Figments of Escape

2011-09-12T16:51:00.001-07:00

It has been a while since I wrote about these characters.

I am told that I am a cathartic writer, and this point does not ring more true than in this story. Be gentle, haha!

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Transposed
Joshua Albers – 2011-09-03

            This is not the place I grew up in.

            England is different from home in a lot of ways, many ways really, but not so much as to be strange; at least not yet. People have been telling me that they are here for me when the culture shock sets in. The by-product of having never really been anywhere different for any length of time is that you aren’t really sure what culture shock is. Truth told, I like to think that a heavy European upbringing helps to make a transfer to a place like England all the easier, but I haven’t been here long enough to really say that with any certainty.

            I still haven’t gotten over the fact that I am here to begin with. Everywhere I go I walk around like I am caught up in some place between fiction and reality, it is surreal. I will be walking down the street out front of my new home and it seems normal enough, I mean the architecture is different sure, but what really nails home the idea that I am not in Canada anymore is when you see potholes in the road, but they aren’t really potholes because you can see the old cobblestone streets underneath. There is a history underneath the pavement that you just don’t get back home. Still though, none of this really has fazed me yet. Get back to me in a month or mores time and I might tell you something very different. Right now though, I am just enjoying where I am. I go to bars, I go to diners for breakfast, I go to the mall or I just walk around and try to make this place a part of my everyday life. Take breakfast for instance. I can assure you that the breakfast you can get at just about any café here is not the kind of breakfast you will find back home. Back home you can get several kinds of things for breakfast, but here you can only seem to get a varying set of combinations of the same dish, the fullest of which involves black pudding, two sausages, two pieces of bacon, an egg, a fried tomato, toast, and beans.

            Black pudding by the way is better known as blood pudding and is rarely ever served back home, and by rarely I mean never. Though it is rarely served, you will no doubt recognize the flavour once you have had it but you will never be able to fully place it. In short, it isn’t as scary as it seems.

            I think the only thing that is really getting to me is the idea that I am sort of here in this place alone. That is the one thing that constantly reminds me I am in some new and different place. My friends and my family are back home. It isn’t that I am unable to make friends here, I have met awesome people, and it is just that the friend-making thing is different here. I am a stranger to this place who is sort of jumping into people’s lives after they have made friends and developed relationship over the course of years. I feel out of place, like a blip on a radar. Maybe this is what everyone who has ever been new to my home country has felt like; in which case I hope I was inviting towards them and available to them. The whole thing is made all the more odd feeling when the friends I have back home rarely talk to me through e-mail. I both enjoy this and resent it at the same time. On the one hand I am excited to be in a new place and meeting new people and going new places; on the other I feel left behind in a way. The odd message here and there is greatly received and yet when I become engaged too much I get annoyed and want to be left alone. Perhaps I am enduring the result of my own fickleness.

            The other day I went to a pub that has sort of become my new local watering hole. My brother would give me a hard time calling a pub a local pub, stating that every pub is a local pub. If he knew how many there were in my vicinity though, he might understand why I call it my local watering hole. Anyway, I was in a local pub called The Whitworth, a quiet place where you can grab a beer and play darts, or watch the latest match or just be left alone to think. It is the less popular choice compared to the modern looking Ford Maddox Brown, which serves various kinds of steaks and is more of a trendy place to go. It was inside the old walls of The Whitworth that I met the unfamiliar faces of a couple long time friends as I had sat down at a table to myself and had taken a sip from a pint of my San Miguel, a bit more expensive but well worth it. An old man sat down at my table with a pint of bitter and a familiar twinkle in his eye. The old man had a familiar feel about him, like I had seen him someplace before but I couldn’t place him. He sat across from me wearing a thick, knitted brown sweater, unbuttoned, over a blue, nearly grey, shirt. His hair was thick and windblown and white and his face was clean-shaven. To tell you the truth, he reminded me a little bit of JRR Tolkien, or at least the picture of him I used to see on the back of The Hobbit.

“How are you liking it here across the pond?” He asked me.

            The question had thrown me off guard a little bit. How could this man know I wasn’t from England? I hadn’t spoken except to the bartender when I ordered my drink. I wondered if I really stood out that much but answered him none the less.

“Feels a bit like a dream if I am being honest.”

He had taken a sip from his pint and smacked his lips, “Blessings do tend to feel that way.”

“Do I know you?” I asked, the curiosity and that familiar feeling had finally gotten the best of me.

“You’ve changed over the years Josh, but you are no less odd. I to change as things progress, your view of the world has changed and I with it I suppose.” The old man smiled a smile that I could all of a sudden place again.

“Father Time, what are you doing here?”

            He laughed a little bit, he was no doubt proud of himself and his wit, “You can always find me in a pub.”

            You can always find Time in a pub. I suppose that is a true statement. He put his drink down on the tabletop and pointed behind me.

“You remember Fall?”

            I had looked in the direction that Time pointed in and the person I saw was not the Fall that I had always remembered. Though her clothes still very much pointed at her season; she was dressed in a long P Coat that went down to her knees, brown in colour with faint rusty red patterns sown into it. Around her neck was a scarf, brown and gold and she was wearing brown stockings and brown suede buckled riding boots. Her wardrobe seemed to reflect the city I was in now and her physical appearance had changed as well. Her hair was no longer red, but was thick and golden brown, her skin was olive coloured but her golden eyes remained the same.

“You have changed a lot since I last saw you at the park back home.” I said to her.

“You don’t look much like the annoyed 22 year old I met that day either.” She sat down next to Time with a glass of cider and a smile.

“What brings you to England?” At the time it seemed a good enough question, though now it just seems silly, a reach for conversation.

“You do.” She said, still smiling. She and Time were not going to make this easy.

            Moments passed between the three of us where nothing was said; there was just the sound of glasses being placed as they went up and down from mouths and back down to the tables. It felt awkward, it was like meeting new people again, and a shyness set in that I hadn’t felt in some time. Perhaps it was a good thing though, it was another growing opportunity, another chance to further step two feet out of my comfort zone, even if it was with familiar people. Fall had changed a lot, she wasn’t as shy as the first time I met her, in fact she had grown into a person I least expected her to become. She was serious, but loving; she was reserved, but open. She seemed to fit a stereotype I have yet to fully discover. No, I didn’t glean these conclusions off of a few seconds of conversation. We did talk much longer, the three of us; it just seems so distant now. We talked about what we had been up to in the last four years and we talked about all the things that had changed. It is amazing the kind of growth you can find in what is really a short amount of time. I have a theory that life works in two-year periods of idiocy.

“Every two years you look back and discover what an idiot you were for thinking that you had it all figured out, only to discover the same thing in another two years.” I laughed a little bit as I said it. It was just my way of saying that I understood that I will believe to have it all figured out but I may never truly. It was my way of saying that I understood I still had growing to do.

Fall looked at me with an eyebrow raised and her lips pursed in a smile, “Sounds like you have it all figured out.” Her voice was very distinct, it sounded as though she carefully considered every word she said in a matter of moments.

“No Fall, what I am saying is that I don’t.” I had smiled as I said it.

“You recognize that much.” Time had pointed out to me. “You still seem to find loneliness all to easily and have yet to discover you are never truly alone.”

            Part of me in that moment wanted to give a sarcastic remark about talking with figments of my imagination but I bit my tongue. The truth is I knew what Time was talking about. He had been referring to God. And God continues to try and tell me that same message every time I start to feel like just a spec travelling through a place.

“Put Him in front of you Josh and you will be taken to amazing places. Another Joshua used to do just that. You never know what you are going to find, but you can trust it is Him taking you there. Stop with all the self pity and just go for it!”

            This wasn’t the first time I had heard those words before. I had experienced a great deal of encouragement a couple times with those very same words and I continue to be encouraged by them now. Time gave me another one of those familiar smiles over his pint glass and almost spoke into his cup.

“Besides, Fall is here. Maybe the two of you can go to Arndale or take a walk around Platt. She still fancies you, you know.”

“Dad!” Fall blushed, that all to recognizable shyness setting in once more. Perhaps we don’t change as quickly as we think we do! “You are constantly meddling about!”

“I’m Time…I meddle, it’s what I do.” He got up and left the table, I don’t know where he went, probably to play darts, but he had left Fall and I alone to catch up.

            To give a bit of history, I suppose. Back home I had been a friend with the Ravens who brought the seasons. It had all began when I met Winter on a train leaving the downtown area. Winter had always been my favourite of the seasons, I had always had a rocky relationship with Summer and Spring slept most of the year. Fall had always had a special place in my heart though. She was never around that long back home, but when she was, she brought with her magnificent colours and days that were bright and sunny but with a wind just cold enough to need a jumper. Fall brought with her inspiration and I had always felt that she was my muse. She had admitted that knowing that she inspired me made her shy towards me.

“So how about it? Would you want to go for a walk some place?” I asked.

“Why not.” She replied.
            This is not the same place I grew up in.

Change is a good thing.

For Another Day

2011-03-23T10:40:00.001-07:00

For Another Day

I close the door to my cabin behind me, and turn around to the wind blowing gently through the emerald green hills that surround my home, and the soft bleating of several hundred head of sheep. I live in a quiet stone cabin tucked into the natural cul-de-sac that the hills make. Hills that could pass for small mountains, etched with grey stone protruding like natures own age lines; these are what makes the area I live in so famous. There isn’t a soul for miles around and I am left to myself. I am perhaps the worst kind of person in the minds of some; a writer looking to understand something he doesn’t for the sake of a book. The way I see it; if Peter Mayle can do it in France, why can’t I do the same thing here? The only difference between he and I seems to be that I may have lied about my intentions in coming here in the first place. I have been here for well over a year now and I have no intention of stopping what I am doing. You can call me a coward if it makes you feel better. I think the only reason I stay is because I don’t miss what I had at home. Back home it was deadlines, facebook, e-mail, advertising that would not cease until I defined my life by their products; I jumped at this chance. My desire to get away from all of the noise of back home was the leading reason behind this new adventure, and I do not regret it. I know what you might be thinking; “Oh great, another self righteous bohemian.” And maybe you’re right; your conclusion does not bother me in the slightest though. I have learned a new level of responsibility I have never known in my life. I am not a parent, I do not have children; what I do have, and in abundance now, is sheep; and my dog, a lappinonian herder named Eli. I have never cared for lives so small, so fragile, and at the same time so stupid.

Sheep are by no means the brightest animal I have ever encountered, but there is something to caring for them that seems to resonate with me. The other shepherds in the area think I have a tinge of lunacy for feeling so, but perhaps it is because all of this is so new to me. I cannot help but love these animals, and the level of responsibility that comes with them. I feel ever ounce of joy those little lambs feel as they jump about and play with one another. I feel every ounce of sorrow and pain that the ones who stray from the flock do; and even more so for the ones who do not return. The whole thing makes a stewardship for this planet and its creatures, which we are all born with, become so much more alive than before I came into this work. The truth is I have no book that I am working on, I only have a journal. And as I continue to read my journal from its first entry to its last, I begin to like the main character more and more.

It had been raining all day and the clouds, in their own majesty were every shade of grey that could be offered; merely adding to the vast expanse of the place I now call home. Eli comes bounding up to me, tail wagging happily; tongue hanging out in a smile that only a dog could have. Eli has a black coat with white hair around his paws and a small white tuft of hair on his chest; normally it would have an incredible sheen coming off of it, but given the state of the weather, his hair was to remain matte. I scratch Eli under his chin and pick up a small tennis ball and throw it off into the distance. With incredible speed Eli was off, the ball bouncing up and down the soft earth, dirt kicking up after each of Eli’s strides. I can’t help but laugh slightly as the bleating of the sheep increases and the sounds of small feet thumping across the soft earth all around me as Eli tackles his ball amidst the flock. Trotting back, Eli places the ball at my feet and sits down with a look of accomplishment across his panting face; I give him a pet on his head and with a sharp whistle and hand signal, I send him on his way.

The grass pathway that leads from my land has now faded into a dirt road, and crunching of gravel underfoot lulls me into a tiny sense of rhythm. I am heading into town to meet with the many people that I have come into contact with during my time here, though there is one person in particular that I am interested in seeing. She is a young woman who has been visiting a relative in the village. I know her from back home, though she is not from there either. The two of us worked together for the same paper, she was our receptionist, spending a year in our country before heading off to another part of the world that called to her. I would be lying to you if I said we had gotten on with one another almost immediately. It wasn’t that either of us couldn’t stand to be in one another’s presence or anything like that, it was more that she just didn’t jump out at me. I said hello every now and then to her when the occasion called for being more social than normal, but that was about it. It wasn’t until her going away party that I knew I had made some sort of mistake, that I had missed out on something. She was getting a drink and was wearing a beautiful red dress and she had her hair done in a way I had never seen it before. I had walked over to get myself a drink; I was behaving the same way I always do in those kinds of social situations. My friends went and spoke with their friends and I was left to listen to their conversations, or at least look like I was while my mind wandered. Often there were times were I initiated conversations with people, though most times I would wait for them to do so.

“Thanks for coming out tonight.” She said as she poured herself a drink.

“Don’t mention it. I am always one for being social.” That was a lie; I hadn’t talked to anyone for more than five minutes that night. At least I knew her name; that was bound to make a conversation with a person I had not taken the time to really get to know better.

“So Elise, what new adventure is pulling you away from us?”

She smiled over her drink and ran a hand through her hair, “Well, first I am going to visit a relative of mine then I thought I might look into some work more directly related to what I studied in Uni.”

“Back home then?”

“Work or visiting?”

“Both I suppose.”

“Neither; I don’t think I am ready to go back home just yet.” I remember her mentioning that she was going someplace that had nothing to do with home. One of the many pieces of information I had forgotten while sitting upon the fringe of the office social network.

“So what are you hoping to for work while away from home?” Because I had absolutely no idea what she took in school to know what field of work she was looking for. She smiles at me; she knows I know nothing about her. Is she enjoying this?

“I want to work with children!”

The conversation continued onward from there. Elise didn’t seem to mind that I hadn’t paid her any attention during her time with the paper and that I was scamming free food and drink at her going away party. No; the two of us just spent the majority of our evening chatting with one another and that all too familiar feeling of regret came creeping up. Why hadn’t I gotten to know this person when I had the chance? Well, as things would have it, I had another opportunity. Or at least another missed one.

The sun is setting lower now as I crest over the hill just above the town. I can see a few lights scattered about the valley. There is a larger one in the center of the town that interests me more though. It is the pub. Now contrary to what you might believe, this establishment, like all real pubs, does not serve food. It is home to, however, many good drinks, local music, and many, many, long nights. This is the epicentre of social activity for this town. Every night is alive with friends sharing the stories of their day over a drink or two. Tonight however is special. It is the anniversary of the town and they are hosting a night filled with music and dancing. Everyone partakes in this event, in one form or another. This is my debut with the penny whistle. I am not that great with it, but that fact won’t stop me from trying. It doesn’t really matter anyway, these towns folk just want to know you are enjoying yourself. As I walk down this hill I start remembering when I ran into Elise in this very same pub.

I had just landed and was now taking a train to the first small town that would then connect me to another small town by bus, which would then have a person waiting for me to give me a ride to the sheep farm I now call my home. As I was riding the train; first class no less, I began to check my Facebook account, for what was to be the last time I can assure you. I had let everyone know where I was going to be, and Elise, who was now my “Facebook Friend” due to our small exchange at her going away party, had sent me a message.

I am going to be in your small town in your small new patch of the world this weekend, let’s catch up! Meet me at the Ram Horn pub in the center of the town this Friday night.

In a new country for a couple of hours and already a familiar face to meet up with, who would say no to that? The small stone cabin looked as though it had been there for millennia, and maybe it had been. Most of the places in this country had homes and buildings that were older than my country. I was past the point of no return now, and as soon as I stepped over the threshold of my new home, I was committed to at the very least, one year of a new life in this strange place. This was the first moment I stepped foot into the cabin. The old man who picked me up from the bus station was the man who was to give me a tour of my new property. As the old man continued to show me around the cabin, he told me a little bit about its history and its previous owner. It appeared its last owner died with no heirs and that it was a stroke of fortune that I had come looking. At least that is what I gathered from it. In two days time, I was going to the center of that town and I was going to meet up with a friend. I just needed to get through this tour first.

The room was dark, illuminated by small lights in distant places of the establishment and the two small windows and wide open door that made up the front wall of the pub. When this town had gotten electricity, this must have been the first place to get it, the lights look about as old as the establishment itself. Elise and I were tucked into a small corner of the place, a table to ourselves, and our voices lifted a little higher than the soft murmur of the pubs more long serving patrons.

“You’ve taken up shepherding? That is a step back isn’t it?” Elise smiled with her arms crossed on the table, her drink in front of her.

“It’s for the paper, a fluffy piece to take people away to a place they think they want to be a part of.” I took a deep sip of my drink and wiped the foam off my moustache.

“That is a serious amount of dedication to an article; I don’t think I could do that.”

“Maybe this is the piece that earns me a book deal, fame and fortune.”

“Nobody wants to read a story about a North American going over sea to be a shepherd. Though, you may do well with the blue haired reading demographic.” Her laughter was beautiful, as was her smile. Her whole face became alive with the joy of laughter. I felt lost a little bit in that moment. And like the last time we met and talked, it was to be for but a few hours. The night grew old and we both needed to go our way.

“Well, it was good seeing you again Elise.”

“Likewise Brett, we’ll have to keep in touch.”

“I would like that...send a post to me here in town. I am afraid I will be out of touch with the world for the next while.”

“Of course, I’ll see you later.”

“See you around Elise.”

The next moment was awkward to say the least. We were both standing there looking at one another in silence, neither of us moving, as though something were supposed to happen. Finally when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I moved in and gave her a strong hug goodbye. When she left, I felt as though I had missed out on something again. Over the course of the year, we sent a couple letters, but not many. She had given up on work for a bit and went home, and then traveled around a little bit more. I didn’t hear from her much, and eventually just succumbed to my routine. That was until just a few days ago when I received a letter from her in town saying she was passing through and wanted to see me. And now hear I am, on my way to see Elise in the same pub that we hung out in, roughly one year ago.

The dull and muffled sounds of fiddles and whistles become a roaring cacophony of rhythm and livelihood as I open the door to the Ram Horn pub. I am greeted by cheers from various people in the pub, all of them excited to see me and all of them offering me a place to sit during the nights festivities. I politely decline their offers and explain to them about how I am meeting a friend of mine that I have not seen for some time. I briefly describe her to them in the hopes that maybe they have seen her.

“Ah, yes we have, she was the one sitting all on her lonesome, and well, that does not happen long here as you are no doubt aware friend. You have stiff competition tonight!”

Normally this would be off-putting if my stiff competition wasn’t old men, long attached to wives, in their never ending flattery towards young women. Sure enough, my ears perk at the sound of all too familiar laughter emanating from an all too familiar corner of the pub. Sure enough, among a score of old men whose dearest wish is to never see a beautiful young lady go unattended at such an esteemed social occasion were doting on Elise with tall tales often reserved for whatever tourist may be tromping through this county.

“Gentleman, may interrupt you and speak with the lady?”

“No.” The small man with the round face and impish grin laughed and patted me on the back. “Of course boyo, go right ahead. Miss, if this young upstart gives you any trouble, we are a here a waiting!”

“Young upstart? You’ve made a name for yourself in this town!”

“No, Finnegan just knows how to push my buttons. Rather, he knows how to push anyone’s buttons. I believe he has spent a life time devoted to his craft. It is so good to see you again Elise!”

“Ai, yes, and it is great to see you again Brett!”

“Let me grab you a drink!”

I return from the bar and we get to catching up with what one another has been doing, things that can never be properly communicated in a letter, lest you end up wasting the readers time. It is great to hear about all of her adventures out there in the world, and I love watching her eyes react to the many stories I have developed during my time out here. After sharing our stories with one another, exchanges of what exciting new things are going on in our lives, we begin to talk about anything we can think of; silly names, what God has been doing in our own lives, how we have been growing, and then finally we just sit in silence. We are almost oblivious to the sounds of music playing around the bar, until someone grabbing at my shoulder pulls me out of my moment and the events around me come swirling back in.

“Let’s have a dance Brett!”

It is the old woman whose husband owned the pub. I, of course, oblige her request and begin to dance about the pub in tune with the music, as do many other people. The wooden floor is alive with the sounds of running feet and brilliant laughter. I can tell you something; if you are not sweating by the end of your first dance at one of these parties, then you have not been dancing. All of the dances have some sort of step to them, an order, but often these go ignored for the sake of enjoyment! When I finally do get back to my seat with Elise, I am sweating like a cat in a dog pound.

“You’re quite good, I didn’t know you could dance!”

“Well, I could brag and say it was something I’ve always been gifted with, but I am afraid any skill in this area I may have is owed to the fine folks of this town.”

“So when will you show me a dance?”

“How about right now?” I extend my hand to Elise and begin to pull her to the floor. The moment we get ready for our dance, the band changes the tune to a slower song.

“Oh come on!” I shout, more than a little embarrassed and the band laughs at me before striking something a little faster. They have all seen me for the last year, and in that time, they have seen me as a single man and it has been the butt of more than one joke. Our dance is a fast one, but an enjoyable one and when it finishes, she goes back to her table, but I join the band to play a song that I had learned on my penny whistle. The crowd all laughs and cheers me on, ignoring my mistakes but instead continuing to praise my effort. Finished I return to my table with Elise.

