Before they go …
Love Boat but with Zombies. Maybe use Most Dangerous Game, a la Fantasy Island.
Positive Images to build reality, like all the Daria dystopian fiction led to the pandemic. One author wants to create horror lit but is persecuted by those who insist on positivity.
Storymatic #5
Story Structure: Shake It Up
Stories often work by addition: a stable environment exists only until something is added to it. Characters then act to address whatever is shaking up their world – in other words, they change.
Character Cards: violinist … stay-at-home parent
Object Card: handcuffs
Relative Minor
NOTE: Every major scale has a relative minor that uses its same key signature. The relative minor is located 1½ steps down from the relative major. For example, the relative minor of C major is A minor.
Carl Yestramski had gotten used to the day-to-day patterns of his current existence. Oh, sure, he remembered the chaos of his early adulthood. Others might refer to it as late adolescence, those years between 15 and 18, but by the time he was old enough to vote, he had already become emancipated from his parents (who always seemed to mean well and who pushed him to want better of himself but never seemed to emerge from there alcoholic stupor long enough to properly parent their genius teen) and was living on his own. A studio apartment in Manhattan, within walking distance to everywhere and right in the midst of several Broadway company theaters. He had had one Big Dream back then: to play first chair violin in the orchestra pit of the Gershwin theatre. Even thinking back on that dream, his heart leapt at the thought of the Gershwin brothers and all their music had contributed to not just American Society but to his own personal belief system. They say that musicians channel the voice of God in their creations, but to Carl the Gershwin brothers – particularly Ira – quite possibly was God himself.
Life back then had been chaotic, he mused: violin practice three hours a day, schoolwork seven hours a day, homework and more practice in the evenings, somehow maintaining friendships and even a relationship or two. When he had moved out, he had to add a job into all of that as well. But it was worth it, he still believed that. So life had been rather chaotic and yet he had done it and, he thought, he had done it rather well.
Now, though, he was 21 years old and life had become more routine. He no longer lived in Manhattan but had bought a house in the suburbs of Queens. He no longer was right in the middle of the fervent grandeur of Broadway but was still less than an hour away, and it was an hour that he joyously drove four nights a week. No, he had not yet worked his way into the “Pits of the Gersh” as he laughingly referred to it, but he played consistently in a third rate theater off off Broadway and was generally well respected in the second chair. The median age for an orchestra player was 33, and he had resigned himself to several more years of dedicated practice before he would be able to get to the Gershwin and knew that he would someday do it. He had to do it.
So a house in the suburbs it was, and he was very fond of it. He rose every day at 4:30 a.m. and descended into the basement where he had created what amounted to a sound studio for himself. At the very least, the sound of the first two hours of his practice each day would not awaken his wife and four-year old daughter, and this was time that he could not only practice but also meditate. Gathering his thoughts for whatever lay ahead end and the future he envisioned.
At 7:00 o’clock, an alarm would ring in his bedroom and his wife would get up and awaken their daughter. The two would get dressed and talk and laugh as Carl carefully returned his violin to its case and went up to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. a hard boiled egg and hot tea for his wife and oatmeal with a dollop of honey for his daughter. Afterwards, his wife, Cheri, would kiss him and Angelica, wish them a happy day, and head to the city for her job as a legal assistant. He and his daughter would play for thirty minutes, watch a half hour of educational TV, read a book together and talk about the lesson being taught, and then have a half-hour of “meditative play” (which really was just time for Carl to have time to himself while Angelica played in her room). Next, at least an hour of music immersion – what was sometimes called the “Suzuki Method” – where he and his daughter would alternate listening to music and “playing” with their violins. Playing in the truest sense of play, just running the bows across the strings and plucking the strings to make noises – Angelica acquiring musical skills as easily as she did language, Or at least that was the idea. They had been doing this her entire life and she was sometimes focused and sometimes silly, he just never knew. After their hour of music immersion, lunch and a nap and then “whatever goes” time which might involve anything. His wife would come home and he would have dinner prepared; they would spend quality time together as a family, and then everyone would go to bed. Pretty much the same thing every day, and that was how he liked it.
They ate their breakfast. Cheri went to work. Carl and Angelica played with blocks and dolls and then watched Little Einsteins. They read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom twice and watched a video of the book on YouTube. “OK, Angelica. What’s next?” he asked, guiding her to remembering their routine.
“Pay,” she answered.
“Play,” he repeated, emphasizing the L.
“Play,” she said again, correctly.
He smiled and tousled the curls in her hair. “Attagirl,” he said. “Off you go.” And she scampered off to her room.
He took a look around the house to see if anything needed to be straightened, cleaned, folded, or put away. Not today, he thought to himself; everything looks good. With that, he sat in his living room chair and returned his attention to a piece of music he had been mulling over for the past several day. he had long since past the point where notes on Staffs we’re simply notes, marked down to be played in a certain way. Although he had composed his own music on occasion, only recently had he begun to consider the intricacies of decisions made by the musical masters. Asking himself, why allegro here? How would pianissimo benefit this passage? Why did the master creator not use staccato here and here when it would make the music so much better? And on and on – his own personal mental playground.
He was taken out of his reverie by the sudden appearance at his elbow of his four-year old in completely different clothes than she had been wearing. “Time for music,” she announced, and he saw on the clock that she was right.
“Did you change clothes all by yourself? What are you wearing?”
“Tec viclothes,” she answered nonsensically and then insisted: “Music now.”
“Right you are, kiddo. Let’s go.”
She held on to his wrist as they descended into the basement, and reaching the “musicaruem” as she called it, she requested “Toccata et Fugue in D minor?”
He always laughed at times like this, not at her but at her cleverness. This little girl who could not pronounce her L’s and R’s in the middle of words could easily repeat the names of famous classical pieces. “Isn’t that from Disney?” he asked, even though he knew it was. She nodded, her curls bouncing, and he said, “Alexa, play Toccata et Fugue in D minor.” The digital home assistant repeated his request, including the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis catalogue number, 565, and then launched into the opening toccata organ music.
As they always did, he and Angelica sat cross-legged on the floor across from each other and held hands, swaying back and forth as the music inspired them. At one point, during the tremulous glissato of the 87th measure, she took her hands from his (probably to sway in the air, he mused) and then, as the treble clef slowed and the bass clef hastened in the 97th and 98th, he felt metal encircle both wrists and heard a distinctive click-CLICK.
He snapped his eyes open and he stared at his wrists, which were now adorned with pink fur-lined handcuffs. The handcuffs he and his wife sometimes played with before Angelica learned to crawl. Handcuffs that frankly they had not used in far too long, but he was certainly using them now.
“You unna rest,” his daughter informed him.
Part of him wanted to react harshly, perhaps even yell, but he quickly put himself in check. He realized that his response was much more embarrassment of his situation than anger at his daughter. When had she been in his room? It didn’t matter. He knew that, kept saying it over and over to himself. And then he plastered a smile on his face for his daughter’s benefit. “Oh no,” he said. “What am I under arrest for?”
“You wobbed the bank.”
Just play along, he told himself. “I never thought you’d catch me, Police Office Angelica.”
“Teccive Angelica,” she corrected him. “You stay here,” she ordered him, pointing her index finger in his face, and she dashed for the stairs.
