Writing : I'll show you mine if you show me yours...

From Ultimate Grand Supreme Super Sexy Baby:

     Mothers begin to grind their teeth when Alaska Scott enters the room—technically, a convention hall inside the Radisson Hotel, furnished with a modest stage and about a hundred wounded chairs from basement storage.  These women crane their necks to the main entryway, suspending any last-minute preening of their own darling daughters: the slouched hairdos or mascara clumps.  A chocolate stain soon-to-be-remedied with Kleenex and spit.  That paradigm of glamour and grace, Alaska Scott—she stands poised while the rest of the mini princesses circulate at knee-level, wrinkling their gowns and eating boogers off French manicures.

 The research had worked. Inside the cedar and pine trunk of his construction, the insulating layer of plastic and foam had not deteriorated one bit. He placed a palm on them they were not even warm. The Renuzits, all cinnamon flavored, banked the interior and made the fetid aroma greatly reduce--and the mummification had begun on the young victim's body.

    He sighed and looked at the calendar he had placed on the back door. Today was officially the first day of Autumn. Halloween would be soon.

    "Poor bloke. Over state lines, and still no one has asked me about you," Darryl hit the side as if the body understood the joke.

    He was going to love the fall in Florida.  

Okay, 121, sorry about that.

Peace,

Rue

From 'The Ballad Of Charlie Braxton' ...

“I’m fine now.” I say.
“Are you sure?” he asks. “You look like you just seen a ghost.”
The irony of that statement was almost funny, but I was too terrified.  I had to keep my mouth shut.  A part of me wanted to help the others on the other hand.  I decided it was in the best interests of my family to stay out of it.  Still, I was scared.  I didn’t know what Charlie was capable of.  He was not the same person I knew over a year ago.  I saw a void in his eyes.  There was something missing.

A snippet from the 24th Chapter
 

Damn.  Some good stuff in this thread.  This is tempting.  But...oh dear.  Popping my Lit Reactor cherry.  Nerves!  Biting of nails!  Mixing of a martini!  Yeah.  All right.  Ready as I'll ever be.  This is from a short story set in West Texas (not to be confused with West, Texas, which is an actual town in West Texas because we're into clarity down here, y'all), that involves magic and death and a bit of code switching with Spanish -- still trying to decide if I want to italicize the Spanish or not.  The narrator is 16.  120 words.  I'm a cheaterpants.

***

     I’m not sure you can call her a witch.  Not sure you can call her anything, really; we called her La Viuda (like that, you could hear the capitals) when we first saw her around town, after all those rumors about her started.  Then, once we met her, we called her what she said was her name.  Rosa.  Doubt it was her real name, though.  People like that...in the stories, they keep their names secret.  Names are powerful.  Symbols, y’know?

     I’ve read about symbols and stuff, since then.  Read about magic, and folk tales, and how all that stuff from Europe influences who we are here, even in Texas.  But I’ve never read about anyone -- anything -- quite like her.

JT, I thought this was tit for tat? Show off your stuff!

From a short story I'm working on, Julie Paints a LOLcat

Her sculpture of twin Siamese kittens was hailed as a "collosal achievement in metaphor."  I was there when Professor Tacks explained that "the chocolate-point Siamese does battle with the blue-point Siamese for possession of the ball of yarn, beautifully representing the conflicts inherent in people of opposing ethnicities and creeds.  Cats, even when very young, are born predators, and accurately depict the innermost violence so common in humanity.  Think of the child warriors of the Congo, and then look at these kittens."  Caught up in the reverie of Julie Castle's gospel of red clay and acrylic pain, Tacks snapped momentarily. 
"Look at them!" he shrilled. 

Beggar: My friend!
Me: How did you get this side of town so quickly? They let you on a tram in that state?
Beggar: I walk.
Me: Impossible. I’ve only been here a few minutes and I took the tram.
Beggar: Money?
Me: Oh, not this…
Beggar: Need money for television.
Me: What does that mean?
Beggar: Do you speak English?
Me: I’m speaking English now.
Beggar: No English?
Me: I’m. Speaking. English. Now.
Beggar: Espanol?
Me: English.
Beggar: I’m sorry, my friend. I can’t understand you. Dobry den.
Me: You understand me just fine when you want money.
Beggar: What?
Me: You understand me okay when you want money.
Beggar: I don’t understand.
Me: I’m speaking English.
Beggar: What?
Me: (screaming) We’re speaking the same language.
Beggar: No we’re not.

