Wet earth beneath his feet. Soft impacts of snowflakes tapping on the shoulders of his jacket. Hands in pockets, head down. The wind sifting through unseen branches. No voices, no signs of existence outside the dull sphere of firelight. The wind quickens, pushes orange embers away from the fire and into the night. He tucks his face into the collar of his jacket, looks at the fire. He looks deep into the bed of coals, little pockets of flame licking up at the falling snow. He stands and lets the fire die, its light lost and heat radiated away until it is just him and the wind and the tapping snowflakes and the sound of his breath in the night.
Definitely feels like a good end to something. What it is an end to? I have no idea. Haven't been able to get back in that frame of mind. Probably a bit too Cormac McCarthy, but I liked it. More to come.
3.28.2009
3.12.2009
3.10.2009
Meteoric Rise...
...is a ridiculous phrase. Meteors don't rise! They are rocks (essentially) captured by Earth's gravitational field and pulled towards it's surface at extreme rates of speed. THEY ARE FALLING! No one would say sky-diverific rise, would they? No, because skydivers, like meteors, aren't rising. Falling. Always falling.
Rant brought to you by Wikipedia's article on Sara WIllis' novel Ruth Hall.
Rant brought to you by Wikipedia's article on Sara WIllis' novel Ruth Hall.
3.05.2009
Roger
Is the entity looming over my desk. He has not communicated with me, yet, except to inform me of his presence. Above are two visual interpretations. The drawing is very cartoonish; he's much more sinister in person. I know he's there, but when will he speak to me? Soon, I hope.
3.03.2009
Receipt
The girl at the register is cute. I pretend to casually glance her way, until I make out the name on her nametag. Laura. She has long dark hair, a fair complexion, and is thin. Very thin. I could probably break any of her bones, easily. I want to take her home and make her sandwiches until she reaches more human proportions. She is polite but not nosy, as any good cashier should be. She asks me how my day is. Fine, I say, how is yours? She shrugs I’ve had better. She rings up my items and asks if I want them in a bag. All I purchased was a small box of nails and a small box of ceiling hangers. And a jar of real peanut butter. The good stuff. I think I can handle it, I say with a grin. Are you sure, she asks, these are pretty dangerous. No, I’ve been lifting lots of weight lately, for this exact purpose. All right, she says, have a nice night. You to I say, headed for the door. What an idiot, I think to myself. That’s all you could manage to say? I’ve been lifting weights? Nice one, meathead. By the time my first foot falls outside the door, I’ve thought of at least a thousand better things I could have said. I live for danger. I’ve received all the proper training for these situations. It’s okay, I’m impervious to puncture wounds. The list goes on. By the time I put my key in the car door, I’m half-convinced I should turn around, walk back in there and holler don’t worry about me, I thrive under hazardous conditions. But I don’t. I drive home and pretend like I said something funnier, wittier. I pretend that after I impressed her with a clever remark, she asks for my signature on the receipt, and just before I can finish writing my last name she also asks for my phone number. That shit only happens in movies, I guess. And maybe Nicholas Sparks novels. My life is not a Nicholas Sparks novel, which is sort of a blessing and a curse. Blessing: I never gag on sentimentality in my day-to-day life. Curse: I never fall madly in love with the awkwardly beautiful soulmate.
A semi-true tale, and a product of the same day that saw Killing Jerry Seinfeld's genesis. I usually operate like that: weeks and weeks of sloth and disinterest followed by a day or two of frenzied productivity, then more sloth. Not too sure this piece has a future, though. At least not on its own. Perhaps it will see life as part of something else. Perhaps it will be left here, on this digital page, to die and rot into obscurity.
A semi-true tale, and a product of the same day that saw Killing Jerry Seinfeld's genesis. I usually operate like that: weeks and weeks of sloth and disinterest followed by a day or two of frenzied productivity, then more sloth. Not too sure this piece has a future, though. At least not on its own. Perhaps it will see life as part of something else. Perhaps it will be left here, on this digital page, to die and rot into obscurity.
Killing Jerry Seinfeld
The vampires outside the window were very bothersome. All red eyes glowing and peering through the window. I wanted to close the shade, but was too scared to go near the window. Which is ridiculous, as the glass is both thick and vampire-resistant. It’s not coated in garlic or anything, but there is a manufacturer’s guarantee sticker in the lower left corner. So, really, my fear was completely irrational. Though, when dealing with vampires near one’s dwelling, it can be beneficial to handle the situation with caution, regardless of any anti-vampire systems that may be deployed. This is all my fault I suppose, the vampires. I spent too much time in graveyards over the years to expect that I wouldn’t have some sort of run-in with them. But now there were twenty of the fuckers outside on my front lawn, and I was fresh out of crucifixes. Wooden stakes though, yeah, I had those. I had plenty of those.
I spend time in graveyards digging up recently deceased bodies. For, research purposes. And by research I mean experiments. Necromancy. I’ve been experimenting with necromancy, which is the practice of bringing the dead to life. Like some sort of zombie conjurer. Anyway, so I used to rent backhoes and dig up coffins and take them home. I’d take the bodies to my garage and try to bring them back to life, but the coffins, those I chopped into various sizes for firewood. Yes, I have a fireplace, and I use it often. Also, burning is a good way of removing evidence, and coffins. Turns out a lot of times firewood and anti-vampire stakes are the same thing, which, though I didn’t know at the time, would become immensely helpful in the future.