“Where in town are you staying?”

“Just outside of town, actually, with a relative of mine.”

“Would you like to go for a walk? Maybe you can come see the old homestead I call home.”

She smiles and nods, “I’d love to see your sheep!”

It isn’t a short walk back to my place from town, and it is already late as we begin the hike back. The sky is pitch black, but I know that as we start to get nearer to my home, that it will transition to a cool purple and dark grey clouds. The silence around us on the lonesome pathway home is almost crushing. The shrill notes of a happy ceilidh band that cut into the night’s sky from the Rams Horn Pub had long vanished in the distance. There are moments when things are quiet, and I mean truly quiet, crushingly so; where silence sits so heavy it is as if it were around you like a physical blanket. Most of our walk back to the hills and the stone cottage is like this. I love moments like this; there is an intensity about them that I cannot fully explain, perhaps it is because in silent moments like this one, I expect some great revelation; I can hear the still small voice in these moments. I look over at Elise and smile a little bit.

“Do you ever have regrets?”

“I suppose,” She doesn’t even look at me; instead she looks ahead in silent contemplation. “I suppose we all do, but I think there are times where we misunderstand what regrets are.”

“What do you think they are?”

“I don’t think regrets are moments that we wish we could go back and relive. That would suggest that we lost opportunities to live, and I don’t think those opportunities just go away. I believe that we certainly have the tendency to fuddle those kinds of moments, but until we’ve died, we just push them to a later date. Regret should not be about a missed chance, a missed opportunity; rather regret should be the realization that we must now take a longer route to a chance, an opportunity.”

“That is profound.” I grab hold of Elise’s hand as I continue. “And it makes a great deal of sense to me. I am only sorry it took so long to see what was right there for a whole year.”

Elise smiles at me and pushes a stray lock of hair out the way of her face. She doesn’t say anything. I don’t know if this is something she expected or if it is just something she welcomed. Either way is fine with me, it just feels nice to finally be doing something instead of sitting on the fringe wondering about what I could be doing.

North Only Jokes, South Only Smiles, East and West Are Late

2010-09-04T01:23:00.000-07:00

Once a month they gather.

Call it a tea party if you will.

Once a month, West meets with East, and South meets with North, and the four of them get together to chat with one another, play cards over tea in big mugs, because those are the best mugs to hold on to.

Fall is about her work, dancing and changing the colors of the leaves, preparing the world for her sister Winter, and this leaves North, South, West and East in need of warmer clothing. North arrives at a small clearing, with a carpet of red leaves and a gentle, warm wind with the slightest hint of chill rolls around, forever moving the crimson, gold, copper, brass, orange and yellow carpet. There in the middle of this clearing sits a stump, with four wrought iron chairs with what must be the plushest looking seats one could hope for. It has been a while since East, West, South and North have gotten together for tea, and rest assured there is much to catch up on, and they will be doing much sitting down. As I was saying though. North arrives, his hair black, with faint hues of blue, much like one might find in a ravens feather, tussled and unkempt, a losing battle with the wind he often puts up with. Around his neck a warm, knitted grey scarf, an open blue P-Coat with the jersey of his favourite rugby team underneath. His trousers bunch at the bottom near his untied shoes and he kicks at the leaves on the ground as he makes his way to the chair of his choice. He sits in West's spot today, you know, for a change of pace. One of his feet bounces in place and his fingers move to a tune that only he seems to know, or perhaps only he can hear, either way, the world around him is one giant orchestra, constantly providing him with music. The sound of humming in the distance, perhaps there was at least one more person who could hear the music.

From up over the hill, making her way towards the stump and three unoccupied chairs, came South. She was a polar opposite to North, in a more literal sense, in reality, the two often got along quite well and were able to laugh with one another rather easily despite their differences. While North, a bit on the rough side, not to say that he was an ugly chap, but perhaps a little on the disorganized side, South was the definition of together, though she might scold you if you ever told her that. The truth was, everything about her had it's place and was intentional. A great word I think, intentional. Something perhaps we could all use a bit more, and luckily for North, his friends would see that he got just that, even if it was just the tiniest smidgen. She wore a hat, knitted of course, over top of light brown hair that was just past shoulder length, a hat that was worn just so, in such a way that no other could emulate and nor do I ask them to try. A knitted sweater, knitted I should tell you, not store bought, because everyone is wearing those and it just wouldn't mean as much if it wasn't home made, even if she was not the one who knitted it. The sleeves of a white shirt move past the sleeves of her sweater and drape over her hands just past the knuckles. She hums along in her jeans and hiking shoes to complete the ensemble and still add a hint of class that most people could only dream of. She takes a seat in North's regular chair.

"You think you can handle that seat?"

A smile, a head tilt, and a look in her eyes that suggested there were words coming but they got bunched up at the end of her tongue and never made their way out of her mouth. North smiles now.

"I mean it is great to see you again South."

"You to, North. East and West are late again eh?"

"What do you expect? What with the sun rising and setting on them all day long it has got to be more than a little confusing."

A squint in her eye, mouth open and a breath caught in an uncertain smile. Clearly South doesn't entirely agree with North's assessment, but is willing to laugh anyway, you know, for his sake.

"One can only imagine what that must be like. What kind of tea have you brought today North?"

North removes a small baggy from his pocket. Of course it would just be so like North to keep his tea bags inside of sandwich wrap. The very image was North to the core. Why go through the hassle of putting the tea in a proper case when he could use one of the many sandwich wrap bags that come in those wonderful over sized bundles. The kind that come in packs of 200 and never seem to leave your cling wrap drawer because you never end up packing a sandwich. South lets out a small giggle, and covers her mouth with her hands just a little bit. Which doesn't really matter because her eyes tend express themselves as much as her mouth might.

"Glad this amuses you. Today, we have Scottish Blend, straight from the exotic and far away place of your nearest Tesco's shop, or Ex Pat Store, or whatever else specializes in tea that most tea aficionados would not consider a specialty. To which I say, and with all kindness and respect, get a life."

"Hmmm, I can hardly wait."

Eyes and mouth smile in unison. North, is not oblivious to the sarcasm, nor is he oblivious to the genuine nature of South's response. Truth be told, she will support any good thing that makes a person feel great. An odd statement, but if you knew South, you would get it. A slight rustle in the leaves, and West has sashayed his way to the tea party. Hair tightly cropped, dusty blonde, sitting on top of sturdy shoulders, a black jacket with a black t-shirt to match, jeans that have been hemmed to mathematical perfection, a pair of black all purpose dress shoes, all of these things are home to the intellect and Renaissance tastes of dear, dear West. Everything he does is done with purpose!

"Good day people! How are you doing?"

Hands on knees, leaning forward in his seat, of course after the briefest moment of lounging, staring intently at his friends North and South. You will never meet a person more straight forward, more comfortable with themselves, and more ready to abandon the bland for the exotic. The perfect friend. Out from a side bag comes a French press, a small tin of green macha powder, and a tin of loose rooibos tea leaves. West, is a tea aficionado.

"South, did you bring any lemons? I was going to pick some up along the way but wasn't sure if I needed to or not."

North smiles, there is a reason why he was bypassed in that particular question, and it was bunched up in a sandwich bag on the stump where the tea party seemed to already be growing.

"Sorry West, didn't occur to me to bring any with me."

"Well, if you both must know..."

North pulls a lemon from his pocket, as well as some honey; and a couple packets of sugar he nicked from a fast food joint, for himself.

"Ah! Most excellent!"

"Look at you! All prepared!"

"We had this talk the last time we met, and heaven help us all if I am going to fit into that mold again."

"Did North bring the lemon? He has been telling me for months he was going to, supposed to be a big shocker to you two."

East has sat down at the table.

East is has brown skin, made a tad darker from her time in the sun, and wavy chocolate hair with eyes that some might call green, if they so wished to use such simple nomenclature. Green was certainly present in those eyes, but so were a healthy array of many other colors. She was dressed in a dark pink sweater, complete with khaki shorts that went just past her knees, with tennis shoes. She had ridden her bike and laid it down to rest near her seat, in South's seat. East un-slung a backpack from her shoulders and took out some tea biscuits and a kettle. That backpack said it all, East was busy, always on the go and seeing new things, the four of them were lucky to ever have moments like this, but they relished them none the less. East placed the kettle down in the center of the stump and almost at the same time, everyone sank a little bit more into their seats.

"North...that baggy of tea looks like a bag of drugs."

Everyone laughed, and it was no doubt something that was on everyone's mind. Even North had to laugh.

"Your telling me. This was a gift from Rain. Old man Time had a double take when he was visiting me not to long ago."

"How is Rain?"

"She is doing well West, sent me a post card of a dude in a canoe, thought it seemed appropriate. I have it sitting on the mantle."

"If by mantle you mean that stack of comics and video games you call a desk."

"Funny South, your on fire today."

"South, do you want to try this rooibos with some macha?"

South clenches her teeth together and lets an inward hiss pull between her teeth.

"Sorry West, North wanted to treat me to his tea."

"Well, you don't have to. I mean if you want a fancier tea you can have it."

South smiles and declines her escape. This is the part that would be all the more easy to understand if you knew South.

"I wouldn't mind trying some of that rooibos West, though I may skip on the macha and opt for lemon and honey instead."

"Did anyone bring milk? I'll not be having my Scottish Blend with out it."

"It's never stopped you before."

"I was wrong before."

A long pause.

"Only counts when I admit to being wrong, nobody else can accuse me of it."

A few smiles break and the kettle whistles during all of the preparation. Steaming hot water is passed around from giant mug to giant mug. North's is actually a ceramic beer glass but figures he can use it anyway. East pulls a pack of playing cards out from her backpack, Dutch Blitz.

"I love this game."

"I could never figure out why they called it Dutch Blitz though."

"Mennonites used them in substitute of actual playing cards."

"And it is called Dutch Blitz because? Why not call it Mennonite Madness or something."

"You can call it whatever you like North."

Everyone at the table shuffles their cards like pros, everyone but North. Long has his inability to shuffle cards with any real aptitude been the joke of his circle of friends. Even as the game play starts, his handling is clumsy, and his play is slow. Dutch Blitz, for North at least, this is not. The way North plays is more of a Dutch Gentle Saunter, or perhaps a Mennonite Sit and Ponder. His frustration is then transfered into the audio when he grunts, or growls at every missed chance, which South wastes not time in poking fun at.

"You sound like an angry pterodactyl!"

"I do?"

"It's cute."

"If by cute you mean rugged and manly, then yes, I suppose it is."

That tilt of the head again, humorous acceptance of the fact. North is stubborn, and perhaps a bit shy.

"Blitz"

North brings his arm down in a sweeping motion and points at West with a slight snap in his wrist.

"Nope."

The table laughs again as North smiles and begins to count the cards left in his pile verses the cards he managed to actually play.

"Well, I am off to a roaring start, 2 points."

"Did you count the cards against you as double?"

"...I thought we didn't keep count."

"Then why are you?"

"Because."

And that settled the matter. Besides, it is a well known fact that even if you are not keeping score, you must tally your points anyway. Especially around North.

"Well...since we aren't keeping score...I suppose that puts me in the lead then."

"Really? I got 21 points that round."

North raised his eyes at South.

"Well known fact. Even when one isn't keeping score you need to tally your points regardless."

Told you.

And so the meeting continued onward. It could have been a few minutes longer, or a few hours, or days even. But the four friends continued to sit around the table, sipping their tea, sharing their jokes and playing their card game. That was until West became restless and decided he needed to go and do something, as is usually the case for West. And then East had some place to be, urgently and was on her way. And South decided that she had brought herself down enough that she would head back home and take it easy before once again returning to her busy schedule. And North was left alone with his thoughts before he finally went back home, sat in a chair and decided to write a story about the nights events.

Reawken the soul with the Midnight Sun.

2010-07-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

Greetings and welcome. This is just a short piece of fiction I wrote. The theme is...well I'm not quite sure. It's all about self discovery and inner demons. The theme challenges will begin again shortly, our short hiatus was unexpected but we are back into the swing of things now. Expect new things from me at least every second week from now own. So please sit back and enjoy The Midnight Sun.

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Midnight Sun
By William Evans
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I sit in the empty, devoid room staring at the pale green walls. They give off an aura of disgust, their presence a sin against nature and god. I hate them. I hold the instrument of pain in my hands, the weight and feel of it giving me pleasure. The balance of it, the feel of the grip and I run my fingers along it, everything about it makes me smile my wicked smile. The sense of untouchableness that flows through me is unmistakeable. I feel like a god, I feel like I am invincible. I could crush the things that bring me such hatred, the pale green walls in this room, I could even end her. The glint of the steel edge catches in the low light, the edge is deadly. I feel so untouchable.

I stand from where I sit, my legs popping from the extended disuse. I hold the instrument in my hand, my grip loose, letting it hang by my side. Then I swing, attacking the shadows, the invisibles, myself. My mind is lost to imagination as I bring physical form to my hatred, my disgust, my loathing. I move about the room attacking what is not there, what I see in my mind. Twisting shapes of featureless design. Then as I turn to the wall I lunge and stab. The pale green walls my true target, the thud of the blade stabbing into the wood echoes through the room. I stab and stab and stab again, my rage consuming me, filling me up inside until I can hold it no more. I back away, knife once again hanging at my side. Nothing has changed. The wall still stands still pale green. Nothing has changed. I turn from the wall as I drop the knife to the carpet below, vile building on my tongue as I move towards the window.

The window, my one escape, my view to the outside. The world of the midnight sun. A place where the world is covered in snow, its flaky white substance protecting and preserving the land, protecting it from itself. I gaze out to see a barren field, a single tree, leaves gone long ago, trunk shriveled and dying. The midnight sun above shining down on me, calling me. I yearn to be with it again.

My hand presses against the cold glass, it feels so nice. The moisture, the heat escaping from my palm. My breath clouds the window; it prevents me from seeing my beautiful midnight sun. I react badly. My hand lashes back and then forward, the fist forming mid swing. Shattering glass flies everywhere, cold freezing wind filling the room. I feel so alive in that moment.

The midnight sun shines on me in happiness, its warmth flowing over me. The cold freezing wind fighting the sun’s warmth, shifting me between a constant cold and warm feeling, making me numb. My hand hangs limply at my side, blood flowing freely, glass littered through the flesh. I feel no pain, just disgust. I turn back to the room, to the walls. The walls, they laugh at me, I can feel it, their silent laughter lulling me into insanity. These walls, these pale green walls, I hate them so.

My head swoons from the blood loss, I stumble towards the wall opposite of me, its silent laughter drawing me towards it. My rage boils over once again, it takes me, overwhelms me. I scream and curse at it, all sense of place or time or direction is gone. I step out of the anger briefly, forgetting what I was doing, stepping back to look around me. The wall is covered in blood, no longer the rancid pale green that I despise so. Then, suddenly, inspiration. I reach down to the carpet and retrieve the knife. A devilish grin sprouting on my face, a grin of someone who had finally solved all of their problems, this madness will end soon. I place the knife to my wrist, the place slides into flesh with ease, the pain is severe. Then, the freedom of release comes. Blood pours from the wound, uninhibited. I threaten to lose myself in the blood loss. I stumbled back towards the wall and begin to paint the wall red, covering the green for all time.

The blood flows and I paint away the horror that once was, I feel at peace for once. I fall slumped to the ground, unable to stand for anymore. The other walls glare at me for what I have done. My laughter fills the room for their sorrow at the loss of their brother, a dark melody that echoes long after it has escaped my lungs. The others must suffer. I slowly stand, my legs weak and my arms all by useless. Taking the knife into my glass covered appendage I grip it tight and lift it high to the ceiling. The knife dangles in my grip as my strength quickly drains from me. Then before I drop the instrument of pain I thrust it down into myself with all of my might. I feel it puncture me; I take the metal blade into me and feel its steeling kiss. I drag it down my body, my skin and muscle ripping apart in its wake. My body cut apart like a filet, organs exposed for all to see. Then with the last of my failing life I push off the wall and stumble to the other walls, smearing my blood, my organs, and my life across them, covering the putrid greed color forever. Then I fall to the floor, my final deed done. The last images I see are of the midnight sun through the window shining down on me, calling me back to it. Then blackness surrounds me and I see nothing, I feel nothing, I am nothing, complete and utter darkness. How I love it.

Strings at Dusk

2009-10-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

Hey there, its been a while I know, but yes, I've decided to post something up, something I've just written. No theme, no challenges, just something I felt like writing.

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I walked by them about a thousand times, maybe more. They played in front of an alley entrance on a busy street. You ever see one of those streets that are closed off to motor traffic, but instead have several small shops, privately owned, nothing corporate? Those kinds of streets tend to be the home to all kinds of street buskers. You of course have your Jack Johnson wannabe crooners, playing all the soft rock hits, singing them out in a raspy whisper of a voice. They don't shave, they don't cut their hair, and they pay hundreds of dollars to buy clothes that look retro or vintage, its all a part of their image. Next to them you have your balloon artists, running around in make up making balloon animals for children and pretty women they don't have a whisper's chance in a choir with. Magicians, of course fall into this same category. The street is home to several artists, selling pictures of your inflated head driving a sports car, or paintings of pretty sunsets, hand crafted knick knacks and brick-a-brack are available in all forms. It looks like something out of a J.K. Rowling novel. That being said, one would think it hard for anyone in particular to stand out in such a crowd, but these two...I don't know, it's hard to explain, but they just did.
The old guy with his torn top hat and blue checkered collared shirt, poking out of a gray vest, was playing on a piano, the kind one might find in a pub. A lot of work, one can assume, to get that thing out onto the street. And the girl, she gently tapped away at a small drum set, her brown hair hanging out from underneath a winter cap, bundled in a brown, off orange, p-coat. I walked by them everyday, sometimes I would stop to listen. I must have been the only one, or at least that is how it felt, everyone seemed to continue on their way, paying these two musicians no mind at all. An odd thing, since their music was perhaps some of the most captivating I had ever heard. They never sang, the girl just seemed to hum a long to the songs that she and the old man in the torn top hat played. Finally, I had to ask, a momentary lull in the music, as if waiting for me to ask (the girl continued a soft beat on the drums).

"Why don't you ever sing?"

The old man turned on his seat to look at me, "Never had much a talent for it, can't seem to find the words for it."

The girl smiled a small smile from her drum set, and the old man chuckled a little bit. It must have been written all over my face. How could such music not have lyrics to it? How could music that seemed to conjure up images, stories before my eyes, not themselves have an actual story to tell?

"We improvise." The old man pointed to an acoustic guitar leaning against the piano. "Been looking for a third, why don't you join in? I'd bet my last dollar that you have those lyrics you're looking for."

"What? No, I couldn't possibly."

"You mean you won't." The girl was looking up from her drums, and eyebrow lifted in mock inquisition, unable to mask the faintest smile at the edges of her lips.

"Well, I can't...tried the guitar once, never been all that..."

"Good at it?" The girl finished my sentence for me. "I know you've tried to learn, and you gave up, a bunch of excuses, come on, give it a shot, what have you got to lose?"

I wish I could say that I picked up the guitar right there and began to let loose a flurry of chords, but I hesitated instead.

"I know a guy, and He told a bunch of people once, people that needed to hear what He had to say, that they could move mountains, uproot them and cast them into the sea. All it took was a little faith, a little heart." The old man smiled.

"Wasn't that Jesus?"

"Oh? You know Him to then? Look, pick up the guitar, and give it all you've got. Have a little faith in yourself? Play the first thing that comes to your mind, stop letting fear get in the way of faith, take heart in the fact that you would never be lead into a place that you could not be carried away from."

Reaching down, pulling the guitar into my hands, I looked at it for a but a moment as I slung it around my shoulder, the only sound I could hear was the light rasping of a snare drum, and the gentle hum of a symbol. The sounds of guitar strings as my fingers ran along them looking for chords, the piano chiming in, a bouncing, soft melody, accompanied by the drums, awaiting my guitar to strum into its place:

" Far away, so far away now
Dancing dreams that went with her
Are so far away.

Pools of blue, deeply swimming
Sparkling vortex have me spinning
Framed in chocolate rivers flowing
Ivory lines, all brightly shining

Dancing in white birch corridors
That paint roads copper and gold
Never seems to touch the road
It where my dreams do go

Far Away, so far away now
Ripples in the water now
Just so far away

Quickly moving, every chasing
Point me in the right direction
Never Stopping, ever running
A worthy desire upon reflection

Grant me courage
Remove my fear
I seek wisdom
I seek things made clear

Far Away, so far away
I am getting closer now
Not so far away."

We played for hours, I had never felt like that before, it was freedom, there was no doubt about it. It was well into the evening, perhaps even morning by the time we had finished, and my bloody fingers wouldn't let me play anymore. One song, maybe more, nobody stopped to listen, it didn't really matter.

