Category: My work

Voice Week 2011: Monday

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Voice Week is underway! As you can see below, I’ll be the first to break the 100 words rule – just to prove I won’t fault anyone else for doing the same. But I promise my other entries  are all under limit. Except that other one…

The thing about my mom – she’s sick a lot. Not the kind of sick you get from germs and stuff, but the kind you get from life. I mean, I don’t know that much about her past, because she doesn’t talk about it much, but you don’t live with somebody for fifteen years and not pick up some details.
Like, she hates men. You don’t get that way without being slapped around by a few creeps. And unless she’s passed out, I can’t go out anywhere except school, ‘cause she’ll freak out. She acts like she’s afraid something will happen to me, but really I think she’s afraid I’ll just decide not to come back. And she’s got scars on her arms, but like a lot of other things, I don’t ask about them.
Yeah, she’s been sick a long time. The booze? That’s just medication.

 

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From the prompt “alcoholic mother.” Read the other versions: Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5

Who does the character feel like to you? How old, what gender? Where did you think the voice was strong or weak? Let me know!

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July flash fiction: Independence Day

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Let’s hope I practice what I preach.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted some real writing. I wrote this last week based entirely on the phrase “my cappuccino is a choppy sea” which came to me randomly. Maybe I should make it an InMon prompt.

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We sit in the very center of the café, swaddled by the muted bustle of coffee mug chit chat. I’m staring down at a froth-topped cappuccino. Giant bowl. Tiny handle. I don’t think my fingers are that strong.

“We’re just not the same people we used to be,” he says. He is half apologizing to me, half justifying himself. He hopes I will look up. I take the spoon and swirl the foam into my coffee.

“We want different things now.”

But he doesn’t want something different. He just wants out. My cappuccino is a choppy sea, swishing and swirling and slapping up in waves against the sides of the cup.

“I just don’t think I can make you happy.”

But I am happy. At least, I was until he bought me this cappuccino, this wretched ugly storm I hold in my hands. For a moment, I feel like I’m drowning. Then I remember to swallow.

“I feel like I’m holding you back.”

What does he even mean? Nothing. Nothing at all. Just sounds to fill the vacuum as I mop up a caramel-colored drip from the table with my sleeve. Now my sleeve is sticky. Stupid, stupid. Where are the napkins? He disappears for a moment and returns with a stack. But what thin paper handkerchief could soak up this ocean?

Why can’t he just ask me to look at him? Why can’t he have the guts to make me face him? Because he’s nicer than he is good. If he had been good, he would never have chased after me, or begged for my phone number, or paid for my dinner, or made me addicted to his smile. He would have known that he would get bored with me, and he would have left me alone. Because he wants excitement and flirtation and impassioned wrestling bouts. But I want a hand to hold, and a soul to talk to, and a band on my finger.

No, he is only nice. Guilt is his only motivation to be good. And he is not what I wanted. I wish that made it easier. I wish it meant I could flash him a smile and walk out with my chin up. But my heart is stronger than my pride. One little crack, and everything else stops working. It’s raining on my cappuccino sea, now.

“You’ll be so much better off without me,” his voice is gentler, but only because it makes him uncomfortable to see me cry.

“What you mean,” I croak out after another swallow and a few clearings of the throat. “Is that you will be better off without me.”

He makes an objection, but it is weak, and empty.

“But that’s alright,” I still can’t look at him. “You can have your life. I don’t think I want it any more. Buy me another coffee?”

He blinks and stares and eventually stutters, “uh, sure.”

“Make it to-go.”

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not really InMon

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It seems that “mindstorm” is rather popular and I feel compelled to participate, though I wrote this many years ago, so this doesn’t really count, but it goes well and I wanted to share it.

In the distant years to come, a man overwhelmed with his emotions will look up to the sky, and whisper to himself in speculation;
“Is it the weather that affects ones emotions, or a gathering of feelings that influences the sun and the rain?”
Although he will be deep in sorrow, and pain, and anger, and hate, the sun will shine the brighter and the calm breeze will gently carry the soft clouds across the delicate blue sky. So he will come to the conclusion that it is not the dreary weather that makes him sad, but his sadness that brings the dark clouds. Yet in all his sadness, the storm will not come. He will think the sky is too far away to hear his cry of pain, his mass of anger is too deep within to be seen by the rays of the sun, and his hate too great to be tamed by the blue sky.
He will desire to be rid of his inner pain, and in his wanting to cast it out, he shall venture close to the heavens where the wind will touch his feelings, and know which clouds to bring. So he shall obtain a great basket and set upon it a giant balloon to lift him off the ground. And he will sit in the basket and ride it as the balloon carries him up into the heights where the air is cold.
He shall float amongst the clouds and plea for them to envelope his sorrow with joy. He will ride the wind and request it to blow away his pain and replace it with peace. He shall absorb the sunlight and beg it to shine through him, gaze upon his anger, and melt it into calmness. He will be roofed by the sky so blue, and shout at it to cover his hate with love. Then he shall sit and wait for the weather to take away his unwanted emotions and turn them into feelings of good. But in all his asking, they will not respond to him. The clouds, and the wind, and the sun, and the sky will do nothing to change him, and he will not know how to change them.
So he will weep in failure, and try not again. And his terrible emotions will consume him and bring him to utter turmoil. Then the sky, and all contained within it, shall be disturbed by his outcry. His deep sorrow will become dark clouds around him. His pain will burst forth from him and strike down and pierce the sky as lightning. His cries will howl as fierce winds of a tempest. His anger and hate shall roar and shake the ground as great thunder. His tears will pour from his eyes and rain down a monsoon of grief. At last he will spill his dreadful feelings, release his burden of emotions, and be a calm, peaceful break in the center of his devastating storm. With his wrath escaped, he will bring upon others a taste of what was his inner turbulence, to remind them of how much they miss the sky of a beautiful day. And he will no longer be human, weighed down with feelings, troubled with the things of mankind. No longer be called man, but thereafter be named Hurricane.

