked very much like a witch.
missesdash
from Paris is reading The InformersOctober 9, 2011 - 12:14pm
From my WIP about a 17 year old peeping Tom:
I stuff half of my burrito in my mouth, watching her stomp down the stairs in those scarlet demon talons she calls shoes. My mother's got on so much make-up I half expect her to pop on a red nose and run out to a car filled with other whore clowns.
"How do I look?" she says.
I finish chewing, suck the shredded beef from teeth and wipe my face on the back of my arm. "Like a whore,"
Pete comes running down the steps, one of his little toy trucks in his chubby hands. He's got god-knows-what caked all over his fingers. It looks like shit, but it's probably dog food. The kid has a serious weakness for those Puppy Chow Turkey Dinners. "Whore. Horr-orrr," he's saying.
lynx_child
from Seattle is reading The Dresden Files seriesOctober 9, 2011 - 12:12pm
those scarlett demon talons she calls shoes.
This made me laugh.
Renfield
from Hell is reading 20th Century GhostsOctober 9, 2011 - 12:24pm
I've been having a lot of trouble with the first chapter of my current WIP. This is my most recent opening:
If you don't mind me weighing in on this Lynx, I could make a comment on this as an opening. Your opening lacks a good hook of a description and lacks an emotional relation. It's more an overly detailed play-by-play of a rather tepid scene. You could open with a description of the pummeling heat or the sweat gathering in the old lady's flabby fat folds, something visceral to lock on to. Dialing in the description closer to the more intimate POV rather than the distant omniscience might pump up the action a bit more and invest you more in the scene. Tackling a scene from a different angle like this usually gets me past that barrier. Hopefully this is helpful, what you think?
lynx_child
from Seattle is reading The Dresden Files seriesOctober 9, 2011 - 1:00pm
If you don't mind me weighing in on this Lynx, I could make a comment on this as an opening
I really appreciate your feedback. I've tried so many different angles, and I think I'm stuck in a rut because the only ones that feel "right" are the ones closest to my original opening, which I wrote 8 years ago and needed a lot of work. But if I go in a different direction, it doesn't feel like it fits. And all of them seem to fall flat. I had another, discarded one, where I got rid of the cart altogether:
"A boy stumbled down a long dirt road in blistering heat. His muscles were sore, his lips were in tatters from the wind, and his chest ached from the strain, the dust and the thick smell of smoke saturating the air."
It needs editing, of course, but is it any better than the first?
This is just a second draft but this first chapter is just killing me. Also, if you'd rather PM me than post here, that's fine - I don't want to derail the discussion.
aliensoul77
from a cold distant star is reading the writing on the wall.October 12, 2011 - 10:06pm
When the Professor invited him over for dinner he was surprised to say the least. He thought those sorts of things only happened in movies or bad sitcoms. Yet Professor Kirkland had always treated him with a certain air of respect by reading from his papers in class or applauding his answers to a lecture question. He was the sort of student who set up the grading curve for others. Some of his peers even murmured of favoritism especially one white-bread frat boy jock in particular named Devon Hutchinson who he heard talking about him outside of class one day.
“It’s all about affirmative action with these people, man,” he said to his buddies, “They have to make them feel special or else they accuse you of racism. It isn’t enough they dominate the media and sports, now they want to take over the academic world too. I’m sorry but I believe certain classes of people will always be smarter than other people, it’s genetic.”
It took everything Greg had not to beat the shit out of Devon at that moment, he wanted to lose it and just maul him but he knew he would just be feeding into all his stereotypes.
Raelyn
from California is reading The Liars' ClubOctober 12, 2011 - 10:41pm
Ōishi was aware of teeth cracking as his face broke his fall. The door slammed behind him, leaving him out in the cold of the night.
“Why bother getting up,” he thought to himself. “Better to just rot right here.” But he knew he couldn’t do that, no matter how tempting. Slowly he picked himself up and spat the blood from his mouth.
An alleyway was just a few paces away. A sweet refuge where Ōishi could slump down into an ignorant bliss, at least for just a moment. He dragged sore feet across the ground and propped himself against the brothel he was just thrown out of.
Once he was off the main street Ōishi allowed gravity to pull him down and hold him tightly to the floor. The harsh impact caused quivers to shoot up his digestive track and sent him retching into the open space next to him.
“Mo...” he uttered. He raised his arm to wipe the vomit, but passed into a drunken stupor mid swipe. He dreamt.
His dreams were pleasant ones.
“Chikara, what fortune causes your mouth to have grown so wide?” Ōishi teased his eldest son.
“Mother has come home!” he shouted. “Our struggle is over father! We’ve won; our honor has been restored! We can be a family again.”
Chikara’s mother appeared beside him and cast a shy but lovely smile on Ōishi, who stepped forward to embrace her. Their body heat mingled together, and everything else faded away. Ōishi held his wife’s head to his chest and wrapped his other arm around her tiny frame. Everything was perfectly warm; perfectly natural.
“Oi, Ossan!” The warm feeling was shattered by a rush of cold water cascading down on Ōishi’s head. Too startled to react, he peered up through squinting lids at a boy, no older than ten. He was holding a water bucket and leaning backwards away from Ōishi and his stench. “Ossan, please, you need to get up. Please.”
“What’s the date?” Ōishi grumbled.
Raelyn
from California is reading The Liars' ClubOctober 13, 2011 - 1:23am
Let it be known that this is the first time I've showed any of my writing to someone other than my boyfriend. Oh, how nerve racking!!
missesdash
from Paris is reading The InformersOctober 13, 2011 - 8:07am
@Rae I love your style. It's clean and allows for really nice pacing. I can tell there's a story here instead of a mess of words that just sound interesting together.
Greg Eidson
from Los Angeles, CA is reading THOMAS PYNCHON'S BLEEDING EDGEOctober 13, 2011 - 8:47am
From my new story G.I.L.F.
There’s a girl and a guy in the back, fucking, I’m pretty sure. He’s got her against the wall in a dark corner near some old PacMan machine. There’s a lot of heavy breathing and a few grunts. Her skirt is hiked up to the top of her thighs but you can’t see much else. An old man sits at the end of the bar, head down, a long curly grey beard covering up most of his face. Like the person he used to be is long gone. Covered up and masked away. Abandoned.
People high five, play pool terribly. A fight breaks out every other hour. Someone leaves with a busted bloodied cracked nose, probably falls asleep on the sidewalk down the street.
This group of people, these black sheep. This is where they all wash up into this black abyss. This bar, all the bars across America, the world, they suck these people in.
This is where they go to die.
With a drink in hand, everything just feels a little bit safer.
MattF
from Tokyo is reading Borges' Collected FictionsOctober 14, 2011 - 3:08am
Four days after the tsunami, at a shelter in Miyagi, I met an old woman named Akiko. She was eighty-two. She said that she had searched the ruins for her house and found it far away. She entered and her things were strewn everywhere. Then she saw among the debris, half-buried, her own dead body sprawled across the floor. Forlorn, she went back to it. The future was uncertain, she told me, either way.
