Writer's Journal

(Finals Week, expect short entries)

Day of Awkward Silence:  (April 29)  A day dedicated to commemorating all of the relationships lost to awkward silences.  Observed by starting conversations, making off-color comments to which no response is possible, and then remaining present and marinating in the silence that you wait for someone else to break.

Bring Your Neuroses to Work Day:  (September 6)  Celebrated in one of three ways–first, by not getting out of bed; second, by going to work dressed in a bathrobe and slippers and photocopying one’s crying face; third, by behaving as one does normally.

Take Your Hangover to Church/Synagogue/Mosque Day: (Day of Worship immediately following Summer Solstice)  A much less successful “Take your X to Y day,” this is much more popular on the day before (”Take your Hangover to Church/Synagogue/Mosque Day Eve”) which has many drink specials.  It is considered polite to buy a drink for friends of other faiths on the appropriate day.  Those who participate in the celebration on the eve are obligated to go to church, mosque, or synagogue the following day, whether hung over or still drunk.

Snark Day: (October 4)  In select newspapers, lists of objects (including mundane objects such as “toilet seat” or “stop sign” and metaphysical ones such as “Courage” or “Truth”) appear, along with addresses.  Teams of people dress up in outlandish clothes and gather the items before showing up at the pre-arranged spot.  While there, the various scavenger crews start a bonfire, drink, and share exaggerated stories about their adventures over the day.

National Bizzaro-World Day (November 19th [or 12th, depending on when Thanksgiving falls]) a holiday enacted by the fictitious πth president of the United States, Pythagoras.  On this day, there are public screenings of “Un Chien Andalou,” Libraries forgive late fees, and many police officers call in sick.  Generally, people behave in a manner opposite how they normally do.

Last Friday, I dropped my car keys and thought I’d lost them. Realizing that something was wrong, I went looking: I eventually found them sitting on the damp asphalt by the trunk of my car and stuck them in my pocket.

Then I went about my day, typing things out, checking and double-checking research. I did my laundry, returning to work at my computer between loading and unloading the washer and drier.

But every now and then my car alarm went off. Knowing the small remote on my keychain doesn’t work properly, I assumed it must be an electrical problem. Those aren’t uncommon–the car is, in fact, eleven years old. The power locks don’t work, though thankfully the windows still do.

Needless to say, this made me feel a little upset. After all, I had just had quite a bit of work done on it not a month ago. Numerous things had gone wrong, and I ended up needing to make two trips just to make sure everything was working properly.

So every time the alarm went off, I took off my house shoes, unlaced and laced by boots, and pulled on my coat, cursing under my breath.

But without fail, every time I stepped out the front door of my apartment, the honking would stop, and I can only assume that the flashing lights did as well. No one paid it any mind, but it was horribly irritating.

The third time that this happened, I had had enough, and resolved to go down and inspect the vehicle even if it did stop. I slapped down my pockets, looking for my keys, and discovered them in my back pocket.

I had been sitting on the “panic” button the whole time, and, having parked on the opposite side of the building from my front door, every time I went out my front door, the combination of concrete walls and distance had signaled the car to stop honking.

Going to my back window, I raised up the keys and hit the “lock” button. The lights flashed. Apparently, instead of shorting out the remote, it had caused the unworking mechanism to short back into functionality.

Honestly, I didn’t know that could happen.

(For those of you I don’t know on Facebook, I started up a fan page for my writing.  You can find it here.  At least I hope that words like it’s supposed to.)

There was a diner in the warehouse district. The Runaway sat in a small booth in the far corner, away from the three men sitting at the counter. She drank her foul-tasting coffee, and tried not to look at anything, waiting for the parts of her brain that deal with the senses worming their way into her skull to spin and catch and start the processes of conscious thought.

Until then, she had:

the babble of conversation spilling through the air and filling her ears,

The the feel of the poorly-upholstered seat beneath and behind her, the formica on her forearms, and the porcelain coffee cup between her fingers,

the reflection of the harsh, gray light penetrating the windows, the marred reflection of the ceiling in a puddle of recently spilled cream of chicken soup on the floor, the empty seat across from her.

Something caught in her mind, two dollars of payment and tip were left on the table, and she headed out. One last thing before the Runaway could continue with her mission.