“No, honey, you have to unlock these and let me out.” His voice was sterner than usual but he could not let her go upstairs unsupervised. Who knew what sort of trouble a four-year old could get herself into?
“No, you in pizzin.”
“Prison,” he corrected her.
“Prism,” she said, and he decided he had other things to focus on.
“Go get the keys, honey.” She climbed to the top of the stairs and he repeated himself as she reached for the knob: “Get the keys, Angelica.”
She turned back to him. “OK, daddy.” She opened the door and step through, returning quickly and ascending the stairs with her hand out. “Here you go.”
His car keys, of course. “No, I need the ones for these handcuffs, honey. Where are those keys?”
Her face squinched up as she tried to remember. “I don’t know,” she finally said.
Come to think of it, neither did he. If they had not actually been in the handcuff lock when Angelica had found them, then he was not sure where they might be.
“Time to play your violin,” Carl told his daughter, unsure of exactly how to proceed. His hands were cuffed in front of him, at least, and he was not tethered around a pole or anything. He pulled at the cuffs and twisted his hands in opposite directions, but that didn’t work. They wouldn’t be much of a set of handcuffs if that had worked, he reasoned. He looked around the basement, hoping to see a screwdriver or anything that might be used to pry open one of the links that joined the cuffs together, but this was not a workshop room for repairs. This was his music room, and there were no such tools to be had down here.
Angelica started pulling the bow across the strings, just creating sound. He recognized a few passages that almost imitated the Bach piece they had been listening to. And then, she played the beginning of a song they had listened to a few days earlier. “What’s that?” he asked, and she responded instantly:
“Toven Fidelio.”
Of course, the fates conspired with him or against him. One of only two operas written by Ludwig von Beethoven. An opera about a woman who rescues her husband from death in a political prison.
“OK, God, I hear you. I get it, I get it.” He picked up his phone and pressed Cheri’s number.
She picked up on the second ring. “Hey there, what’s up?”
Noting to it but to do it, he said to himself and took a deep breath. “Hey there, Cher, any chance you could come home and join us for lunch today? The funniest thing has happened …”
THOUGHTS BEFORE: OK, I like this one. So this parent — probably a father, just to go against the cliche, takes care of his young children and practices his music. At nights, he plays in the local Symphony Orchestra at the Playhouse while his wife stays with the children. And so one day, as he is getting ready for his day to day routine, his daughter – again, to break up routine – asks if he wants to play cops and robbers, and he says sure When he is not paying attention, she puts fur-lined handcuffs around his wrist and around a pole that is for some reason in his house. And she runs away laughing, and he is yelling at her to let him go, but she thinks it is all a game. He is trying to remember where the key is or if there is some secret to getting the handcuffs off, when he hears his little girl shriek from another room in the house. And then quiet. His phone is out of reach, and he is handcuffed, and he does not know what is going on. Yup, a lot of room here for creative and interesting thoughts. I am ready to write.
THOUGHTS AFTER: I really like the way this story turned out! It was fun to write, and I enjoyed doing the research into classical music. There are several places in the story where it runs a little long, a little too descriptive, but I almost like that in order to weigh the story down a bit. After all, this is someone with a day-to-day routine that is going to be disrupted, so I think I needed to add the weight of the boring routine. I was originally going to call this story “Virtuoso Performance” after looking at some domain specific vocabulary for violinists, but then I liked “Relative Minor” even better. I thought I was very clever for including the information at the beginning that the relative minor of C major was A minor and then naming the characters Carl and Cheri and Angelica.
Anyhow, this is my first story that actually exists as a finished short story and is not the start of a novel or something else. And there is certainly room for improvement, but I think it is a worthy first draft. Word Count = 1977 of my 1000-word goal. Cool 😊
Story Structure: XYZ (X is in a conflict with Y about Z)
X = two character cards
Y = one character card
Z = source of their conflict
Character Cards: future president … stargazer … preservationist
Object Card: debt
A Modern Proposal
(don’t read this – it’s awful … feel free to read the notes afterwards, though.)
quote Jerome I want you to give me an updated list of contributors the last six weeks, End Quote Reginald roundtree commanded. Jerome, who had not been sitting, hurried into action. Reginald was sure that if he could have literally left at the opportunity that he would have. What’s this about? His wife Donna asked. Donna was a good woman, and Reginald had always been very proud of her. Beautiful and statuesque, distant yet approachable, and erudite, and yet a woman of the people. He had married her as much for her potential political power As for her looks and personality. It did not hurt, of course, but her father came from big money. There’s some sort of inconsistency, Reginald replied. I wanna be sure that everything is showing on the books correctly. We were too close to winning this election to have some surprise present itself at this point. they were inside reginalds a state, working for home as it were. This had been one of his campaign promises, that he was a man he was a president at home as much as he would be in the White House, in the past 17 months had seen a variety of news crews, interviewers, personality profiles, poparazzi, etc in his house round the clock seeking to capture every bit of information they could about the roundtree family. And that was good, because Reginald had nothing to hide. He was legitimately a good band doing a good thing for the good of the people. And the people loved him, and he felt certain that his election was assured. But as you said, no sudden surprises. Red Jerome re entered his office two moments later with a folder. He had taken the time not only to print that day that he had been asked to but to make it a presentable, formal document. This was the kind of service that Reginald treasured most in Jerome. The young man was a hard worker, devoted to the roundtree family and their causes, and could be relied on to perform any service that needed done. “thank you, Jerome. “a pleasure, Sir, Jerome replied. Reginald sat behind his large mahogany desk. This was a new acquisition, something he had purchased shortly before announcing his intent to run for the United States government office. He and his advisors had constructed this image of him carefully, and despite the fact he was working from home, they decided that it would not do to have people see Reginald with papers splayed out across the dining room table in his normal haphazard manner. As such, they had purchased this task add an appropriate managerial chair, and outfitted his office with law Toms and classic literature, the exact right kind of soft lighting they said that this was his comfort zone, thinking and studying and working and coming up with plans for a better tomorrow. Donna did not rise from her seat on the couch against the wall, merely looked over at him as he perused the reports did you find what you were looking for? She asked he looked up at her and back at the papers and then back up at her again. Do you know how holly Madison? Dolley Madison? She asked no, he said, holly with an H. Donna shook her head no, why? She’s made the highest contribution she’s allowed to make. Well that’s good, his wife replied. Is that a problem? He did not answer her right away, instead looking to some other papers he had on the corner of his desk. Generally speaking, when someone contributes the most money they possibly can, they are a celebrity or someone in the financial market or someone who is at least known. But I’ve never heard of this holly Madison before, look period End Quote we showed her the list of names only one of which had a star next to it. All these others are known to us but I was having my analysts verify identities for all of the contributors and End Quote “why would you do that? End Quote his wife asked. Well, two reasons. First we always want to make sure that I’m only comes from legal sources. Second, if these are our people but we want to be sure that we are doing our business with them. And everybody else checks out, except for holly Madison. So it’s not a business person his wife confirmed maybe somebody went to school with? An old girlfriend she teased him. He was serious
THOUGHTS BEFORE: This is another one of those times that I’m just not massively moved by the card selection. I’m trying to hold true to the experience, knowing that I might just as likely provide such an unreachable topic to my students and require them to write. I guess the most obvious way, and probably the way that I’m going to choose, is to have a preservationist stargazer who approaches a presidential candidate to create a proposal for some project that will cause massive national debt. Or something. Who knows? My method of writing is to put characters on the page and let them talk it out. Let’s see what happens.