So I began to think about my own future, and the next morning I left.
--89 words from the middle of a story currently being submitted...
D J Hearn
from Merritt Island Florida is reading American Psycho, Blood Meridian, Classical Guitar BuildingOctober 14, 2011 - 5:49am
@ Bob Pastorella I liked your entry.Especially "heneeded a bad job bad"
My entry is an excercise Iv'e been working on. I take vocab words from the book I'm reading and try to build a scene for them. None are very long but might come in hady in other stories.
Ignacio stood tall above the decrepit querents. Gazing at him eyes sand stung and dry. He could only hold their fate for so long with his divinations of arcana spoken in a hollow voice of foreign words and made intelligible only by his broad sweeping arms. He knew how to captivate, mixing local emotion with esoteric revelations. A din of flies voracious through the heavy musk of dysentery find suitable homes in the crevasses of the bloated bodied supplicants. The pale oracle of La Luz is losing ground.
Marius Hjelseth
from the frozen Norwegian tundra is reading GomorrahOctober 14, 2011 - 9:11am
Random excerpt from my huge novel WIP:
‘Can I borrow that?’ Aurora asked, and pointed towards Ise’s hip. She looked down at the sword hanging casually from her waist. Ise took a firm grip of the hilt, and cringed at the thought of giving it to Aurora, even for a moment.
‘I shouldn’t let you touch it,’ Ise said hesitantly.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Aurora replied, clasping her hand to her face in horror. ‘Is that offensive? It’s probably a big cultural taboo, right?’
‘No, I just don’t want you touching it. You’ll hurt yourself.’
‘Oh, please! I know not to touch the sharp edge. Come on, I want to show you something.’
‘There are two sharp edges, Ro.’
Nick Wilczynski
from Greensboro, NC is reading A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. MartinOctober 15, 2011 - 12:13pm
I like it Marius, is it Fantasy?
@MattF that's quite interesting.
Short Story called 'Getting Credit' that I've been pounding out this week.
I was getting wine drunk in an alley when I met her. She snuck up on me and I didn't notice her over the quiet hiss of the spray paint until she reached out to touch my shoulder.
The reason behind the wine was that it is not carbonated. When you ride around with beer in your backpack as you bicycle around town, in my experience this can only lead to explosions. Not the cool sort of explosions one might marvel at in a Michael Bay movie, instead these are anticlimactic little fizzles that get your shirt wet and waste half the beer. Liquor is a viable option, but when you are riding around town taking straight shots of warm vodka your tags are probably going to get sloppy.
Nicholas C.
from Canada is reading The Corrections, by Jonathan FranzenOctober 16, 2011 - 11:48am
Wicked stuff, everyone.
Well I saw all yours, so here's mine.....
When I opened his door I was greeted by a skull-rending bang and a bloom of wet red mush, which made a splat as hit the ceiling.
I wish I hadn't seen his face. Then I could maybe convince myself that he'd been planning to do it all along, that his will was iron. But I did see his face. His eyes locked onto mine and I saw the way his whole body flinched in surprise as I entered without knocking. He squinted and the muscles shifted where the shotgun met his chin. His fingers squeezed tight around the trigger probably out of reflex.
Do you get that? I surprised him into pulling the trigger. Maybe he could have done it without me, maybe he couldn't. All I remember is his face when I walked in, and then a second later he had none.
And I remember the tears streaming down his face. Because I'd never seen my brother cry before.
Marius Hjelseth
from the frozen Norwegian tundra is reading GomorrahOctober 16, 2011 - 12:32pm
@nkwilczy That's the idea, but I find myself struggling with keeping to genre conventions, so we'll see what it turns into.
@Nicholas I really like how you can make me feel like I've been kicked in the stomach in a hundred words or less. Well done.
Nicholas C.
from Canada is reading The Corrections, by Jonathan FranzenOctober 16, 2011 - 1:36pm
Thanks a bunch, Marius.
I like the two characters you presented, especially Aurora. You get a little snippet of her personality there.
@missesdash Your piece is captivating. Short, but it grabs you. I would definitely keep reading if you put the whole book in front of me!
damoneorone
from Hobbs, New Mexico is reading Imperial BedroomsOctober 17, 2011 - 1:03am
He knew that he was in the wrong part of town with the wrong kind of girl but he didn't care. She led him by the hand and for the first time in a long time he felt bad. He felt bad in a good way. The way you feel when you retort someone's insult with a quip so gruesome it stops them dead in their tracks. A response so intense that they have no choice but to walk away defeated. He enjoyed that. He reveled in it. She was his new drug and the danger that loomed in the distant future was nothing less than a distraction.
simon morris
from Originally, Philadelphia, PA; presently Miami Beach, FL is reading This Body of Death, by Elizabeth GeorgeOctober 17, 2011 - 6:46am
For my first contribution, I will show you the first four words of a project that sold to the first editor to read it.
"Sometimes I hear voices."
My second contribution is from a work in progress:
Don’t be nervous. We’re in-vis-i-ble. Invisible and indivisible, divisible by one. Take a deep breath. Hold it. That’s better. Today’s our day. When we woke up we felt it was going to be like any other day. After watching the news---nothing threatening there---we knew that today could be a good day to go shopping.
Nothing threatening is anjother kind of problem. We need something to gossip about. Takes the mind off …
Look at this place. Bigger than a stadium and the people look like they are going every which way at once. Don’t we love it—the anonymity of the crowd? Everybody coming from someplace or going to someplace.
Except us. We’re shopping.
We’ll know the right one when she arrives. She—or he---will have that little lost child look. Some of those young boys are prettier than the girls. We almost feel sorry for them. Look at them. Sheep being led to slaughter. Innocent as lambs but we know the truth, don't we?
mutterhals
from Pittsburgh
October 17, 2011 - 7:32am
I'm extremely new here, so forgive me if this is out of line, but here is a bit of something I've been working on and I'd love any feedback. Thanks in advance.
***
Although he looked charmingly disheveled in the loaned hospital robe and his battered new wave hair cut, in the harsh light of day his injuries looked hideous and painful. I couldn’t help but stare at him. Of course he caught me.
“What, what is it?” he asked.
“Well, you look really fucked up right now,” I admitted uneasily.
“Do you have a mirror or something?”
“Yeah, sure.” I reached into my smock for my mirror and give it to him. He gasped when he looked into it.
“Holy fucking Christ, I look horrible.”
“You don’t look that bad,” I lied. I realized it must have been the first time he’d seen himself since the accident. He seemed fascinated by the new proportions of his mangled face.
“I look like the fucking elephant man.”