"I'd say that about does it for today." The old man began to rise up from his chair, and he placed a hand on my shoulder. "But before we go, I am wanting to tell you something. You've experienced what it is to let go of fear. Fear, is the opposite of love, most would think it's hate, but to be true, hatred stems from fear. It is fear that stops you from living the life given to you. It stops you from making the choices you want to make. Fear of getting hurt, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of inadequacy, fear of self. Fear is what stops you from using the gifts you've been given, the life you aught to be living. I'd say whatever that song was about is worth the risk of a few scrapes."

I walk by that same alley way every single day, I've never seen the old man and his, presumably, daughter. No one seems to know who I am talking about whenever I ask, not even the other buskers. I still walk by the alley, I still hum the tune to a song that had no lyrics, but was given some. I still remember what the old man in the torn top hat told me, and it's not easy, but I am getting by.

The Boy in the Rain

2009-07-12T23:26:00.001-07:00

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Challenge: The story starts during a police investigation. The story takes place a year into the future. A character will drink something alchoholic. A character is deceptive throughout most of the story. During the story, a character gets a promotion.

Theme: Fiction, Mystery
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Rain is dropping down, no sign of relenting, the streets aglow in the sheen of the watery surface in the night time lights and signs. Water falling from the sky, water falling from the suspended clothes lines, water falling from the rusted steel fire escapes, water falling off the hats of the investigating officers. The alley was filled with the alternating blue and red lights of a few police cars, a fire engine and two ambulances. I lite a cigarette, a terrible habit, I picked it up after my promotion, probably a few months afterward. I was a bright and eager young man, just made detective, thought I could be a real sleuth. Could not have been further from the truth. Its not all Sherlock Holmes, detective work. Now days its all murder, gang violence, informing families of dead kin, filling out paperwork. There was no evil villain with a dastardly plan to over throw a regime with their wealth and power and influence, just the next punk with a pistol. There was no picking up even the smallest piece of evidence and concocting an elaborate scheme with pin point detail, that was crime scene investigations job. I don’t think I can tell you about a single case where I actually had to go out and follow leads, do any actual investigation. Except for now. Opening the small flask I carry with me, I take a large swig of the burning rum inside of it. Its not a crutch, its not like I need the stuff, it just helps deal with situations like this one.

There is small boy in front of me, his blonde hair was mousey, although at this point it is matted to his head by the rain. He looks up at me with near dead eyes. Eyes that were ready to cry at any moment, and yet wouldn’t, they carry a heavy sadness in them. I can’t look at them, not my job, I gotta get this kid to tell me what he saw, C.S.I and the others first on scene told me that he was blank, wasn’t talking. This kid, who was mere moments from growing up all at once was my only lead to this slaying. I don’t need to ask him yet, I’ll check out the scene first, see the bodies, get a hold of the situation, so I can get as much of an idea as I can before I talk to the sprat. Before I go though, I take my fedora and place it on the wet child’s head, and wrap him in up in my coat. Never had kids before, never been married, but it was time to act like I knew what I was doing, like I was some sort of parental figure. I don’t smile, I don’t nod, I just tap him on the shoulder and walk away.

I walk towards the bodies, five in total, it was the most brutal slaying to take place this year, and we were not even halfway through it yet. The crime and murder rates have shot through the roof from 2009 to 2010. Some of them are emerging cults, all prepping the world for 2012. Bunch of psychopaths who think these next few years they can do whatever they like, cults performing ceremonies in accordance to their fiction writers doctrine. I’m a piss poor protestant myself, piss poor in the fact that I find it hard to love or forgive, maybe would have made a better catholic. I flick my cigarette onto the ground and turn into the direction of a gruff and groan coming from a investigator.

“Piss off Vance, you’ve had a bloody hour and a half with this scene, that’s time enough to get what you want.”

I lift the sheets on the first body, then the next, and the rest consecutively. Probably the strangest things I had seen yet, most brutal to be sure. It was definitely the work of some kind of cult, symbols scratched into the heads and arms, single stab wounds in the middle of the throat. Not sure how the kid managed to get away, baby sister managed to get the same treatment as the others, maybe he hid. Either way, I give a nod to the E.M.S and begin to make my way back to the kid. I place a hand on his back and begin to lead him out of the alley. Its odd, he doesn’t fight, doesn’t run back to his parents, he just walks away, never looking back.

Cut to a small P.O.S diner, and a eight dollar milk shake, and I am sitting across from a kid that has not eaten a bloody thing, and hasn’t spoken a damn word. But I keep the façade, I remain patient…looking. I dip my fry into ketchup, start to play with my food a little, hope I can get a laugh from this kid. But all he does is hold that deep, heavy sadness. I could slam my fist on the counter. You get impatient thanks to monotony after a while. You get used to the same in and outs and if something disrupts that, it makes you impatient, even if its something you want.

“You ain’t touched your food. Come on kid, even you gotta eat, they serve a pretty good milkshake here.”

There crap actually.
“I gotta ask you some questions, its important that you answer them. Otherwise we’ll never catch the bad people who hurt your family…”

Even with the details, I doubt we could catch them, this whole thing is just another file for the basement archives. The kid looks at his milkshake and just pushes it away and lowers his head to the table, burying it into folded arms. Small muffled sobs vibrate off the table, and I put a comforting hand out, or at least I try to. He probably knew it wasn’t sincere, or real. He just looked up at me, his face stained with tears and dirt. I found myself hoping he didn’t ask about what was going to happen with him, it would be more lies, end up in a boys home or something like it, can’t tell him that its all “going to be alright” or that he will be “well taken care of ”. Instead he just sits there, with those muffled breaths you get when you cry and your breathing can’t quite catch up.

“Its ok son, your safe with me. I need you to tell me who the bad men were.”

He wipes his face on his sleeve and begins to retell what happened. Talk of old men, dressed nicely, playing cruel games with his family, leaving him alive to watch, to witness and to tell people of the cruelty he witnessed. He was told what to tell people, to say it was the activity of some kind of pagan cult, to spread discord and confusion. Maybe its true, its hard to tell anymore, so many wacko’s out there. I sit and I listen and I lose more things to say until it finally goes a little quiet and I can only say the one lie I have left in me.

“Don’t worry son, its going to be alright, your going someplace where you’ll be well taken care of.”

I pay the tab and I usher him out the door, back into the rain and uncertainty of a world going to chaos.

Death Be a Lady

2009-06-28T21:54:00.000-07:00

Alright, here is another story entry for my theme. Its been a while since we last posted anything on the site, but we are getting there.

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Theme/ Challenge: A character is optimistic throughout most of the story. During the story, a character has an accident while traveling. The story must have a hell hound at the end. The story must involve an earring in it. The story is set during a concert.

Genre: Fiction, Macabre, Morality
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I could see the music. I could see it vibrate in psychotropic colors, outward and onward from the Guitar Man. And I doubt that I was the only one in that crowd feeling and experiencing that music. The crowd had to have been feeling it, they were tranced out, moving in complete sync with the Guitar Man's ever chord pluck, stroke and wail. It was the event of all events, the last night of a three day art, drug, music and free expression binge out in the dessert. It was pretty far out. Three days of the world's misunderstood minds, artists and creators coming together for the festival of all festivals. And then it was almost over, and the crowd, myself included, stood amongst several large sculptures looking at the Guitar Man and his band play against a monster burning effigy backdrop. All of us in sync with the person next to them.

She was screaming the loudest, dancing the hardest, dressed the coolest, standing on top of one of the giant sculptures, a twisted image with its hands held outward to receive a gift. Her skin was fair, her hair was black, a few tattoos and some killer facial and ear piercings, the woman of my dreams. She reminded me of the sixties, a flowing skirt and a black and white striped long sleeve shirt and a scarf in her hair. She embodied the freedom of the sixties, and the freedom of this festival, and she was alone. So I did what any aging hipster would have done, I climbed up to meet her. The fire in her eyes was burnt onto my soul forever the moment I saw them, forever etched, going nowhere, and her smile clasped at me with a steel grip.

" Hey freedom...you dance good."

The ultimate opener. Even if I hadn't been blitzed out of my face, I doubt I could have said anything better to her.

"Thanks Russel."

"You know my name? Are you real? Am I tripping out?"

That soul melting smile again, followed by a laughter so haunting it sends chills up and down your body, but the moment the chills leave miss them.

"Yes, I know your name. Yes, you are tripping, and I am the realest thing you will ever hope to meet."

I was never sure what she meant by those words, at that moment, but I didn't care. I was so fixed on her at that moment, I couldn't focus on anything else. She started to dance again, and my eyes were pulled to her every movement. It was almost as thought she could anticipate the music, each move she made complimented the songs that were being played. I just sat down and stared.

"Your working those songs."

Two for two, I can admit it, I am not exactly Robbie Burns. I may not have always been able to articulate in myself in a manner more appropriate to my situations, with exception to the recount of this event, but I always seemed to get by. I stood up, for reasons to me then I am unclear, for the music did not call for the following actions, took her by the hand and began to dance with her. You ever hear of astral projection? Its a theory that passes along the idea that there are people out there with the ability to have their soul leave their body and travel elsewhere in the world. People claim that they have been able to see places that they themselves have never been to. I have never been to sure on this phenomena myself, but I can tell you at that very moment I felt as though I was leaving my body. I looked down to see myself no longer standing on the platform, but instead watching the statue tumbling to the ground, myself, alone, on the outstretched hands of the twisted giant sculpture, a smile on my face, almost in a state of euphoria, or some sick kind of pleasure from my impending doom. I watched as the sculpture crashed into the ground, as hundreds fell to its weight, my body being tossed, broken and mangled, the smile never leaving. I looked back to the woman, who stood looking at me, a smile still on her face as we floated back to the ground amongst the chaos, separate from it all and amidst it all. From the panicking crowd walked a large Irish Wolfhound, thick black shaggy fur, embers wafting up from each animated clump of hair. The beast's eyes glowed with the soft glow of an active ember, and sulfurous smoke danced up from its nose. paw prints burnt into the dessert floor, leaving black char and shimmering glass with each step. The woman spoke.

"Russel, its time for you to go. A life filled with selfish pursuit's, you care only about yourself and re-obtaining your past. You ignored the poor, you ignored the needy, you ignored the downtrodden. You spent the entirety of your life seeking the next high, the next wave in free expression. And now this life has lead you to your final resting place." Her smile was gone, there was no laughter, only her job. " The Hound will take you where you need to go."

The dog was suddenly so much more imposing, I didn't run, I couldn't, you don't run from death, and there is no escaping the toll. She was right, I squandered my time with self pursuits, and now I am paying for them. Forced to re-live every mistake, every blunder, every lost chance, lashed with my transgressions, flogged with my shortcomings. Forced to watch my death over and over again, how I was pulled into a trap and how it sprung. How my lusts and selfish desires lured me in and snagged me. And now that I have reached the end, there is no relent, I must now go over them again, in new detail, in new revelation.

The Horror

2009-06-27T17:11:00.001-07:00

Okso here is my entry, I know it's been awhile hasn't it. Sorry about that. Well here is our new site, it's awesome. Good job Jon. Hope you all like the Horror, it's something different.

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Idea: Character will take a bath, but the action goes terribly wrong. During the story, a character has to pay a fine. The story ends during a meal. The story takes place in the summer. During the story, there is a fight to the death.
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The Horror:

The day was July 13th 2016; the people of earth were going about their daily lives as if nothing was wrong, nothing ever went wrong, nothing that they could stop at least. I remember that day though; I remember it because the events that took place then changed my life forever. That was the day the world finally knew true fear.

I was a business accountant in those days, focused on numbers and figures and formula. I thought finding three tenths’ of a cent in those days to be exciting. Ha, if I could only go back to those days, when things were carefree and fancy and I didn’t have to run every night for safety. I had woken up in a daze that morning, my alarm clock had gone off and instead of the usual buzz, and it gave off a high pitched siren sound. Almost pissed my bed from the scare. I remember throwing it against the wall in frustration and anger, cursing myself as I did, it was an expensive clock.

After collecting myself I began my daily routine of getting ready for work, shave, shower, teeth, breakfast and then out the door to catch the bus. I got as far as shaving before I encountered my second problem of that fateful day, if I had only known what else was going to happen I would have given up then and there and just gone back to bed. But no, I wasn’t like that in those days. After I had shaved I went to start up my shower and found my shower nozzle had corroded over, nothing was getting out of that thing and even if it did, I don’t think I would want to shower in it. I was usually a meticulous cleaner but work those last few weeks had kept me busier than usual and I had hired a maid service to come in and clean up while I had such a heavy work load. I regret now hiring a maid service that I found on a flyer stapled to a light post. Not one to break routine I put the plug in the tub and started running the water into a nice hot bath. I was never one to take baths but I wasn’t going to leave the apartment unclean, you just don’t do that sort of thing as an accountant.

The bath water was steaming I remember as I stepped inside it, my naked flesh turning red where the water lapped against it. The pain of the scalding water going up my legs and setting off a fire in my brain. Ah I wish I could feel like that again, I would give anything for one more hot bath. I remember sitting down in the water and resisting the urge to stand instantly back up. I wasn’t used to the water being so hot and it was if each submergence of my body was a new experience to me. I laugh now, regretting that I never took more pleasure in the simple pleasures of life. Taking more time out for myself and leaving my job at the office instead of with me twenty four seven. Slowly I adjusted to the water; it didn’t take long for my whole body to be under the crystal clear water. It felt nice and calming as I recall.

I was unable to enjoy it though, just as I was reaching for a cloth to clean my body the entire building began to shake and rumble. Pieces of the ceiling and wall began to collapse in around me. The water in my bathtub swirled and bubbled as if it was being boiled a top a stove. I scream and yelled as I scrambled out of the bathtub and into my bedroom. The building had stopped shaking by the point and I could hear screams and cries coming from outside. My bedroom was in chaos, my dresser and my art along the walls had all fallen down, pieces of glasses and porcelain were everywhere. My collection of little green space men I had picked up on a vacation a few years back were utterly destroyed. I remember the sadness when I saw them there shattered; I really liked those little green men.

I grabbed a robe from the mess that was now my closet and moved out into the apartment hallway, bypassing my living room and kitchen which were now in complete shambles. I met other people in the hallways, each of them more unsure of what was happening as the last. It wasn’t an earthquake; there hasn’t been an earthquake in those parts for decades. No one thought it was a bomb either, there wasn’t any sign of fire and it appeared to have affected the entire city. No one knew what was going on. So dressed in my brown fluffy robe and a pair or saddles I had slipped on before leaving my apartment I ventured outside for my answers. What I found outside was nothing but destruction and chaos. People were running from place to place, screaming, looting, and bleeding. It was if the entire world was coming to an end and I remember the first thing that went through my mind was that I wouldn’t be able to finish the burnstock adjustments by Thursday.

I tried to stop several people outside but they were either too busy with their senseless looting, or they were injured and bleeding. The few people I could get answers out of said that something had fallen from the sky and landed in Waterhill Park a few blocks south of my apartment. I decided that I should investigate and get my own logical take on the situation, perhaps there would be someone with better knowledge on scene, and I had seen my share of movies. There should be at least an army commander or police chief or someone to talk to! So I was off, in saddles and robe and with a mind to get some answers. Something had ruined my day and I was not about to let it get off without an explanation.

I got to the entrance of the park in no time flat, but was stopped at the gates by a bunch of hoodlums. I will never stop being amazed at how fast gangs can form when something goes wrong in the world. It’s like humans are drawn together to make trouble for anyone who isn’t part of their newly formed group. It’s insanity. This group of hoodlums were armed with bats and chains and demanded that I hand over any cash I had on me. After stuttering for about a minute I finally formed the words to tell them I didn’t have any money. Of course they didn’t like that answer. One minute I was smiling meekly at their leader and the next I was waking up with a painful head ache and freezing to death. I looked around, remembered that I was at the entrance to the park and then I noticed my nakedness. The punks had taken my robe and my saddles. I lay there in the rubble and debris naked and with a head wound. I couldn’t believe the nerve of some people’s children.

It was much later in the day now, I would have guessed around dinner time. I must have slept through most of the day after the blow to the head. I weakly and slowly got up, my legs almost giving out on me. I managed somehow, and I slowly began to stumble my way into the park and hopefully someone who could help me. The twilight was hard to see threw, my eyes blurred because of my head wound which didn’t help. I saw someone up ahead among the foliage and shadows. They were crouched over something; I couldn’t tell what they were doing though. I moved closer, stumbling as I did, I tried to call out to them, to try and get them to turn around but my voice croaked and came out in a wheeze. As I got closer and closer I saw more and more figures and I could hear a horrible sound. Tearing and squashing and chewing sounds, I could see the figures reaching down and tearing things from the ground and stuffing them into their mouths.

I stumbled onto the ground; I couldn’t understand what was going on. That’s when I saw the others coming towards me. Their movements were sketchy, their arms flicking back and forth in random movements, their heads twitching in erratic patterns, eyes wide and white. Each step they took was slow and purposeful, their legs making precise movements with each step. My vision cleared and I could see they were naked, their skin covered in large barnacle like sores, oozing and pulsing in unison. Some of the creatures were tentacle limbed with giant hooks protruding from their chests; others were more human shaped, their skin changing from a pale pink to a dark brown, their veins showing a black blood flowing through their bodies.

I froze then; I couldn’t understand what was happening. Were these things human? What had happened? Was I awake or was I still sleeping, a dream brought on by the blow to my head. The creatures approached closer and closer, I could smell the stink of them, they smelled like sulfur and sweat, their erratic movements giving them the look of rag dolls being shaken about by an unseen hand. I was horrified.

I scrambled to my feet, and began to move away from the nearest creature. That was a mistake, the creatures seem to be attracted to movement, the second I stood up the erratic movements stopped and all of the creatures around me turned in my direction. A horrifying scream burst out of their mouths simultaneously then, a scream that would turn milk bad and send the mightiest creatures scampering away in fear. As the scream faded into the night air the creatures launched their assault, their movement had changed from their erratic perfect movement to a horrible gibbering of limbs and torso as they scrambled toward me. Crawling over each other, tearing at each other as they struggled to get to me first, to feed on my flesh and my soul.

I turned and ran the, stumbling and tripping on the wooded ground of the park. I ran without thought, I ran and ran until I couldn’t run anymore and then I ran some more. My heart beat faster and faster, adrenaline pouring through my veins and into my limbs, giving me the strength I needed to get to safety. My feet were torn and scratched from the branches and twigs and rocks, the pain gave me a reason to go on, to not fall back into the gibbering mass that was chasing me. I could see light and buildings up ahead; the other side of the park was insight. I burst through the barrier of trees and scrub and ran out into the street ahead. I was free, I had made it to the open spaces, I could find a place to hide and figure things out. I began to get my bearings and was moving back towards my apartment building when I was confronted.

The creature that stood before me was bigger than anything else I had seen in the park; its arms were huge muscled pieces of jagged rock. The head on its shoulders was no longer recognizable; it had elongated and shrunk, flattened to be more incestile, less human. It clicked and clacked at me and it stepped closer and closer. It didn’t have the same erratic patterned movements as the other creatures, this one walked more confident, more in control.

I looked around for anything to use as a weapon, something. However I was just an accountant in those days. I didn’t know weapons training, and we hadn’t made them weak to sodium yet so I couldn’t even use that as an advantage. I ended up grabbing a piece of rebar if I remember; it had been part of the sidewalk and came loose when the meteor crashed into the park. So with rebar in my hand I faced off against the brute, I thought I was about to die to be honest, I had no hopes of fending off the thing. So he came at me, huge jagged rock arms slicing through the air. I jumped back, landing on the uneven ground and stumbling backwards onto a nearby car. The creature continued his assault, arms swinging and swiping in a frenzy of power; I rolled out of the way as the beast ate into the car, his arms turning the metal into shreds and shards. It was at that time that I came to my senses and dropped my weapon and turned tail and ran. I moved through the streets stepping on loose rocks and broken glass. More and more foreign debris were forced into my feet, the pain was almost unbearable. I could hear the beast behind me, knocking cars and other things out of its way as it barreled towards me.

I kept my gaze straight ahead, for fear if I looked back I would be doomed. Up ahead I could see a large garbage truck, its black paint absorbing the light from the intermittent street lights. I ran around the back of the truck and into the passenger side door. Luckily the brute wasn’t that smart and followed my trail around the back of the machine. I jumped in the driver’s seat, turned the truck on. The engine roared to life and black smoke billowed into the air. I jammed the gear to reverse and back up at full speed, knocking the monster into the back of the truck. I found the compactor controls and started it up. As hydraulics and metal began to move they creature let out a low click and then several high pitched whines. Bones crunched organs and blood squished and then there was nothing. The black blood began to leak out of the back of the truck, pooling into an inky black puddle that no light escaped from, it was almost hypnotic. I could not enjoy my victory though; I could hear other creatures coming towards the death cry of their comrade. I moved through the city until I reached my apartment again and temporary safety.

I sat down at my ruined kitchen table then, brushing off the debris and pulling over the box of cereal I always kept there. In the entire ruckus, it had stayed standing; the world was funny like that. I opened the box and began to eat the crunchy oat circles, surveying my surroundings and shutting down my conscience. My life had changed that day and I would never be able to go back to the way things were ever again.

Armageddon started that day; it was a day none would forget. However something else began on that day that was the day that Milton Charles died and The Horror was born. A man who had no emotion, no fear and no remorse.