THOUGHTS AFTER: Well, this is as good a time as any to discuss the concept of Writing Practice. Do you see those 761 words up there? The ones that I could not even be bothered to break into paragraphs and edit for voice-to-text errors? (I hope you did not try to read that mess: I did warn you in the beginning not to.) Well, that is still Writing Practice. Obviously, I never even got to the preservationist stargazer. And I just got to the point where I knew it was not going anywhere that I wanted it to go or could reasonably work with, and so I abandoned it. However, I abandoned it after 761 words. And Writing Practice is valuable, to be honest. As much as those 761 words will never go anywhere, it did allow me to brainstorm and refocus my thoughts somewhat. Were I to redo this story, this is the plot that I would pursue: There is a presidential candidate who has run his campaign based on preservationist ideas. Save the environment, cut down on fossil fuels, etc. And frankly it is not going well. He is at the bottom of the polls and the newscasters actually report their surprise that he has not dropped out of the race yet. He is surprised when he gets a sizable donation from an unknown source, and his team of advisors eventually allows this donator to have an audience with the presidential candidate. During which, after a series of things not being said and having to be inferred, he realizes that the contributor is actually someone from the future and is in fact from a different planet whose sole purpose is to ensure that he does become president because without his leadership, the planet was going to fall into almost immediate destruction and only those souls who could be evacuated from the planet survived. (I know this was a terrible run-on.) This moment that the future person comes back to is determined to be the pivot point where he either drops out of the race or continues on and suddenly gets a massive upsurge in popularity. Actually – damn it – I kind of like the idea now.
Classic Storymatic
Gold cards: person with very poor memory … person who needs to remove a tattoo right away
Copper cards: glue … phone call at 3 a.m.
***
The Tattoo
She didn’t understand at first what had awoken her. The feeling of something being … not quite right. Not of something being wrong, no, but just some niggling dissonance in the back of her skull. A chirp, a tweet, a jangle. She decided to ignore it, turned her head without even opening her eyes and let her downy pillow cushion her head again. She willingly subsumed herself in the darkness of her dreamscape.
An unknown time later, she was roused again. It might have been seconds or minutes or hours; she neither knew nor cared. This time, however, her waking occurred Because of a persistent flutter on her ear drums, a gentle buzzing That was almost silent and yet somehow said, Sorry to bother you, but if you’re listening maybe you could pick up?
Damn phone, she thought. Who’s calling me at this time of the night? She reached beneath her pillow and retrieved the phone, which lit up as soon as it sensed her movement. Too bright. She had not bothered to open her eyes yet, and this burning luminescence convinced her not to bother. She pressed where she knew the answer button would be. “This better be important,” she slurred.
A frenzied voice hissed at her. “Toni, thank God. Get over here! Can you get over here?”
“Fuck, Gena, I’m sleeping. What the hell?”
“I need you!” Despite her intensity, her sister was not speaking loudly, not at all. Her voice was a whisper, but desperation frayed the edges. “I need you, Toni. Please?” And her whisper was suddenly tinged with tears.
This was not the first time Gena had called her panicked about something, but Gena also did not make a practice of middle-of-the-night calls. “Yeah, hang on,” she moaned as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. she opened her eyes and let them adjust to the brightness. 3:02 a.m. Seriously, what the fuck? “You at home?”
”Y-yes.”
“And this can’t wait until morning?”
And now the crying became louder. Gena was obviously still trying to suppress it, but her wordless response was marked by jagged catches of breath and short suffocated sobs.
“Okay, Gena, I’m on my way,” she promised. And then her sister did say one last word in her intense hiss-whisper:
“Hurry!”
***
Toni traditionally slept in shorts and a T-shirt, so she slipped on some tennis shoes and – after thinking for a moment – whisked off her shirt and pulled on a sports bra, then pulled the shirt back on and headed out her apartment door. Gena lived 30 minutes away during the day, but she felt sure the ride would only take 10 minutes at this time of night.
She wished she had more details to know what was wrong. Knowing her sister’s history with men. Toni understood that her sister might need nothing more than a shoulder to cry on, but there was every chance she might need something more substantial. Toni did not have a firearm, so the can of mace that was attached to her key ring would have to do, she thought as she went down her staircase. Verifying that the parking lot was empty, she strode over to her Mazda, popped the lock, opened the door, and slid in. So far so good.
The streets, as expected, were mostly deserted. The few businesses that were open 24 hours had the straggler traffic that always accompanied such establishments, but nothing out of the ordinary was going on. Traffic lights were on her side, and she made the journey as fast as she had expected. The dashboard clock showed 3:17 when she turned down the street that led to her sister’s house, and because she did not have enough details to plan her strategy she thought it best to cut her lights off when she was still two houses away. She slid silently in front of the house next door and cut her motor, then exited her car without slamming the door. Stealth mode, she thought.
The fact that her sister had a house while she lived in an apartment had always struck Toni as ironic. People with houses have their shit together. They were able to do their own home repairs and take care of the lawn, and so on. Those things were definitely in Toni’s wheelhouse but not at all in her sister’s. Gena relied on friends and occasionally boyfriends and – if Toni’s suspicions were right – an occasional girlfriend or two to help her with life decisions and situations that arose.
Frankly, this was one of the reasons she was not terribly surprised to get a call from her sister in the middle of the night seeking help. Still, it never hurt to be cautious, and so the stealthier walk up seemed like a good idea. However, there was nothing noticeable at the house: no loud noises, no blaring music, only one dim light burning in what she knew was her sister’s bedroom.
Thinking again, I wish I had asked for some details, she stepped onto her sister’s front porch, used her own key to unlock the door, and stepped inside as quietly as possible. Her sister was crying, she could hear. Not terrified crying, as she’d feared something terrible was happening, but just the quiet crying of someone who had been crying for quite a while now and had almost run out of tears.
Toni walked to the open bedroom door and looked inside. Her sister was sitting cross-legged on the floor on the side of her bed nearest to the bathroom with her knees up and her arms around them, facing away from Toni. No one else was in the room, and the room was not in any sort of disarray. So there had not been a fight as there had been the last time she had come over. But her sister was obviously in a real state, and so Toni quietly said “Hey, Gena, I’m here. What’s up?”
Her sister Gena gasped out one last, breath-catching cry, reached behind her to pull herself up onto the bed, and turned toward Toni. “Thank you for coming over so late.” The relief in her voice was evident. “I hate to be such a bother. I know you hate this sort of thing. But I didn’t know who else to call.”
Toni was taken aback. “What did you do?” she asked.
“I don’t remember, but I don’t know what to do. I can’t very well go to work like this.”
Right there, on her forehead, a little off-center, was a word tattooed into her flesh. BITCH, in big capital letters. Not a professional job by any means, just someone with a needle and ink and time. Toni looked at her sister carefully. “Who did this to you?”
Gena’s sobs started again, “I — I have no idea!”