He looked at the stitches stretching across the side of his head with keen interest, craning his neck to get the full effect in the tiny glass. He ran a finger over it indelicately, like it didn’t hurt at all.
enough
from Indiana is reading Warmed and BoundOctober 22, 2011 - 8:28pm
100 Exactly....The begining of what I think will be NUMB.
Guitar rifts entwined with cat calls and whistles accompany through an ever swinging door marked “Private”. Cigarette smoke hangs languidly amid shots of whiskey, crude chopped lines and a plethora of female skin. Silver tracks cradle bulbs scoring a row of mirrors in the shotgun style dressing room backstage. Scratched and dented lockers lining the opposite wall gape half open and closed splaying out worn leather, shedding boas, lingerie and platforms. Incense, liquor and musky notes of cologne collide with pheromones in a sweet transcendence amongst the fleshed walkway to the bathroom stalls marred with red paint at the end.
enough
from Indiana is reading Warmed and BoundOctober 23, 2011 - 5:31pm
@Simon Morris
Interesting. You have me curious now.
Renfield
from Hell is reading 20th Century GhostsOctober 23, 2011 - 6:47pm
it's "guitar riffs" but extra points awarded for using 'gape' and 'splaying' in a sentence not referring to anything sexual.
Richard
from St. Louis is reading various anthologiesOctober 23, 2011 - 8:36pm
102 words from a short story called "Fireflies" that I have submitted to the Machine of Death anthology. Keeping my fingers crossed that it gets in. 2000 submitted, only 35 accepted. Long odds.
"When the winds come, the hut shakes and I grab the tabletop, the heavy wood carved centuries ago, scarred and pitted by time. I wait for the roof to rip off, exposing me to some giant hand, pulling me into the sky to be punished for my sins. The beams creak and moan, and in the gaps I hear her voice. I beg her to shut up, to leave me alone, but the dull ache that wraps around my plodding heart, it trembles and hesitates, apologizes for snapping at her, my love, and asks her for forgiveness. And she gives it, freely."
Chester Pane
from Portland, Oregon is reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazFebruary 19, 2012 - 9:06pm
Moonlight pours in through the bedroom window, rinsing Eve’s pale naked body in blue. You wonder how she can sleep without any blankets or sheets; her milky complexion warmed only by the orange galaxies of freckles that stain her smooth skin. “I could sleep through anything,” she was always saying in response to your insomnia as if she possessed some sort of highly evolved sleeping gene. Her nipples are stiff and her groin is auburn, just like the long hair that’s fanned out around her head. She’s been so cold lately and you wonder if she really could sleep through anything as you reach out to feel the parts of her she doesn’t usually let you touch anymore.
Dave
from a city near you is reading constantlyFebruary 19, 2012 - 9:36pm
Rough, but the fewest words I could get while still having some context:
How I met her was, how I got this scar, I was shooting an AR-15. The AR-15 is a semi-automatic civilian version of the military’s M4 carbine, a 5.56mm, magazine fed, gas operated, air cooled, lightweight assault rifle, itself an evolution of the Viet Nam era M16 assault rifle. In this case, what I was holding in my hands was identical to the military’s M4 except for the fire control group, because I was shooting a weapon that belonged to the Police Department. It was my first time with an assault rifle.
“On the command of FIRE, shoot TWO to the body, ONE to the head, TWO to the body, ONE to the head!” The body armor drill. The failure to stop. The triple tap. The Mozambique. “FIRE!”
Richard
from St. Louis is reading various anthologiesFebruary 19, 2012 - 10:11pm
^the aforementioned story "Fireflies" did not make it into the MOD anthology but it will be in an upcoming issue of Polluto so, that's kind of cool.
Here's the first bit of a story I wrote in the SGJ intensive here at LR. Shopping it now:
If you asked me today the exact moment in time that I knew Heather was wrong for me, it would have to be the night her husband was banging on my apartment door, her laughter hidden under the sheets, our bodies slick with sweat. She was the kind of girl who bent over the pool table just a little too far, her top slipping down, her bra pushing up, her skin-tight jeans hugging her hips. Her eyes told you she’d never been here before, that this was new territory, eyelashes batting, a stray dark hair tucked behind her ear. She sipped at the bottle of beer as if it was an oddity—it somehow just ended up in her mouth. Sly grins and sharp white teeth devoured glossy bruised lipstick, always wet, always whispering secrets wrapped in bourbon and mint.
Chester Pane
from Portland, Oregon is reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazFebruary 19, 2012 - 10:32pm
I like Heather.
Churtward
from Gainesville, VA is reading Play It As It LaysFebruary 19, 2012 - 10:48pm
An excerpt from a novella I've been working on for a couple months now. Don't have a title for it yet. Just playing around with it. Could always use some critique, be brutal!
"We stood stiff facing each other. Me facing Beatrix. Beatrix facing me. The gun facing the blonde and the blonde facing all three. I proceeded to take my jacket off and unzip my pants and went down to the floor. I went down and had my way with that girl. I went down there like a savage, like a hunter attacking their prey. And like a hunter that stalks their prey, they pin them down and cover their mouth to keep them from screaming or even escaping. And we keep them pinned, we keep our prey pinned until we are done taking what we want from them to satisfy our own personal needs. We just attack and attack and attack until their defense is down and there is nothing left to attack."
Bekanator
from Kamloops, British Columbia is reading Ugly Girls by Lindsay HunterFebruary 19, 2012 - 11:17pm
Part of the story I'm working on for my "slutty novella" called Casual Encounters. In this scene, Ellen meets up with Oliver, an awkward guy who isn't into the aggressive sex she's into, but she feels bad and decides to have a conversation with him instead of hurting his feelings by leaving:
He sold home insurance, though he wasn't entirely sure why. He said that was where his life ended up. He said he hated his basement suite, it's orange carpet and gravestone-coloured walls. It wasn't even a legal suite because he had no window in the bedroom. And when he woke in the morning he could never tell what time it was, and he said that if if it were up to him he'd roll over and sleep forever. He asked me what I did, and I said, “I work at a jewelry store. I sell ugly diamond rings to boring couples trying to make their lives exciting.”
He kissed me, his lips tasting as sweet as the ice wine. We made out on his couch, his hands shaking, one on my neck and one on my waist, never straying. I suggested going to the bedroom and he said, “Sure, okay.” And he climbed over me and I shut my eyes in the dark, his voice invading, saying, “I'm glad you stayed,” his breaths quick, paced, hot on my face, nervous. He felt in his nightstand drawer, struggled with the rubber, trying to get it on with just the kitchen light streaming in through the open bedroom door. And I reached for his dick and he shuddered. I told him I wanted him. I wrapped my legs around him and he kissed me, lips on my ear, on my neck, his hands clinging to me, never using me, doing nothing for me. When he came he collapsed on top of me, lips against my ear, saying, “I want to get you off. Can I get you off?”
I winced, his fingers inside of me, never angled the right way, his breath shaking, him asking, “Is this good? Is that good?” And I faked it, ended it, all of it.