Jonathan writing challenge #1

2009-05-29T00:33:00.000-07:00

Alright, so this is my week and my first writing challenge! And let me tell you, it was a tough one!

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Title: As Far As Cobbling Hammer's Go.
Genre: Fantasy
Challenge: A character will get dressed. During the story, a character takes a test. The story must have a scholar at the beginning. The story must involve a hammer in it. The story takes place in the afternoon.
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I am told that I am a heavy sleeper. That on the right occasion I could sleep through the end of the world and not be disturbed by its events in the slightest. I suppose this could be true, I’ll never be awake to find out though. All I can really say is that the sound of rain softly falling down in a dance with a gentle wind upon ones tent is enough to allow anyone to sleep away most of the morning, and well into the afternoon. Ireland’s marshlands are the home to many pieces of the country’s history, waiting to be pulled from their soft tombs and catalogued. The rains and the mist, and really the total understanding of just what the old bards were speaking of was one of the largest draws to this particular assignment. The downside however was having to work with a man known within the university for being notoriously difficult to work with and a real stickler for the details. And I perhaps should mention, a complete ogre when it comes to his student’s punctuality. The moment I hear him start to give his lecture from outside the tent, I get dressed as fast as I can to meet him outside.

‘I’ve half a mind to do you in with the spade and leave you to the bogs! This is the 5’th time in as many weeks you’ve awoke in the late afternoon! A whole day wasted to your insufferable snoring and sloth! Honestly Jonathan, I believed this expedition would rouse your attention, but it seems your determined to sleep through my work, be it in a classroom, or in the field. You damnable kids these days, not got a brain for anything but your music and your next party.’

This is where I start to fade out. Not only was the Professor just an all around crab, and anthropological genius, but he was also the universities commander and chief in the war against the MTV generation. Its just to bad that as far as he was concerned, anyone younger than himself was a member of this depraved stain on the cultural hind end of the world. I preferred the old music myself, as long as the old stories, told long before anything was written, but that was just me. No sense in arguing the point either or I would have that grating voice jabbering on all day.

‘You kids have got no pride in anything you make even the most slack jawed of attempts at! I’ve had enough of ya, go grab the bloody spade and start digging in the Area C. And if you haven’t got anything to show for yourself by the time I am done cataloguing what I found this morning, well you can start looking for open spaces in Dr. Gerard’s modern philosophy classes. Spend your days talking about the cultural significance of M. Night Sillyman or whatever the bloody hell his name is…idiots, the lot of them all.’

Even after I leave he keeps talking, it’s the same thing every day. I swear to you, I honestly believe the Professor feels that talking to himself is an intellectual conversation to which none are privy to. As long as he was over there, and I was over here, it didn’t matter.

The sky is still muggy, though its warmed up a little bit and I toss my wool sweater onto a nearby branch to allow myself to cool down a little bit. Fog is creeping its way over and down hills, and gently slinking through whatever tree’s are in the area. Cleaning whatever pieces I managed to find was made that much more difficult though, instead of removing dusted dirt, I had to removed caked mud, among other things, off whatever I found. Which more often than not, turned what could have been an artefact, into nothing more than a rock. And I am sure you can guess how impressed the Professor would be if he saw that I had unearthed some of Irelands oldest stone pebbles. But patience would win me the day. What I found next had to have been the largest item since the start of the trip, and it was whole! When I pulled it, gently from the ground, I didn’t feel anything, not at first. But as I began to clean the item, I started to feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, a shiver, not a bad one, run up and down my spine. I became excited, but it was mixed with something else, something other worldly. Upon removing more of the mud and bog mess from the item I begin to discover just what it is that I am holding!

It’s a small hammer, a flat nose that leads to a small singular fork for its tail with a handle made from the same metal as the actual hammer head itself. Its not so simple however; the handle itself is twisted into triple knots and has small sapphire berries inside and out of the knot work. The actual hammer head itself is also a series of knots that form into the shape of an Irish Wolfhound. The knots taking on the shape of the great dog’s fur pulling through wind as it trots along some field, chasing its prey. The knot work makes the small hammer look alive!

‘Professor, over here! I found something, in tact and whole!’

If you ever thought an old man such as the Professor incapable of great speed, think again. A stride that would be the envy of even the greatest hurdler at the thought of a fully in tact artefact. He reached out, gloves on of course, and his eyes widened in astonishment.

‘Boy, have you even the slightest clue as to what you’ve found?’

I told him I found a hammer.

‘Yes, obviously it’s a hammer, but think boy! What significance would a hammer have in Ireland, especially a well decorated one such as this?’

I told him that it could be a weapon.

‘Please, something this well decorated would have more symbolic purposes. Look at its size lad, what full grown man would have a hammer this small as a weapon?’

Clearly not a fully grown man was my only response. His questions were annoying, expecting to know something without proper explanation.

‘Your starting to get on the right track. Think about it, what in Irish history and folklore utilised a hammer? A cobbling hammer.’

I took the hammer back into my hands and scrutinised it, in truth, at his last question I had already knew the answer, but I was unwilling to just spit it out, it was absurd. Honestly, the idea that this could have belonged to a leprechaun was all the proof I needed to believe that the Professor had lost his mind.

‘I haven’t held one of these in years.’

‘Wait, what? This isn’t the first one you’ve found? Why isn’t it in the university museum?’

‘I never found another one, its just not the first I’ve held.’

The Professor took the hammer back into his hands and removed his gloves, rubbing the palm of his hand over the face of the hammer and down its handle, looking at it with a sense of longing. I had never seen such a stern man look so emotional. In all truth, I had never seen him look like that before in the entire time he had been my teacher, he didn’t look as old as I thought, except for his eyes. The Professor’s eyes carried agelessness in them.

‘Bet you didn’t know how important these hammer’s were, are, to Leprechauns. Not many people know this, but these little hammers were the source of their very being. Sure, they were magical as it was, they are after all members of the Aes sidhe. But these hammers were what gave them their purpose, their task, their knowledge, their skills.’

I had thought the Professor was going to go on another rant, lecture me on how I never paid attention in class. I looked down at the ground I was kneeling in and dug the spade into the moist earth, and instead of hearing more words, more talking, I heard nothing at all. I looked back up, and where the Professor had been, there was now nothing. The whole area grew strangely silent as I stood to my feet and looked around, hearing nothing more than the wind begin to carry away the slinking fog.

Round Two! Fight!

2009-05-22T01:57:00.000-07:00

Yo peeps, OK here is my entry for the week, hope to be writing lots of new stories for you people out there.

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Title: Dawson's Story
Genre: Fantasy
Story Restrictions: Must start in Library, Someone must die unexpectedly, someone must drink something they have not drunk in a long time.
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The room was small, smaller than any Dawson had seen before. There were two tables and several chairs in the cramped space, which made things even worse. Small lanterns were scattered around the room in a random arrangement, each giving off a faint orange glow that illuminated a few feet in all directions. The books along the walls seemed almost ethereal in this tangerine half light, their spines warping and twisting as shadows played against them. Dawson moved through the aisles of the dusty room, trying desperately to not disturb even the slightest speck of history for fear of punishment. The book he needed was on the top shelf of the western wall or so he was told. Dawson had refused help from the mansion’s steward for fear of being spied upon. The eyes of his stalkers were everywhere these days and he needed to keep what he was about in private. Dawson reached the western wall of the small room and pulled the ladder over to where he assumed the book should be and began to climb. His weak arms struggling with each rung as his boney frame climbed higher and higher into the air. He climbed seeing the dust from the shelves getting thicker and thicker from lack of attendance from the cleaning people. Dawson made a mental note to comment on the cleanliness of the room to the Steward before he left. Finally upon reaching the zenith of the ladder he came across a set of books that no one had touched in more than a decade. The spines were black leather coiled with a stark white cord that showed no sign of age or wear. The wording on the spines was in a silver bead and read Brackin Family Tree. “This is what I’m looking for it is, it is!” Exclaimed Dawson quietly to himself. Running his finger along the spines until he found the volume he needed and pulled it from its place. The other books toppled over to fill the place where their brother once claimed. With book under his arm Dawson descended down the ladder and back towards the entrance to the room, a smile on his usually depressed looking face.
Exiting the library he moved into the plain hallways of the Brackin Mansion, their once former glory gone now with the ages. Stains along the walls marked where the great family portraits had hung, displaying proud men and women who had raised the name of Brackin to glory. Now those portraits lay in some waste, shredded, defiled, broken, never to see the light of day again just like the other family heirlooms that had been taken in the great split.
Dawson turned the corner and proceeded down a set of spiral stairs that led to the main hall of the house. As he approached the main floor of the mansion, he heard several people conversing. One of them was the steward his high shrill voice unmistakable, the other two he did not know. They sounded like they were from the JJC, their heavy accents ramming into Dawson’s ears with their heavy H’s and rough R’s. They seemed to be arguing about something; however it was impossible to tell from the stairwell. Dawson moved down out of the stair well and was just about to take the corner into the main hall when he heard the shrill scream from the steward and then a thud as if a heavy bag of yams fell to the floor. Fear ran through Dawson as he edged towards the corner that turned into the main hall. Slowly he peeked around the edge and saw such horror it’s almost unspeakable. There on the majestic red carpet lay the steward, blood creeping out of his lifeless form to soak into the carpet. His head a grotesque jigsaw puzzle after the pincer had smashed it open. Dawson pulled his head back quickly, his heart racing and his hollow face was soaked in sweat. He had just witnessed a murder of an innocent man by government officials. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. His mind raced and reeled as the possibilities lit up before him. He could walk out casually; make it look like he was just passing through. No they would kill him to hide their crime. He could return to the library, hide until they had finished their business. That was the safest option and Dawson was a cautious man. Slowly he edged back towards the steps, careful to not make a sound, each step taken with care.
He began to ascend the steps, slowly at first and then more quickly until finally he was in a full dash, his dark leather shoes slapping against the cold stone with each step. Up and up he ran until he was once again in the hall leading to the library and beyond. Moving past the library the young researcher with book in hand turned into a room that was sparsely decorated but had a very thick Larian oak door with a secure latch. Closing the door behind him and securing the latch in place Dawson turned and examined the room he had chosen as a sanctuary from the evil which chased him. The room was plain, a desk sat in the middle of the room lined with several bottles of liquid and several high backed reading chairs were scattered here and there. The stone floor was lined with a very intricate carpet from the south western country of Lar. The griffins and snakes on it chased each other in a constant circle never gaining ground over the other, in a constant battle of neutrality. Dawson noticed that there were several glasses mixed in with the bottles. The natural assumption was he stumbled on Senator Brackin’s drawing room. Moving into the room he looked at the liquids closer, each was an expensive spirit of some kind. There was Brandish Wine from 836 EP, Larian Rum that was illegal anywhere but inside Lar as well as several other bottles whose labels were too worn to read. However there was one bottle that Dawson could not refuse to inspect closer. A bottle of 1193 Rockwind Whiskey. He had drunk a few glasses of Rockwind Whiskey in his youth, it was a drink that let you free your mind and dance with the wind, let your preconceived ideas disappear. It was simply an amazing drink. Dawson’s hand began to shake, sweat poured down his already slick face, his heart quickened. A slow smile crept along his mouth as it began to water.
Dawson was a recovering alcoholic, in his youth he was a drinker and he had a taste for Whiskey. Rockwind whiskey was the one drink he could never afford very much of; it was the drink for the rich, the famous and the man who had everything. It was the great equalizer in the end but was too expensive for the common man. It had been a hard fight to get the drink from Dawson’s system, he had gone twenty some years without a single drop of the rich, tasty liquid that burned so hard it made you feel born again. However now, now he was tempted. The first time in all that time and he was finding it difficult to turn away and place the bottle back.
“I just need a little too wet my whistle and to calm my nerves, I did just witness a murder!” He said to himself, half laughing to no one. Dawson popped open the decanter and smelled the liquid inside. The aroma wafted to the quivering mans nose sending him into an ecstatic shock. Licking his lips he began to pour the drink into a cup, spilling more of the stuff then actually getting into the cup. When the cup was adequately filled he placed the decanter back on the desk and raised the cup to his lips. Breathing in the scent he tipped the cup and swallowed the stuff in one gulp. The liquid burned his mouth, injecting its toxins and chemicals into his gums and tongue starting him on a journey he would never forget.
It was a mere seconds before Dawson collapsed on the cold stone floor shaking a foaming at the mouth as the additives in the drink sent him on his other worldly trip. He left his body and went sailing into the other world, stars and moons and suns flew past him. He saw things that were at once possible and impossible, his mind turned and twisted in the chaos of the new land he now travelled. He found that things were upside down and right side up, that he was spinning but things were perfectly still. All sense of direction was gone now, he didn’t know where he had come from or where he was going, he saw others there as well. Mutated freaks, their flesh twisted into tendrils and shapes that the human brain could not comprehend. They tried to speak to him but all that came out was a wailing of such anguish and pain that it made Dawson weep when he heard it. Further and further into the new land he travelled, oceans of metal rose up and crashed against the beaches of wood and cement, the tiny animals that lived here running to and fro amongst the wrecked bone ships sailing the shore. Islands of tears and blood floated in mid air, their inhabitants, more of the twisted flesh creatures he had seen earlier. In the distance he thought he saw himself, lying in a great high backed chair in the drawing room surrounded by an orange glow. He tried to call out to himself but got no response. He travelled the land seeing things that would drive men insane and make scholars question the existence of the universe. He floated there for what seemed years and then as if a timer ran down to its last digit the world screeched to a halt and a black vortex appeared before him sucking him in. The world began to darken around him, thunder striking the air and thunder rolling across the twisted sky. As the vortex closed around him he felt a great heat and his skin began to blacken and burn. Dawson screamed and blue and purple flames began to sprout out from his skin and a great wail burst from his lungs.
Dawson opened his eyes as pain racked through his body; he was in a hospital surrounded by people all working on him. His body was a fire with pain, every inch of him scratched and burned. He tried to move his head and found it was secured to the gurney he was laying on. Huge piece of skin were being lifted out of a cooler and place onto him, the muffled words of the doctors and nurses who worked on him sounded like static to him. One of the nurses noticed he was awake and bent closer to his ear. “You are badly burned, we will save you do not worry. You are lucky to be alive, yes?” she spoke softly into his ear, her accent heavy, and thick, filled with horrible grammar. He was in a JJC medical facility, being injected with their drugs and his body parts being replaced by god knows what. Dawson knew that after they were done with him he would be one of their drones and his life would be over. The last image he saw was of the huge segmented exoskeleton they wheeled in to wrap him in, then there was nothing but darkness.

Holy crap were back!

2009-05-21T23:19:00.000-07:00

Alright, so we are back and we are giving this another shot! We are hoping to enter these into various writing forums or publications so we have stepped up the game a little bit. The themes work a little differently now than before and are a little more challenging! Here is my first entry.

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Title: Soda Fountain
Genre: Macabre
Writing restrictions: Must start in a library, must have a death, character mus drink something they have not drank in a long time.

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With walls made of bookshelves that expand into a blackness of unknown depth, it is no wonder this room was called simply the Library by those that inhabited it. No special name, no code, nothing more, just Library. However its roles are more than just a house for stories and records, it serves many dark purposes. To sum it up, it could also be considered a playhouse, but then where does the tom foolery of those who find time in abundance take place? Think back to school and the things you did in your own library. This is a room that played host to the dark dealings of the worlds utmost upper class. Individuals so rich they can afford to keep themselves a secret to the world and still have enough money left over to embarrass the Forbes top ten richest list. It is these men in this Library who have performed deplorable acts the likes of which even your wildest nightmare could not fathom. Their money has lead them from act to act, finding and delighting in new and more depraving pleasures. Their room is built very much like a pit, circular with an upper ring made of stone walls, homes to the bookshelves that contained these elitists’ records. Every quarterly gathering was held in those volumes, in all their disgusting detail. Then descending from the upper ring are two sets of stairs that fill into a Cineplex style seating before a small stage, where the public acts of just what money can buy are performed for the society. The Library is illuminated by thousands of candles on banisters, wall mounts or upon iron cast chandeliers. The Library has been home to the children of mammon for several hundred years, and tonight’s meeting promised to be its best.

Oppressing silence is pierced by the hinges of a giant, heavily decorated, iron door being swung open and the sounds of footsteps echoing about as thirty people enter into the room. Every last person who enters is between the ages of midlife and death, all except one. Dressed in uniforms of the finest clothes and one of a kind fashion items, each one of them looks as though they are attending a gala.

“ I bought the most beautiful painter the other day, she is indeed a rare gem! I have her painting the study, though I do hope she finishes soon. I grow tired of her sobbing and begging, ‘Let me free, let me free!’ Enough already!”

“Well perhaps you can send her my way when you are done with her? I wonder if she can do more than paint?”

“You are barking mad sir, her work is one of a kind. When I am done with her, what’s left goes to my prize hounds so I can keep her work as such!”

Small chit chat of this nature is exchanged between the thirty members before they finally take their seats. A moment or two to allow everyone settle into their meeting and one of their ilk stands and takes the podium in front of everyone. He is much older than the rest of the members but manages to carry the fierce visage of a predator and commands instant respect from everyone in the room. He is silent for a few more moment still, there is definitely an air of excitement from the members, after all this was a special occasion. There would be no show today, only the offer of a lifetime. A guttural growl emits from the oldest man’s throat as he clears it and speaks.

“ I know most of you are eager to get to the matter at hand. And to be frank with you all, I don’t care. Our fraternity is built on order and structure, no matter how obscure the performances in here have been. And if you, like some untrained dog do not have either of these, go and buy some.” Hold for laughter with the build of a golf clap. “Now, first let us go over old business. I would ask those of you who put on the slayings last quarter to next time do a better job at finding your players. Some of them still had living family members who became roused at their missing family members. No need to fret however, the proper people were dispatched to clean the situation and the proper people were bought. I understand some of them will be used for future performances, but that’s new business. I would like to extend a thank you to Mrs. Widow for her performance last week. Having taken her late husband’s spot in our fraternity, her True to life re-imagining marionette play of “The Jersey Devil” has no doubt raised the bar for some of you.”

The oldest man leads the children of mammon into a small ovation for Mrs. Widow before he continues with announcements.

“Finally, new business.”
The room tenses as he makes this small and yet exciting announcement.

“You all received the parcels, and I trust you disposed of their carriers (he added with a stern glare). So you no doubt are aware at the validity of what is going to be shared with us today. So I will not occupy more time than I am sure some of you are willing to spare and will allow our most esteemed guest to come and make his speech.”

The oldest man begins to make his way to his seat, leading the others in a rousing introduction as the youngest man walks to the stage and pulls the sheet off a, until now, hidden item. It was nothing more than your run of the mill Soda Fountain, which drew scorn immediately.

“Allow me to speak before you all resort to your grumblings, I assure you, you will be involved in my little joke by the time I am through! What is your biggest concern? All of you, you all share it. So What is it? Death. Don’t kid yourselves, death is the disease that no doubt some of you, if not all of you, have invested large fractions of your wealth into. I look around and I see no companionship, which no doubt means you are not willing to leave your fortunes behind, so who has control over your estates when you die? Who gets all that money? Does it just sit there? Going to waste? Does someone who will no doubt use it unwisely gain control of it and squander what you all have worked your lives, some of you generations in family, to amount? If you could snuff out that pesky little detail, you could keep that fortune for yourself, continuing to amass it to greater amounts, continuing to explore all the decadence this world has to offer you. Why, nothing would be out of your grasps, if only you could get past that one…little…hitch. Death.

Juan Ponce de Leòn found himself in Florida around 1512 trying to find the remedy for death. Herodotus believed that the answer was found in the lands of the Ethiopians. A lot of people believe you can create this elixir with something called the Philosopher’s stone through Alchemy. The point is that this story has permeated almost every civilization we can think of for the last several thousand years. I am of course talking about the Elixir of Life or,” the young man points to the soda fountain which was already drawing some laughter, “the Fountain of Youth.”

Everyone stands to clap for a wonderful and inventive means of presenting his product and the young man had the attention of every member of the ancient fraternity.

“I hope you all can excuse a young man for his desire to install a little humour, all in good fun I can assure you. I can assure you though, what I am offering is a lot more real than these tall tales. The elixir is the precise combination of several ingredients at a precise moment in time. Mix the ingredients in the wrong way and the results can be far more disastrous than you could ever want. That is why I built the elixir into this soda fountain. It allows the ingredients to be mixed at precisely the right moment, and offers up one frosty beverage.”

More chuckles from the members, the young man knew what he was doing.

“You all no doubt received a small sampler of what I have to offer and have seen what it can do. I will warn you now however. This elixir does not offer you eternal life, the continued consumption of it does. One glass full will grant you hundreds of years of life. Life without disease, life without frailty, life in the highest definition of the word. Tonight, all of you will get a sample, one glass between you all, enough for youth for another fifty years of life. After that, the recipe and the means of its creation goes to the person who wants it most.”

“And what is to stop us from having you flayed and hung on our walls now and just taking what has been prepared of the elixir so far? Time will allow us to figure out its creation.”

The young man smiled.

“The elixir is not complete. There is one thing missing, and it must come from each and every one of you. You followed the directions on your sampler. It requires your blood. One drop from the each of you. One drop and the elixir many of sought, fought and died for will be yours.”