Toni went over and sat beside her sister, held her hand, and looked her right in the eyes. Gena did not look away; she knew and trusted her sister very much and even though she was embarrassed, Toni could see that she was desperate for someone to understand what she was going through. “You must have some idea,” Toni said. “Have you been seeing someone?”
“No,” Gena said. “I’ve been single for a few weeks now.”
“What about whoever that was? Could he have done it?”
Gena shook her head no. “That wasn’t any major relationship or anything, just a fling for a few weeks. Just some fun. And we’re still friends. Couldn’t have been Keith.”
“What about that guy you were living with a few months ago?”
“I thought about all these people. I thought about all these things, Toni. Nobody that I know would have done this to me. Even my worst relationship didn’t end badly enough for someone to do this to me.”
“What do you think happened, Gena? You’re the only person who would know. You were there.” She tried to joke but it wasn’t funny.
“Toni, I’m so scared. I literally have no idea when this happened, where this happened, or who did this.”
“Well, what’s the last thing you remember?”
“That scares me too,: Gena whispered. “I seem to be having memory problems. I remember waking up here and going to the bathroom and looking in the mirror, and seeing –” She pointed to her tattoo. “But before that? Before that, the last thing I really remember was having brunch with mom on Sunday. We went to Carmine’s and had our usual, had some pleasant conversation, tipped the waiter generously as always, and then nothing.”
“ Gena, that was three days ago.”
“Four,” Gena corrected. “Today’s Thursday. It isn’t out Wednesday anymore.
“Four,” Toni amended. “You don’t remember anything between that and now?”
“Nothing.”
“Have you been to work this week?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Have you gone out?”
“Toni, I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything. Literally, I can remember nothing that has happened in the past four days. I don’t know who did this to me, and I don’t know what to do about it, and it’s really scaring me. But I have so many gaps in my memories!”
“I definitely understand that, Gena. All we can do right now is call mom in the morning and ask her if she knows anything. We’ll call your work and tell them that you’re going to be taking a few days off.”
“What am I going to tell work? How am I going to explain this?”
“Well, for once, thank God for COVID-19. Just tell them that you have not been feeling well and have a test scheduled.”
“Yeah, that’ll give me two weeks off, won’t it?” She snuffled and wiped her nose.
“Yep. Before that, we’ll get this all figured out.”
“Should we file a police report,” Gena asked.
“And tell them what? There’s a rogue tattooer running around? We just don’t have any information, Gena. There’s nothing that we can do. We’ll have to wait till the morning and see what we can figure out.”
“Can we get the tattoo removed?”
“Well, you and I can’t do it, but we’ll find someone who can take care of it.”
“Is it hard to get a tattoo removed?”
“How would I know? I’ve never had a tattoo.” She reached up and traced the letters of the word. “We’ll look it up on the Internet tomorrow, okay?”
Gena nodded. “Will you stay here with me tonight?”
“Sure.”
Gena lay down and Toni lay beside her. After a few reconfigurations of body parts and a negotiation of blankets, Gena’s breath started to regulate. Toni herself started to fade away to sleep.
Then she heard her sister’s voice again. “Tone?”
“Yeah?”
“Am I?”
“Are you what?”
“What it says on my head?”
“A bitch? Hell yeah, you’re a bitch. Waking me up at 3:00 o’clock in the morning.”
Her sister she knew was either going to have a bad reaction to that or laugh, and thankfully it was the latter.
***
All right, so I wanted to stop writing this story several times. It got really uncomfortable for me because ultimately this is a story about violence against women, and I have a real problem with violence against women. I got to the point where I didn’t want to write about it anymore. I’m not going to finish this story; we’re never going to find out anything about anything. Because I didn’t like it. I don’t know if it was an ex who did this to Gena or if it was somebody that she met after having brunch with her mom. I can’t imagine any scenario where it would have been her mother who did this, but I have to acknowledge it’s a possibility. Certainly it wasn’t Toni herself who did it. It could have been aliens, I suppose, but why would aliens have put that word on her head? There’s always the possibility that for some reason Gena did it to herself and maybe we have some deep psychological story where she is concerned that she is that type of person blah blah blah, but I don’t feel like getting into all that either.
This is a good example of a story that is just writing practice. It’s 1838 words, which blows my 1000-word goal out of the water, but it’s never going further.
By the way, for what it’s worth, I never could figure out a way to get GLUE into this story. It was a stumbling block when I began and I decided I would just get into the story and see where it took me. But there was no place that it belonged, neither as part of the problem or of the solution.
Whatchoo Want?
The key to creating good characters is to make them want something.
Card #1 Seller of Used Cars
Card #2 High School Coach
Good Enough
I knew the deal was blown. I knew it, they knew it, everybody knew it.
But the thing is, you just never know.
These people would tell two people what happened – “Yeah, so we went to Krazy Kars but didn’t like anything we saw. But the salesman, Tom Terrific (Yeah, that was his name. Can you believe it?), he was a good guy, treated us fair.” And then those people would each tell two people (Krazy Kars, Tom Terrific, can you believe it?) and those people would tell two people (Tom Terrific at Krazy Kars) and it grows and grows and grows until someone somewhere thinks, “I should go see this guy, Tom Terrific,” and maybe a sale would be made then.
It sure beat the alternative: “That salesman, Tom Terrific (what a stupid name) was a real jerk. Didn’t pay any attention to us, just walked away from us, etc.” Nothing good would happen after that, and it wasn’t like I had anything better to do right now. The lot was pretty much empty. I put on my “I’m on your side, pal” smile.
“Truth be told, Maverick, I’m not sure this is your style. And style is really important to someone your age.” The kid looked to his old man, and he nodded back at him. “Yeah, see, your dad knows. He and I, we are of an age. Am I right?”
“Age gone by,” the man agreed.
“You got that right.” I turned my attention back to the kid. “You’re what? 17? 18?”
“Next month,” the kid agreed.
“Perfect age,” I reassured him. “Time to build your own identity, be your own man.”
Kid looked at his dad again. Dad looked at me. I gave the dad a conspiratorial wink. We know what’s what, that wink said. Trust me.
“Son, you have got a great dad here. And I can see he has your best intentions in mind, and I can see that you trust him. And God bless you, son. You too, dad. I love to see a good father-son connection.” I watched their faces to be sure they were following my line of thought, and they were. Dad had a slight smile on his face; his son was shuffling his feet in the sand a little bit with his hands in his pants pocket, but he was listening to what I was saying. “But this car you choose is the one that will be the one you pack your clothes into when you head off to college and the one you’re going to drive around campus. This is the car that you’re going to park at the drive-in with that special someone –”
The boy looked up at me, perplexed. “What’s a drive-in?”
The dad laughed. I laughed too, but my reaction was more embarrassed than humorous. I’m so old, I thought. His dad explained, “They used to have drive-in movie theaters. You could drive your car into a parking lot and there was a movie up on the screen that you could watch.”
“From your car?”
“Sometimes people brought lawn chairs or blankets and sat outside.”
The boy shook his head slowly. “Crazy.”
I was losing the conversation. “Yeah, different times, no doubt. But anyhow, you need a car that’s going to be a reflection of who you are. And you, kid, you got that something special, you know?”