@Jenny Hanniver - my motto is "Live Fearlessly"... and since I'm such an antisocial, wimpy wallflower IRL, I must write fearlessly or face the wrath of Me. And I can be very... full of wrathfulness. On paper.

I'm way so diggin' the writing on here... this thread, others and the workshop. All of you continue to inspire me.

Bravo!

I stand alone in a sea of sand with no sign of life insight. My clothes are charred and black. Wearing a burnt suit stained and faded to gray. My wrinkled dress pants ripped at the ankles I can feel the hot surface beneath my feet from the lack of soles. A clear blue sky surrounds above me. No clouds and no mountains just miles of oblivious plains. The heat relentlessly beats on me. The lack of water is draining my energy rapidly. Lost in this god forsaken desert I can feel death walking beside me. I walk continuing towards nothing for miles away and for hours I walk across god’s ashtray.

This is the beginning of something I've been toying around with, which might see the light of day, maybe. 

"Fresh out of two years in the pen for biting off a cop’s nose, there were two things Mac wanted to do; spring his little brother Dinky from the looney bin and make some fast cash. Mac could have gotten out of the pen after nine months, but that would have meant going on parole, and parole was for pussies. He had no intention of going back to prison, and he just wasn’t the type cut out for a real job. Nope, he needed a bad job bad, and fast." 

Bob & kahscrap:

Both of you have a blue collar style while managing to sound completely unique.  Based on both these snippets, I'd definitely read the entire pieces.

I'm always jealous when I read Mr. Pastorella, how he tackles the "straight plot, no chaser" style so deftly and economically. Plot moves like a chick on the dancefloor that sways her hips just right. I'm jealous of a lot of writers I find through the velvet, and now here too.

@Phil and Renfield, thanks. Now you're making me want to work on that story some more. Damn, I've got too many projects flying around.

I wonder what that guy sounds like in bed, I thought.

The auctioneer continued to spew out numbers and bounced around the alphabet while I drifted into a hazy, low budget, recorded on VHS and hidden in your closet porno daydream.

“You like it there, here, there, here, no here, there it goes, you like it, I like it, I’m getting there, pleasing you, pleasing you, moan, and another, and another, do I have a nipple? Yes I have a nipple! Come on, come on, come on baby. Come on you baby? don’t come on you? do? don’t? do? dont? Do, do I have a do, a yes. I have a yes. I’m out, jerk, that’s right a jerk off, and SOLD!!”

I imagined him calling out SOLD, a soft gallop on old, old,old with the shakes and the shivers until he collapsed and whispered “you bought it”.

**

Um...part of what I would call creative spew aka "morning pages". Watched one too many auction shows one evening with my sister. 

It is also 149 words. I regret nothing.

Anyone interested in starting a story thread? Write two sentences and let the next person take over...

118 words :p from a short story I'm working on called "Ecological Gentrification" Also I didn't read the thread, so forgive me for putting this in the middle of your story.

"There is a man who lives on top of a hill, who will give you a large fish to deposit a simple canister into the woods at the edge of a clearing. He is very specific: his clearing. He insists it is his personal clearing.

One smooth metal deposit at a time, nobody thinks it's much of a problem; the jungle just swallows them without asking any questions. The fish is very large, foreign tasting, exotic. The man is equally foreign, with his short trimmed hair and his oddly stubby ears. His pale white skin glows weirdly under our blue sun. My own purple fingers are near translucent even as I drop the green canister into the vines."

-

There is an Avatar-ey vibe that I'm not super fond of and I'm working on getting out of there, tall purple humanoids combined with earthling greed, dangerous territory there. But Gentrification is not military at all, it's about agro-business, gradual contributions to ecological decay, and pesticides.

She called it her vagina, I called it her cunt. 

It was the second night in a row that I awoke to her screaming in pain. Frankly, I was annoyed. Sometimes she could be so selfish, I mean, we are all capable of thinking of ourselves first, but she couldn’t comprehend the fact that she was being selfish even if she wanted to. I guess when your emotional capacity is at an all time low you have trouble being empathetic. Selfish bitch.

“Can you turn the light off?” She asked.

“Yeah, sorry. Just give me five minutes.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Huh?”

“I think you misunderstood me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I’m sure I asked you to turn the light off. I don’t think I asked you to do that in five minutes. Did I?”

“I’m not doing this,” I said, my voice monotone.

“Doing what?” She questioned, her voice starting to rise.

I wave my arm, “This.”