Go to my room and bring me my scarf, I told my girlfriend. She’s great, but she won’t be any help tonight. She doesn’t have the stomach for this kind of work. When she returned, I wrapped the scarf around my neck, pulled on my coat and picked up the sharpest of the firewood. I kissed her quick and headed out into my very vampire-dense front lawn. The battle was anticlimactic. Really, twenty blind vampires aren’t that hard to defeat. Turns out they don’t even possess bat’s echo-locative abilities. The worst that happened was one of them got his pale hand wrapped in my scarf and I had to slither out of it, to avoid tearing it. Other than that, though, piece of cake. The bodies I dragged to the back yard, piled them up next to the garage, being especially careful no to disturb the carefully placed stakes. Come sun-up I’ll have a nice pile of ash behind the garage.
It’s amazing, the ramifications of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This morning, for instance: everything was set for me to leave the house at the appropriate time, to catch the appropriate bus, until I tried to make my lunch. I got two pieces of fifteen-grain bread out of the bag in the cupboard, as usual. I got a knife out of the silverware drawer, as usual. I got the raspberry jelly out of the refrigerator, also as usual. However, instead of getting the vat of peanut butter out of the same cupboard as the bread, which I would have done way back when the bread was extracted from said cupboard, I got a small jar of all-natural peanut butter out of the same refrigerator containing the jelly. To be perfectly clear, I do not condone using all-natural peanut butter, under any circumstances. The oil has a nasty habit of separating from the food-paste, and unless you stir it constantly or refrigerate it, it is completely worthless in it’s binary state. But my girlfriend, she insisted that I make the switch from delicious, non-separating Skippy to this new, purportedly healthier demon. She’s pretty cool, but she knows nothing of proper PB&J manufacturing.
Anyway, so I have to refrigerate my peanut butter, which keeps it in a terrible, un-spreadable condition, and when I attempt to spread, it pulverizes the bread, rips wide gashes through the fifteen-grain matrix. I try to spread another dollop of the thick paste on the other piece of bread, with similar results. I glance at the stove clock, notice I’m four minutes behind schedule and curse out loud. Furious, I slap the two pieces of ravaged bread together, squeeze them into a ball in my fist, until the thick, un-spreadable peanut butter oozes between my fingers, and hurl the useless mass into the sink.
So now I’m on a bus, not the one I should be on, but a later, less timely bus. My hand smells like all-natural peanut butter. In five hours, I know that I will be sitting in the break room at work, angry and hungry. Worse than that, though, are the vampires. I expect them at any time, their pale noses hot on the trail of my peanut buttery flesh.
Strangely, it wasn’t my peanut butter fist that drew the vampires to the front lawn. It was my necromancing. Turns out one night I managed to return a corpse to the realm of the living. Except this particular corpse was less of a corpse and more of an undead vampire who was just resting in his coffin, and who, by being returned to the living world, ceased to be a vampire. Also turns out that this particular vampire was well liked in the vampire community. Something of a comedian, I guess. But the rest of the vampires, they weren’t too happy with me for stealing away their funny-man. At least that’s what I was told by one of the blind nighstalkers on my lawn, moments before I staked him. He might have also said something about unrelenting attacks on myself and loved ones, until I returned this undead Seinfeld, but I was too busy plunging firewood deep into his heart to ask questions.
Twenty blind vampires were only the first wave. The next night, there were thirty. And they had all the vision necessary for serious combat. As luck would have it, I still had plenty of firewood, and my good friend Meriwether Duval. Meriwether though, he’s no vampire slayer, but who is, really? Buffy, sure, but she’s not so much of a vampire slayer as she is Sarah Michelle Gellar pretending to be a vampire slayer. What I could use is a bona-fide, steak slinging, crucifix wielding bad ass. I’d settle for Sarah Michelle Gellar, though probably for different, less vampire-related reasons. None of that mattered though. It was just me and Meri and thirty goddamn vampires on my front lawn. Oh, and my girlfriend.
I called for her to bring me my scarf. Why don’t you just stay inside, she said, we spent all that money on the vampire-proof windows, we might as well use them. Vampire resistant, not vampire proof, I said. Now please be a dear and bring me my damn scarf. She’s all right, though I often wonder if Sarah Michelle Gellar would be of more use in these situations. When she returned with my scarf she asked me when I became so devoted to vampire staking and wasn’t I too scared even to close the blinds the night before. I told her Ripley was scared shitless in Alien but the didn’t stop her from kicking xenomorph ass.
Meriwether and I, on the front steps, stakes in hand. I instruct him to take the eastmost fifteen while I attend to the westerly fifteen. He stared at me blankly and I said just go wild, we’re Lethal Weapon 4 now.
It was bloodless, the battle, which isn’t to say that wounds weren’t inflicted nor vampires slain. It’s just that, though they consume blood, vampires don’t necessarily bleed it. That is to say, vampires are undead, so bloodflow isn’t required and therefore, when staked through the heart, they don’t bleed. I could never understand how heart penetration is supposed to kill something that is both already dead and independent of their cardiovascular system. I guess that’s just the way it is. But the battle, victory. Thirty dead vampires and not a scratch on my body. Meriwether, he didn’t fare so well. I can still say the battle was bloodless because the fifteen vampires he was responsible for teamed up and drained every ounce of his blood through their hollow pale fangs in no time flat. Sucked him completely dry. At least I was able to stake most of them while they were hunched over his body.