The sounds if whispering and conversation filled the Library, for a short time. The oldest man stands up.

“We accept the offer.”

In mere moments each member was lined up, with a finger ready to be pricked and their blood placed into a small eye dropper. It was a small amount of blood to be true, but every last bit of it was squeezed into a small container in the soda fountain. All it took, at least from the spectator’s seats, was the flip of a switch. The whole process was a lot less magical than everyone expected it to be. The machine just clicked and whirred as it started mixing and chilling its most precious drink until the only noise left was the silent hum of the soda fountain keeping its precious cargo chilled. The young man placed a glass under the fountain head and turned to look at the children of mammon. A small click and the contents were being deposited into the glass.

It was as the youngest of them all was pouring the drink that all the members of the fraternity begin to feel strange. It was as if their very life essence was being drained from them. They all start to feel the same way a juice box might feel as every last part of its juice was pulled out of it by a straw. Slowly they all begin to fall to the floor, still holding onto their last twisted hopes of immortality. Perhaps this was all a part of the process, perhaps when they took that one sip they would start to feel invigorated and renewed! But that moment would never come. The members fall to the floor, their life still draining from them until they are nothing but grey corpses, devoid of the signs of life having ever been in them in the first place. The young man grabs the glass from the soda fountain and brings it to his lips. It was a taste he had been without for at least three hundred years. And every time he drank it, it was that much sweeter. It was a perfect balance of flavour, its hard to compare the taste of ones life force to something, but you could take your sweetest meal or drink and it still would not compare. The rush of life entering every facet of one’s body, gaining strength and youth from it offered the kind of feel good burn that no exercise could ever offer. The young man, now a child began to step over the bodies and up the stairs, removing a candle from the banister. No one would ever find these people. They paid to remain secrets, and secret’s they would remain, kept in cleansing fire.

Lack of a story

2008-09-04T00:33:00.000-07:00

No story from me this week if you haven't noticed by now...went on vacation...it was good but prevented me from writing anything. Maybe when my cohort here uploads something I will as well. Double entry from me next week!

Something different

2008-08-26T16:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I have not really had much time to come up with a story for you guys since I have been on vacation. So instead I will post something far far different!

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Theme: God
Genre: Sermon!
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Ok, so I kinda had worked on this little study I made up for a bit, and now I am gonna present it to you guys, so comments please. I would like to know your thoughts.

God is a restaurateur, and he makes some of the best food you could ever hope to make. I mean this food is phenomenal, it fills you up, makes you feel full and complete and just great! This food I am talking about is His own spirit, the Holy Spirit. Imagine if you will, walking through the door to meet the most genuine host/waiter of your entire life. His name tag says his name is Jesus, and he is gonna be your server. As he sits you down at the table, Jesus begins to tell you a little bit about the chef, God. He tells you that He is a master at his craft, a creator of miracles in the kitchen, and the Jesus gives you something to start before you order. You bite down into your food and you can't, at first, find the right words to explain how you feel. Jesus was right, the food is incredible! Your a little different now, somehow changed, and you start to encourage the others at your table to dig in to the starters.

John 14:26 "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you."

From the words of Jesus himself. The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom God will send in the name of Jesus Christ. To teach us all things about God. What is it that the food you eat, or rather the starters even, at a restaurant does? It gives you some insight on the Chef, so does your server for that matter. Its their job to inform you of the awesome culinary creator behind those doors. A guy that you by no rights can see, but the food and the server both tell you that he is there. Jesus coming to earth was the precursor of the Holy Spirit. Jesus died so that the spirit of God could come to earth and inform us even more about God. Build that relationship even stronger.

John 16:7 "But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; But if I go, I will send him to you."

Your server has to go away so he can bring you the food! This is where exploration comes in! This is where its the foods job to tell you about the chef. This is when the Holy Spirit fills us like a cup and our relationship with God begins. We can't see the chef, but we know he is there. The food tells us he is, and the chef is informed, trust me, on how we feel about the food!

John 16:13-14 "But, when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and disclose it to you."

So now what happens? The food is on our table and we are eating our fill, learning more and more about this awesome chef. What does one normally do when they find a dish they like? They recommend it to others around them! I have an awesome meal, I am gonna tell others to try it out! I might even tell other people at other tables about it!

Isaiah 61:1-3 " The Spirit of God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to prisoners..."

I understand that last part might be a little much for this reference, but lets look at that first sentence. " The Spirit of God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted;"
This is a nice little example of what happens to us when we are filled with the Holy Spirit. When your filled with Gods Spirit, and his love, and grace, and mercy, and all those things that make a relationship with God so worth while, you get to a point where you can't contain that anymore, you gotta spread the word! And that is exactly what God calls us to do.

Matthew 28:18-20 "Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of age.'"

That right there is the great commission. Its God's call for us to further his kingdom, to go out and make disciples of others. Fill ourselves with the chef's food, with God's Holy Spirit, and get out there and tell everyone how great it is. However...we must be careful in this! Because if we are not careful, we can find ourselves being overly zealous about the food, and in our fervor, we can spill the food on someone! Spilling food on someone is rather quite different than having them eat it, isn't it? Instead of actually aiding them in experiencing the food, we dump it all over their laps and suddenly, they aren't all that interested in the food anymore. Sometimes we as Christians have a tendency to just dump the Holy Spirit on someone. We tend to overload them with information, without giving the time to process it, or aid in the learning of it, and people are dumped with something they have no understanding of anymore. And then it becomes very difficult to have that person dine at that restaurant anymore. We all know someone like this I am sure. So we must be careful when we walk around that restaurant so we don't spill that food when we tell people about it!

So now by this time, your so empowered by this food that some of you have gotten up from your tables and have started going around to other tables in the restaurant.

Acts 1:8 "But you will receive the power of when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."

Along the way, you will no doubt meet what every restaurant has, a food critic. Lets look at just what exactly a food critic is. Often it is the case that a food critic is a failed chef. A person who lacks any form of cooking skill, so rather instead he goes about judging food from everyone else. In the case of our analogy, that person is the devil. The devil rebelled against God in heaven, jealous of God. The devil cannot create, he creates nothing, all he can do is take what God has created and twist it into bitter creatures of loathing and contempt and hate. He will never be able to cook food like God can. So he sits in the restaurant and tries to waylay those who are telling others about the food. Tries to tell them that its not as good as they think it is. It is important more than ever to rely on the chef, to rely on his food. To remember that its the most filling and best tasting food you have ever had, and to encourage others in that as well.

Hebrews 10: 24-25 "Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, while remembering not to forsake our own assembling together, as is the habit for some, but encouraging each other, and all the more so as we see the day drawing near."

In closing, I would like to read yet another verse that kind of summarizes everything quite nicely.

John 15: 26-27 "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the spirit of truth who proceeds from the father, He will testify about Me, and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning."

This last verse is a very fine example of everything in action. God sending his son Jesus down to earth to tell everyone about God, making way for the Holy Spirit, God's spirit to come into the hearts of us all and continue that work. To allow for a close and personal relationship with God the Father, thanks to God the Son, and the coming of God's Holy Spirit. Then we ourselves, continuing on with informing others about God because of that. Telling others about God because of our own relationship with Him, knowing more and more about Him each day.

Na'So Legend Part 1

2008-08-16T23:37:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, I have been toying with this in my head now for a bit. It's a lead of for a Epic I am writing. It's only part one and I leave a lot of hole in it but I didn't feel like writing out the second part right now. Maybe next freebie week I will put that up. So enjoy and as always pardon the grammar. lol

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Title: Na'So Legend Part 1
Theme: Freebie Week
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When the world was first birthed things were different, the air was clear, the earth was pure and the people who lived on the land communed with nature. Yes things were very different, in the beginning. The gods and goddesses looked down at what they had made and they smiled upon it. They had but one rule, no more than 12 of them may live on their land at a time and so it would be because the first people had no concept of sex or of child birth because the gods chose to keep this knowledge from them. So for the first several hundred years all was in balance with the world and the universe around it.

However the gods and goddesses knew about such things as sex and rearing of children and soon they grew bored with their life of luxury. The gods have few rules but their cardinal rule is that no god shall reproduce. None of the gods knew why, just that the elder gods of past ages had decreed it so and they were too scared, that the elders would return, to cross them. Well most of the gods were scared of the elders. The king of the gods, Na knew no fear for he was the knowledge of War and Fire and it was not within him to know such things. He saw the laws of the gods as below him because he was king. He had eyes on the goddess So who held the knowledge of love and fertility. However So was terrified of the elder’s vengeance and refused the advances of the king of the gods. Na was furious with this, he was not used to being ignored or refused and he soon took it within himself to force So to be with him. One night as the goddess of Fertility slept, the king of the gods slipped in to her bed and forced himself on her. The law had been broken.

At first none of the gods knew anything; no fire fell upon the gods, there was no retribution from the elder gods of old. Everything continued on as normal. Time passed and So began to swell with child as Na continued his late night ventures into her bedchambers. The other gods began to notice the change in attitude of So and the change of her stomach as a godling swelled within it. None of the other ten gods voiced objection to what was happening, in truth they were tired of being held back by the rules the elder gods had given them. If they could break the cardinal rule and face no consequences then they could do whatever they want.

Time passed and soon So’s stomach swelled to its fullest and the birthing process was on her. As the child passed through her legs all the gods, even Na the child’s father knew something was wrong. The child was covered with black scales and fur all over its body, its face a distorted mixture of reptile and ape like features. Everyone knew it was an abomination onto life however Na picked up the child and claimed him as his son.

The child grew extremely fast and within a month it was the age of a young child close to the age of eleven. The boy’s features had not improved and he was covered from head to toe with black dragon like scales with tuffs of black and white animal hair planted around his body. He had sprouted a tail as he had grown and had taken on a lizard like gait as he walked on reverse jointed legs around the palace of the gods. He was a monstrosity but no one was willing to tell his father that. They named this child Shadi the word for gift in the old tongue.

The child grew and his godly powers soon to develop within himself, the powers that appeared were disturbing to the other gods and some had never been conceived before. He had the power to control the shadows in the day and the darkness of the night with just a thought and he could summon the dead and fallen and make them follow his commands. He had become the knowledge of dark and evil, something that was unheard of before he was born. The other gods were scared of Shadi.

By the time Shadi was a year old he grew tired of his life on the palace of the gods. He decided to go down to the people of the lands who until know knew nothing of what had happened and were living out a peaceful life. When Na found out of Shadi plans he found that to be a step too far and moved to stop his son. However Shadi was in no mood to talk to his father and when the king of the gods stepped in front of his son to block his path, Shadi waved his hand as if to brush the obstacle away and a dark wave of darkness brushed the king of the gods away.

The rest is a bit hazy after that but from what the tales say; Na didn’t like that one bit. He brought forth all his might against his son in one giant attack but Shadi waved it away in a sheet of darkness as he let out a low pitched laugh. The other gods noticing the fight; came to the aid of Na hoping to put an end to abomination’s life. Each of the gods and goddesses brought forth their might against Shadi but each attack was knocked away with ease as the darkness wrapped around him, making him stronger. The gods were knocked aside one by one as Shadi moved through them, finally coming to the last two, Na and So his parents, his hatred. It is said that a wicked smile splayed the already deformed face of Shadi as he brought up his hand and drew in the darkness from all around him, the light draining from the palace of the gods and a strange mist creeping in along the floor. The two gods stared at the dark thing that they had brought into this world and they wept, they were about to die by their own creation. They knew now why the gods should never bare children, what they were about to experience was much worse than any vengeance from the elder gods. Shadi lifted his hand and pointed it at his parents, the tales never say if he said anything to them, I would like to think he said good bye but we all know a monster like him knows not of such things. What we do know though is that just before Shadi let loose his attack the gods began to sing.

The song of the gods it is called, when the gods gave up their knowledge to the people of the lands below so that we might survive without them. The song of Fire, the song of earth, the song of wind, the song of water, the song of metal, the song of healing, the song of history, the song of wealth, the song of dreams, the song of love and the song of song. As the gods gave up their knowledge they slowly began to pass away, disappearing as their songs slowly moved to the people of the land. All but Na and So, they stayed even after they sang their songs, they would face their son to the final moment. Shadi infuriated and howling in madness as the knowledge he one day hoped to gain moved even farther away from him. Then with a twisted laugh he pointed his fist at his parents and let loose the black void held within. The blast hit the two gods and sent them flying out of the palace of the gods.

As they fell to the land below they embraced each other once more and kissed, as the two fell into the great ocean Na used the last of his power to change themselves into a pair of statues that would burn from within eternally. As they sank into the waters, the waters began to boil and a mist rose up into the land. The mist crept slowly over the world, hiding it, protecting it. The mist covered the world except for the very tips; Shadi would not be able to destroy what the two had loved so dearly.

There was only one problem, the knowledge of the dark places was what Shadi held within himself and the mist is one of the darkest places you can be. When Shadi reached the land and found out what his parents had done he was jubilant, they had done what he could have never done. He had complete control over the world and he didn’t have to lift a finger to do it. He soon unleashed his dark hordes on the people of the land. The people of the land barely escape his monsters and moved to the highest tip of the world. They named the place Dark Watch and began to build a defense against the dark one there. The people of the land were few in number but they were armed with the knowledge of the gods and soon they would have to defend against the dark god himself.
To be Continued.

The Old Man's Bridge

2008-08-08T23:57:00.000-07:00

I was honestly worried about putting anything out that I thought was good enough, but I managed to do it and I rather like it. I wrote this story based on a most amazing photo I saw, and like one thing lead to another and this cute little tale came about. I may even expand on this one as well. Anyway, enjoy.

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Theme: Free Theme Week
Title: The Old Man's Bridge
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The Old Man’s Bridge

You ever wake up to a day where the sun is shining gently into your room, keeping you toasty warm? And I don’t mean to warm. I mean warm enough, like that extra bit of comfort your blankets don’t seem to have. Warmth that wakes you like a loving parent might wake you, telling you its time to get up and start the day. You could stay in bed just a little bit longer but you know that you don’t need to. You know that the day is gonna be perfect when you roll out of your covers and put both feet firmly on the floor. Where do you go on days like that? I mean let’s pretend for a second that on this particular day you do not have anywhere important to be. You have got the whole day to yourself (and lets be real, these kinds of days have a tendency to no show up when you have to work.). I know where I go. There is this special little bit of forest that I go to on my island that I like to think no one else knows about. The only thing that could shatter that belief is a bridge in my forest, but I don’t let that stop me from believing that this spot is mine and mine alone.

I could bore you with the details of my morning after the sun stopped in and gently woke me up, but I won’t. Instead I will cut right to the chase. The sounds of gravel underfoot are quickly replaced by the soft crunching of tree leaves and loose twigs as I step into the woods that neighbor me. The sun manages to squeeze just a little bit of itself onto my chosen path, for the canopy above me is thick with the tops of mighty trees that almost seem to bend themselves over me as I walk through a wooded corridor. I have one destination in mind. The bridge. The bridge is this old stone bridge that by rights seems to have no earthly business in the middle of a forest. There is nothing around it at all to give way to what it could be or may have been for. But its there, and it’s my quiet place. The bridge sits over top of one of the most undisturbed ponds I have ever seen in my life. Its surface like a fragile glass reflects the whole forest around it and within its shadows allows you to see within it to the bottom of the pond. You ever read the Lord of the Rings? There is a marsh that Frodo, Samwise, and Gollum find themselves trying to move through, a marsh that was once the home to a horrific battle. Frodo can see bodies, preserved bodies, in the waters of the marsh and Gollum mentions that he had tried to reach them once, but they were to far down to reach. I often wonder if this pond is similar. If the image of the bottom just appears close, but in face if one were to try and reach it, they could swim for all eternity and never set foot on its bottom. I suppose I could check, but why? I am afraid I would ruin the magic I put into that pond and managed to walk across it. So I let it rest, allowing only frogs to splash into it without disturbing its glassy surface. I could spend hours upon hours at this bridge, allowing my imagination to get away from me. Today was different, however. Today there was an older man at the bridge, sitting on a bench; a bench that I swear to you now, I never thought was there. He looked like a vagabond, a transient if you will, with a tattered top hat wit a belt tied around it. A scraggly beard, salt and pepper in color, seemed to hide any evidence to a neck, or an upper lip for that matter. The old man had a jacket draped over the bench and was wearing a light brown sweater with a checkered blue dress shirt underneath of it, its color trying but failing to make itself known within the tangles of that mighty beard. His dark brown slacks were home to an assortment of pocket watches and a tattered old brief case, which at the moment seemed to be the resting place for the bottom end of a newspaper.
“Beautiful day isn’t it sir?”
“No arguing with that, one of the better days I’d say lad.” The man’s accent was Irish, odd for these parts.
“Is that your bench? I don’t ever remember seeing it before.”
“Well if it weren’t mine, whose would it be? Especially since you ain’t seen it before, musta come with me then.”
The old man had this intense kindness in his eyes, they seemed to smile right along with him when he spoke and laughed. He was a very approachable old man to be true. So I sat down beside him, and let him to his paper before curiosity finally took control of me.
“So…you dragged this bench all the way out here?”
“Well not all the way boy. Its not a long pull from home.”
“Where’s home?”
The old man began to rustle through his newspaper until he finally seemed to land on something. He began shaking his head and talking to himself.
“Sir? Did you hear me?”
“You know, these clowns who try to predict your horoscope will never get it right. Not once. For instance today, I don’t see a single bloody thing about me running in to a rather inquisitive young lad.” He gave a smile and a wink as he spoke to me.
I couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed; I suppose I had been a little bothersome with all the questions. All worry left though when the old man clapped me on the shoulder with a laugh and answered my question anyway.
“I live in there!”
I looked over to where he was pointing, and his finger landed right on the bridge. I had to laugh, and he started to laugh along side with me.
“That’s a bridge.” I rather humorously pointed out to him.
“Your right,” he continued to laugh. “And that’s where I live.”
“I suppose you have a little bed and bedside table on one side of the bridge, and a little kitchenette on the other side?”
“Don’t be daft boy. Trolls live under bridges, or at least Mother Goose would have you believe that, I said I live in the bridge.”
I am sad to say that the old man was completely off his rocker, or at leas he had to be. There was just no way anyone in there right mind would seriously argue as to their living situation being inside a bridge. That look in his eye though never left, and he was still sitting there smiling at me, challenging me even. I knew what was going to come next.
“I can prove it to you.”
The last thing I wanted was to have this old vagrant try and pull me under the bridge, where he would no doubt do me in. But this was not one of those days now was it? If we were all paying attention we would remember that this is in fact, a perfect day. And perfect days seem to have a sense of wonderment about them that pops up when we least expect it to. The old man folded up his news paper and placed it into his briefcase. And in an instant, and I still can’t really be sure if what I saw was what I saw, the old man folded up his bench and put that into his briefcase as well. At least I am sure this is what I think I saw, or rather, the bench was no longer there, so where could it go? The only reasonable explanation was that it went into the briefcase, which the old man with the raggedy top hat was now clipping shut and allowing drooping from one hand. He walked, ever so calmly to the bridge and stood there looking puzzled for a moment, his hand holding his chin up as he took on an expression of deep though. I suppose I had held my tongue long enough, because I blurted out rather curtly, “I suppose you don’t remember where the door is.”
“Close enough,” he said without a hiccup. “Blasted knob is always changing its spot, took me almost three days last time to find it.”
“Well suppose you ask it politely to show up, I haven’t really got three days to wait for you to find it.”
“You know…I never really thought to ask it to show up. Perhaps I’ll give that a try.” He cleared his throat. “Ahem, alright you little rascal, I’ve about had enough of this game, this young lad here seems to be in a rather hurry and I think it best we prove our point to him before he need be on his way,”
You would have had to be rather quick to catch it, I never did (it was to become something that would be one of my largest hassles in the future.). But there was a slightly off colored stone, almost brass color in shape, and yet still a stone, that showed up at the old man’s foot. He laughed with triumph and glee. Not before, of course, turning the stone like anyone might turn a door knob and having the ground at his feet turn into a cobble stone set of stairs. He started to walk down them.
“Come along boy, we mustn’t waist time.”
I will never tell you why I did what I did, but I followed him down into the door at the bottom of the stairs, and sure enough, there was indeed a home. And it was as cozy looking as any woodland cottage. There were even several windows letting sun in.
“Where did those windows come from? They weren’t outside!”
“My boy, they would have had to of been from outside, otherwise, where would the sun come from?”
I was getting a little annoyed now.
“No, I have been to this bridge as many times as I care to remember and I do not remember ever seeing any windows!”
“Perhaps you missed them then, after all, you couldn’t find the door either could you?”
There were windows where I could have sworn there were no windows and walls where there should not have been walls, and yet the view outside was unchanging. There was even a window on a wall that overlooked the pond! And if that didn’t baffle you, the patio that was sitting on the pond itself was sure to do just that!
“Where is this place?”
“The best I can explain boy,” the old man laughed. “Is telling you that it exists in the same place your wallet goes when you’ve lost it, or your keys, or even your television remote.”
“And where is that?”
“Well if I knew that I doubt I would be losing my own items!”
The whole room began to shake, decorative plates on the wall were clanging, the cupboards were making a racket and the old man sprang to his feet to keep as many things as he could from falling over. I, however, could only roll my eyes as the event brought forth yet another question. And I think the old man knew it.
“That was the woodland train.” By this point, I wasn’t even going to put up a fuss about there being no train in these woods. “Near as I can figure it, that thing rolls over here about the same time everyday. Not quite sure where it goes. Been meanin to get on that thing one day, take a bit of a vacation. Me ruddy daughters rarely come in for a visit anymore. Maybe I should hop aboard that train. Take a trip around wherever it goes. Perhaps I will sleep on the idea a little bit more.”
I had slowly made my way back towards the door, having enough weirdness for one day.
“Oh my dear boy, I am sorry I am sorry. You must be in a rush to be on your way. I tell you what, take a cookie from the jar on the counter there for your walk back, and perhaps the next chance you get you can come and visit me again.”
I took a bite from my cookie and nodded a smile at him, a genuine smile at that. There was something rather nice about being in this place; I rather enjoyed all the little surprises it added. I waved my goodbye to the old man, I never did get his name though, I suppose there was always next time. And I made my way up the stairs.