She glanced around, as she walked on, and spotted a dishwasher crouched in the alleyway, half-sitting on a milk crate. Dangling from his lips was a cigarette that had just been lit.

“Excuse me,” the Runaway asked, “could I bum a cigarette?”

He took one out, and put it behind his ear, before tossing it to her, there were three left in it.

“Take ‘em,” he said, around the one in his mouth, “god knows I don’t need them.”

She patted her pockets down for a lighter, and eventually took his offered match.

“Never seen you before,” he said.

“Never been here before,” she replied.

“Waitress says you’re probably a runaway,” the man said.

“And?”

“She wants to call the cops. Thinks its some great service. Happens at least once a week, because of where we are.”

“I’m June,” she said.

“Jesús.”

“I am,” she said.

“Am what?”

“A runaway.”

Jesús shrugged, “I figured, but I’m not getting involved unless asked. Where you headed next?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should probably figure out a destination,” he said.

“I know.”

“So, any ideas?”

“Probably east coast. Somewhere warm.”

“Carolinas?”

She thought for a moment, and nodded.

He closed his eyes, and rested his head on the side wall of the diner.

“Know how to get to the bus station?”

“Not really.”

“Do you need help getting there?”

“Okay.”

He stood up and put out his cigarette. He took off his hairnet and his apron, and threw them in the side door.

“I’m off, anyway,” he said.

The two of them walked a distance in the late afternoon light. She gave him a broad berth, walking outside of arm’s reach, and with an eye toward escape at all times.

“It’s just a block or two, this way. Left at that light, then right on the corner.”

The dishwasher paused for a second, thinking. He looked over at her, then at a building across the street.

“I’ve got an errand to run, you know where to go.”

The dishwasher headed for the building he’d glanced at, waved goodbye, and walked in.

She looked both ways, something else caught in her brain. The bus station would still be there in ten minutes. She stepped into the alleyway, scanned it and looked for danger.

Not seeing anything, she stood on her toes, and glanced through the window.

The people in there were dirty-looking, and dressed in rags, as if they’d been driven from their homes. Some slept in piles on the floor, others seemed to be kneeling in prayer. Near one end of the room, a jaundiced man sat in an ornate chair.

He and the dishwasher were exchanging words; the time each spoke gradually became shorter and shorter, until they were shouting indistinctly at one another.

She watched as the man, Jesús, produced a gun and aimed it at the other. For a long moment, there was silence, and he spoke again through clenched teeth.

The man in the chair took a long time to reply.

And when he did, Jesús pulled the trigger.

Well, then, there isn’t much time.  Hopefully this quick and easy guide will lead you through the number of options you have so that you may stylishly descend to your ultimate and unavoiable doom.  There are several additudes you can take to this situation, the first and most familiar is:

• The Falling Man:  Arms windmilling, screaming optional.   A tried and true method, commonly used due to its instinctive nature.   Most often used by amateur plummeters when surprised.

If you’re interested in several other techniques, the following may proove interesting to you.  It is suggested you try them several times*, to see which one best fits

• The Swan Dive:  A classic; fling your arms out wide as if to give the onrushing ground a bear hug, keep your legs together, and head tilted up.  You might also know this as the “Belly Flop” technique.
• The Superman:  Either one or both arms flung out forward, (if only one, the other should be curled into a fist near your chin.)  One leg should be crooked down beneath you, parallel to your spine.  Somewhat awkward, due to the fact that the aerodynamics of plunging from a great height will cause you to tumble end over end in this position.
• The Starfish:  Very similar to the basic “Falling Man” technique, but with the arms and legs flung out to their greatest extent (fingers and toes extended optional) and head held rigid.  The least natural, but possibly the most scenic, because it allows you to watch the oncoming ground.

Beyond these three, there are two more advanced techniques, recommended only for those who have some marginal experience with plummeting to their deaths”

• The Gibreel:  Mix and match with the above techniques and whatever you come up with, preferably laughing and singing as you tumble end over end to your death far below.  It is important not to hold any one position for too long.  Also, if you can attempt to hold discussions with your fellow plummeters, it will make your entry into the afterlife much easier, as you will already have several friends entering into the hereafter alongside you.
• The Chamcha:  The polar opposite of the Gibreel.  While in the “Chamcha” position, you must, repeat must, be wearing a bowler hat, and preferably a suit.  In this position, you aim your head directly at the ground, keep your arms, legs and spine perfectly straight and perfectly parrallel.  Ideally, your face should betray a somewhat bored expression.