After a few days and many failed incantations, I was finally able to revive Meri. Within a week or so he was back at full strength and, aside from the many fang-marks, he was as he was before the battle, except now he demanded to be called Hrothgar. Of course, during that time I had to fend off countless vampiric hordes by my self. She was there, my girlfriend, and she’s okay, but she didn’t even help be haul bodies to the ash pile behind the garage.
That night, no less than one hundred vampires outside, I decided enough was enough and that I would give in to their demand. I opened the vampire-resistant window and called out to them. I told them I was sorry and that I’d do whatever it is they wanted me to if it meant and end to the nightly slayings. The leader of the vampires came to the front of the pack. So be it, he menaced, and proceeded to explain in excruciating detail everything they expected me to do.
Turns out the guy I accidentally brought back to life, yeah, Jerry Seinfeld. Been a vampire the whole time, since the beginning. So when I said earlier that he was some sort of vampire Seinfeld, I couldn’t have been more right. Anyway, tracking him down was no problem. Hrothgar and I rented a car using the credentials of one of the vampires and drove to New York. We had used the internet to discern the rough location of Seinfeld’s mansion, and drove lazy but strategic loops around the vicinity, until, one night, we spotted the infamous comedian speeding along in one of his many Porsches. We ran him off the road, pulled his living body from the wreckage and tossed him in the trunk of our rental. We escaped home without incident.
Pulling into the garage, Jerry Seinfeld bound and gagged in the trunk. I tell Hrothgar to be alert. He might try to distract us with his trademark observational comedy when we open the trunk and carry him into the back yard. I pop the trunk, get out of the car and walk to the back. Hrothgar asks how are we going to turn him back into a vampire. That’s for the vampires to worry about, I reassure him. Now help me with the legs.
I was a little disappointed that our cargo had passed out during the nine hour car ride and was still unconscious even as we haphazardly hauled him out back. Secretly, I was hoping that he really would try to distract us with some good did-you-ever-notice mojo. I used to watch his show all the time. Hrothgar brought me back to reality. He asked me if this wouldn’t be easier with some more help. Who, I ask. Oh, yeah, her. My girlfriend. She’s, uh, nice, but do you think she has the braun for this operation. No, best to just bite down and do it ourselves.
When the body was firmly lashed to the posts we had driven into the lawn, we went inside. I called for my girlfriend, to let her know we had returned, lest she didn’t hear us struggle from garage to yard, laden with comedian weight. There was no reply. I walked from the back door up a small flight of stairs into the kitchen. To my surprise, there was my girlfriend, splayed out on the kitchen table, a thick pool of blood covering the floor beneath her. In the corner, looming in the shadows like he was in a detective novel, a vampire. He waited for a moment, then skulked out of the shadows towards me. Where is our funnyman, he hissed. The funnyman’s in the back, I said. He hissed some more. If you don’t bring us our funnyman by tomorrow night, another loved one will suffer the same fate as your precious girlfriend here. But I said he’s in the back. Like, we already have him for you. The vampire hesitated, then menaced, in the same cautionary tone as before. Oh, I see. Sorry for the mess. He walked past me, down the stairs and out the back door. A few seconds later Hrothgar entered the kitchen. Hey, did you know there was a vampire in the house? I just saw him walk out the back do--holy shit! What happened here? They killed her, I said, as incentive to complete our mission in a timely fashion. Hrothgar came closer, put his hand on my shoulder. I’m so sorry, is there anything we can do? Don’t worry about it, I said. But, isn’t she going to turn into a vampire? No, they didn’t bite her. From the looks of it they drained her blood the toothless way. Hrothgar turned to face me. You’re necromancy! You can bring her back, just like you did to me! I said don’t worry about it, and walked to the kitchen window.
Outside, in the back yard, a cluster of vampires had gathered around their former kin. The body we recently secured to the poles in the ground rose from the grass, hovered a few inches off the ground. No shit, I said out loud, and made my way outside. Hrothgar, he stayed in the kitchen. Not much of a Seinfeld fan, that one. I sidled up to the vampires, ensconced myself in their midst. Vampire Seinfeld still hovered there, a pair of leathery wings caped out behind him. And what’s the deal with Dracula, he said. What’s he a Count of anyway?
This is the complete, unedited first draft. For this outing I tried not to get caught up in the editing process while writing, instead trying to get the story on the page as quickly as possible. Thus, the many plot/grammar/logic problems. Further drafts will be posted as they are drafted. I'm curious to see where this story goes.
I spend time in graveyards digging up recently deceased bodies. For, research purposes. And by research I mean experiments. Necromancy. I’ve been experimenting with necromancy, which is the practice of bringing the dead to life. Like some sort of zombie conjurer. Anyway, so I used to rent backhoes and dig up coffins and take them home. I’d take the bodies to my garage and try to bring them back to life, but the coffins, those I chopped into various sizes for firewood. Yes, I have a fireplace, and I use it often. Also, burning is a good way of removing evidence, and coffins. Turns out a lot of times firewood and anti-vampire stakes are the same thing, which, though I didn’t know at the time, would become immensely helpful in the future.