He didn’t look convinced. And he had started looking down the road of cars without really fixing on anything. This is what people did when they were preparing to leave, distracted themselves from the conversation so it was easier to separate. So I had one last chance, and I took it.
“Here you go, Maverick.” I took a business card out of my shirt pocket and flicked it with my forefingers to give it a pop. Little trick I learned from a magician friend when I was a teenager myself. “I’ve got new stock coming in next week, and I think I’ve got a car you’re really going to like. I’m going to hold onto it for you, and you come back in and I’m going to cut you a great deal.” I handed him the card. “Tom Terrific,” I reminded him. “Deal with me direct.”
The kid put the embossed card into his pants pocket, said “Thanks” and shook my outstretched hand. Dad shook it too, and they headed back to their SUV. I busied myself wiping the door handle – just a moment’s business, to keep me “in the room,” so to speak – and heard the kid say, “Why did that guy keep calling me ‘Maverick?’”
***
I slumped behind my desk and breathed out heavily, closing my eyes and moving my head back and forth slowly. “Tom Terrific,” I whispered into the void of my existence, and then I chuckled as I’d chuckled the past five years at moments like this. The most ironic thing about my name is that it’s really my name; it isn’t made up. It isn’t a sales ploy or a made-up moniker; Thomas Nathan Terrific, that’s what I was saddled with at birth. Went by “TNT” when I was a kid but never really had an explosive personality. Even tried “Tomcat” when I was a new adult, not much older than that boy had been, but it didn’t really fit my personality. Ended up with the alliterative and overly optimistic “Tom Terrific” and laughed it off when called into question.
But I wasn’t feeling too “terrific,” that’s for sure. I just wasn’t feeling it anymore. I didn’t feel like going out every day and trying to convince people they needed upgrades that they really didn’t. I mean, everybody needs a car, and used cars are certainly in demand in today’s economy. There’s just something dirty feeling about it, something not quite right. It’s like I’m trying to trick people, and that’s just not me. Get these wheels, these hubcaps, this GPS system, this satellite radio system. And on and on and on. If someone comes in and that’s what they’re looking for, then that’s fantastic. Terrific, even. But this kid and his dad needed a reliable vehicle that would get the kid back and forth to school, back and forth to work, and look good when he drove it with his friends. He didn’t need all the bells and whistles, and that’s why I let him go. Nothing I had was going to be right for this kid, not really.
But the thing is, a good salesman never says “Goodbye.” A good salesman would never say, “We don’t have anything that’s right for you today.” A good salesman would realize that if they could not find the “perfect” car, they could find the “good-enough” car.
And that’s when I realized that I did not have the “perfect” job. I had the “good-enough” job. And here’s a hard truth, kids: “Good Enough Never Is.”
***
“Mr. Terrific?” a hand went up from the middle of the room. I looked up and saw a fresh-faced 12-year old with strawberry blonde hair trying to catch my eye. I checked the paper in front of me, found the name attached to her seat.
“Call me ‘Coach,’ Heather.”
“Coach,” she amended, “how can ‘good enough’ not be good enough?” She smiled, confident that she’d caught me in an inconsistency. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
I put my narrative essay down on the lectern. “That is a very good question.” I thought for a moment. “Tell me, why did you wear those clothes today?”
She looked confused but glanced at her blouse and jeans. “I like them?” she ventured.
“Why do you like them?”
Students around her started to laugh, a little nervously lest they be next. Not at her, not at me, just at the situation.
“Um … I think they look nice?”
“I can see that the color of your shirt has complementary colors to your hair and to your eyes.”
She blushed a little, not sure what to say to this line of thinking. “That’s why my mom picked them out,” she said. “She said they’d look nice on me.”
“So are those clothes ‘really nice’ or are they just ‘good enough?’”
now she started to get it. I was glad. I had been trying to think of a different direction to try to teach this lesson. “I think they look really nice.”
“So you don’t dress ‘good enough?’” She shook her head. I looked around the room, caught as many eyes as I could to keep the kids engaged.
“Think about your friends,” I said. “Your really best friends. Your boyfriends and girlfriends.” Giggles and a few looks between pairs. I gave them a couple seconds —teacher wait-time, they call it – to get their significant friends in mind. “How would you describe their qualities? Are they just ‘good enough,’ or are they somehow ‘special?’” Several hands went up, but I ignored them in this case. I continued: “What makes them better that ‘good enough?’” Hands waved, eager to answer. “Don’t answer out loud,” I said, “just think.”
“So, you see, we cannot settle for ‘good enough.’ I decided that day –” I lifted up my essay and popped the papers – “that being a used car salesman was not good enough for me.”
“So you became a teacher?”
“I like to think of myself more as a coach.”
“But you don’t coach a sport,” a sullen young man said. I checked my paper, found his name.
“No, Tim, that’s true. I’m more of a ‘life coach.’ Ever hear that term before?” Several nodding heads. “I’m not here to teach you reading or math so much as to help you find your way to a happier future.”
A hand went up from the back, near the door. Dmitri. “Yes, Dmitri?”
“Do you make more money as a teacher than you did selling cars?”
I nodded, not in agreement but in acknowledgement of his question. “I have two answers for you. Answer number one is No. I made more money selling cars in a year than I make teaching. But answer number two is what really matters, and it’s what my essay was about: That job just wasn’t good enough for me. I needed more out of life, and talking to that kid that day and knowing that what I was saying – even though the deal was blown, even though I would not make any money – knowing that was the right thing to say to him, that what I was saying gave him a different way of seeing his place in the world and of raising his expectations …” I took a breath, aware that my ideas had started to jumble together. “That’s what I needed my life to be. Not just ‘good enough,’ but an ongoing pursuit of excellence.”
I turned to the whiteboard, uncapped a marker and wrote those last four words in capital letters beneath where I had earlier written WHY I TEACH. “Ongoing Pursuit of Excellence.” I said it just to hear it again, decided I liked the way it sounded. I checked the clock on the wall and turned back to the class. Smiled my “gotcha” smile.
“And that is the title of the essay I am assigning you for homework tonight.” Groans of despair, just as I’d predicted. “I want you to tell me about your ‘ongoing pursuit of excellence,’ in whatever form that might be. Be sure you bring something to class tomorrow that you can share with others in the class.”
“Homework on the first day?” one student said. And another added, “A whole essay?” Someone muttered, “Not fair, dude,” and I heard a couple others vow “I ain’t doing it.” Everyone started putting their notebooks and pencils into their backpacks.
The bell rings and everyone heads out the door. I feel good about today, my first full day of teaching on my own. The door opens and Heather leans her head back in. “Mr. Terrific?” she says.
“Coach,” I remind her, and I am expecting her to ask how long the essay needs to be. I’m ready to tell her “As long as it needs to be to tell your story,” which I think is the right answer to that question.
“Coach,” she nods, but she doesn’t ask about her essay. She asks, “Why did you call that kid ‘Maverick?’”
Curious kid, that Heather; a good thinker. I just shrug and wave good-bye. It’ll be an ah-ha moment when she finds out on her own someday.