*Preferably off a diving board, low-hanging tree branch, or possibly the roof of a short garage.

When the Visitors came, it was the best of all possible worlds.

They descended from the skies in silvery ships, and settled over every major city (as well as a small patch of ice in Antarctica before disappointedly moving on,) broadcasting a message of peace, first in Dravidian and ancient Egyptian, then in an archaic form of greek, finally, they puzzled out Cantonese and Portuguese, and a dialogue began.

They didn’t want our water or minerals, or anything of the sort; such things could more easily be found elsewhere.  Instead, they came for our literature, our television, our music, and our philosophy.  For copies of books, they traded wonders: medical technology, computers, and energy sources to solve all our problems.

In return, they just wanted our culture.  Some of them, members of all races, sat in on college classrooms.  At Duke University, a twelve-foot tall creature with fins and scales listened to lectures on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, cooing and laughing at odd points in time.  The undergraduates didn’t look at him, just staring ahead with slightly uncomfortable faces and unblinking eyes.

In Oxford, an octopus-like creature with blue skin and twelve arms floated near the ceiling, listening to lectures on Orwell.  The students even managed to convince it to participate in a rugby game, in which it scored thrice; in no small part because the opposing team had no idea how to tackle a flying squid.

The best of all possible worlds, just as we’d hoped.

Then, one day some six years later, the visitors’ ships had ascended into the sky, leaving none of their number behind.

“Thank you for your culture,” they signalled, “we’ll be back in another six thousand years, after we’ve made the rounds again.  Maybe next time, you’ll be ready for membership.”

With that, an electromagnetic pulse passed through the planet, interfering with the world’s magnetic field and all of the electronic devices within.  Our computers died; then the bombs came, levelling every city with more than a million people.

And then: silence.  The survivors knew then what Atlantis and Troy had known, what the pre-dynastic egyptians had learned, what the ancient Dravidians understood.  The harvest had come, and the crops had been taken to market; then the used-up plants had been gathered and thrown to the fire, the ashes used to fertilize the fields.

And in several millenia, maybe we would no longer trust the rugby-playing squid from the skies.

There’s a ghost following me.  I know, because I’m the only one who can see it; I say “it” because I can’t tell whether it was a man or a woman: it’s six feet tall, and wears a shroud and a mask.  It might be less than six feet; it could be floating under the shroud.

I noticed it one day, while I was at a water fountain: I bent down for a sip of water, and when I stood up, it was there, not quite two full paces away, looking at me.  No one else responded to it, and I had a bit of a headache, so I did my best to act natural:  I walked past it, heading back to my office.  It followed me, but the worst part was the breathing; you’d expect that dead things don’t need to breathe, but this Ghost was determined to do so.  From the sound, I suppose it’s forgotten how to:  I’ve never heard anyone use consonants while breathing.

When I get back to my office, I close my door and sit at my desk.  The ghost stood in the corner of the room, wheezing and watching me; as I soon discovered, this made it impossible to get any work done.  I tried to shoo it out the window, but it wouldn’t go.  It just stood there, looking at me.  Wheezing.

When I left for work, it planted itself in the back seat of my car, on the passenger side.  It didn’t bother to open the door, just sort of passing through it and sitting down.  Driving home was a nightmare.  When I accelerated, it would slide back into the seat, and it would move forward when I braked, moving as far forward as the front seat.

It followed me into my house, and when I finally went to sleep, it stood in the corner of my bedroom.

The next day, as it was watching me eat breakfast and read the newspaper, I saw that someone had died in my building, yesterday.

“So that explains you,” I said to the ghost.

“Hakk bhurr,” the ghost wheezed.

“Lovely.”

We drove back to work, and went in the elevator, the ghost sharing a spot with a somewhat heavyset woman in her forties.  Its head stuck up from the middle of her, and glanced around, momentarily.

“Feel like someone walked across my grave,” the woman muttered.

When we got out, I walked toward my office, and stopped, looking down the hallway.

The drinking fountain was there, but was cordoned off by yellow police tape.

“OUT OF SERVICE DUE TO UNEXPLAINED TOXICITY” a sign read.