Go to my room and bring me my scarf, I told my girlfriend. She’s great, but she won’t be any help tonight. She doesn’t have the stomach for this kind of work. When she returned, I wrapped the scarf around my neck, pulled on my coat and picked up the sharpest of the firewood. I kissed her quick and headed out into my very vampire-dense front lawn. The battle was anticlimactic. Really, twenty blind vampires aren’t that hard to defeat. Turns out they don’t even possess bat’s echo-locative abilities. The worst that happened was one of them got his pale hand wrapped in my scarf and I had to slither out of it, to avoid tearing it. Other than that, though, piece of cake. The bodies I dragged to the back yard, piled them up next to the garage, being especially careful no to disturb the carefully placed stakes. Come sun-up I’ll have a nice pile of ash behind the garage.
It’s amazing, the ramifications of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This morning, for instance: everything was set for me to leave the house at the appropriate time, to catch the appropriate bus, until I tried to make my lunch. I got two pieces of fifteen-grain bread out of the bag in the cupboard, as usual. I got a knife out of the silverware drawer, as usual. I got the raspberry jelly out of the refrigerator, also as usual. However, instead of getting the vat of peanut butter out of the same cupboard as the bread, which I would have done way back when the bread was extracted from said cupboard, I got a small jar of all-natural peanut butter out of the same refrigerator containing the jelly. To be perfectly clear, I do not condone using all-natural peanut butter, under any circumstances. The oil has a nasty habit of separating from the food-paste, and unless you stir it constantly or refrigerate it, it is completely worthless in it’s binary state. But my girlfriend, she insisted that I make the switch from delicious, non-separating Skippy to this new, purportedly healthier demon. She’s pretty cool, but she knows nothing of proper PB&J manufacturing.
Anyway, so I have to refrigerate my peanut butter, which keeps it in a terrible, un-spreadable condition, and when I attempt to spread, it pulverizes the bread, rips wide gashes through the fifteen-grain matrix. I try to spread another dollop of the thick paste on the other piece of bread, with similar results. I glance at the stove clock, notice I’m four minutes behind schedule and curse out loud. Furious, I slap the two pieces of ravaged bread together, squeeze them into a ball in my fist, until the thick, un-spreadable peanut butter oozes between my fingers, and hurl the useless mass into the sink.
So now I’m on a bus, not the one I should be on, but a later, less timely bus. My hand smells like all-natural peanut butter. In five hours, I know that I will be sitting in the break room at work, angry and hungry. Worse than that, though, are the vampires. I expect them at any time, their pale noses hot on the trail of my peanut buttery flesh.
Strangely, it wasn’t my peanut butter fist that drew the vampires to the front lawn. It was my necromancing. Turns out one night I managed to return a corpse to the realm of the living. Except this particular corpse was less of a corpse and more of an undead vampire who was just resting in his coffin, and who, by being returned to the living world, ceased to be a vampire. Also turns out that this particular vampire was well liked in the vampire community. Something of a comedian, I guess. But the rest of the vampires, they weren’t too happy with me for stealing away their funny-man. At least that’s what I was told by one of the blind nighstalkers on my lawn, moments before I staked him. He might have also said something about unrelenting attacks on myself and loved ones, until I returned this undead Seinfeld, but I was too busy plunging firewood deep into his heart to ask questions.
Twenty blind vampires were only the first wave. The next night, there were thirty. And they had all the vision necessary for serious combat. As luck would have it, I still had plenty of firewood, and my good friend Meriwether Duval. Meriwether though, he’s no vampire slayer, but who is, really? Buffy, sure, but she’s not so much of a vampire slayer as she is Sarah Michelle Gellar pretending to be a vampire slayer. What I could use is a bona-fide, steak slinging, crucifix wielding bad ass. I’d settle for Sarah Michelle Gellar, though probably for different, less vampire-related reasons. None of that mattered though. It was just me and Meri and thirty goddamn vampires on my front lawn. Oh, and my girlfriend.
I called for her to bring me my scarf. Why don’t you just stay inside, she said, we spent all that money on the vampire-proof windows, we might as well use them. Vampire resistant, not vampire proof, I said. Now please be a dear and bring me my damn scarf. She’s all right, though I often wonder if Sarah Michelle Gellar would be of more use in these situations. When she returned with my scarf she asked me when I became so devoted to vampire staking and wasn’t I too scared even to close the blinds the night before. I told her Ripley was scared shitless in Alien but the didn’t stop her from kicking xenomorph ass.
Meriwether and I, on the front steps, stakes in hand. I instruct him to take the eastmost fifteen while I attend to the westerly fifteen. He stared at me blankly and I said just go wild, we’re Lethal Weapon 4 now.
It was bloodless, the battle, which isn’t to say that wounds weren’t inflicted nor vampires slain. It’s just that, though they consume blood, vampires don’t necessarily bleed it. That is to say, vampires are undead, so bloodflow isn’t required and therefore, when staked through the heart, they don’t bleed. I could never understand how heart penetration is supposed to kill something that is both already dead and independent of their cardiovascular system. I guess that’s just the way it is. But the battle, victory. Thirty dead vampires and not a scratch on my body. Meriwether, he didn’t fare so well. I can still say the battle was bloodless because the fifteen vampires he was responsible for teamed up and drained every ounce of his blood through their hollow pale fangs in no time flat. Sucked him completely dry. At least I was able to stake most of them while they were hunched over his body.