The Piece for March

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Let's hope I practice what I preach.

Debra challenged me to write from one of my own prompts. The result is heinously longer than I intended. Perhaps it will make up for the lack of a February excerpt.

 

Everyday villain

The worst part is sleeping alone. The bed is too big, and there are one too many pillows. It’s not that I forget she’s gone, but every morning I’m blindsided by the thickness of the empty space. The loudness of it.

I try to ignore it. But even before I open my eyes I can feel the hollow in my gut. I roll until my feet hit the floor, and it feels harder than it used to. The solidness of it seems to make my bones shake and knock against each other as I stumble to the closet. I’m looking for a clean shirt, but all I can see are the empty shoes. She always had too many shoes. New ones littered the floor every season like multicolored dandylions. I used to curse every morning when I tripped on a pair of flip flops or a lonely stiletto on my way to the bathroom, swearing I was going to toss them all to the curb with the junk mail and the coffee grinds. Never did. Never will.

But it’s the empty shoes that wake up the monster, and before I finish getting dressed, my hands are twitching. I find it difficult to button the top button. I’m trembling, like the hollow in my gut is swallowing the rest of me.

I find myself in the kitchen, without remembering having walked there. The monster shoves me along, screaming in my ear. I fight it in the feel of the glass in my fist. I fight it in the moment between reaching into the refrigerator, and touching the orange juice, when my arm rebels and tries to reach for something else. I shake it off, but I’m fighting it again in the sound of pouring. And I fight it in the taste when I swallow, and I feel like I’m losing when there is nothing in my chest but coolness. Above my shoulders, there is not skin and skull and eyes and brain, only swarming, churning, throbbing.

Everything is sharper, harder, colder than it used to be. I remember it soft, and dim, and weightless, when the monster was young and just beginning to grow. Before I decided to fight it. Why did I decide to fight it? Suddenly, I can’t remember. Why should I? It’s never going to give up. It’s never going to get any easier. The shoes will never be filled and there will always be too many pillows. We used to be friends, the monster and I. The keys are in my hand, and I realize that, in a matter of minutes, in a matter of miles, I could exchange those keys for a bottle, for some relief.

But there are footsteps on the linoleum, and I am startled by a figure in pink pajamas. She smiles – she has her mother’s smile. I unconsciously hide the keys in my fist. She shuffles past me to pour herself a bowl of Cheerios, but pauses to kiss me on the cheek.

“It’s a year today,” she says. Nothing else. No I love you or I’m proud of you, but I can see it in her face, that she feels safe. Her old man fights a war for her every day. And every day, she’s the one who wins it. I slip my keys back into my pocket.

January Excerpt: Mardon Troupe

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Let's hope I practice what I preach.

It’s the end of the month, so I’m giving you an excerpt of real writing, instead of all that instructional stuff I usually post. This is the beginning of a book I haven’t technically started writing yet, and in the true spirit of BeKindRewrite, it will probably be scrapped and completely rewritten before it sees print. 

The book will be composed entirely of letters from Alexandre Barneby, assistant of Mardon Troupe, to an unidentified lady.

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The only thing you really need know about Mardon Troupe, is that he was an impossible man. To answer your last question; I don’t know for sure, for that was before I knew him. But let me put it this way. A butcher once asked me if it was true that Mardon Troupe had really survived a stampede of one hundred head of cattle, while carrying an open jar of antivenin, without spilling a drop. “Of course not,” I replied, “It was two hundred head of cattle.”

So you may assume your story of the dragon was true, but it probably had five heads instead of two. I think Troupe plays the stories down when he tells them.

Yes, Mardon Troupe was impossible. He never tired. We could be hiking through the jungle for three days, nonstop, without food, I on my knees, dragging myself with bloodied fingers, mumbling incoherently, half mad with exhaustion.

“Come on, Barnaby,” he’d say briskly, looking down at me, “life is too short to be wasted on dawdling and cheap wine.”

On the note of alcohol: no one could out-drink him. He could guzzle an entire barrel of rum and then win a tongue-twister contest against a perfectly sober elocution expert. He never even grew tipsy.

Food had the same effect on him. That is, none at all. He went some days eating constantly, alternately snacking and feasting, and never gained a pound. He went other days eating nothing at all, maybe for weeks even, and never lost a pound, never grew faint.

And I never saw him sleep. Oh, there were occasions when he would lean back, legs stretched out, arms folded, hat pulled over his eyes, snoring softly—but that does not mean he was sleeping. I have a strong suspicion that he only pretended to be sleeping to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. Even when we took lodging for the night, he would stay up reading, or smoking, or watching the stars. I think his mind never slept; I doubt his body did either. If you say that is impossible—you are beginning to understand Mardon Troupe.