Laramore Black
from Joplin, Missouri is reading Mario Kart 8February 20, 2012 - 11:57am
The beginning of an overdose feels astounding, all of those chemicals pumping through your veins. Your eyes they slowly start to close, or begin to flutter. It’s the most relaxing moment anyone could offer if you have the right mind set, otherwise you’ll be struck with panic. The feeling of falling asleep and knowing you won’t wake up, knowing it and being at peace with it. What a feeling, to be at peace with everything finally having an ending. Don’t go feeling sorry for that man on the screen though, he was just another good joke that you never heard. Keep reading and he’ll have you laughing at him soon enough.
During this time it had been three days since losing all faith in humanity, or maybe it was just the first time coming to a realization of never having faith in it anyway. That’s a sad story though and I wouldn’t want to plague you with it just yet. How are your Serotonin levels today? I was just checking, if you were feeling rather down I could have told you a joke or something. You know, give you that little happy feeling you spend every breathing moment on a never-ending pursuit for: Dopamine.
A good joke you have probably heard is how we walk around acting smart and dressing ourselves to seem so civilized, or to impress for sex in our environments. Some of us do whatever it takes to prove we are that higher life form we claim to be. Our very existence is like the butt of some bad joke. A bunch of animals playing dress-up to broadcast an ego, just evolved monkeys driven by nervous system chemicals and a never-ending sex-drive to pro-create while walking around speaking some useless words we all made up to produce that lovely “ahhh” chemical in our minds. Emotion driven beings trying to invent things like structure, maybe it’s not a joke. Maybe no matter how it’s told, you’re going to hear a sad story…
EDIT:
Sorry for more than 100 words, didn't read the first post...
Mellanie Blue
from Lewisberry, PA is reading The Ultimate Guide to Kink by Tristan TaorminoFebruary 20, 2012 - 3:50pm
I am feigning ignorance about any word count.....
Dakota sagged in a pale corner of her room, brushes scattered in disarray beyond her gnarled feet. Daubs of paint sullied her blue jeans, the floor. The canvas rested dismally atop the heap of clothing in the opposite corner, the result of meeting with Dakota's anger, her painfully contorted fingers. A gradual darkening of the room lured her into consciousness. The streetlights were blinking into existance. She quickly gathered up her materials, hid the stained jeans under her bed. She'd have to throw them away to escape the tumultuous fury of her mother, the insults wrapped in one hundred proof breath.
Since Dakota was a very small child, her mother had painted. She went into "her place", and it was sacred and proud. There were two things Lucy loved to do - paint, and drink. She was good at neither. Naturally, it was divined that any child of hers would paint. There was a ghost in Lucy's mind while pregnant. She knew the child would be good. She hammered back margaritas at the thought of vicarious fame.
When Dakota was birthed, and subsequently thrown into the turbulence and instability that was life with her mother, she was instantly and powerfully unloved. No child with disfigured hands, disgusting, crooked little digits, could ever be worthy of Lucy's love.
Chester Pane
from Portland, Oregon is reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazFebruary 20, 2012 - 4:03pm
Yay!
Nick Rolynd
from the US is reading Leviathan February 20, 2012 - 5:11pm
BIt long, sorry.
____
Antiques are an enigma.
People have a love-hate relationship with the past. Some want to learn from it. Some want to forget it exists. Some value it as is. Some want nothing more than go back and change it (some literally, some literarily) But when it comes to antiques, everyone wants them all the time, regardless of their association with the past.
Perhaps it's the novelty of past ideas.
Perhaps it's simply the prospect of future value.
I won't pretend to know the truth about antiques. I only know that if everyone wants them, then I am not a part of the whole in the minds of those who craft the concept of everyone. In fact, I'm just about far from everyone as anyone can get, which is rather contradictory when you think about it, considering the fact that all the anyones in the world supposedly make up everyone.
But then, anyone who doesn't like antiques can't possibly be part of everyone.
So I guess I'm just as much of an enigma as antiques themselves.
Yuck.
I need to remedy that.
___
My daily short story in progress.
Alex Kane
from west-central Illinois is reading Dark OrbitFebruary 20, 2012 - 9:08pm
"The call was from her dad," Jared says as I turn on the ignition, and we speed off into the total black of a starless night, the hushed whisper of tires against road the only music.
I click my tongue, and nod slowly.
Jared tells us, "It was the first time I'd ever talked to him, really heard his voice."
Our singer, Damon, he doesn't say a word. This whole time he's scary-quiet.
He probably knows where this is going as well as I do. That this is only the beginning. That we're only just starting down the road to hell.
Because I've read the history books. I've seen the true-crime specials on A&E. These kinds of incidents, they're never isolated. You take a small Protestant town in the center of Bumfuck, Egypt, and you let it fester for a couple centuries, eventually you're guaranteed to get some loonies in the mix. Inject a fair dose of twenty-first-century desperation, and before long you'll get what you might call a centennial sociopath.
You'll have yourself a killer, and then a trail of blood. Like I said, a road to hell.
I hate to break it to you, but this is pretty much the American way.
Hey, it's a mathematical certainty; don't slaughter the messenger. Just think of this all as being inevitable, because really, isn't everything?
Jose F. Diaz
from Boston is reading Wolf Hall by Hilary MantelFebruary 20, 2012 - 10:52pm
The orange waning crescent hung low in the sky to the West just before dawn. As he walked down the lonely road the only other light that shone were from the tattered house's porch lights that lined the street. They illuminated barely enough to see the dirt covered furniture outside of them. Staring at the moon he remembered that half of the moon was in darkness and the rest was bathed in the Sun’s light. The moon became a giant globe in the sky instead of a flat disk to him. He almost didn’t see her at first. The pale light made her appear to be wearing a bright red dress down to her knees.
Not happy with this at all where I'm at. It will be fixed in the very near future.
Fritz
February 20, 2012 - 11:01pm
“I don’t want to die!” The girl yelled, raw. Her voice broke. Billy heard spit in it.
“Who does?” Markus asked. He never seemed upset, just put out.
“She doesn’t understand,” Billy said.
“Really?” Markus asked. There was a funny look on his face.
“I’m not ready yet,” she said. “Mom and Dad found each other. They made another, just one, to take their place. I want to do that.”
Markus laughed… big. Rover got up and moved little farther away. The girl looked scared but was no longer crying.
“You’ve got a good reason to live, girly. Not many better than that one.”
“The police will come. If they take you away your dead.”
“Hear that Rover?”
Thought I'd throw down a bit of a short novel I'm piecemealing. Shooting for a 40-50k piece - just for kicks. I've got about 25k roughed. doing it along with other stuff. Going to title - 'Touching the Soul' - It's a little post-apop weird story. Happy writing!
Dave
from a city near you is reading constantlyFebruary 21, 2012 - 3:17am
Where has Jen gone?
Dwayne
from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updatedFebruary 21, 2012 - 3:31am
"I remember one summer he took me to the beach almost daily while Ma was working. I never understood why he just couldn’t be that other guy. He said he got right with God the last few years of his life, and I hope he did. I have doubts to be honest. But he was my father and I loved him, and miss him even if I haven’t seen him in a very long time.”
I thought I sounded like an idiot, but he reacted like I’d said something touching. I’ll never get other people’s reactions in a million years.