After a few days and many failed incantations, I was finally able to revive Meri. Within a week or so he was back at full strength and, aside from the many fang-marks, he was as he was before the battle, except now he demanded to be called Hrothgar. Of course, during that time I had to fend off countless vampiric hordes by my self. She was there, my girlfriend, and she’s okay, but she didn’t even help be haul bodies to the ash pile behind the garage.
That night, no less than one hundred vampires outside, I decided enough was enough and that I would give in to their demand. I opened the vampire-resistant window and called out to them. I told them I was sorry and that I’d do whatever it is they wanted me to if it meant and end to the nightly slayings. The leader of the vampires came to the front of the pack. So be it, he menaced, and proceeded to explain in excruciating detail everything they expected me to do.
Turns out the guy I accidentally brought back to life, yeah, Jerry Seinfeld. Been a vampire the whole time, since the beginning. So when I said earlier that he was some sort of vampire Seinfeld, I couldn’t have been more right. Anyway, tracking him down was no problem. Hrothgar and I rented a car using the credentials of one of the vampires and drove to New York. We had used the internet to discern the rough location of Seinfeld’s mansion, and drove lazy but strategic loops around the vicinity, until, one night, we spotted the infamous comedian speeding along in one of his many Porsches. We ran him off the road, pulled his living body from the wreckage and tossed him in the trunk of our rental. We escaped home without incident.
Pulling into the garage, Jerry Seinfeld bound and gagged in the trunk. I tell Hrothgar to be alert. He might try to distract us with his trademark observational comedy when we open the trunk and carry him into the back yard. I pop the trunk, get out of the car and walk to the back. Hrothgar asks how are we going to turn him back into a vampire. That’s for the vampires to worry about, I reassure him. Now help me with the legs.
I was a little disappointed that our cargo had passed out during the nine hour car ride and was still unconscious even as we haphazardly hauled him out back. Secretly, I was hoping that he really would try to distract us with some good did-you-ever-notice mojo. I used to watch his show all the time. Hrothgar brought me back to reality. He asked me if this wouldn’t be easier with some more help. Who, I ask. Oh, yeah, her. My girlfriend. She’s, uh, nice, but do you think she has the braun for this operation. No, best to just bite down and do it ourselves.
When the body was firmly lashed to the posts we had driven into the lawn, we went inside. I called for my girlfriend, to let her know we had returned, lest she didn’t hear us struggle from garage to yard, laden with comedian weight. There was no reply. I walked from the back door up a small flight of stairs into the kitchen. To my surprise, there was my girlfriend, splayed out on the kitchen table, a thick pool of blood covering the floor beneath her. In the corner, looming in the shadows like he was in a detective novel, a vampire. He waited for a moment, then skulked out of the shadows towards me. Where is our funnyman, he hissed. The funnyman’s in the back, I said. He hissed some more. If you don’t bring us our funnyman by tomorrow night, another loved one will suffer the same fate as your precious girlfriend here. But I said he’s in the back. Like, we already have him for you. The vampire hesitated, then menaced, in the same cautionary tone as before. Oh, I see. Sorry for the mess. He walked past me, down the stairs and out the back door. A few seconds later Hrothgar entered the kitchen. Hey, did you know there was a vampire in the house? I just saw him walk out the back do--holy shit! What happened here? They killed her, I said, as incentive to complete our mission in a timely fashion. Hrothgar came closer, put his hand on my shoulder. I’m so sorry, is there anything we can do? Don’t worry about it, I said. But, isn’t she going to turn into a vampire? No, they didn’t bite her. From the looks of it they drained her blood the toothless way. Hrothgar turned to face me. You’re necromancy! You can bring her back, just like you did to me! I said don’t worry about it, and walked to the kitchen window.
Outside, in the back yard, a cluster of vampires had gathered around their former kin. The body we recently secured to the poles in the ground rose from the grass, hovered a few inches off the ground. No shit, I said out loud, and made my way outside. Hrothgar, he stayed in the kitchen. Not much of a Seinfeld fan, that one. I sidled up to the vampires, ensconced myself in their midst. Vampire Seinfeld still hovered there, a pair of leathery wings caped out behind him. And what’s the deal with Dracula, he said. What’s he a Count of anyway?
This is the complete, unedited first draft. For this outing I tried not to get caught up in the editing process while writing, instead trying to get the story on the page as quickly as possible. Thus, the many plot/grammar/logic problems. Further drafts will be posted as they are drafted. I'm curious to see where this story goes.