“What is ‘this’? Huh? What the fuck is ‘this’?”

Have you ever seen footage of someone screaming on a mountain and starting an avalanche?

“Arguing. I’m not arguing,” I said.

Prepare for impact…

This is wrong. I should start at the beginning. The trouble is knowing where to start. What constitutes the beginning? When we first met, our first real conversation, the kiss that changed our everything? Was it me asking her out to dinner? That day in the park? The night she cried to me on the phone for a couple of hours? Unfortunately I do not think any of that matters. There are plenty of good moments, but in this case that would not give the meaning to this story the right tone. It’s not about a relationship turned sour. It’s about the snowball effect. It’s about the time at my apartment. The night I tied her arm. It was the moment I inserted the needle into her once lively and beautiful vein. It was the look in her eyes. It was the euphoria.

Substance: A dream like state. Ignore what you’ve been told. Of course there are ups and downs, but isn’t that the case with everything? That question was rhetorical. This isn’t a topic that is up for discussion. You will find that most of the people who are in the midst of this dependency keep to themselves. It’s better that way. That isn’t to say that favors won’t be asked, or that social acceptance has totally dissipated, because that is untrue. That is where manipulation comes into play. You learn to become everyone’s friend, and all the while the relationships you cultivate are done so with a motive. Honestly, there is nothing honest about drugs. It’s not fashionable. I don’t think a blown vein was ever a fashion statement. It is what it is, plain and simple, it’s personal choice. The only problem is knowing the difference between complete dependence and occasional use. It’s a very thin line. Needle thin.

2 sentences

His foot reaching, touching the carpet, which was condensed to that of a sticky black over orange cess pool from tenants, nameless faces of decades past, he cringed at his surroundings.  Paneled walls were covered with crayoned colored drawings, obviously from that of a child.  

The boy stumbling through the park, he makes his way over to where I'm tanning and he says, “You're so beautiful.”  He says, “Help me, please,” his voice like a neglected puppy's whimper.  His knees give and he collapses on the ground in front of me.

We're surrounded by onlookers, kids laughing and their parents gasping, muttering, starting to pick up the picnic blankets to move them further away.  I put my book down, my hands shaking when I sit up and reach to touch him.  He groans.

He might be on acid, but I really don't know anything about drugs.

Here is 100 or so words from my upcoming novel, Normal Heroes.

#

Bertha-Lee Nettles was a hugely pregnant fifteen year old carhop at Kayla’s Homeland Drive-In, a retro-style restaurant that featured seating in classic twentieth century automobiles and an all-female roller-skating wait-staff.  Bertha-Lee told the anchor-woman from channel twenty-one, out of Brunswick, that Prince Darren was the baby-daddy. The anchor-woman smelled a scandal and it was a slow news-day.  King Abe caught the feed at his castle in Havana.  He sent his goons to secure a DNA sample and to put a muzzle on Bertha-Lee.  He tested the DNA himself.  King Grandpa was a very happy man.

#

Just a taste of the backstory on a minor character.  100 words is really a lot less than it sounds like.

Really great stuff in this thread. Here's my hundredish word contribution from the opening scene of my novel in progress:

My honey-brown skin -- what little of it isn't covered with leaping red-gold koi and bright blue Japanese-style waves, or black astronomical swirls and colorful planetary bodies, or Mexican sugar skulls and La Calavera Catrina herself -- is probably what's making him uncomfortable. He thinks I won't want to work on him because I think he's a racist. As slow as business has been here at the shop, I'd gladly tattoo a burning cross onto the ass of the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. I'm too broke to give a fuck what this guy believes.

I guess it was when I found the eviction notice on the front door, or when I was going on three months being unemployed, or maybe even the point where I questioned myself as a writer, is when I sat down and started writing out facts. I was a writer in love with fiction, and besides my non-fiction work that allowed me enough money to eat (mostly to drink, unless there were food specials at the bar) I was writing short stories. I never thought about writing about my life, because in my mind I was still young. I was wet behind the ears; a little shit that thought he knew everything. I know nothing.