Dave
from a city near you is reading constantlyFebruary 22, 2012 - 3:38am
Walking into the dark, the demons wait. She’s been gone for a day, and the horror will be there. Her little face, crying big salty bulbs that well in her clenched eyes and fall heavy to her cheeks. Her mouth open in gasping sobs that would pass as laughter if not for the pain, the tears glistening in the light. The anguish of it constricts my throat. That I caused it, my heart seizes. That I can’t help her, it breaks. The helplessness of it weakens my knees. Watching her cry, seeing her pain, I’ll carry that forever.
Ches Smith
from Houston, TX
February 22, 2012 - 4:43am
It was just before midnight and the phone rang and I already knew.
“She’s gone,” she said and then cried.
“I’m so sorry,” was all I said, all I could say.
I walked through that dark trailer house to her brother’s room and woke him up and handed him the phone. He spoke to her for a moment and then woke up his dad and sister, called his brother.
“Mamá murió,” he said.
We loaded into my truck to go to the hospital. I took a winding country road to get there, the streets lit only by high beams and a few lonely street lights. Crooked fence posts that couldn’t be put right again and leafless tree branches and old caved in barns, empty like cicada shells, passed us in the night on that black route.
None of us spoke.
Chester Pane
from Portland, Oregon is reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazFebruary 27, 2012 - 12:16am
I saw Jen pass through the other day, and I remembered she had started this great thread that got buried and I just had to resurrect it. Yay Jen.
Anyway, here is something from a short bizarro story I am struggling through:
You’re getting sleepier and sleepier.
Your eyelids become so heavy that they fall off and begin spiraling through the air like a couple of maple-tree helicopters.
Actually they look more like crescent moons than helicopters the way they gather and reflect the light.
No, take that back.
As they hit the ground your pretty sure they’re only clipped toenails. Toenails that crash like helicopters colliding with crescent moons.
What a disaster.
And just like that you’re wide awake again.
Not only are you awake, but you’re pretty sure you’re going to stay that way for a long time unless you find a good eyelid mechanic. And at this hour, what are the odds of that?
You never thought you'd be saying this, but you already miss your eyelids.
Grigori Black
from US is reading Radium Girls by Amanda GowinMarch 15, 2012 - 2:51am
Some really good stuff in this thread. Here's a very rough scrap from my current project. It's a dialogue between a 13 year old boy (the narrator) and his step-father (Jonas):
“Watch your mouth,” Jonas said. “What did you learn?”
“Nothing.”
“All right. Stand up then.”
As soon as I get to my feet, he slams his fist into my stomach. Doubled over, I fall to my hands and knees.
“So what did you learn?”
Vision blurred, it takes everything I’ve got to not black out. “I can’t- can’t breathe.”
“Try to get up, take a swing at me.”
Still gasping for air, I shake my head.
“That’s right,” Jonas said. “There’s your first lesson. It doesn’t matter how tough someone is. If you can’t breathe, you can’t fight. Got it?”
I thouroughly enjoy passive agressiveness. Kuddos, sir!
This is a snippet from chapter 3 of the novel I'm working on. And by working on, I mean adding to every month or so when I find a few spare hours...
"The city-state of Nualla-Stem greets me with the stink of rot and ripe fruits. I reach the outer walls stumbling, snarling and starving, the migraine swirling in my head threatening to burst and splatter my brain's remains on the damp earth. I press on, hoping I will hold on until I find a cure.
The walls of the city soar from the ground and stand so high I have to squint to see the top. Black cannons and catapults watch over the wasteland at my back. This whole city is a monster. It strives and spreads as far as the eye can see, twisting the land and sky, bending them to its will. My home, Mog-Torpide, was nothing compared to this behemoth, this anomaly in the landscape. Back home, interconnected caves mazed their way around our underground lake, linking together low-rising dwellings and houses carved in bedrock, sulfur and lime torches nudging the shadows away. Big enough to house and nurture several thousands of my brethren, yes, but a speck of civilization compared to this. Sheltered from the light of day, we hid and fed and slept in our earthen tombs and never dared think of a place such as this."
From my current WIP:
I've been having a lot of trouble with the first chapter of my current WIP. This is my most recent opening:
From my WIP about a 17 year old peeping Tom:
This made me laugh.
I really appreciate your feedback. I've tried so many different angles, and I think I'm stuck in a rut because the only ones that feel "right" are the ones closest to my original opening, which I wrote 8 years ago and needed a lot of work. But if I go in a different direction, it doesn't feel like it fits. And all of them seem to fall flat. I had another, discarded one, where I got rid of the cart altogether:
"A boy stumbled down a long dirt road in blistering heat. His muscles were sore, his lips were in tatters from the wind, and his chest ached from the strain, the dust and the thick smell of smoke saturating the air."
It needs editing, of course, but is it any better than the first?
This is just a second draft but this first chapter is just killing me. Also, if you'd rather PM me than post here, that's fine - I don't want to derail the discussion.
When the Professor invited him over for dinner he was surprised to say the least. He thought those sorts of things only happened in movies or bad sitcoms. Yet Professor Kirkland had always treated him with a certain air of respect by reading from his papers in class or applauding his answers to a lecture question. He was the sort of student who set up the grading curve for others. Some of his peers even murmured of favoritism especially one white-bread frat boy jock in particular named Devon Hutchinson who he heard talking about him outside of class one day.
“It’s all about affirmative action with these people, man,” he said to his buddies, “They have to make them feel special or else they accuse you of racism. It isn’t enough they dominate the media and sports, now they want to take over the academic world too. I’m sorry but I believe certain classes of people will always be smarter than other people, it’s genetic.”
It took everything Greg had not to beat the shit out of Devon at that moment, he wanted to lose it and just maul him but he knew he would just be feeding into all his stereotypes.
Ōishi was aware of teeth cracking as his face broke his fall. The door slammed behind him, leaving him out in the cold of the night.
“Why bother getting up,” he thought to himself. “Better to just rot right here.” But he knew he couldn’t do that, no matter how tempting. Slowly he picked himself up and spat the blood from his mouth.
An alleyway was just a few paces away. A sweet refuge where Ōishi could slump down into an ignorant bliss, at least for just a moment. He dragged sore feet across the ground and propped himself against the brothel he was just thrown out of.
Once he was off the main street Ōishi allowed gravity to pull him down and hold him tightly to the floor. The harsh impact caused quivers to shoot up his digestive track and sent him retching into the open space next to him.
“Mo...” he uttered. He raised his arm to wipe the vomit, but passed into a drunken stupor mid swipe. He dreamt.
His dreams were pleasant ones.
“Chikara, what fortune causes your mouth to have grown so wide?” Ōishi teased his eldest son.
“Mother has come home!” he shouted. “Our struggle is over father! We’ve won; our honor has been restored! We can be a family again.”