2.26.2009
More Sandwich Problems
It’s amazing, the ramifications of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This morning, for instance: everything was set for me to leave the house at the appropriate time, to catch the appropriate bus, until I tried to make my lunch. I got two pieces of fifteen-grain bread out of the bag in the cupboard, as usual. I got a knife out of the silverware drawer, as usual. I got the raspberry jelly out of the refrigerator, also as usual. However, instead of getting the vat of peanut butter out of the same cupboard as the bread, which I would have done way back when the bread was extracted from said cupboard, I got a small jar of all-natural peanut butter out of the same refrigerator containing the jelly. To be perfectly clear, I do not condone using all-natural peanut butter. The oil has a nasty habit of separating from the food-paste, and unless you stir it constantly or refrigerate it, it is completely worthless in it’s binary state. But my girlfriend, she insisted that I make the switch from delicious, non-separating Skippy to this new, purportedly healthier demon. She’s pretty cool, but she knows nothing of proper PB&J manufacturing. Anyway, so I have to refrigerate my peanut butter, which keeps it in a terrible, un-spreadable condition, and when I attempt to spread, it pulverizes the bread, rips wide gashes through the fifteen-grain matrix. I try to spread another dollop of the thick paste on the other piece of bread, with similar results. I glance at the stove clock, notice I’m four minutes behind schedule and curse out loud. Furious, I slap the two pieces of ravaged bread together, squeeze them into a ball in my fist, until the thick, un-spreadable peanut butter oozes between my fingers, and hurl the useless mass onto the countertop.
So now I’m on a bus, not the one I should be on, but a later, less timely bus. My hand smells like all-natural peanut butter. In five hours, I know that I will be sitting in the break room at work, angry and hungry. Worse than that, though, are the vampires. I expect them at any time, their pale noses hot on the trail of my peanut buttery flesh.
Based on a true story. I have this and another story in the works right now. Both feature vampires, for whatever reason. Maybe they will become one, or maybe they will spread their wings and fly far from the nest. Excited to be finally producing fiction again in larger amounts.
So now I’m on a bus, not the one I should be on, but a later, less timely bus. My hand smells like all-natural peanut butter. In five hours, I know that I will be sitting in the break room at work, angry and hungry. Worse than that, though, are the vampires. I expect them at any time, their pale noses hot on the trail of my peanut buttery flesh.
Based on a true story. I have this and another story in the works right now. Both feature vampires, for whatever reason. Maybe they will become one, or maybe they will spread their wings and fly far from the nest. Excited to be finally producing fiction again in larger amounts.
2.24.2009
Spacing Issues
My entire life (really since first grade) I've operated under one overriding truth: when starting a new sentence the first word appears two spaces after a period. However, it has been brought to my attention that it is not only acceptable, but in fact commonplace, to start a new sentence one space after a period. My world has been shaken to it's foundation. While I'm hesitant to work against my punctuational programming, I feel that the single space strategy is far superior, from an aesthetical stance. Makes the page more uniform, more balanced. So, I'm struggling to erase seventeen years of typographical habit and embrace the new standard. Except when writing essays, where every extranious blank space adds to the overall volume of the document without any extra work.
Counter-Reality Machine
This weird fog; a need to be focused. Walking through it is like walking randomly through time. To walk through it is to walk (through?) random time. Shadows of people, only outlines or silhouettes, never more visceral than a light fog or mist. I have a counter-reality machine. When I turn it on everything reverses. Dead becomes alive, warm becomes cold, wet becomes dry, dry becomes gaseous, gaseous becomes liquid. Make it clear, though. This is no bizarro world. Nice does not become mean, hello does not become goodbye. No, only something with physicality can be altered. Exist becomes not exist. This fact becomes something of a problem, then. Everything exists. What doesn’t exist? Would some extinct planet be the home for bigfoot and the loch ness monster? Only things that don’t exist? Then how do we decide what doesn’t exist? This conversation is getting out of hand.
Sometimes I write with no goal in mind, in the hopes that some amazing idea will work it's way into my mind. I really liked the sound of 'counter-realty machine,' but the more I wrote about it the less sense it made. Ideas are easy, logistics are not.
Sometimes I write with no goal in mind, in the hopes that some amazing idea will work it's way into my mind. I really liked the sound of 'counter-realty machine,' but the more I wrote about it the less sense it made. Ideas are easy, logistics are not.
2.19.2009
Furry Carnage Locomotion
Church bells and train whistles, the wind grazing over the tops of wheat. Imaginary ropes tied to the couch. Twice blinked. Dark brown / frail earth battery. Charged, broke, rotated spindles. Spinnerets. Bitten toe spider, venomous. Full of sand, inched across the sweltering desert pavement. Black roads 100mph small wire fences on the sides, collected tumbleweeds and roadrunners.
A man, standing in sudden rain. He notices that his feet are liquid, flowing away with the slight current of the minuscule stream. Humorous things happen, as this is meant to be tragic and comedic simultaneously.
I can feel myself sliding down the couch, slowly melting, like a humanoid stick of butter in an upholstered saucepan. So far no sizzling though, only casual melting, skin so smooth. Distant music provides atmospherics. A quick scan for open padlocks reveals judicious chains.
A man, standing in sudden rain. He notices that his feet are liquid, flowing away with the slight current of the minuscule stream. Humorous things happen, as this is meant to be tragic and comedic simultaneously.
I can feel myself sliding down the couch, slowly melting, like a humanoid stick of butter in an upholstered saucepan. So far no sizzling though, only casual melting, skin so smooth. Distant music provides atmospherics. A quick scan for open padlocks reveals judicious chains.
2.17.2009
Carpet
The carpet in my apartment smells old and thick. Not like my grandmother’s house or a nursing home or anything like that. Old just happened to be the first word that came to mind when I inhaled the intricate details of the rarely-vacuumed surface. I hear someone say yes, I use a golden toothbrush. A thousand questions come to mind.
The (hopeful) genesis of a new story. More to come...