All in all, it was indeed a perfect day. It’s unfortunately a story I would never be able to tell anyone, after all, who would believe something like this. But I suppose I could settle with someone thinking me creating a tall tale. I made my way through the forest once more, the leaves softly crunching and the sound of a chocolate chip cookie crunching along with them. As the trees lightened, the sun shone through them a little bit more, curious to know as to what happened in the woods today. Gently wrapping me up in subtle warmth, it walked with me the rest of the way home.

Electro Gypsy

2008-08-03T16:15:00.000-07:00

This story is dedicated to Savlonic and their song Electro Gypsy. Also to Mr. Weebl who gave the song to the world through flash. Sorry for the last Update as well, I had to rewrite the story because I didn't like how it read.
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Theme: Myth/Relationship
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The darkness consumed everything, from mountain to the sea; the land lay in its dark expanse. Nothing moved, the creatures, big and small settled in for the night. The wind played with the leaves of the trees making the slightest of noise as the branches swayed in its gentle embrace.

Over the darkened land lay a small village with no name, this night it is home to a very special encounter. A small caravan wagon drawn by a small donkey drew through the quiet night towards the small village. A strange sound emanated from the wagon as it drew closer and closer to the cluster of houses. The twangs and strums sounding almost futuristic as the sound grew louder and louder with each step the donkey took.

As the wagon entered into the village the noise began to slow and then stop. As the music echoed off into the distance a young man jumped out of the driver’s seat of the wagon and after dusting off his leather pants and silk shirt he pulled out a strange instrument out of the wagons back. The instrument was slug around the man’s neck, it appeared to be a guitar but instead of strings there were keys instead. The man let out a devilish grin and plugged a cord into the keytar and turned the device on. A low echoing sound burst forth from the speaker in the back of the wagon. Then as if waiting for a cue he began to play.

His fingers began to moved rapidly up and now the keys of the keytar, a beat that none had heard before burst forth from the speakers. Twangs and das mixed together to form a futuristic beat. Then after he had gotten a beat he was happy with, he began to sing.

“Yama Yamaha
Yama Yamaha
Yama Yamaha
Moog and a Casio”

He continued the same verse, over and over again until his fingers began to bleed from the extended playing of his instrument. However he seemed not to care as his keytar was soon coated in a layer of blood. He stayed like that moved back and forth in his leather pants and silk shirt until morning.

The people of this village had awoken when the stranger had come into the village. They rarely get strangers and when someone as strange as this comes to their doorstep they notice. The mayor of the village walked up to the young man as dawn began to break; hoping to ask the man why he had come to play his fine electric beat for them. Before the mayor could open his mouth to ask his question the young man began a different verse of his song.

“Here I am the electro gypsy in my caravan, it’s the future man. See me play a tune upon my Yamaha, A guitar won't do. They are to old school! Time to sell door to door; I have pegs and lucky heather! Do you like my leather pants? Oh I am so clever!”

The mayor just stood there dumb founded as this strange man played his beat and nodded to the back of his wagon where several piles of clothes pegs and bundles of lucky heather were piled. A sign noted that the pegs were thirty cents each and the lucky heather was two dollars a bundle. The mayor smiled and picked up several clothes pegs and a bundle of lucky heather and placed the money in a small tin near the gypsy’s feet. The gypsy nodded and smiled and returned to his first verse. The mayor turned around and walked back to his house for his morning breakfast.

The rest of the village did business with the electro gypsy as well and soon the man was out of things to sell. When the day was over the gypsy finally stopped paying his electronic song and placed the keytar back in the wagon and picked up his tin full of money. His fingers were still bleeding as he gathered up the reins of the wagon and motioned to the donkey to start moving again.

The electro gypsy never returned to the small village again but everyone there remembered the beat that he had played for that day and always wondering whether others were enjoying his fine electro beat.

Fall is a Dancer

2008-07-25T00:35:00.000-07:00

This is kinda based on these really short stories I wrote where the seasons where these four sisters and their father was Time. Anyway, I wrote this kinda on the fly, William is not a huge fan of it, but there was something about it that I was kinda unwilling to change. Anyway, it touches lightly on the theme for the week, something we both have been doing a lot, which makes me question the whole theme concept if we are so unwilling to abide by it. Also this is being posted early, probably because I have another story on my brain and I want to dedicate some time to it. Also this is a much more cheery story than usual, enjoy.

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Title: The Dance of Fall
Theme: Myth/Relationship
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Most people will try to tell you that raven’s bear with them bad tidings and ill fortune. Perhaps in some cases this is most definitely the case. However in my family, story after story is passed along about how they more often than not carry with them the change in the season, and like you or me, are just people with a job to do. I myself have often come upon the Raven’s of the seasons, sharing in conversation with them, or falling away from what they bring with them. However this is nothing new, stories of my families dealings with them go farther back than dates do. And it is in these stories that we have become so familiar with them, so un-startled by them. For instance, did you know Fall is a dancer?

He was but the first among my family, and with him he carried no name, the kin of a man and a Sidhe, some might say, details however to which he did not care. What the first of my line did care for were the things he saw around him and the things that people so often seemed to miss in their hurriedness. There was very rare a time that he was not gallivanting through the woods near the town to which he was so estranged, further stoking the rumors that he was the spawn of such an odd union. The boy would not wear shoes on his feet, claiming that there was only one way to experience the wood, and that was with the earth moving through, under and over your feet, allowing yourself to fully experience it. It was one day, trying to make his way home from traversing perhaps just one stream or one field to far that the first of us did meet a new friend, forever changing the course my family would take. He was crossing a gentle stream when perhaps an even more gentle breeze did pass him by. And carrying with it were several dancing leaves of a color he had never seen leaves before. The leaves carried with them the varied range that the copper the villagers used seemed to carry.
“Many a distance I have traveled these woods, and not a leaf nor a blade of grass have I ever seen carry such beauty! I will move against the wind today, mayhap I will find the home to these strange leaves!”
And so, without thinking, as my family often seems to do, the first of us did wander off against the wind in the hopes of finding something new that the others did not know a thing about.

It would be more than a strange leaf that the lad would find, soon he found his forest floor, carpeted with greenest moss you could hope for, was covered in fallen leaves. The leaves delicately draped themselves over the forest landscape, resting and colorizing every hill, ever crevice in a beautiful range of golds, crimsons, and coppers.
“I am no longer in my forest. Have I been taken by the fair folk, for truly a wood of this elegance must be theirs.”
The boy continued with his walking, swearing to himself that he could hear music, a sweet humming off in the distance. Moving against the wind once more, the lad was walking into the setting sun, into a golden forest, so much more different than the green one he was used to, and it was in a vast expanse of trees amongst an ocean of moss and fallen branches that he did see her. She moved in front of the golden rays that seemed to be creeping in through the trees and he lost her to a silhouette, but it did not stop him from hearing her song.

The spring is done, its come and gone
Summer has had her turn.
And now I dance with the woods
Waiting for Winter to return.

My time is precious, for it is short
But I cherish every moment
Every step among your branches
Toot sweet I must lament.

The warm wind blows around me now
Carrying your leaves
I must carry on my dance
As I move amongst the trees.

Her song continued, it seemed as though she was making it up as she went along, but the boy did not care. He was enthralled with her dance. She stepped lightly upon the forest floor, up and down trees, twirling as she did so. It seemed as though she never touched the ground. If I could compare it, the dance was everything that any dance would aspire to be. I cannot mention just one dance, for I would have to believe all dance draws upon its desire to move the way Fall was. And as twilight began its approach, it was then that the boy finally got his first best look at Fall and he found himself further enchanted by her. Her skin was fair, and her hair seemed to shift almost as much as the falling leaves did, moving through the colors we so associate with fall. She wore a dress woven from leaves, but flowed like silk, that moved with grace with Fall’s every step. She wore a shirt one would have to assume was woven by light and carried the color of a setting sun, sharing even its glow. Even this was changing as the sun began to set, the fabric slowly filling with flickering stars. And lastly around her neck was a scarf knitted using yarn from the wind, for it to danced endlessly. Lost in his rapture, the boy hardly took notice of the fact that she was, with unbelievable grace, stepping towards him, her golden brown eyes carrying with them a smile as warm as the one spreading upon her pink lips.
“You can see me?”
“How can I not? What is it that you are doing?”
“I am changing the seasons. Summer is over and I must make ready for Winter’s time.”
“What are seasons? What is Winter?”
“Winter is one of my sisters.”
The lad had no idea what seasons were, this was his first time meeting one of them. But he liked Fall, he was quite smitten by her to say the least.
“You should come back to the village with me, it will be dark soon.”
Fall chuckled, as most seasons tend to do when one does not understand their work.
“I can’t dear boy. I must get going; I have much to do, and very little time to do it in.”
The first of my line became sad; he did not want Fall to go away. He wanted to watch her dance; he wanted to continue to hear her song.
“Then I will come with you.”
“Where I go, you cannot come I am afraid. But I will be back.”
“When? Will it be for longer?”
“The same time next year. And no, I am afraid I won’t be here much longer than I am now.”
“Your time is so short here, and yet with you comes things I have never seen before. I won’t forget them. I promise, there will come a time when one of my line will get to walk with you while you dance. Until then I shall tell them about you. And they will keep watch for you. Every time they see the leaves fall, they will know you are back, and they will listen to your song and they will watch your dance.”
Fall had no more words for the first of my line, instead she gave him a gentle kiss upon his cheek and smiled at him. She started to sing her song, and dance once more, and the boy could only hear but a few more words of her song fade off into the woods.

I dance now, through song and tale
As Inspiration has now been born
He waits for me every year
That he may see me dance once more.
That he may see me dance once more.

Bedhunter Vol: 1 and my lack of experience for the theme.

2008-07-20T00:42:00.001-07:00

I don't know if this is very thrillerish but I don't know how to do a thriller so whatever shall I do? So here is a Occult Spy story that is a little bit like a thriller. It's part of a series and I wrote it awhile ago but it's good, enjoy and don't break your head trying to read my bad grammar. lol

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Theme: Occult Spy Thriller
Title: Bedhunter Vol: 1

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I remember the look it gave me before I tagged it, well maybe look is not the right word. Its not like it had eyes, it was more of a mental message and even that I don’t think conveys what I am trying to get at. It was a message of pain and sorrow and of anger and hate, these things know that I am their enemy and they want to kill me but at the same time this one wanted me to help it. To kill it and set it free from its task.
Perhaps I should start at the beginning.
You don’t know me, but I know you. I have seen you, I have talked to you but if I came up to you today you would not remember me. I am an easy face to forget I have been told. I work for the government, a secret division of the Canadian government that is secretly protecting you from a hidden threat that you would never suspect.
What if it was your own bed?
Allow me to tell you a story; a story about how the realties of what you think you know is nothing but a lie. Let me show you my life.

The light entered the room filling it with a golden brilliance, revealing everything that was hidden a second before. The room was a pale peach color; chips of paint were coming off the wall in large chunks from years of mistreatment. The room was smoky and had an air of dampness to it, like something out of a horror movie. The bar was stained from who knows what, peanuts were scattered around the few bowls that were present. The door swung slowly shut and the light vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by a dull yellow light. The place was mostly deserted, a couple were sitting at the far end of the bar drinking what I thought were martinis but then again I was never quite sure.
The Bartender gave me a dirty stare; he was dressed in a brown shirt stained by the drinks he slung. He was cleaning cup as he watched me, I could feel his eyes burrowing into me trying to find my secrets more then likely trying to find out if I was a cop or not. I raised my hand and called out for a coke; he gave me some unintelligent grunt and began to fill a glass with a brown liquid.
I surveyed the bar I was in again, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Not that I was looking for anything in particular but I do like to take notice of my surroundings. I saw a bush in one corner, desperately in need of a prune perhaps the owners attempt to spruce the place up. Several windows had been bored up, perhaps to ward off the sun from shinning into the bartender’s eyes.
My train of thought was lost however when the Bartender slammed down my drink on the table, he was a grisly fellow. He wore a pair of blue jeans too tight for him; they forced his large stomach mass to pop out every which way. He was still staring me down with his dark brown eyes, eyes that were hiding something. Perhaps he sells drugs, or better yet maybe he is a slave trader. I have heard of people doing that sort of thing in these parts.
“Seven fifty.” He says in a gruff voice scarred by smoking
I look at the drink he had placed in front of me, a small by any standard. “Seven fifty? For this?” I replied in my most outraged voice. It’s not that I cared but I know when I am getting ripped off, it’s the principle not the price.
The Bartender that I have made a mental note to call Sid because well he looked very much like a Sid, or maybe a Hank However I digress. Sid gave me an even stare even harder then the last one and held out his hand for a payment of some kind. Reluctantly I reached into the black jeans I was wearing and pulled out a ten dollar bill. Sid grabbed the bill up quite quickly and walked back to his bar where he did not put the money in a till or bring me back my change I might add.
I was about to go up to the bar and ask for my change when the room was filled once again with the golden light from outside. My eyes were blinded for a second before they adjusted and I viewed what I can only say is the vision of beauty.
She was tall for a woman, perhaps five ten, maybe six feet high. She curved at all the right places, and had hair the color of honey. I thought I was in love, well at least for a second. Soon the harsh reality of what I had to do rushed back to me and with that in mind I took a sip of my drink.
She walked into the bar, looked around once and then moved to an open seat a few tables away from me. I watched her for a few moments, not quite sure how to approach her. She took out a book and began to read, the dim light inside the bar did not give me the chance to see what she was reading before the bartender Sid came out to get her order.
“What do you want?” He said in that smoky voice only a mother could love.
“Water. In a god damn clean glass.” Her voice was like a river, it flowed out and washed over you filling you up inside with its beauty.
She at least knew what she wanted, so as soon as Sid left to go and get her drink I made my move. Picking up my Coke I walked the five whole steps to her table and introduced myself. “Hello there, sorry for the trouble but what are you reading today?” She gave me a look filled with ice and hatred and simply tilted the book so that I could read the title myself.
It was a book on Faith and Science or something, I honestly can’t remember. However I remember I did have to talk my pants off before I could get her to actually talk back.
“So are you in school or do you just read this stuff for fun?” I asked in my most serious but playful voice. “Oh? Is that important for you to know?” She retorted with her own Serious but not too playful voice. I simply burst out laughing; she was quite the girl if I do so say myself.
We ended up talking for quite the time, the bar filled and then emptied and then filled again before I knew it and soon Sid was turning chairs over telling us to get the hell out. So taking the hint we got up and moved outside.
I took a glance at my cell phone and checked the time, I always wondered if people thought I was rude when I did that. The time read that it was three in the morning and that I had just spent eleven hours in a bar talking about science and religion and babying a coke worth seven fifty all in all not a bad night.
“So did you want to continue this talk somewhere else? Or are you leaving?” She asked in that same smooth flowing voice she had. “I can keep the conversation going for a bit still, where did you have in mind?” I replied, a smile climbing on my face as the realization of what may come to pass danced in my mind.
She simply laughed and walked down the street, leaving me to simply follow behind her like the little puppy dog she was turning me into.
We ended our walk in front of a large building; I wasn’t quite sure what it was supposed to be. I didn’t see any signs or markings telling me what it was, I do remember that it was filled with books so I guess it was a library. We walked the rows on rows of books, commenting on what we found and what we might be looking for. I think she worked there, she just walked through the front door, no alarm no nothing. So we strolled through the books and found books on theology to books on how a seal breeds. I remember seeing the sun break over the other buildings from the windows in that place and then I remember the taste of her mouth and the way she wiggled under me as I entered her.
I woke up next to her on a bed of books, I don’t remember much more from that night but I remember I liked it. She stirred as I began to move, our clothes covered us like a blanket. I stood and dressed as she watched from our bed of books. A smile played on her face; I was never sure what she was smiling for.
“That was fun.” I said as I dressed. A moan was all I got from her as she slowly began to dress her self.
She stood and grabbed her bag that I had all but ignored last night, the image of an eagle or maybe a falcon I wasn’t sure was on the side. I pulled out my phone and checked the time, just after noon. I guess you can’t sleep very long on a bed of books, which as I mention it my back cramped for weeks after that.
“Did you want to continue this back at your place?” I asked. I was going to pull it out a winner by the end.
She looked at me then an odd look. It was filled with guilt and suspicion and something else I couldn’t put my finger on. However it was gone as quickly as it came and soon she was dragging me back to her car in the bars parking lot.
She lived in the city; it was about a ten minute car ride from the bar maybe a bit more then that I can’t remember exactly. The area her apartment was in was one of those slum areas that every city has. Filled with crack addicts and winos and who knows what else. A place a young women should not be living in.
The car came to a stop in front of a large apartment building, at least ten stories or more. She happened to live on the fifth floor with a corner suite. Not a bad place really, the outside looked pretty bad but the inside was well kept. We entered her apartment and I could feel the presence of what I was looking for right away. The malicious and violent thoughts against me were evident within the first few steps. It knew who I was which was odd considering up until now I didn’t think they had any way of communication. I made a mental note and walked all the way in.
The main living area was well furnished, a full leather couch set and a set of dark wooden end tables and coffee table. I moved in and sat on one of the lather couches, I watched as she stood there not quite sure what to do. I noticed something then, I never did ask her what her name was. I never even told her my name. Somehow this didn’t matter though, it wasn’t important. I simply sat there on the leather couch in my black jeans and my crappy throw away white tee shirt, waiting for her to move away from the door way.
She however just stood there.
“Is there something wrong?” I asked in genuine concern
However she never replied, she shook her head and moved into the bathroom. I heard the shower turn on and then I heard signing, a rich sound that like water flowed over you. I don’t think I will ever forget the song she was signing.
I just stood there, in front of the couch listening for several second before I heard it coming.
However I was too late, the sheet whipped out of the bedroom and wrapped around my head. I reached up and tried to release the linen from around my head but the sheet tightened and I could feel a pull from the other end. The pull knocked me off balance and I found myself struggling as I was slowly pulled towards the bedroom, over the couch and the table behind it. I could feel the wood of the table break under my weight, the thin legs meant to hold ornaments could not support my weight and several jagged pieces of wood jabbed into my back and stomach. I tried to find something to brace against, anything to slow my advance towards the bedroom and my death.
Then I found my savior, my hand reach out and grasped a metal rod. Desperate for my light I clung to the rod for my life. My advance to the bedroom seemed to stop, I tried to regain my feet, to try and walk back away from the direction I was being dragged. However the thing was too smart for that. As soon as I got to my feet, I was yanked once again back to the ground.
My body raked with pain, I had been stabbed by some of the wood and was bleeding. I couldn’t tell where I was bleeding from but I could feel the damp material of my shirt as it soaked up the blood.
I struggled still with the cloth wrapped around my face; there seem to be no opening. As if my face had merged with the cloth itself. Then as I searched one more for a seam or opening to rip the blasted thing away and free myself, the pulling stopped and the cloth was lifted from my eyes.
I found myself surrounded by clothing, I could make out the faint outline of a desk covered with clothing and what I thought was a television it’s white snow sending out a low hiss. Then as I regained my feet I saw what I had come for.
A king sized bed, complete with four posters and a canopy, perhaps one of the most dangerous types of beds known to mankind. They are considered royalty among the beds. Back in ages past only royalty and people of important placement had them and as such they became the leaders of their kind.
I was not prepared for this; my intelligence told me she has a twin at the most. Something simple, something easy! I was in trouble.
I looked around for anything I could use as a weapon. Something that the bed would be afraid of, then out of the corner of my eye I saw it. A trash can with a pie tin in it.
I was in luck! Perhaps I wouldn’t die.
I made a dash back to the front room, dodging tendrils of sheets and the occasional pillow. She was still signing in the shower, that rich relaxing sound. I made my way into the kitchen and flung open the fridge, using the door to protect myself from the pillows being thrown from the bedroom.
I scanned the fridge; I saw the mustard and the milk and lots of veggies. Then in the back I saw what I wanted. I pulled out a Tupperware container and opened it.
Almost instantly the barrage of pillows stopped, I could feel the fear it had now. I could feel the beast looking for a way to kill me quickly instead of toying with me. I wasn’t going to let it though, I was going to take this thing out and I wasn’t going to let it or anyone stop me.
I pulled out the apple pie from the Tupperware, it wasn’t blueberry but it would do. I moved out into the front room, a pillow came straight for my head but I batted it aside easily. The pie piece held before me. As I entered the bedroom two sheet tentacles came at me, grabbing my right leg and left arm. The sheets pulled me down to the ground. The pie piece fell from my hand as I hit the ground. The sheets pulled me closer and closer to the bed; I could see the top mattress lifting up and the millions of teeth dripping with anticipation of the feast I would provide it.
Looking around I found the apple pie piece a few fee away lying on a shirt. As a final desperate act I grabbed the shirt and pulled it and the piece of pie towards the gapping mouth of the bed.
The beast swallowed the shirt not even thinking the pie could be contained within it. However as soon as the mouth closed the bed began to shudder and spasm, the beast spewed forth clothing and items it had stolen for all the years it had lived. Then with a last shudder its box spring collapsed inwards.
I moved out of the bedroom, the living room was a disaster. Pillows and broken furniture lay everywhere. The signing still came from the shower that must now be cold. However when I knocked on the bathroom door I got no reply and the song did not falter.
I left that place soon after, taking a small note book out of my back pocket and writing down the mattress serial number on it.
I left that town the same day, my job was finished and I had other things to take care of. However I will never forget her, or the Bed of Books that’s we made that night.