Chikara’s mother appeared beside him and cast a shy but lovely smile on Ōishi, who stepped forward to embrace her. Their body heat mingled together, and everything else faded away. Ōishi held his wife’s head to his chest and wrapped his other arm around her tiny frame. Everything was perfectly warm; perfectly natural.
“Oi, Ossan!” The warm feeling was shattered by a rush of cold water cascading down on Ōishi’s head. Too startled to react, he peered up through squinting lids at a boy, no older than ten. He was holding a water bucket and leaning backwards away from Ōishi and his stench. “Ossan, please, you need to get up. Please.”
“What’s the date?” Ōishi grumbled.
Let it be known that this is the first time I've showed any of my writing to someone other than my boyfriend. Oh, how nerve racking!!
@Rae I love your style. It's clean and allows for really nice pacing. I can tell there's a story here instead of a mess of words that just sound interesting together.
From my new story G.I.L.F.
There’s a girl and a guy in the back, fucking, I’m pretty sure. He’s got her against the wall in a dark corner near some old PacMan machine. There’s a lot of heavy breathing and a few grunts. Her skirt is hiked up to the top of her thighs but you can’t see much else. An old man sits at the end of the bar, head down, a long curly grey beard covering up most of his face. Like the person he used to be is long gone. Covered up and masked away. Abandoned.
People high five, play pool terribly. A fight breaks out every other hour. Someone leaves with a busted bloodied cracked nose, probably falls asleep on the sidewalk down the street.
This group of people, these black sheep. This is where they all wash up into this black abyss. This bar, all the bars across America, the world, they suck these people in.
This is where they go to die.
With a drink in hand, everything just feels a little bit safer.
Four days after the tsunami, at a shelter in Miyagi, I met an old woman named Akiko. She was eighty-two. She said that she had searched the ruins for her house and found it far away. She entered and her things were strewn everywhere. Then she saw among the debris, half-buried, her own dead body sprawled across the floor. Forlorn, she went back to it. The future was uncertain, she told me, either way.
So I began to think about my own future, and the next morning I left.
--89 words from the middle of a story currently being submitted...
@ Bob Pastorella I liked your entry.Especially "heneeded a bad job bad"
My entry is an excercise Iv'e been working on. I take vocab words from the book I'm reading and try to build a scene for them. None are very long but might come in hady in other stories.
Ignacio stood tall above the decrepit querents. Gazing at him eyes sand stung and dry. He could only hold their fate for so long with his divinations of arcana spoken in a hollow voice of foreign words and made intelligible only by his broad sweeping arms. He knew how to captivate, mixing local emotion with esoteric revelations. A din of flies voracious through the heavy musk of dysentery find suitable homes in the crevasses of the bloated bodied supplicants. The pale oracle of La Luz is losing ground.
Random excerpt from my huge novel WIP:
‘Can I borrow that?’ Aurora asked, and pointed towards Ise’s hip. She looked down at the sword hanging casually from her waist. Ise took a firm grip of the hilt, and cringed at the thought of giving it to Aurora, even for a moment.
‘I shouldn’t let you touch it,’ Ise said hesitantly.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Aurora replied, clasping her hand to her face in horror. ‘Is that offensive? It’s probably a big cultural taboo, right?’
‘No, I just don’t want you touching it. You’ll hurt yourself.’
‘Oh, please! I know not to touch the sharp edge. Come on, I want to show you something.’
‘There are two sharp edges, Ro.’
I like it Marius, is it Fantasy?
@MattF that's quite interesting.
Short Story called 'Getting Credit' that I've been pounding out this week.
I was getting wine drunk in an alley when I met her. She snuck up on me and I didn't notice her over the quiet hiss of the spray paint until she reached out to touch my shoulder.
The reason behind the wine was that it is not carbonated. When you ride around with beer in your backpack as you bicycle around town, in my experience this can only lead to explosions. Not the cool sort of explosions one might marvel at in a Michael Bay movie, instead these are anticlimactic little fizzles that get your shirt wet and waste half the beer. Liquor is a viable option, but when you are riding around town taking straight shots of warm vodka your tags are probably going to get sloppy.
Wicked stuff, everyone.
Well I saw all yours, so here's mine.....
When I opened his door I was greeted by a skull-rending bang and a bloom of wet red mush, which made a splat as hit the ceiling.
I wish I hadn't seen his face. Then I could maybe convince myself that he'd been planning to do it all along, that his will was iron. But I did see his face. His eyes locked onto mine and I saw the way his whole body flinched in surprise as I entered without knocking. He squinted and the muscles shifted where the shotgun met his chin. His fingers squeezed tight around the trigger probably out of reflex.
Do you get that? I surprised him into pulling the trigger. Maybe he could have done it without me, maybe he couldn't. All I remember is his face when I walked in, and then a second later he had none.
And I remember the tears streaming down his face. Because I'd never seen my brother cry before.
@nkwilczy That's the idea, but I find myself struggling with keeping to genre conventions, so we'll see what it turns into.
@Nicholas I really like how you can make me feel like I've been kicked in the stomach in a hundred words or less. Well done.
Thanks a bunch, Marius.
I like the two characters you presented, especially Aurora. You get a little snippet of her personality there.
@missesdash Your piece is captivating. Short, but it grabs you. I would definitely keep reading if you put the whole book in front of me!
He knew that he was in the wrong part of town with the wrong kind of girl but he didn't care. She led him by the hand and for the first time in a long time he felt bad. He felt bad in a good way. The way you feel when you retort someone's insult with a quip so gruesome it stops them dead in their tracks. A response so intense that they have no choice but to walk away defeated. He enjoyed that. He reveled in it. She was his new drug and the danger that loomed in the distant future was nothing less than a distraction.
For my first contribution, I will show you the first four words of a project that sold to the first editor to read it.
"Sometimes I hear voices."
My second contribution is from a work in progress:
Don’t be nervous. We’re in-vis-i-ble. Invisible and indivisible, divisible by one. Take a deep breath. Hold it. That’s better. Today’s our day. When we woke up we felt it was going to be like any other day. After watching the news---nothing threatening there---we knew that today could be a good day to go shopping.
Nothing threatening is anjother kind of problem. We need something to gossip about. Takes the mind off …
Look at this place. Bigger than a stadium and the people look like they are going every which way at once. Don’t we love it—the anonymity of the crowd? Everybody coming from someplace or going to someplace.
Except us. We’re shopping.
We’ll know the right one when she arrives. She—or he---will have that little lost child look. Some of those young boys are prettier than the girls. We almost feel sorry for them. Look at them. Sheep being led to slaughter. Innocent as lambs but we know the truth, don't we?
I'm extremely new here, so forgive me if this is out of line, but here is a bit of something I've been working on and I'd love any feedback. Thanks in advance.
***
Although he looked charmingly disheveled in the loaned hospital robe and his battered new wave hair cut, in the harsh light of day his injuries looked hideous and painful. I couldn’t help but stare at him. Of course he caught me.
“What, what is it?” he asked.
“Well, you look really fucked up right now,” I admitted uneasily.
“Do you have a mirror or something?”