***
FWIW, I wasn’t really feeling this one when I started out. I liked the structure of one character wanting to be something else, but the cards I picked didn’t really inspire anything in me. I was not sure which way to go with this, whether to have a high school coach want to be a seller of used cars (which seemed the less logical of the two) or have a used car seller who wanted to become a high school coach. But even so, I just couldn’t see why it would matter. But I’m devoted to the task and set myself my goal of 1000 words, and that’s what I came up with.
Was it good? I doubt it. But the thing is that it was done, and as Ray Bradbury said, if I write 1000 words a day for a year that will be 365,000 words, and certainly some good stuff will come from that. If only 10% of what I write is good, that’s still enough words for a novel. Or, in the case of this writing experiment, a book of short stories. Heck, if I write 365 short stories (and with Storymatic I could write “trillions” as advertised) and 10% of them are good, that’s 36 short stories – easily three books worth.
Now this particular story has problems, I acknowledge. As I did nothing in the early part of the story to indicate that Tom was reading an essay out loud, the sudden shift is probably much too abrupt. (“First readers” will have to let me know if this is so or not.) And since I didn’t even think about doing that shift, I was not actually writing it as a “teacher-model essay” when I started and I will need to reconsider certain aspects there, I believe. Also, I think the latter half of the story runs a bit long and probably gets too preachy. But this is first draft writing, and I’m grabbing all the ideas as they come.
Another weakness, something I’m going to have to address: I like first-person POV much too much. I started in first person, and then I decided to switch to third person, and without realizing it I switched immediately back into first-person. It’s like I have to inhabit the main character’s head personally in order to give it the proper Voice. I know that novels can be written in first- person POV, but I need to be sure it is not a crutch.
Also, names. Tom Terrific? Terrific sounds like Traffic, and that relates to cars, but I just don’t know.
Anyhow, two days and two stories. Feeling good about that. I was only aiming for 1000 words but got 2095, so that’s a good feeling too.
And tomorrow’s going to be another day.
OK, first readers, you elite bunch of trusted individuals, let me have it. You gave me some great ideas and feedback on “Midnight Shift,” and I’m hoping for more of the same.
I purchased “Storymatic,” which is a writing prompt generator that claims it has “six trillion stories in one little box – which one will you tell?” It has a multitude of prompt cards and a brief instruction book that gives you suggestions for story creation. (Frankly, you could just draw a random card to get a character and a random card to get an object and then write a story about whatever that inspires.) But I like the promptbook, and so for my first story I chose the “XYZ” structure – that is, X is in a conflict with Y about Z.
For X, you were told to choose two character cards, and for Y you were to select one. I decided to pick three and see how they worked themselves out. So the three character cards I got were Runaway … Vampire … Employee in a Fast-Food Restaurant.
For Z, which is the source of their conflict, you were directed to choose one, and I got “a box of kittens.”
And what follows in a completely unpolished first draft. Even so, I would really appreciate any feedback you might choose to give after reading. I think I’m going to try to write daily using this prompt generator system. We will see how it goes.
Midnight Shift
This? Hell, this is the life!
Well, no, that’s not really true, is it? I mean, technically speaking, this is the afterlife, right? Or maybe the life after death? Or maybe it’s just a different life? It’s kinda hard to explain, to be honest.
So imagine this. There you are, just being a totally cool dude, doing nothing at all out of the ordinary, and then things just get flipped. Is that a good word, “flipped”? I don’t know. It sounds right, though. And this is my story, and I can tell it however I want, so yep, everything got flipped.
Maybe I should explain. First of all, I don’t expect anyone to believe this. I mean, we’ve got stories out the ying-yang about supernatural teenagers, right? Teenagers who inherit powers from their superhero parents. Teenagers who are bitten by radioactive insects. Teenagers who discover that they are the living recreation of an ancient god. Teenagers who are werewolves, and zombies, and vampires, I mean who believes any of that anymore, right?
Well, believe it. Need proof? Check out the canines, baby. Oh, well, you’re reading this, aren’t you? So you can’t really “check them out.” So I will tell you, they are poin-tee. Sharp enough to tear into living flesh, solid enough to tear chunks out of … well, you get it, right?
Need another clue? I used to work at a fast-food joint known for its diverse menu of fried meat substances and especially well known for its delectable French fries. No names need to be spoken, eh? Actually, it’s not right to say that I used to work there; it’s more accurate to say that I used to work there during the daytime. Fortunately, this particular fast food establishment decided several years ago that money could be made if they stayed open round the clock, and that was damn lucky for me because—remember I said I was gonna offer you another clue? Well, here it comes—I don’t do so good working when the sun is in the sky.
OK, OK, you get it now. And like I said, I don’t expect you to believe it. Six months ago I wouldn’t have believed it either, you know? And really, that’s how I found myself in this unusual situation.
Dracula at the Drive-Thru, baby; the tabloid newspapers would eat this story up!
Short story made endless, I transitioned from being a high school student flipping meat on the grill to being a dropout vampire cleaning out the grease traps.
Yeah, I can already hear what’s inside your head. No, not because I’m a vampire. Stupid. Because it’s what I thought to myself a dozen times: Why would I bother keeping a job paying barely above minimum wage when I have become in fact an immortal creature of the night who feeds on human blood, etc. and so on and so forth?
No, it’s not because there are so many potential victims all around me. Even though there are, obviously. And it’s not because I need the money. We vamps can sleep underground as well as in a darkened dungeon sequestered from the light, and I have access to all the food I want (if you understand what I mean by the word “food”) whenever I want it. And, for what it’s worth — and not that I’ve done this before — but it’s not like I can’t engage in some petty theft to get any material possessions I may want. I mean, let’s face it, they can’t exactly record my image on security cameras, right? You know the tropes.
Nope, the reason that I have this the midnight shift job is that I like it. That’s right, I said it. I like working at this place. I like preparing the foods and sweeping the floors and cleaning the parking lot and interacting with customers. I like all of this (except for cleaning the grease traps, to be honest: that’s just nasty).
You see, one night several weeks ago, right after my miraculous transformation, I was working the front counter when I saw someone that I had not seen since my freshman year of high school. She came in, hands in her pockets and with her hoodie up over her hair, and walked up to the counter.
“Welcome! How can I help you tonight?” I asked with my well-trained smile.
“Cheeseburger,” she said, and strange as it sounds that’s when I knew it was her. She hadn’t met my eyes yet, kept looking at the floor, but there was always something unusual about the way that she pronounced the letter S. And that’s odd, I know, because the S in cheeseburger really sounds like a Z, doesn’t it? CHEEZBURGER. But see, that was it. She said the letter like a soft S. CHEECEBURGER. It sounded almost foreign, back when we were in school together I always wondered if she had moved to America from a different country. To be honest, I spent a lot of time “wondering” about her.
Her name was Tracey, and she had been my first crush. Not puppy love, but a full-on “how can I get her to notice me?” devotion. I had two classes with her, English and 3D Art, and in both classes I made sure that I was sitting behind her and to the left. A knight’s move in chess, that’s what it was. Two rows over and one row back, and that way I could look at her while still seeming to pay attention to the teacher. And I liked looking at Tracy. She had black hair in little ringlets that I thought were adorable, and I had memorized the angles of her face from looking at her so often. She always had a green Trapper Keeper, two textbooks, and an ever-changing “novel-of-the-week,” usually urban fantasy. She chewed on her pencils. And I wish I had had the social skills to figure out how to engage her in conversation.