So now you know what I do, whether or not you believe me or not is up to you. Just remember. They are our retreat for when we get tired, they protect us during the night and we give them no thought. However what if they were intelligent? Would you still sleep on them? Would you still feel safe around them? Have you ever come home and went into the bedroom and seen things moved around? Perhaps you are missing some socks? Maybe the pile of clothes is no longer in a neat pile, or the books that were scattered around are now in a nice pile. These are the signs of a bed no longer willing to live the life it was meant to.
That’s where I come in.
I am William Evans, Bed Hunter.

We are so lazy!

2008-07-13T22:35:00.000-07:00

My Goodness are we ever lazy! Two poems in a row. I was so far behind in writing my story for this theme that I plum ran out of time! I, it seems, am a very busy man. But if it means anything, I have a fair chunk of a fresh notebook dedicated entirely to half finished stories and ideas! Anyway, this poem is based on a story I heard from someone, and I think it was my father. It was about this town in England, like way back when, that woke up one morning and found these hoof prints burnt into their cobble stone streets. Not just their streets, but up lamp posts and their houses and roofs. Walking in a straight line until it reached a field and stopped, didn't continue at all. Who knows what could have done this, but I got to thinking about this story recently and wanted to try my own crack at it. I focused more on the occult and danced around the spy part of our theme. I don't think the story is all that thrilling, but whatever.

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Theme: Occult/Thriller/Spy

Name: In Stone

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Through the fog I did feel a creeping chill

As cats of eight did sit and stare.

I ventured onward safety fleeting still

And of the consequences I did not care.

Those who seek to hurt and cause harm

Are at their deeds this night.

Hurry before I fall for a phantom’s charm

To put their evil deeds right.

Upon my spine I did feel a creeping tingle

As ghostly fingers did make their way.

Upwards and downwards every single

Part of my dear vertebrae.

Upon the field of which I now do tread

I saw a most peculiar sight.

A young child swinging up overhead

On this fog filled moonless night.

This work I do is but by an employer

For if not, I would find other work.

They hire me, a paranormal voyeur

To find where the dark things lurk.

A child was swinging upon the swing

No features for me to see.

For innocent blood it seemed to be calling

Before walking away from me.

The swing still swang on its direction

No rider on which it bore.

The rider moving towards its selection

Of which I was to see no more.

Its walking straight was not imposed

Nothing to mar its way.

Hoof prints on stone the thing embossed

Nothing moving it astray.

A raven did caw its mourning somewhere far

As the creature did continue to trod.

May it find no home in which it can scar

Was my prayer to Holy God.

The town slept as I kept my watching

Jotting down letters in my notes.

I watch the small child as it kept on its walking

With hoof prints that looked like a goats.

It walked over houses, clear over poles

Nothing did stop where it walked.

Leaving the sleepers and leaving their souls

As I ran after and merely gawked.

To a field, did the child finally stop moving

Standing amongst the sheep herds.

I swear to you now I heard the thing crooning

In a voice to which there is no words.

In a moment, the child did get swept away

In a fire to which there was no light.

I can’t fully explain what I saw to this day

And none would believe the tales of my sight.

So I wrote to my employer my final notes

About the events in that town.

About the child whose prints were like goats.

And walked over all who slept sound.

Only one thing that tells my story real.

Hoof prints burnt in stones.

All across the town like a burning seal.

Walking over top their homes.

Apologies!!!

2008-07-07T23:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks but I totally forgot to write a story this week! I got caught up with real life or something. I will replace this post with a story as soon as I have written it. In the mean time here is a poem.

Shadows dance across the pond
the waves of men come and gone
Soon the wind will come again

The man sits by himself
wallowing away in his tin cup
too lost to find his way again

The song has disappeared gone and dead
full of loss and full of dread
He sits there and starts to weep again

His love has left him, his love is gone
full of pain and confusion with a clouded dawn
He wallows in his drink once again

Wallowing in the dirt he cries out loud
his skin breaks as he turns around.
weeping in the night again.

The night has ended, he is still alive
forced to considered why he did not die
the song is gone, the song has faded
only to be replaced by something greater
never to bother him again.

Insight

2008-06-29T11:28:00.000-07:00

Ok folks, sorry about being a day late with my next story, but here it is. I will also be posting another story on here about midweek or so, one that a friend of mine wrote on this theme as well. Its allot different than what I expected from him, so stay tuned, midweek.

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Theme: Substance abuse
Title: Insight
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“The root of the problem is that you’re just too emotional. It’s nothing I would worry about though. We have a pill for this kind of problem.”

It was easily the strangest thing I had ever heard come out of the mouth of a psychologist in my entire life. I didn’t think that anyone could ever have bee labeled as ‘to emotional’ let alone have a pill prescribed to the symptom. The doctor handed me a small bottle, brown and translucent, filled with little green pills.

“We tested these babies on prison inmates as a means of relaxing their behavior, found out that it made them almost well behaved and put a little research into it. These are not on the market yet, but you could be one of the front runners for the public testing of these bad boys.”

“What do they do?”

“They inhibit emotions, those pesky little buggers that can often get in the way of making even the most obvious decisions, and activate the logical center of the brain.”

“So what? I become like some sort of Vulcan or something?”

“Logically speaking, yes, but no. The drug does not completely inhibit emotion, more so transfers the brain’s focus from emotions to logic. You’ll be able to think clearly, eat less, sleep right, and get in shape. These pills could very well be the first step towards a perfect society.”

Who would have thought that a perfect world would have been obtainable if he had just taken a few moments to stop, and think a little more logically? The pills sounded great, and I didn’t mind being a pioneer on this front, so I wrote in my consent and took home my first prescription.

I was perhaps one in a hundred people who had been asked to participate in this first public test of the drug called Como Logiscinodol or as it would later be known as, Logisill. The instructions are as follows:

Take just one pill three times per day, make sure to eat a good meal and wash down with a beverage.
Do not exceed the recommended dosage for any reason whatsoever.
If strange symptoms begin to develop, contact the doctor who prescribed Como Logiscinodol to you and inform them so they may make notes for further production.

That was it, three steps, easy enough to follow, so that night I took a double dose to get the pills working, ate a full dinner, went about my business and then went to bed.

I would be a liar if I said these things did not work, when they so clearly did. I don’t think I can recall a day better than the one after I received my first prescription. I was already feeling like a champion, ready to take on the world. I didn’t wake up with no emotion, I woke up unwilling to allow emotion to get in the way of tackling the day. While at work I was on top of my game, by 10 I had already created a revised work schedule for myself and increased my efficiency by at least 30%. My friends and co-workers were astounded by my sudden increase in concentration and focus. And when they all asked me what it was, I told them the truth. A magical little green pill and things went on in this direction for months onward. I reported back to my doctor everything I was experiencing and he told me that Logisill would soon be entering into the market as an over the counter drug. I suppose that’s where things went wrong, not just for me, but for countless others. I can’t tell you their stories, I can only tell you mine, however mine was like countless others.

The more Logisill became available, the more I was able to get my hands on it. And the problem is that I had set the bar high while I was using it, and I was no longer able to function without the drug. I was like everyone else in the office who had been taking Logisill, and that simply would not do. I would sit at my desk and tell myself over and over again that I could increase my efficiency a little bit at a time if I increased the dosage just a little bit. There would be fewer emotions to get in the way, more time to see the problems clearly and tackle them with bigger and better solutions. And it would seem that I was not the only person who thought this way. In regards to me and the circle I hung out with, we began to perform small crimes. I would get together with others much like myself, uninterested in emotional solutions, wanting to see things logically, find the real answers, and we would indulge ourselves on Logisill. And the more we began to talk about things and the state of the world around us, the more logical it would seem for us to act against those things, to fix them, to improve not just ourselves, but the world. It started out with public artwork, acts of vandalism. I just couldn’t see the logic behind the need for art. Art produced an emotional response, took people away from things that they ought to have been focusing on. So I did away with whatever I could find. This escalated past artwork to various kinds of stores, clothing stores, jewelry stores, entertainment stores. All of these things were designed to make us love ourselves and others around us. They were an emotional solution to problems that needed to be looked at logically, they had to go. More and more cases like this would make their way to the courts, the abuse of the prescription medication Como Logiscinodol cited as the reason behind every single act. It wasn’t long, probably a few months that the issue of placing the product on the illegal substance list worldwide had come into debate. I was sitting at home coming down from the previous night and watching day time talk shows, an episode about people who abused Logisill was on, and they had a psychiatrist on the show.

“The creators of this product seem to have missed out on one very important thing. Logic is not confined by any one singular universal law. Logic changes from person to person. One person may find something illogical in the methods of someone else’s logic. This is very dangerous and can lead to very extreme states of psychosis. We are talking sociological violence beyond anything we have seen before.”

He was a smart man; there was a lot of logic in his argument.

A few more weeks had passed, and the inevitable had happened, it was the only logical thing for the governments to do, at least in their eyes. They had made Logisill and illegal substance, and it took to the streets by storm. Once again, their emotions got in the way and the problem was made worse. If only they had left it alone, the world could have been such a better place. I found myself buying the stuff two or three times a day, and I was once more telling myself that I was not working to my complete optimum. The dry stuff just didn’t do it anymore. I had grown resistant to Logisill, and had started crushing up the pills into powder and snorting them. And when that had not been enough, I started liquefying the pills and injecting them with needles. That way I was able to see everything logically for several hours, never coming down as long as I had the needles with me. People started ignoring me as I walked down the street, muttering about how everything seemed to be illogical and needed to be fixed. Their ignoring me only made things worse, they needed to hear what I was saying. A few weeks later I was arrested on assault with an illegal narcotic. They caught me forcing a high dose injection into a person. That was the only one the caught me doing. They sentenced me to 10 years prison time, which I could shorten if I had agreed to serve rehabilitative time. I chose the most logical course of action. I went to rehabilitation and that very day fled before I could start to suffer withdrawal. In the privacy of an alley, I pulled a pack of pills in a balloon I had swallowed and took probably, seven to eight of them in one sitting. If I was going to get more Logisill, now called Insight, I needed the best and most efficient solution. And it came almost instantly. A man and his family were walking by and I made my move. The man thought this was nothing more than your average stick up, he moved to protect his wife and child, he was wrong. I grabbed him and through him into the brick wall of the alley and smashed his head in until he stopped moving. His wife was screaming, his child crying. I did not care, they were not the problem, nor the solution, I just took the mans money and took off into the alley. This process would repeat itself several more times and each time it became less and less about the money.

It got to a point where I didn’t just need Insight anymore, I depended on it. It became the driving force behind my actions. Every time I killed a person, I was logically enlightening another. One does not just kill for any reason; there is no logic to that. I killed to live, and I killed to teach. I was a road scholar. I would teach anyone I could set my eyes upon. One person, living off their emotions, clouded, imperfect and non functional would sacrifice themselves so that those around them could leave that life of imperfection. I took my lessons on logic from state to state, gathering Insight as I went along, ridding myself of emotions I did not even have anymore. Dependency was not a need, it was a practice, something I was unwilling to let go of, lest I regress to a state of imperfect, illogical response.

I told them the exact story at my trial. Almost word for word, they would not have any of it. My words promoted fear, so they took the emotional course of action and sentenced me to death. It did not make sense to me, it still doesn’t. I killed to live, are we not all capable of such things? They told me I killed for the drugs, they didn’t see. I was alive, they are all dead, I killed to continue living, I killed so I could stay alive, killed to stay on top, is that not what we are all programmed to do?

All I want

2008-06-21T22:18:00.000-07:00

Alright folks, so this is my Revenge/Switch of Roles story. It's a bit of a far stretch for the theme yes but I like it. So by next Saturday Jon will have his story up here with the new theme witch is Substance Abuse. I will have mine up in two weeks time. Till then.

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Theme: Revenge/ Switching Spots
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All I want is to smell a flower…..

Those were the last words on the parchment lendal had found in the dank chapel from a forgotten age. He had been searching for artifacts but instead he found only stories and records, nothing worth any value to a treasure hunter. He looked through the pile of paper he had collected so far, nothing seemed to come after the piece he had just read. Whoever had written it had simply stopped and not bothered to finish. Lendal picked the papers up and placed them in his satchel maybe he could find someone to buy these “treasures”.

As the treasure hunter turned to leave he caught a slight movement at the edge of his vision, a black shadow almost like a wisp of smoking running deeper into the chapel. Lendal looked towards the back on the caved in structure, it was mostly rock and timbers piled onto each other from the massive cave in that had happened some thousand years ago. Nothing of value was here anymore, picked over by the local vagrants by now. There was a small narrow opening near the back, some of the rubble had been taken away to allow access to the sealed off section of the chapel. Lendal had passed over it earlier not thinking the risk was worth it. However now as he stopped in front of the opening again, he could hear the faint sounds of scratches and hard breathing as someone traversed the narrow crawlway.

Lendal got onto his hands and knees as he shone his flashlight into the opening. The yellow light revealed nothing new to him; past the initial ten feet the black inky darkness consumed all, revealing nothing to the naked eye. Securing his satchel in place the young treasure hunter moved forward into the opening, his flashlight shoved out before him. The passage it self was cramped and contorted as it moved this way and that never sure which way it would go until the very last second.

Soon the passage way opened up and Lendal stepped out into a totally different world. This section of the chapel was completely untouched by the cave in. In fact the wall of rubble he had just moved through wasn’t even rubble on this side, it was just a wall. Whoever had cleared the tunnel must have forced their way into this chamber by accident. The chamber Lendal stood in now was filled with pews, perhaps a secondary worship area. Lendal really didn’t care.

Lendal rubbed his hands together and began to look for lost treasure. His blonde hair blew as a light breeze came through the passage way he had just came through and then a rumbling shook the temple violently.

The passageway collapsed.

Lendal’s face dropped as he ran scrambling to the tunnel entrance. He began to curse and shout, screaming for help and divine intervention. He received neither of these things, he was stuck. The tunnel has collapsed in such a way that a large block had fallen and plugged the gap sealing it indefinitely.

Lendal began to hear sharp hissing sounds as he frantically tried to pry the block from the opening. He soon found out that the sounds were coming from him as his frantic little breaths of air. Standing up he calmed himslef and moved to one of the pews in the room to sit down. He thought about his situation for a moment, weighing what he knew and what he didn’t and the overall odds of getting out of the sealed room.

He sat there for a few minutes and then stood up and solidly kicked over a pew and then broke off one of the legs. The leg skidded across the dusty floor coming to rest under one of the other pews in the room. Lendal calmly walked over to the place where it lay and picked it up. He weighed it a few times, swinging it now and then to get a feel for the improvised weapon. Then with a small sigh he rushed forward towards the sealed passage he had previously come through. He swung the pew leg at the unmoving block a few times until the timber gave up and shattered to pieces.

With his final reserve depleted Lendal broke out in tears, he did not know what he would do. He had to no way to survive. He didn’t even like digging around in the dirt for this junk, he just got into it one summer.

Tears welled up in Lendal’s eyes as he fell against the stone wall in frustration; he had come to his end. He would never see the light of day again. He was doomed. That’s when he saw the light. At first he thought it was just his own flashlight but then when he looked again he saw a small candle sitting on a table at the far end of the chapel. Lendal stood up and moved towards the lit object.

The candle was two feet high and colored white, the flame that burned atop of it was a mix of many colors. A constant shift of greens and blues and reds, Lendal had seen candles like this before, the wick was soaked in a special chemical and when the flame burned that part of the wick it would change its color for a short time. Under the candle was a small stack of parchment and an ink pot and quill.

Lendal took up the quill and began to write, he did not know why he began to write but he did. He wrote out what he was doing in this small chapel under the earth, he wrote about what he really wanted to be when he grew up, a florist, he even included his favorite flower a nice little thing called a moon drop blossom. He went on to write about how he had stolen artifacts from a thousand different cultures and even more societies and how he never cared who he sold them to just how much they were willing to pay. Finally he wrote his dying last wish.

It seemed like ages while he was writing his life story, the paper never ran out and he seemed to have more and more to say. Finally when he was finished he placed the papers down and blew out the candle. As he did the chapel began to shake and crumble and the passage way at the front of the chapel opened up bringing the roof down on top of him.

He dodged out of the way as a huge block from the ceiling came crashing down scattering the pages he had been writing into the surrounding room. Lendal rolled as he came down onto the floor crashing headlong into a pew. The pew shattered with the impact and the stone brick that had fallen onto his workspace broke apart sending fragments of stone around the room as well. Lendal lay there covered in rubble. Lendal lay there half buried as a young man moved through the small opening on the other side of the room.

The man did not speak but moved around the room in the dark for several seconds until he reached into his bag and pulled out a flashlight. The light was piercing and penetrating blinding Lendal instantly. The man moved the light around the room several times, once even passing right over Lendal himself however the man did not care or maybe he didn’t notice him in the rubble. Lendal tried to scream for help however the dust had caught in his lungs and made speech impossible. He tried to dig himself out but the rubble pressed down on him mercilessly. The stranger seemed so familiar to Lendal but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The man continued to move through the room, picking up Lendal’s work every now and then to read it. Lendal tried again to scream out for help but still the dust sucked it’s self into Lendal’s lungs and he could not speak. Finally the man was about to leave when Lendal worked his arm free and flung his satchel at the stranger. Lendal missed his mark however he did get the man’s attention, the stranger just moved past Lendal to examine a hole in the back wall that had formed when the ceiling block came crashing down. Lendal was mere feet away from him now. He clawed and wiggled against the rubble all the time trying to scream for the man’s help.

The stranger got on his hands and knees and shone his flashlight into the narrow opening, the light reflected off the ground and wall revealing the man’s face for the first time.

It was Lendal.

The man moved into the opening just as Lendal freed himself. Lendal rushed to the passage way to stop him but in his rush he tripped on the rubble strewn floor and knocked over a pile of rubble that flooded into the passageway sealing it.

Lendal released a long and torturous moan and moved towards the entrance way of the temple. He moved outside noticing for the first time the Latin written on the arched door. “Let ye who enter face thy nightmares and be judged.” Lendal spoke in a revered and hushed tone as picked a stray flower growing on the path and took a deep whiff of it, as he walked back to his waiting jeep.

About the Author Part Deux: Williams Evans

2008-06-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

Williams Evans was born in Northern Saskatchewan in the lovely year of 1985. I was actually born in a place called Nipawin, it's a little hick town that I miss dearly sometimes but I am so glad I don't live there anymore. I am a man of few words unless you are doing something wrong then I will correct you. I wouldn't say I have an over active imagination, I do however have a problem with turning my brain off. It's always thinking and coming up with ideas, however I do not remember these awesome ideas and so the world suffers. If you have not figured it out yet, I think very highly of myself, well at least when it comes to online. I will make many Grammatical errors and a few spelling mistakes however I do not care because I try and fix them when I see them. I tend to be very random and dislike routine so I try and shake things up as often as I can. I am not really sure what I am doing with my life yet, I am sure I will find out eventually but until then I shall pick and choose as I see fit. Now enough of this onto the questions!

Who are your Favorite Authors? Why?
My favorite authors are as follows. Terry Brooks, George R.R. Martin, David Eddings and Guy Gavriel Kay. I enjoy Terry Brooks because he was the first author I read, the Shannara stories are some of my favorites and they got me through High School. George R.R. Martin is the only author I know of that really explores the whole Knight in armor kinda aspect of fantasy and they emplys all the more classical elements of fantasy writting. David Eddings, well with Mr. Eddings I was very hesitant to read anything by him because I figured he was just another Tolkien wirtter. Then I read the Balgariad and I found it pretty comical and enjoyable, who knew. Guy Gavriel Kay was just a random pick because of The Fionavar Tapestry, a Coworker suggest it one day when we were at a bookstore and I picked it up and I was pretty impressed, only three books I have read from Kay but one day i hope to pick up others from him.

Why do you write?
i ask this question to myself all the time. I don't write very often because I need to to kinda strike me and it doesn't happen very often or I am busy when it happens. I guess I write because i have a talent for it and it helps express my ideas.