“Yeah, sure.” I reached into my smock for my mirror and give it to him. He gasped when he looked into it.
“Holy fucking Christ, I look horrible.”
“You don’t look that bad,” I lied. I realized it must have been the first time he’d seen himself since the accident. He seemed fascinated by the new proportions of his mangled face.
“I look like the fucking elephant man.”
He looked at the stitches stretching across the side of his head with keen interest, craning his neck to get the full effect in the tiny glass. He ran a finger over it indelicately, like it didn’t hurt at all.
100 Exactly....The begining of what I think will be NUMB.
Guitar rifts entwined with cat calls and whistles accompany through an ever swinging door marked “Private”. Cigarette smoke hangs languidly amid shots of whiskey, crude chopped lines and a plethora of female skin. Silver tracks cradle bulbs scoring a row of mirrors in the shotgun style dressing room backstage. Scratched and dented lockers lining the opposite wall gape half open and closed splaying out worn leather, shedding boas, lingerie and platforms. Incense, liquor and musky notes of cologne collide with pheromones in a sweet transcendence amongst the fleshed walkway to the bathroom stalls marred with red paint at the end.
@Simon Morris
Interesting. You have me curious now.
it's "guitar riffs" but extra points awarded for using 'gape' and 'splaying' in a sentence not referring to anything sexual.
102 words from a short story called "Fireflies" that I have submitted to the Machine of Death anthology. Keeping my fingers crossed that it gets in. 2000 submitted, only 35 accepted. Long odds.
"When the winds come, the hut shakes and I grab the tabletop, the heavy wood carved centuries ago, scarred and pitted by time. I wait for the roof to rip off, exposing me to some giant hand, pulling me into the sky to be punished for my sins. The beams creak and moan, and in the gaps I hear her voice. I beg her to shut up, to leave me alone, but the dull ache that wraps around my plodding heart, it trembles and hesitates, apologizes for snapping at her, my love, and asks her for forgiveness. And she gives it, freely."
Moonlight pours in through the bedroom window, rinsing Eve’s pale naked body in blue. You wonder how she can sleep without any blankets or sheets; her milky complexion warmed only by the orange galaxies of freckles that stain her smooth skin. “I could sleep through anything,” she was always saying in response to your insomnia as if she possessed some sort of highly evolved sleeping gene. Her nipples are stiff and her groin is auburn, just like the long hair that’s fanned out around her head. She’s been so cold lately and you wonder if she really could sleep through anything as you reach out to feel the parts of her she doesn’t usually let you touch anymore.
Rough, but the fewest words I could get while still having some context:
How I met her was, how I got this scar, I was shooting an AR-15. The AR-15 is a semi-automatic civilian version of the military’s M4 carbine, a 5.56mm, magazine fed, gas operated, air cooled, lightweight assault rifle, itself an evolution of the Viet Nam era M16 assault rifle. In this case, what I was holding in my hands was identical to the military’s M4 except for the fire control group, because I was shooting a weapon that belonged to the Police Department. It was my first time with an assault rifle.
“On the command of FIRE, shoot TWO to the body, ONE to the head, TWO to the body, ONE to the head!” The body armor drill. The failure to stop. The triple tap. The Mozambique. “FIRE!”
^the aforementioned story "Fireflies" did not make it into the MOD anthology but it will be in an upcoming issue of Polluto so, that's kind of cool.
Here's the first bit of a story I wrote in the SGJ intensive here at LR. Shopping it now:
If you asked me today the exact moment in time that I knew Heather was wrong for me, it would have to be the night her husband was banging on my apartment door, her laughter hidden under the sheets, our bodies slick with sweat. She was the kind of girl who bent over the pool table just a little too far, her top slipping down, her bra pushing up, her skin-tight jeans hugging her hips. Her eyes told you she’d never been here before, that this was new territory, eyelashes batting, a stray dark hair tucked behind her ear. She sipped at the bottle of beer as if it was an oddity—it somehow just ended up in her mouth. Sly grins and sharp white teeth devoured glossy bruised lipstick, always wet, always whispering secrets wrapped in bourbon and mint.
I like Heather.
An excerpt from a novella I've been working on for a couple months now. Don't have a title for it yet. Just playing around with it. Could always use some critique, be brutal!
"We stood stiff facing each other. Me facing Beatrix. Beatrix facing me. The gun facing the blonde and the blonde facing all three. I proceeded to take my jacket off and unzip my pants and went down to the floor. I went down and had my way with that girl. I went down there like a savage, like a hunter attacking their prey. And like a hunter that stalks their prey, they pin them down and cover their mouth to keep them from screaming or even escaping. And we keep them pinned, we keep our prey pinned until we are done taking what we want from them to satisfy our own personal needs. We just attack and attack and attack until their defense is down and there is nothing left to attack."
Part of the story I'm working on for my "slutty novella" called Casual Encounters. In this scene, Ellen meets up with Oliver, an awkward guy who isn't into the aggressive sex she's into, but she feels bad and decides to have a conversation with him instead of hurting his feelings by leaving:
The beginning of an overdose feels astounding, all of those chemicals pumping through your veins. Your eyes they slowly start to close, or begin to flutter. It’s the most relaxing moment anyone could offer if you have the right mind set, otherwise you’ll be struck with panic. The feeling of falling asleep and knowing you won’t wake up, knowing it and being at peace with it. What a feeling, to be at peace with everything finally having an ending. Don’t go feeling sorry for that man on the screen though, he was just another good joke that you never heard. Keep reading and he’ll have you laughing at him soon enough.
During this time it had been three days since losing all faith in humanity, or maybe it was just the first time coming to a realization of never having faith in it anyway. That’s a sad story though and I wouldn’t want to plague you with it just yet. How are your Serotonin levels today? I was just checking, if you were feeling rather down I could have told you a joke or something. You know, give you that little happy feeling you spend every breathing moment on a never-ending pursuit for: Dopamine.
A good joke you have probably heard is how we walk around acting smart and dressing ourselves to seem so civilized, or to impress for sex in our environments. Some of us do whatever it takes to prove we are that higher life form we claim to be. Our very existence is like the butt of some bad joke. A bunch of animals playing dress-up to broadcast an ego, just evolved monkeys driven by nervous system chemicals and a never-ending sex-drive to pro-create while walking around speaking some useless words we all made up to produce that lovely “ahhh” chemical in our minds. Emotion driven beings trying to invent things like structure, maybe it’s not a joke. Maybe no matter how it’s told, you’re going to hear a sad story…
EDIT:
Sorry for more than 100 words, didn't read the first post...
I am feigning ignorance about any word count.....
Dakota sagged in a pale corner of her room, brushes scattered in disarray beyond her gnarled feet. Daubs of paint sullied her blue jeans, the floor. The canvas rested dismally atop the heap of clothing in the opposite corner, the result of meeting with Dakota's anger, her painfully contorted fingers. A gradual darkening of the room lured her into consciousness. The streetlights were blinking into existance. She quickly gathered up her materials, hid the stained jeans under her bed. She'd have to throw them away to escape the tumultuous fury of her mother, the insults wrapped in one hundred proof breath.