But now I didn’t need social skills; I needed polite professionalism. “A cheeseburger,” I acknowledged, and I considered saying at the same way she did, with the soft S, but decided that might be offputting to her. Time to suggestive sell: “Would you like fries with that?”
“No,” she mumbled, and she removed two crumpled singles from her jacket pocket and placed them on the counter.
I retrieved them from where she had laid them and flattened them out. Something was wrong, and I knew it. I mean, I know it was 11:15 at night and maybe she was tired or something, but sometimes you can just tell that something is wrong, you know? And maybe I shouldn’t have done what I did next, there’s no way of knowing. But, you know, being immortal undead kind of opens up your options or at least removes some of the fear of consequences for things. So I took a shot.
“Isn’t your name Tracey?”
Now he looked up at me, sharply and cautious. Her eyes were assessing me to register how dangerous a person I was. I mean, that’s kind of crazy. You know? People recognize people, and it’s not as if this restaurant is off the beaten path.
“How did you know that name?” she actually almost hissed at me.
“I … uh … if that is you, then I think we went to school together a few years ago. Remember me?” I pointed at the name on my badge. “Derek?”
“Derek?” She shook her head. “No, I didn’t know anyone named Derek.”
Well, of course not, I chided myself. You always sat behind her and never even talked to her before. But what she said next chilled me:
“Tracey … Tracey was my sister.”
And there was something in the pause between the repetition of names, something in the extra stress she put on the word “was.” Something in her tone. Something.
Something that was none of my business. But also, something that I could not let alone.
“Oh, we were friends. She never said she had a twin, though.” I finished her order on the register and the drawer opened. I laid the two singles in the correct slot and removed her change, placing it on the counter. “What ever happened to her?”
Ever have one of those moments when you wait for an answer but realize that no answer is coming? Yeah, this was one of those.
Ultimately, I turned around and pulled a cheeseburger from the warming bin, then turned around. She hadn’t moved other than to look back at the countertop. “I forgot to ask, did you want that for here or to go?”
“To go.”
I put her cheeseburger into a bag, added a few napkins, folded it twice as per company practice, and handed it to her. “Have a great night,” I said. She took her bag and turned around, headed toward the door. And on impulse, I called out, “Tell Tracey that Derek said ‘hi’ when you see her.”
And she disappeared into the night.
***
Or rather, she would have disappeared into the night, never to be seen again perhaps, except for one thing. And maybe you have forgotten after being captivated by my narrative so far, So let me remind you: I am a Creature of the Night. You cannot “disappear” from a Creature of the Night in the night. If it had been midafternoon, she could 100% have disappeared into the midafternoon from me. But I knew the night, and the night knew me, and there was just no way she was going to fly free. OK, “fly free” doesn’t really work there, but you trying becoming a Rock God lyricist overnight. It takes practice, I’m telling you that. But seriously, who doesn’t want to listen to a song called “I Know the Night”?
Anyhow, I just couldn’t help feeling that something was really suspicious about all this. And yeah, it might have been nothing. I mean, she did not know me and I was asking some questions that she obviously did not want to hear, but there was just something about the whole ninety-second interaction that felt wrong. And I think that I would rather look into something and find out that it’s nothing than to not look into something and find out that it’s something.
“Bernie?” I called out.
My assistant manager was in the storage room, helping Dontrice and Gretchen organize and clean. “Yeah,” he called back.
“Can I take a smoke break?”
He walked around the corner by the dish sink and looked at me dubiously. “You don’t smoke, Derek.”
“Yeah, I know, but I need a few minutes. Everybody else gets smoke breaks, what do you say?”
He flipped his hands in a “whatever” fashion. “Yeah, kid, you got it.” He leaned back around the corner. “Gretchen, watch the counter.” She must have said something to him, because he replied “Ten or fifteen minutes max. You’ll be fine.” Then he turned back to me. “Do me a favor and clean up by the curb, OK?”
I grabbed a broom and dustpan. “Thanks, Bern.”
***
I wish that I could describe for you what it feels like to be out in the night. As a vampire. I suppose there are vampires out there who have lived for hundreds of years and who just take this whole nighttime experience for granted, but I haven’t gotten there yet, trust me. And I want to say something like a simile or metaphor to help you truly experience it, but there is nothing I ever experienced in my real life — my life life, you understand — that compares to this. It’s like being completely integrated into something that is essentially yourself. No, see, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Look, when I was a kid, I really liked to dunk Oreo cookies into milk. You ever done that? There’s just something so right about Oreos dunked in milk. No, that’s not enough. That’s not even a small percentage of this experience of walking out into the evening and knowing that you are exactly where you belong. An integral part of everything. Able to exist independently and knowing that the entire universe really does revolve around you and you really do revolve around the entire universe. And at this point I am just saying words that I’m not even going to pretend make sense to anyone because they don’t even make sense to me. But that’s what it feels like to walk out into the evening. Every single evening.
And tonight, I had a mission. where was this girl? Tracey’s twin? I knew she had been walking when she came into the restaurant. How did I know this? Again, I have to attribute it to vampire instincts. She did not smell like someone who had just come out of a car. You ever smell cars? Some of them are nasty, but they’re all distinctive somehow. People talk about the “new car smell,” but an old car smell is just … I don’t know how to explain it to you. It’s just very unique.
Anyhow, I did not believe that she had driven up or been driven up here, and that meant that she had walked. And – Creature of the Night for-the-win! – that meant that I could track her.
**********
NOT DONE BUT FINISHED FOR TODAY … and now some reflection …
Well, that took some unexpected turns. I really liked this exercise, having been given these cards and tried to figure out a way to make them work. As you can tell, the box of kittens has not appeared yet and I’m not sure what to do with them. I’ll figure them in somehow and make them important.
So when I started out, I had decided that a person could not be a runaway and work at a fast-food restaurant because it would be pretty easy to find the runaway there. So then it was either going to be a fast-food employee with a runaway vampire or – as I chose – a vampire fast-food employee and a runaway.
So, Step One, get those two characters together. It seemed pretty natural to put them in the fast-food restaurant and for the runaway to come in for something cheap and fast. But what to do about the box of kittens? I toyed with some ideas. Maybe the runaway was getting food for the kittens? Maybe the runaway carried a box of kittens into the restaurant and was told that they could not have them there? I just didn’t know, and I’m still torn with the box of kittens.
But I did want to establish the characters. And I brought in my vampire fast-food employee and pretty much just let him run at the mouth. And to be honest, I like his Voice. I like the way he sounds when he’s telling the story, and I like the tangents his mind goes off on, and I like his overall attitude about everything. I mean, this is not a vicious killer – and I do realize that we’re going to need to get to the point where he does have to draw blood from a human being in order to survive – and he’s made a decision to work in a fast-food restaurant, which I tried to explain in a way that makes sense. So ultimately he’s a 17- or 18-year old newly-formed vampire Who totally digs his new existence but who has some hangups about the things he experienced in life. And I like him.
Originally, I thought the reason he was keeping this job was because of a girl. And it still might be the case, I haven’t figured it out yet. And I was going to have this girl – Tracy or whoever – come walking into the restaurant and the two of them were going to hit it off and then he was going to discover that she was a runaway and he was going to try to help. Still no idea what to do with a box of kittens, though. But then things just went in a different direction.