“Hurr Hurr Hurr,” the ghost chuckled, looking at me.  I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable.

(admittedly, not my strongest story, but I have to teach a class in an hour and a half, so…be glad I was able to post something.)

Before he became a human, he had been a bird. He had been killed by a green-eyed cat, and was reborn.

The life of a Mesopotamian farmer was not for him; he was poor, and hardly ever traveled beyond the patch of land where he had been born, where he grew his crops, where he would eventually die. When he died, it was because a Greek soldier wanted into his meager pantry. The green-eyed savage cut him down.

Unsatisfied with that life, he traveled far afield, wandering about, searching for some other place to take root.

He settled on Rome, where he was born to a struggling Patrician Family. Eventually, he became a mid-level official, unimportant enough to be ignored, but important enough that he wasn’t allowed to abandon his post and wander. He wished, all his life, that he had chosen to be a soldier. This lust for travel became a lust for adventure. The lust for adventure simplified into a lust for the green-eyed woman, and her husband made an end of things.

Being dead was like stretching cramps from his muscles that he had forgotten about, knots of stress and agony that leaned him nothing.

But life was always the same, and he gradually began to remember.

As an Andalusian noblewoman she was raped and killed by a green-eyed Moor.

When he was a Japanese farmer, his mouse was burned down when a green-eyed ox kicked over a lantern.

As a Russian boyar, he was poisoned by a green-eyed servant.

When he lived in Africa as a medicine man, he was eventually shot by a green-eyed “gentleman adventurer.”

But between each life, he was free. It was only instinct that forced him to return to the life of a man; sometimes, he wished he could return to the life of a bird, and numerous attempts occupied his time. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

And for every time he was reborn, the green-eyed beast was reborn five times, working off the debt it had incurred.

Eventually, he came to be born in Detroit, in the Narrows, and worked in Ford’s factories. The girl who grew up next door to him had green eyes, and he had always been unreasonably afraid of her. He, on the other hand, had always been an object of fascination for her.

When the War came, he went off to serve his country, and became a pilot in the Pacific Theatre.

He’d forgotten how it felt to fly.

He wasn’t the best fighter pilot ever, but he was one of the best pilots; his skill was recognized by all on his aircraft carrier, even though his list of kills was mediocre.

And when he returned home, the green-eyed girl next door flung herself at him, and buried her face in his chest.

WANTED: Albino Victim research subject for experiment in human quantum superposition. This is a contract job, lasting three months and paying $70,000.

Death is guaranteed, but only temporarily. Expert medical staff on hand.

In the unlikely event that it doesn’t collapse you will gain superpowers become an inhuman monstrosity suffer severe medical issues and thus void your claim to the $70,000 dollars in favor of full rehabilitation.

In such an event, we will attempt to collapse your wave function by killing you in every way known. Failing a Wave-Function Collapse, the Uncollapsed Subject would be buried in a vat of concrete, due to the fact that he doubtless would be highly radioactive.

Call: [Redacted]

(Note: This needs to be sent back for revision. I had to mark out all of the super-villainous things you left in. Do you think that someone is going to give you a call if you refer to them as “Victim” and threaten to kill them? Seriously? Try again.)

The destined hero climbed the steps, sword in hand.  He was a tall man with long, blond hair, recently a young farm boy, over the past few months, he had fought many battles.  Now, the end of the road was nearly in sight, the course was almost run.

He pushed open the heavy oak door at the top of the tower, and confronted the dark lord.

A thin man in a coarse black robe sat in front of him, at a table.  He put down the document he was reading, and stared at the Destined Hero over the rims of his pince-nez glasses.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“Silence!” the Hero cried out, before growling, “your reign of terror has come to an end!”

“Reign of terror…?” the overlord asked, then, realizing the situation, grimaced, “not this bullshit, again.”

“Again?” the hero asked.

“You’re the second one this year.  I really do need to get better guards.  How did you get in?  The sewer?”

“Well…yes…”

“Need more rat-monsters, then,” the Overlord sighed.

He leaned back, and opened the cabinet.  Pulling out a glass flask of amber liquid and two wooden cups, he poured a drink for himself and his would-be assassin.

The Hero looked dubiously, and the overlord placed the cups side-by-side, equidistant from the hero.

“Which do you want?” he asked, “left or right?”

“L…Right,” the hero said.