Since Dakota was a very small child, her mother had painted. She went into "her place", and it was sacred and proud. There were two things Lucy loved to do - paint, and drink. She was good at neither. Naturally, it was divined that any child of hers would paint. There was a ghost in Lucy's mind while pregnant. She knew the child would be good. She hammered back margaritas at the thought of vicarious fame.
When Dakota was birthed, and subsequently thrown into the turbulence and instability that was life with her mother, she was instantly and powerfully unloved. No child with disfigured hands, disgusting, crooked little digits, could ever be worthy of Lucy's love.
Yay!
BIt long, sorry.
____
Antiques are an enigma.
People have a love-hate relationship with the past. Some want to learn from it. Some want to forget it exists. Some value it as is. Some want nothing more than go back and change it (some literally, some literarily) But when it comes to antiques, everyone wants them all the time, regardless of their association with the past.
Perhaps it's the novelty of past ideas.
Perhaps it's simply the prospect of future value.
I won't pretend to know the truth about antiques. I only know that if everyone wants them, then I am not a part of the whole in the minds of those who craft the concept of everyone. In fact, I'm just about far from everyone as anyone can get, which is rather contradictory when you think about it, considering the fact that all the anyones in the world supposedly make up everyone.
But then, anyone who doesn't like antiques can't possibly be part of everyone.
So I guess I'm just as much of an enigma as antiques themselves.
Yuck.
I need to remedy that.
___
My daily short story in progress.
"The call was from her dad," Jared says as I turn on the ignition, and we speed off into the total black of a starless night, the hushed whisper of tires against road the only music.
I click my tongue, and nod slowly.
Jared tells us, "It was the first time I'd ever talked to him, really heard his voice."
Our singer, Damon, he doesn't say a word. This whole time he's scary-quiet.
He probably knows where this is going as well as I do. That this is only the beginning. That we're only just starting down the road to hell.
Because I've read the history books. I've seen the true-crime specials on A&E. These kinds of incidents, they're never isolated. You take a small Protestant town in the center of Bumfuck, Egypt, and you let it fester for a couple centuries, eventually you're guaranteed to get some loonies in the mix. Inject a fair dose of twenty-first-century desperation, and before long you'll get what you might call a centennial sociopath.
You'll have yourself a killer, and then a trail of blood. Like I said, a road to hell.
I hate to break it to you, but this is pretty much the American way.
Hey, it's a mathematical certainty; don't slaughter the messenger. Just think of this all as being inevitable, because really, isn't everything?
The orange waning crescent hung low in the sky to the West just before dawn. As he walked down the lonely road the only other light that shone were from the tattered house's porch lights that lined the street. They illuminated barely enough to see the dirt covered furniture outside of them. Staring at the moon he remembered that half of the moon was in darkness and the rest was bathed in the Sun’s light. The moon became a giant globe in the sky instead of a flat disk to him. He almost didn’t see her at first. The pale light made her appear to be wearing a bright red dress down to her knees.
Not happy with this at all where I'm at. It will be fixed in the very near future.
“I don’t want to die!” The girl yelled, raw. Her voice broke. Billy heard spit in it.
“Who does?” Markus asked. He never seemed upset, just put out.
“She doesn’t understand,” Billy said.
“Really?” Markus asked. There was a funny look on his face.
“I’m not ready yet,” she said. “Mom and Dad found each other. They made another, just one, to take their place. I want to do that.”
Markus laughed… big. Rover got up and moved little farther away. The girl looked scared but was no longer crying.
“You’ve got a good reason to live, girly. Not many better than that one.”
“The police will come. If they take you away your dead.”
“Hear that Rover?”
Thought I'd throw down a bit of a short novel I'm piecemealing. Shooting for a 40-50k piece - just for kicks. I've got about 25k roughed. doing it along with other stuff. Going to title - 'Touching the Soul' - It's a little post-apop weird story. Happy writing!
Where has Jen gone?
"I remember one summer he took me to the beach almost daily while Ma was working. I never understood why he just couldn’t be that other guy. He said he got right with God the last few years of his life, and I hope he did. I have doubts to be honest. But he was my father and I loved him, and miss him even if I haven’t seen him in a very long time.”
I thought I sounded like an idiot, but he reacted like I’d said something touching. I’ll never get other people’s reactions in a million years.
Walking into the dark, the demons wait. She’s been gone for a day, and the horror will be there. Her little face, crying big salty bulbs that well in her clenched eyes and fall heavy to her cheeks. Her mouth open in gasping sobs that would pass as laughter if not for the pain, the tears glistening in the light. The anguish of it constricts my throat. That I caused it, my heart seizes. That I can’t help her, it breaks. The helplessness of it weakens my knees. Watching her cry, seeing her pain, I’ll carry that forever.
It was just before midnight and the phone rang and I already knew.
“She’s gone,” she said and then cried.
“I’m so sorry,” was all I said, all I could say.
I walked through that dark trailer house to her brother’s room and woke him up and handed him the phone. He spoke to her for a moment and then woke up his dad and sister, called his brother.
“Mamá murió,” he said.
We loaded into my truck to go to the hospital. I took a winding country road to get there, the streets lit only by high beams and a few lonely street lights. Crooked fence posts that couldn’t be put right again and leafless tree branches and old caved in barns, empty like cicada shells, passed us in the night on that black route.
None of us spoke.
I saw Jen pass through the other day, and I remembered she had started this great thread that got buried and I just had to resurrect it. Yay Jen.
Anyway, here is something from a short bizarro story I am struggling through:
You’re getting sleepier and sleepier.
Your eyelids become so heavy that they fall off and begin spiraling through the air like a couple of maple-tree helicopters.
Actually they look more like crescent moons than helicopters the way they gather and reflect the light.
No, take that back.
As they hit the ground your pretty sure they’re only clipped toenails. Toenails that crash like helicopters colliding with crescent moons.
What a disaster.
And just like that you’re wide awake again.
Not only are you awake, but you’re pretty sure you’re going to stay that way for a long time unless you find a good eyelid mechanic. And at this hour, what are the odds of that?
You never thought you'd be saying this, but you already miss your eyelids.
Some really good stuff in this thread. Here's a very rough scrap from my current project. It's a dialogue between a 13 year old boy (the narrator) and his step-father (Jonas):
“Watch your mouth,” Jonas said. “What did you learn?”
“Nothing.”
“All right. Stand up then.”
As soon as I get to my feet, he slams his fist into my stomach. Doubled over, I fall to my hands and knees.
“So what did you learn?”
Vision blurred, it takes everything I’ve got to not black out. “I can’t- can’t breathe.”
“Try to get up, take a swing at me.”
Still gasping for air, I shake my head.
“That’s right,” Jonas said. “There’s your first lesson. It doesn’t matter how tough someone is. If you can’t breathe, you can’t fight. Got it?”