And what do I have now? Well, I have a mystery to be solved with some seemingly dark elements. I have this supernatural creature on the hunt for someone he once cared about (or at least imagined that he felt something for). Where is she now? Why hasn’t he seen her since 9th grade? She’s got to be in some sort of trouble, right? And her twin does not know where she is, so that’s another element to consider.
And there’s got to be a box of cats in there somewhere, dammit.
Any feedback would be appreciated, plot suggestions welcomed, etc. This was just the first draft, so there will be typos and such throughout. Feel free to offer feedback on those, but I am more interested in hearing about Derek’s character and if you would be interested more of this story as I write it. Please, honest feedback … I’m tough and can take it.
DREAMS. Gotta love them.
We read a story in class yesterday called “Be-ers and Doers.” It’s a little family drama about a mom who expects more from her son and how that situation grows over the years until it comes to a head. Pretty standard fare as these things go, not a story I’m going to go to any great lengths to use in the future but not something I’m going to steer clear of. At the very end of the story, however, the narrator tells us that the son buys a house on a little farm, reads books and writes poetry, never gets married or has children, and lives pretty contentedly away from his mother. Then there’s this line: “He keeps an old rocker out of the edge of the cliff, where he can sit and watch the tides of Fundy rise and fall.”
My poor, befuddled brain being what it is, I immediately envisioned Sammy Hagar (the old rocker) being kept on the cliff’s edge for the son’s amusement. I know, weird.
But then the weird stuff shows up in our dreams. So last night/early this morning I dreamt that a limousine pulled up outside the front window of my house and that to incredibly beautiful ostriches came up to my window and looked inside. Instead of having little bitty heads, they had beautiful big cartoon heads; they had beautiful, white feathers and expressive beaks with lips that could smile. One seemed to have a necklace imprinting her neck feathers that I could not quite see but that I somehow knew would be beautiful. They came up to my window and looked inside, where I was sitting in my chair reading a book. They didn’t look like they wanted to come inside – in fact, one went around the side of the house for a few moments and I assumed she was having a pee break – so I just smiled and congeniality and watched the one who stood at the window smiling in at me. Then the other one returned and they walked back to the limousine. The door opened, and there was Sammy Hager dressed to the nines and looking really dapper. He motioned to the ostriches to get into the car, which they did, and then he waved at me and gave me a thumbs-up.
I have no idea what any of that means.
You know what I like about sudoku?
It’s like, you’re filling in all the boxes with possible numbers, and it’s all so chaotic. You just think it’s never going to work itself out, it’s impossible. How can anything positively go anywhere? And you keep filling in all the boxes, going back and forth between hoping it will somehow work out and just doing what needs to be done because that’s what needs to be done.
And then, one little things changes. You realize that with two linear cells with 1 and 3, none of the other cells in that line can have a 1 or a 3. So you remove those possibilities, and then those changes affect other cells, and so on. And at the end, you’re just like this number goes here and that number goes there and then POOF. Everything is where it is supposed to be, and all possibilities have become realities and you, you clever person, have restored order to the universe.
Sudoku is one of the best metaphors for life I have ever known.
When I was in the 5th grade, I fell in love with my first poem. It was in our Fifth Grade Reader and was called “Trifles.” I had never read it before, and it was not one we studied in class. I have not, in fact, seen the poem since until I looked it up on the Internet ten minutes ago to write this piece.
Here is the poem, by the way:
Against the day of sorrow
Lay by some trifling thing
A smile, a kiss, a flower
For sweet remembering.
Then when the day is darkest
Without one rift of blue
Take out your little trifle
And dream your dream anew.
I read it and was for some reason moved by it. I don’t know of anything that would have made me feel a “day of sorrow” back then, but for some reason it touched me. It moved me. Somehow, it pushed me over the edge into a new mindset, one influenced by literature.
So I took out a sheet of paper and carefully transcribed it word for word. Carefully, I say, because I can envision myself even now sitting at my table with my book crooked to the right side of me as I carefully copied every word and punctuation symbol onto the sheet of paper as neatly as I could. I can see it. I am reliving that moment right now, and I can clearly see myself doing this.
This was 44 years ago. I was 10 years old.
I folded the paper in half and half and half again and slid it into the back pocket of my jeans and carried it home with me. That weekend, preparing my clothes for the laundry, my mother retrieved that piece of paper and unfolded it and read it and then called me into the bedroom. “What’s this, Ricky?” she asked.
“A poem,” I said.
“Where did you get it?”
“I wrote it.”
“You wrote it?”
Why did I say that? Why did I say that I had written it? It wasn’t as if I thought I was going to get in trouble for copying a poem out of a school reader, but there it was. And, I mean, I *had* written it, hadn’t I? I had written the words on the paper, right? But she knew something. She knew I hadn’t written that poem. But I didn’t want to get caught in a lie, either. So I did what any kid would do.
I lied again.
“Well,” I said, scuffling my feet (I’m telling you, I can see and hear and feel everything just as if I were there right now), “I wrote the last line.”
“Mm hmm.”
I waited for a moment but she just handed the paper to me and went back to turning my pants from inside out to inside in.
“Did you like it?” I ventured.
“I did. It was very nice.”
And that was that. She didn’t ask me anything else about it, and I asked her if I could hang it on the refrigerator and she said I could. And later she told my father that I had written that poem, just as I had told her. And for whatever reason, I remember feeling very proud, as if I had accomplished something. But it wasn’t that I was proud I had gotten by with that lie. It was something about that poem. I was proud of that poem, even though I had not written it.
Why?
I’ll never know.
I had that gradually yellowing piece of paper for years afterward. In truth, I wish I had it right now so I could bring it out and frame it and put it up on the wall. There’s still just something about that poem.
How many “trifling things” have I suffered?
How many of those “darkest days” have I undergone?
How many dreams have I “dreamed anew”?
How many have you?
I have been thinking about this poem since it came to mind earlier today (because one of my favorite students asked me what my favorite poem was when I was her age), and I wonder if I would have ever started writing poetry on my own had it not been for experiencing this chance piece of poetry at that time in my life.
The poet, I now know, was Georgia Douglas Johnson. She died the year before I was born, eleven years before I read her poem and she changed my life. When I get to heaven, that’s one more person I need to thank for making me into who I am. And she never even knew me, or how her words would impact me. I hope someday my words will inspire others somehow.
Thank you, Mrs. Johnson.
So I finally have discovered the means of conversing with these giantish peoples, which is really little more than clicks and whistles and lip smacks whilst controlling one’s breath. And so I begin to explain to them the secrets of the omniverse. I clearly explain to them ‘aaah aaah baalaah la la waaa waa laalama blaa bla wa.” I mean, seriously, how much plainer can I be? I say it OVER AND OVER AND OVER, and do you know what the female says? All this wisdom I am sharing, and she merely responds, ‘Go to sleep, Baby, it’s 3 o’clock in the morning.’ She is very insistent about this, and the male keeps repeating ‘Shh shhh shhhh’ – as if that will help!
(Something I wrote on Facebook on 2/21/2015)
WriterRyk 