What is a genre you would like to take a crack at writing?
Well I actually try and write a different Genre every time I sit down to wirte, it doens't always work but I try and shake things up ever now and again.

What is your least loved of all the genre's?
Romance, I hate it so much. Enough said.

What do you hope to get out of this project?
Experience, maybe the writting bug will hit more often if I force some writting out of me.

Last question, where do you think your desire to write comes from in regards to your family?
No Idea. I don't know anyone in my family that writes or has a desire to write. If I had to geuss I would say my grandpa on my mom's side. He kinda seemed like a writer type.

Anything else you would like to say?
Save yourselves the trouble and only read my stories, they are much better then Mr. Elric's here. Just Kidding.*

(*Well no I am not but I had to say that or else he would get angry.)

Stress Mangement

2008-06-14T23:52:00.001-07:00

Slightly different format then we were going for, so Williams will post his stuff after this story post.

Theme: Revenge/ Switching Spots
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Stress Management

It never used to be this way. It never does right? We all enter into the workforce rich with optimism and eagerness and it doesn’t take long until we crack and settle into a mundane, routine based, robot like life. Some of us take longer, and when they crack, it’s even worse. Some of us just put on a façade. These people are the ones who sling around accusations about your lack of cheer being a direct result of “the Mondays.” Well let me tell you something, when you work in a 10’x10’ cubicle, everyday is Monday. Those optimistic people? They are even deader inside then those of us who have embraced our grim circumstance. These people are robots, programmed with the same ideas, and the same lame Jokes.

“Safety meeting! Nobody moves nobody gets hurt!”

Good one Beth, now don’t forget your ear scraping banshee laugh…there it is, lets get together and talk about how you’re the company cut up over the coffee pot at break. The phone rings and like a good little drone I pull myself away from frivolity and enter back into the rumble and tumble world of inks and toners.

“Hello and good afternoon, you have reached Ink Express, adding color to your office needs in a jiffy! My name is Neil Goodwin and I will be your service provider today. Can I start by telling you about this month’s special offer? Pardon me? Are you serious? What in the seven layers of hell is wrong with you? No, this isn’t Pizza Shack, how did you even get the numbers mixed up? They don’t even share the same digits! Ya, you can talk to my manager, you can talk to him all you want, if you can find the bloody number!”

I don’t have a regular phone, I use a head set, probably for the best I would assume. I could have snapped the receiver in half slamming a phone. People are already looking at me, they are just jealous because I did, no, have done four times now, what they have always wanted to do. And from the look on Beth’s face, she may not take to my uncaring attempt at riotous laughter over her less than satisfactory joke at the coffee pot. I don’t know what’s worse, Beth’s jokes, or that inevitable creaking sound that Dan’s office door makes when he opens it. Time stands still for a moment as I imagine myself leaping on top of my desk and wrenching open my jacket to reveal myself strapped with TNT set to blow, laughing in pure pleasure as I see those miserable people scream in horror. I don’t think I could ever do something like that though. I mean I just bought this jacket and its dry clean only and…well you get the idea I am sure.

“Neil, can you and I dialogue for a moment please.”

Or could I?

The floor supervisor is Dan. Dan is an idiot. This guy has just about every book on how a positive attitude can improve your workplace and every book on how to climb just one more wrung in the ladder of success. He is reprimanding me for my fourth outburst, but I am not really paying attention to him, my eyes begin to glaze over and scan over the office. The office of an idiot, decorated for idiots, by idiots. Complete with artwork that no office could be without! Newspaper clipping’s of Dilbert comics with the character names changed to match personalities of people in the office. Tres bien! And let’s not forget the classic motivational poster. A picture of some prat climbing a tricky rock face with the clever caption; “Determination, only those willing to climb life’s obstacles will come out better on the other side.”. I work hard to suppress the bile creeping its way up my throat. I wish Dan would just hurry up and finish this talk, we both know where its going to lead anyway, I was “warned”.

“Here is the number, Lucy will be checking up with me so I know your going. After this, well, if this doesn’t work that is, we will have to let you go Neil. And none of us wants that, wacky tie Tuesday wouldn’t be the same again!”

BOOM.

If only.

“Hello everyone, my name is Neil Goodwin and I am a stress-a-holic. My work is making me come here because I have stress issues. It has been exactly ten minutes since the last time I have been stressed out, because that guy, ya I’m pointing at you ham steak, cut me off in the parking lot!”

Perhaps not the best way to be making friends, but I am not here for friends. And Lucy, the instructor, is burning a hole in my forehead with that glare, and I am pretty sure I can hear a death rattle coming from her chair. Not that I mind the look though, this fiery little strawberry blonde has got my mind running with all kinds of horrible and depraved thoughts. So much so that I miss what she tells me and I just continue on with a story assuming she told me to continue.

“The reason I am here is simple, it’s probably why the rest of you are here, well except for you ham steak, your probably here because of the stress that keg you got puts on your ankles. But I digress. I am here because like many people in today’s workforce, I was stepped on like a door mat in order for someone else’s promotion. One of the guys who was working on a team project with me and a few others. You think you know somebody and then bam! They toss you out under the gravy train so they can hop on. Things just haven’t been the same since that. I blew up at four customers since then, but really, who cares? I work at Ink express, I sell inks and toners! Customers need to be yelled at sometimes.”

“Ok Neil, your activating your stress chakra’s we need you to pull back a little bit with breathing and soothing words to activate those rest chakra’s. Once you have done that you may continue.”

Do you ever wish that you could have an outer body experience? I do, and that moment was one of them. I wish I could have seen the incredulous look on my face that disgust unmasked and unrelenting in its honesty. Stress chakras? Rest chakras? Was this woman for real? I didn’t need breathing exercises; I needed kung fu class or a pistol!

“Are you kidding? I mean, you can’t be bloody serious, because that has got to be the largest load I have ever heard come out of a person’s mouth. Clearly you weren’t listening to me. I said I work on a phone selling ink and toner all day. I deal with idiots all day! And you come at me with that line? Screw you, I am gonna stay pissed until I finish this story and this session and I can go and get my fucking coffee and donut! Now, like I said, that little pin weasel took credit for some of my work and passed his own shoddy work as mine. He got a promotion; I stayed in that dungeon, that cubicle. So ya, I am little stressed. Be honest with yourselves, what one of you has not at some point wanted to come into work with a higher powered fully automatic rifle and start cracking out shots? Anyway, I have to sit there all day, and the image of that hack sitting in my big office, with my big desk and my secretary drives me mad. Come on, be honest, you, Grey Bush, you got stories, come on.”

As the old woman moved past the insult, she stood up and began to explain about how her care worker had been stealing from her or something, I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention to her. I was looking at the strawberry haired seductress across the sharing circle. Thinking of ways to get her to tell the people at work that I was fine enough to stop going to these things, anything to get out of here before the hugging and the crying…anything.

“Ok Maggie, that’s enough, we will take a break and then we can move into the one on one sharing sessions. Neil, I want to talk to you.”

I have been hearing that a lot lately. At least she said talk, and not dialogue.

“Look Neil, I know this your first day and all, but,” Lucy took a drag of a cigarette, a break time staple. “Those kinds of outbursts can’t happen anymore, and stop calling Walter Ham Steak. He is a stress eater.”

“I don’t care what he is, he ain’t the only one with problems, and he is handling them like a schmuck! You’re like a therapist or something, bust out the punching clowns or something. This isn’t stress, its rage, pure and unbridled. Let me hit one of those rebounding clowns or something.”

I hadn’t seen it then, so caught up in my own self pity, the faintest smirk playing across her face. She leaned in a little bit, not enough to make it look like anything more then someone lecturing another however.

“You really think your life would be better if you had that promotion?”

“Yes.”

“What about your friend?”

“Forget him; his circumstances are far from remembering. He’s not my friend anyway.”

“What if I told you I could take his life for you?”

“I would say that you’re probably the worst stress counselor I have ever met, but let’s hear what you got to say.”

“Not a whole lot else to say, I will take away his life, and all I want from you…is you.”

He dies, and I get sex? Win win baby! Did I accept, yes I did, and who wouldn’t. You morally outstanding people need not apply.

“Good, meet me for dinner, late night shall we? Say tonight at the Flamenco Lounge?”

I was gonna get some tonight?

“Sure, what time?”

“Midnight.”

With that, I ducked out of the rest of the session, I didn’t think there would be any point in staying for the one on one’s since I had pretty well insulted everyone at the meeting. I was pretty sure that if any of them were going to hug me, it would be with closed hands around my throat. No, I would go home, shower up, clean up and later on, bone up.

Midnight proved to be rather uneventful, filled mostly with silence and eating. It was not the crass dinner conversation I was hoping it would be before we finally forwent with dinner and just went to either her place or mine for a night of commemorating the death of that tripe that skewered me. No, it wasn’t actually until about quarter to three in the morning that a word was spoken, and when it was, it was even further away from what I had in mind.

“So I took your friends life.”

“What? How? It was only a few hours before we met up with one another after the meeting. I thought stuff like that took, well, planning and time. Things like that.”

She reached into her purse and put a flask on the table. This was perhaps the most macabre looking flask I had ever seen. The stopper was a skull, a horse skull with skin stretched over it and a thousand little tentacles hanging out of the mouth, so life like in their design. The flask itself was a series of bones, forming a shape confined within the shape of the flask. The whole thing looked like it had dank grey skin pulled onto the embossed images, stretched to form fit and loose and hanging off certain places.

“Um…ya…I am all for like freedom of religion, but I ain’t down with vampirism or goth stuff.”

“Its not vampirism, well it is a bit. This flask has your friend’s life in it. You need merely to drink from it and take the life of your friend.”

“I just drink it and he dies?”

“I didn’t say he dies; I said you take his life. His life will be your life, and your life will be his. Think about it, you can rid yourself of all that anger, you can get that promotion you deserve, and, I agree, you do deserve it. After all, you put in the work. That’s why I want to help you. You deserve the cars; you deserve the pay, the luxury, and the girls on the side.”

I liked that last part. Maybe I can put off blowing up the company. I reached out for the flask but Lucy interrupted me.

“We have one more thing to attend to before you can have this flask. You must be mine first.”

“What, here?”

“Yes.”

She reached into her purse again, she was prepared it would seem. But she didn’t pull out what I thought she was going to. Instead it was a stack of papers and a pen.

“Your soul, I want it.”

“What are you the devil or something?”

“Neil!” She laughed, it was musical. “Come on, we both know the devil doesn’t exist, just consider this all a part of the game.”

Games…did you hear how she said it? I like games, I didn’t need to read it, and I just signed it.

“So did you draw this up?”

Her reply cut my laughter short, but I continued laughing thinking it was a joke.

“William Zanzinger’s lawyer. Well, that about wraps up what we have to do here.”

She got up and slung her purse around her shoulder and looked at me from her shoulder and gave me a wink. “Give me a ring when you come into some money, we’ll do this again, maybe some dessert next time.”

I like dessert.

It was three in the morning by the time I got outside of the place and onto the street. The flask felt wet and clammy against the palm of my hand. It all seemed like a big joke; maybe she was setting me up into her program, like an explorative exercise. But still, I couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding that flask practically leaked! But I had already made the deal; there was no turning back now. I wanted it all; I wanted the money, the respect, the power, and the women. I forcefully removed the stopper from the flask, expecting some strange event to take place, but nothing happened, I could only hear the faint sloshing of the liquid inside, and I could only see a gentle steam rising out from the flask.

“Bottoms up.”

I poured the flask back into my mouth and the piping hot liquid inside reached down my throat like a tentacle. It drank like warm sake; it may even have been just that. The steam reached down my throat, carrying the flavor with it, the drink itself following shortly after, carrying even more flavor with it. Every sip was the same, tendrils of steam and liquor. When I was done, it was just me, the night sky, and an empty flask, my watch telling me it was 3:01. I guess there wasn’t much in the flask. I knew it had to be some kind of prank; she would get an ear full at group tomorrow night!

The again, maybe I would take a personal day.

Wind pulling through my hair, the top down on a cherry red Porsche and people looking at me with more envy on that one street then my entire life! That woman, she wasn’t lying! I don’t know how she did it, but I was taking a personal day, driving around with a couple tennis instructors, and that guy, was sitting in what used to be my cubicle forging onward through a slew of calls from idiots. Dan was on quick dial; maybe I would give him a ring.

“Hey Dan! It’s Neil.”

“Ah Neil, enjoying the sun I hope, you deserve a little time to yourself. What can I do for you today sir?”

“It’s about Jared Dan, I don’t know, he has seemed kind of down lately.”

“I haven’t noticed anything sir, but you were both in the same marketing project, so maybe you can see something I can’t, what should we do?”

“Send him in to see the office counselor, tell her to get him on with working on depression. I think he might still be down over the promotion. Let him know that whenever he needs me, I’m there for him. Any time, I can take him out on the boat for a bit.”

“Sir, you are far too generous, it’s good to have you looking out for things up there.”

“Dan, it’s what I am there for, you taker her easy good buddy, talk to you later.” Hanging up the phone I turned to the girls, standing up and letting the wind in through their hair. “Ladies, let’s hit up a bar!”

I love hearing them scream!

The bar was classy, a lot more classy than anything I had ever gone to before, suppose it could have been middle class, if anyone asked, we were gonna be slumming it up that day. I was going to spread around my wealth in that bar, a drink for you sir, your welcome, how about you mam, don’t mention it. Hey you, lonely fella, how about a stiff one, you look like you could use it.

“Hey, thanks pal, aren’t you Neil Goodwin? Ya…you are, you just got promoted at Ink Express a couple weeks back there.”

“You work there?”

“I did.”

Did?

“You did? As in you don’t anymore? Did you quit?”

“You’re kidding me right? You laid off like tones of us.”

“Ya, good one, enjoy your drink man.”

“It’s not a joke, you did, how can you be so cool about it?”

“Something like that doesn’t go unnoticed pal, your making up stories. Now I bought you a drink, stop trying to make stories. Ladies, lets go play some pool.”

I had my back turned, I didn’t see the man on his feet, pointing his finger at me and shouting his accusations.

“You prick! You gave us extra severance pay to keep it quiet! Didn’t want to make a scene! Well I haven’t seen any of that extra severance! I got a family to take care of man! You made promises.”

“Buddy, enjoy the drink, Ladies, lets get out of here.” I started making for the door. “Man, you need to stop putting your problems on me, if you got laid off, you weren’t meeting the bill, maybe at your next job you won’t put out such a bad performance. Give them my name as a reference, I will hook you up!”

The girls laughed and gave me praise; spoke about how generous I was for humbly putting up with that “ugly old man’s” abuses. We made our way into the parking lot and towards the car. I could hear the door to the bar kick open and angry footsteps coming up on me. The girls screamed when we turned around.

I hate when they scream.

A gun barrel in my face.

“Gimme your money man.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking your money! You won’t gimme what you promised, so I am gonna take it! Now empty the wallet.”

Turning my back on him was probably the wrong thing to do.

“Whatever man, you’re gonna stick me up in broad daylight, go home.”

My head swam, the vision in front of me turned to white and I could hear the girls screaming, he must have cold clocked me from behind. All I can remember is uttering out a few choice curse words and then I ended up…well here, talking to you, relaying every grueling second of my life up until this point. I didn’t think you existed, you said you didn’t, we shared a laugh about it. I suppose the jokes on me. I don’t know what is worse, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, or these sessions with you. Sitting here and pouring over every single detail of my life, millennia at a time, watching every mistake, every step closer to you and to this place. But you said you weren’t real…this place shouldn’t be real, this shouldn’t even be happening right now. There wasn’t supposed to be any consequences. I was supposed to get to live the high life, I didn’t get to live. You promised me dessert! I suppose it’s a little to late for all of that now, speculation now. And I have all the time in existence to speculate on it all now. Here with you.

Boom.

If Only.

About the Author Part One: Jonathan Elric

2008-06-10T00:06:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Elric was born in 1985 in Edmonton Alberta Canada. He has taken great pride in the fact that he grew up with what some might call an over active imagination. As a child it didn't take much for him to become inspired and transport himself to worlds that no one could ever set foot into unless he invited them into it. Perhaps his family took notice of this and when he was but a small boy he was given the complete Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. It was a relationship that would never cease to end, it was with these books, and a few movies that his love for Fantasy, Fiction, Fairy Tales, and pretty well anything not set within reality was born. Growing up he was like any other person, perhaps a late bloomer, but always within the confines of his imaginations, perhaps sometimes to his own detriment. He was however able to escape from some of the things he did not care for into worlds he did. He showed a love for creative writing though perhaps took some time to properly transfer what he could see in his head into words on paper. All he knew is that he loved doing it. In Junior High he was introduced to one of the largest inspirations, J.R.R. Tolkien and his books. He became an avid fan and read as much as he could get his hands on. As he continued he made more friends who would introduce him to other authors, like David Eddings, and Neil Gaiman (Gaiman becoming the next largest influence on him.). He met William Evans when he was a young man, in his first year of Junior High and the two have been close friends ever since. Jon is now going to be entering into the Ministry field with the Navigators, and wherever else God might take him.

Who are your Favorite Authors? Why?
I can name you five authors who have impacted me the most. First is C.S. Lewis, I believe his novels where the first ones I received as a gift when I started reading as a small child. I believe I received them from one of my aunts who had an equal love for the fantasy genre. The whole idea of being transported to a world filled with the creations of Fairy Tales is something that still keeps my head in the clouds. J.R.R Tolkien is another great author, I love all of his books and the work he put into them. He inspired me to start investigating my character histories and the history of the worlds I put them in. David Eddings and his series the Belgariad, introduced to me by a friend I made in high school, is a huge inspiration in regards to creating dialog that is rich and creating the rich characters and their attitudes to bring about that dialog. His characters are so well thought out and so well fleshed out during the story you could pick them out off the street if they ever existed. You would know them like you would your best friend. R.A. Salvatore is another writer who has inspired me in terms of writing an action sequence, although he is not one of my top choices, he writes a good fight! Last, and certainly not least, one of my all time favorite authors, and yes I realize its odd to be putting up at the top of my list with other Christian authors when he is not, Neil Gaiman. This author is just so amazingly skilled as a writer, there is not a story of his that I do not like. He writes fairy tales, and horrors in the classic style, but keeps it modern as well. I am hooked to every word he writes and he even inspired me to write my small stories about the girls of the seasons, which I will link up in here one day I am sure.

Why do you write?
Easy question really, I write to escape. I used to use my imagination and my dreams as a means of shielding myself from others while growing up, and this was wrong. Its now a means of getting away from a world I do not feel well placed in, born in the wrong time one could say I suppose. Its a means of writing about things I might be facing in my own life and working them out in conversations that are not actually taking place. Its also a means of creating our world into a fairy tale, keeping that last little piece of wonder in it. Science cannot explain my writing, scientists will not bother to try and uncover my writing and explain it either, its just another mystery that I can keep in the realm of the fantastic and not have it dissected and explained.

What is a genre you would like to take a crack at writing?
Ha, I think most of my work can fall under so many different genre's, fairy tales, fantasy, epic, western, romance. I have never done anything sci-fi, its never really interested me, but I suppose if I could take the genre and make it work for me it might be alright, that or a Mystery, like a hard boiled detective novel. Maybe you will see something like that later on in this blog.

What is your least loved of all the genre's?
Science Fiction, and possibly horror, new horror anyway. I won't say I hate science fiction, because there is a lot of good sci-fi that I like out there, however I find it much to cold and often very depressing! I like hiking and being in nature, and often sci-fi takes place in cold space and even colder looking metal cages called ships. But I suppose I could make it work for myself right? Next would have to be horror, new horror though. I like classical horror, like Sleepy Hollow, or Dracula, or old ghost stories. Brotherhood of the wolf, a movie, had a very classical feel to it. The old fairy tales are rather disturbing as well. In grade 12 english we were forced to watch this movie called Wulthering Heights, and everyone hated it, but it seemed to be a kind of ghost story near the end, and there were parts of the story I really liked!

What do you hope to get out of this project?
Honestly, I just want to write, and I want a reason to write, and I want to talk to like minded people and read their work, and get involved in the writing community. Whatever else comes of it is a bonus!

Last question, where do you think your desire to write comes from in regards to your family?
Immediately I will say my mother and my father. I have read some of the poems and short stories my Dad wrote and they are just incredible! I love his writing, though I don't think I ever told him this. He wrote a story for my step mom when they got married and its really beautiful. I thought so when he first wrote it, I still think so now. I also read this story about a pet bird he had when during his first marriage. I guess a gas stove was left on in their apartment and the bird died or something. I read it a while ago, but I liked reading it, I know that much. And I have also read some of my mothers writing, some things she doesn't know I have read, I peaked in her journal, sorry ma, and she has a really great writing style. Even her blog, www.rainingsheep.com is a great read. A very nice narrative style to her writing. I wonder if they know how good they are. My step mom is an excellent story teller, she used to sit with my little brother and I when we were little and sing to us or tell us stories and I always loved that! She went on to run her own day care and day camp, so story telling was always a natural for her, and she could sign as well, so I believe my desire for story telling comes from her as well.

Anything else you would like to say?
Not really, God bless you all, and praise to you God for making this child with an over active imagination!