The (hopeful) genesis of a new story. More to come...
2.12.2009
2.10.2009
The Sandwich
I sat, staring at the most poorly constructed sandwich I had ever seen. The bread wasn’t cut evenly, turkey and cucumbers were bursting out one side and the whole thing listed drastically to the left. I had to eat it as fast as I could, to avoid total sandwich destruction. The experience was very disappointing. Not worth $5.62 at all.
Never purchase sandwiches made by college students.
Never purchase sandwiches made by college students.
2.05.2009
Unforeseen Circumstances
Dear Professor Quistgard,
I am deeply sorry that I was unable to attend class Wednesday. I understand that our research papers were due and that you do not accept late work, nor do you grant extensions, but I beseech you to give me one more day to turn in my paper. The reason for my absence was far beyond my control, and I think that if you would just hear me out, you wouldn’t hesitate to extend the due date of my paper.
6:20AM. The alarm clock should have gone off, but it didn’t, so now it’s 7:17AM. My eyes opened slowly, the lids breaking free from overnight crusts. I noticed that there is more light in my room than usual. A few seconds later I made the connection and realized it must be far later in the morning than I thought. I looked at the alarm clock. The digital display was blank. With my tired eyes I traced the cord from the clock to the wall socket, where their connection was conspicuously absent. A mild wave of distress washed over me. I slid out of bed and grabbed my cell phone off the floor, where it had been charging overnight. The display came on when I flipped the phone open and revealed the time. What had moments before been a mild wave of distress quickly transformed into a surge of panic, pure electricity racing through my veins, overwhelming my neural processors. In one fluid motion I dropped the phone, cursed and spun on my heel. I made it two steps towards the bathroom before my cat darted out from under the bed and attacked my bare feet. Another curse and a failed attempt at Riverdance deposited me on the floor, with my nose absorbing a majority of the impact. Blood was already soaking into the carpet by the time I could fully grasp what happened. With my right hand pinching my nose closed I rushed into the bathroom to jam a wad of tissue into the leaking nostril.
It was 7:43AM when I tried to leave my apartment. I say tried because when I went to open the door I found there was no doorknob. There wasn’t even a door there anymore. Instead there was an empty wall, like someone had put a layer of white sheet rock over the door. I wasn’t sure how to react to that discovery, so I walked through the kitchen to the window, only to find that it too had been covered. Perplexed, I returned to the kitchen and retrieved a steak knife from a drawer. I didn’t know what else to do so I thrust the knife into the wall where the door used to be. I was operating under the assumption that somehow one of my friends had snuck into my apartment, perhaps after drugging me to ensure my unconsciousness, and put in dry wall over the door and windows. But when the knife made contact with the wall it didn’t punch through like I thought it would. Instead, the knife just stopped, having only penetrated the wall by a few centimeters. I withdrew the knife and looked at the wound it left on the wall. Closer inspection revealed that the mysterious material was not dry wall at all. There were many slender layers of what I guessed to be paper obstructing access to my door and, to confirm my suspicion, I grabbed hold of one of the exposed layers and gave it a hefty tug. A sizable section of the wall peeled off in a wafer-thin sheet. It sounded like tearing an unusually large piece of construction paper. Mystified at the ramifications of this new development, I set to work tearing my way out of my apartment. I took my knife and sliced through several layers of the paper and stripped them back one by one. I did this until the dried blood on my fingers from my nose was washed out by fresh blood seeping through a thousand paper cuts. Whole chunks of flesh were sliced away from my fingertips and hands, and blood saturated the countless layers of paper piled up on the floor.
The clock on my cell phone read 9:02AM when I tore the final layer of paper away from my front door. The euphoria I felt was in no small way the result of severe blood loss, and I was barely able to turn the doorknob, much less pull the door open. All the torn paper blocked the the door, at it was only with some time and great vigor that I was able to clear a path for the door to swing open. However, when I at last set foot outside my apartment, at 9:33AM, I was overcome with a rush of optimism and renewed sense of vitality. I hobbled down the hallway and out the door to the parking lot. I hobbled to my car and put my key in the lock. It wouldn’t turn. For many furious minutes I attempted to gain access to my vehicle, only to be denied with each try. By now I was already an hour late for class, and had no idea how I might manage to make it to school at a reasonable time. I sat down with my back against the car door, keys swaying gently over my head, suspended from the lock. It was 9:46AM.
At this point my recollection of events gets a bit fuzzy, but I do know that sometime around 9:48AM I was taken on board a Reticulan spacecraft by Reticulan spacemen on their way back to their home planet Reticula. I can’t be sure precisely what time they took me because during our journey to Reticula, the Reticulans revealed to me all the secrets of space and time. As a demonstration of their mastery of the temporal realm they traveled backwards in time and brought me back to my car at the exact moment they originally abducted me. I was impressed with their abilities and asked them to take me to school. I should have asked them to take me back to Tuesday, so that I could have emailed you a copy of my research paper, but the thought slipped my mind. Nevertheless, the Reticulans obliged and dropped me off at school, except they overcompensated for the loss of time we experienced when they took me back to my original abduction and left me at school at 10:55PM.