The overlord picked up the left one, and drank.

“Let me guess.  Old man out in the desert, ate some mushrooms and told you to come kill me?”

“Yes,” the hero said, picking up his cup.

“Gave you a sword and sent you on your merry way?”

The Hero nodded.

“Think I’m some sort of baby-eating monster who willingly starves his subjects?” the Overlord asked, “army of monsters, et cetera?”

The Hero nodded, again.  A look of shock on his face.

“I don’t live in opulence, kid,” the Overlord said, “We happen to live in a country with soil to rocky to grow the proper staples.  Our only industry is monster production, and that’s a little hard to trade.  I don’t have time to explain the intricacies of our geopolitical situation, the international trade of grain, or anything like that.  Suffice to say that my subjects starve because the countries around us are lead by assholes who think that people who make monsters are evil.”

The Hero stared at him.

“But…the assassins?”

The Overlord sighed.

“The old man you met is my former chamberlaine.  He was caught stealing, and I exiled him.  You’re the nineteenth ‘destined hero’ he’s sent to kill me.  Of course I want him dead.  You lot keep killing my rat-monsters.”

“And the armies?” the Hero asked.

“We’ve had to turn to piracy and banditry to buy food and resources.  My forces have orders to not harm any prisoners, and they’re generally just stripped of valuables and released if no one will pay a ransom.”

The two sat in silence.  The hero drank his cup.

“So you’re not…”

“An evil overlord?” the Overlord asked, “Not really.  I mean, I guess you could make an argument for it, but I wouldn’t really call myself ‘evil,’ and ‘overlord’ is just my hereditary title.”

“So it’s all…”

“A misunderstanding,” the Overlord said, and turned back to his work, “you can leave by the front gate.  The guards will let you out, and can even direct you to a fairly comfortable inn.”

The members of the Brotherhood of Henchmen, Minions, Hirelings, and Legionaires Local #139 drew straws to see who would go and address the management–namely, Malefico the Destroyer–and discuss the terms for ending the strike.

Malefico had killed the three previous envoys, but when his henchmen started attacking his scabs, he had signalled that he would be interested in discussing their terms.

Dwight Tremaine knocked on the door to Malefico’s inner sanctum.  He shuffled nervously as the white-in-red circle of the electronic eye looked down and read jos facial expression.  Dwight attempted to smile, and the door opened.

The room was almost a hundred meters square, and a bank of televisions illuminated the opposite wall.  Malefico’s hunched, skinny form was silhouetted against them.

“Enter,” Malefico said.

Dwight walked toward the supervillain, and stopped when he reached the seam that marked the edge of the trap door.  He’d had to oil it enough times that he already knew where it was.

Malefico turned to face him.  He was an old man, with a cybernetic eye staring out of the left socket.  He’d originally been an illusionist named “Magnifico” but an extraterestrial artifact had scooped out the eye and crawled into his skull.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” Dwight said, “I’ve brought an itemized list of–”

“Put it on my desk,” Malefico said.

Dwight looked down at the trap door, and decided to walk around it.

“Care to summarize it for me?”

“Well, we’re asking that you update your policies to conform with the Brotherhood guidelines.  Full dental, you pay twice-again the normal Life and Health insurance when you’re directly responsible for the death, dismemberment, or injury of a henchman, an hour lunchbreak, protective gear for use against Dr. Malleus–kevlar, MOPP, the works, a new coke machine for the breakroom–”

“Mother of God, is that all?” Malefico asked, “maybe I can sell one of my testicles to pay for all of that?  Are you all out of your fucking minds?  I don’t have the kind of money for that!”

“That’s not all, sir,” Dwight informed him, grinning sheepishly, sweat beading on his brow, “we also want you to sign a non-binding pledge that you will cease and desist all attempts to ‘destroy all life on the planet earth.’  A lot of us have families, and it’s kind of hard to look them in the eyes and tell them we work for some kind of omnicidal maniac.”

“What?” Malefico said, “You all knew what my mission was, given to me by the electric UFO overlords of the Ninth dimension!”

“Well, yes, sir, many of us did know.  But you did kidnap Bucky from his schoolyard and raise him to be an assassin.  That’s actually part of provision 19c–”

Dwight didn’t finish.  Malefico fired a beam of energy out of his cybernetic eye and burned him to a pile of ash.