Dr. Seidman asked me if I wanted to play a board game. I didn’t respond, in fact I looked as if I was ignoring him purposefully, but I wasn’t. He sat patiently and waited for me to respond. The truth was that I was apprehensive. This was the first time I had been in front of a therapist, and I didn’t know what to say, let alone how to act. I found it odd that the first thing he asked me was if I wanted to play a game. I was stoned as well. Before I got in the car with my mother I sat upstairs in my bedroom, took out my “inhaler” and packed the bowl. (During this time in my adolescence I was fascinated with marijuana and also with the devices used to smoke it with. I didn’t like rolling joints, and blunts had not caught on at that time. Instead, I would make my own bowls. My inhaler became one of my favorites; it was easy to conceal). I got stoned, headed downstairs, grabbed a water, lit a cigarette (my parents were adjusting to the fact their fourteen year old was a smoker), waited outside of my mom’s station wagon, finished my cigarette, flicked it at the end of the driveway, and got in the car. The car ride to Dr Seidman’s office was unbearable. Neither of us spoke, the radio was turned down to a low volume, playing music form the 70’s and 80’s; Elton John’s Someone Saved My Life Tonight was playing. It was ironic to say the least. By the time the song ended we were in the general vicinity of his office. My mother was gripping the steering wheel, her knuckles becoming white, her face becoming red. It was at this point that I realized she was just as nervous as I was. “Fuck her,” I thought. She was the reason I was going to see this man. I didn’t ask to come here and she had the audacity to be nervous. She was being selfish. We could have turned the station wagon around and went back home. We could have taken care of any of our problems at home. We didn’t need to consult a “professional” and talk about our “feelings.” This was the point that I felt my life had become the stereotypical suburban life: a life that you would see on television shows; one that consisted of doctors, prescription drugs, confused youth, mid-life crisis, and of course the nervous breakdowns.

We are in front of the doctor’s office. The area surrounding us looks like an industrial park. I don’t know what to think of this, but I in any sense an exterior cannot speak for an interior.

My mother and I are still in the station wagon, seat belts still buckled, the radio still down low, when she turns to me. She looks at me, only the way a mother can, and smiles. I can only bring myself to return her smile with a smirk. I have always been known for my apathetic smirk. I’m waiting for her to speak. I know she is trying to think of the right words, but like me, we have a habit of saying the wrong thing. Our words are always misplaced even though we might have the best intentions.

“Don’t bullshit him,” she said

“Okay,” I said in return.

There must be a catalogue book that caters to therapists.

Dr. Seidman’s office looked very generic, like I had fallen into a bad movie, or like the only furniture allowed in the office had to be leather. That is the one smell I will always remember from his office. Even now when I smell leather I think of his office.

On his desk was a calendar, assorted writing utensils (although he had a name placard with a golden pen inserted in the center), and a desk lamp with the customary green glass shade. The wall to the right of him, and next to the office door, was lined with assorted books; filling up the bookcases that took up the full space of the wall. I was sitting on a leather couch that faced the office door. He was sitting in his leather armchair in front of his desk. He looked at me; I looked at the elaborate stitch work of the carpet. The office was calmly lit and relaxing, even though I still looked tense. I didn’t want him to look me in the eye. They were dry and red and I was high.

“Would you like to play a game?” He asked me.

I continued to stare at the carpet. He kept silent while waiting for my answer. I was thankful for that.

When I was tired of the carpet I glanced up and over to where he was sitting to find him looking at a marble chess set. I was expecting his eyes to be on me. They weren’t.

“What kind of game?”

“What do you like? I have board games, we can play cards, or checkers, or chess. Why don’t you tell me what game you’re good at? I’ve played them all countless times, but I’m always looking for a good challenge.” He said with a subtle level of smugness. He was trying to entice me, to challenge me, and it was working.

I spotted the checker board. “Checkers. I’m good at checkers.”

“Then checkers it is,” he said brightly. He stood and grabbed the antique looking checker board and grabbed a table to put in between us. He placed the board on the table and moved his seat closer. We were now face to face and ready to start our first of many strategic games.

Our first meeting was spent in front of a checker board in silence. Very seldom did we exchange words. After three games of checkers (which he won), we shook hands and he told me our session was over for the night. He walked me to his office door, said hello to my mother with a formal introduction, and told us both that he was looking forward to seeing us both the next week. My mother asked me to wait in the car while she asked the doctor a question. I didn’t argue. I walked to her car and unlocked it. I sat and for once in a long time felt at ease.

I went into Dr. Seidman’s office with a pre-conceived notion of talking, or not talking, about my feelings and what caused them. Instead we played checkers. We watched each other’s moves on the checker board. He had a way of making a vulnerable situation bearable. He put my anxiety at ease. But while I sat alone in my mother’s station wagon I couldn’t stop thinking of one thing he said before I walked outside. He said he was looking forward to seeing both of us the next week. I was curious by what he meant when he said “both of us.”