Needless to say, every building on campus was closed, and anyway I had forgotten my backpack at my apartment. I couldn’t ask the Reticulans to take me home because they had long since returned to Reticula. So I slept on a bench outside the Library. As soon as the building was opened in the morning I raced to the computer lab to send you this email, which brings us to the present, 8:12AM. If you give me this extension I will take the next bus home and bring my paper to class tomorrow. I promise. Please let me know your decision as soon as possible. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Jimmy Dougan
I am deeply sorry that I was unable to attend class Wednesday. I understand that our research papers were due and that you do not accept late work, nor do you grant extensions, but I beseech you to give me one more day to turn in my paper. The reason for my absence was far beyond my control, and I think that if you would just hear me out, you wouldn’t hesitate to extend the due date of my paper.
6:20AM. The alarm clock should have gone off, but it didn’t, so now it’s 7:17AM. My eyes opened slowly, the lids breaking free from overnight crusts. I noticed that there is more light in my room than usual. A few seconds later I made the connection and realized it must be far later in the morning than I thought. I looked at the alarm clock. The digital display was blank. With my tired eyes I traced the cord from the clock to the wall socket, where their connection was conspicuously absent. A mild wave of distress washed over me. I slid out of bed and grabbed my cell phone off the floor, where it had been charging overnight. The display came on when I flipped the phone open and revealed the time. What had moments before been a mild wave of distress quickly transformed into a surge of panic, pure electricity racing through my veins, overwhelming my neural processors. In one fluid motion I dropped the phone, cursed and spun on my heel. I made it two steps towards the bathroom before my cat darted out from under the bed and attacked my bare feet. Another curse and a failed attempt at Riverdance deposited me on the floor, with my nose absorbing a majority of the impact. Blood was already soaking into the carpet by the time I could fully grasp what happened. With my right hand pinching my nose closed I rushed into the bathroom to jam a wad of tissue into the leaking nostril.
It was 7:43AM when I tried to leave my apartment. I say tried because when I went to open the door I found there was no doorknob. There wasn’t even a door there anymore. Instead there was an empty wall, like someone had put a layer of white sheet rock over the door. I wasn’t sure how to react to that discovery, so I walked through the kitchen to the window, only to find that it too had been covered. Perplexed, I returned to the kitchen and retrieved a steak knife from a drawer. I didn’t know what else to do so I thrust the knife into the wall where the door used to be. I was operating under the assumption that somehow one of my friends had snuck into my apartment, perhaps after drugging me to ensure my unconsciousness, and put in dry wall over the door and windows. But when the knife made contact with the wall it didn’t punch through like I thought it would. Instead, the knife just stopped, having only penetrated the wall by a few centimeters. I withdrew the knife and looked at the wound it left on the wall. Closer inspection revealed that the mysterious material was not dry wall at all. There were many slender layers of what I guessed to be paper obstructing access to my door and, to confirm my suspicion, I grabbed hold of one of the exposed layers and gave it a hefty tug. A sizable section of the wall peeled off in a wafer-thin sheet. It sounded like tearing an unusually large piece of construction paper. Mystified at the ramifications of this new development, I set to work tearing my way out of my apartment. I took my knife and sliced through several layers of the paper and stripped them back one by one. I did this until the dried blood on my fingers from my nose was washed out by fresh blood seeping through a thousand paper cuts. Whole chunks of flesh were sliced away from my fingertips and hands, and blood saturated the countless layers of paper piled up on the floor.
The clock on my cell phone read 9:02AM when I tore the final layer of paper away from my front door. The euphoria I felt was in no small way the result of severe blood loss, and I was barely able to turn the doorknob, much less pull the door open. All the torn paper blocked the the door, at it was only with some time and great vigor that I was able to clear a path for the door to swing open. However, when I at last set foot outside my apartment, at 9:33AM, I was overcome with a rush of optimism and renewed sense of vitality. I hobbled down the hallway and out the door to the parking lot. I hobbled to my car and put my key in the lock. It wouldn’t turn. For many furious minutes I attempted to gain access to my vehicle, only to be denied with each try. By now I was already an hour late for class, and had no idea how I might manage to make it to school at a reasonable time. I sat down with my back against the car door, keys swaying gently over my head, suspended from the lock. It was 9:46AM.
At this point my recollection of events gets a bit fuzzy, but I do know that sometime around 9:48AM I was taken on board a Reticulan spacecraft by Reticulan spacemen on their way back to their home planet Reticula. I can’t be sure precisely what time they took me because during our journey to Reticula, the Reticulans revealed to me all the secrets of space and time. As a demonstration of their mastery of the temporal realm they traveled backwards in time and brought me back to my car at the exact moment they originally abducted me. I was impressed with their abilities and asked them to take me to school. I should have asked them to take me back to Tuesday, so that I could have emailed you a copy of my research paper, but the thought slipped my mind. Nevertheless, the Reticulans obliged and dropped me off at school, except they overcompensated for the loss of time we experienced when they took me back to my original abduction and left me at school at 10:55PM.
Needless to say, every building on campus was closed, and anyway I had forgotten my backpack at my apartment. I couldn’t ask the Reticulans to take me home because they had long since returned to Reticula. So I slept on a bench outside the Library. As soon as the building was opened in the morning I raced to the computer lab to send you this email, which brings us to the present, 8:12AM. If you give me this extension I will take the next bus home and bring my paper to class tomorrow. I promise. Please let me know your decision as soon as possible. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Jimmy Dougan
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