Writer's Journal

When I moved into my campus apartment in August, there were a number of problems with it—burners on the stove didn’t work properly, the fan in the bathroom didn’t work, and the storm window in my bedroom lacked a lower pane. They said that it would be handled soon.

So, I went to class. I wrote. Two more things broke in mid-September:the towel-rack in my bathroom and one of the banks of fluorescent burnt out. I contacted the apartment manager, and waited.

The fluorescent lights got fixed, and my stove came to life.

But it was getting colder, and it turns out that a great deal of insulation is provided by storm windows.

At some point, last year—either late October, or early November—I came down with a fever of 106 degrees Fahrenheit. Living in the mountains in late fall, with howling winds that can rip right through your coat, the last thing you need is a fever.

Calling the housing office got my sympathetic sounds, no progress on the repair, and an angry housing manager, who assumed I was trying to directly place a work order.

With a combination of whiskey, and tea, I managed to beat the fever, despite the fact that it sounded like a legion of the damned were shrieking outside my window. No repairs.

I tried going in and talking to them, but they were out to lunch, as everyone you need to talk to between 11 AM and 2 PM are.

Most of December and part of January were spent in Kansas City, but the window was waiting for me when I returned. Everything else faded into the background, leaving just that rectangular gap in my wall before my consciousness.

So, two weeks ago, my computer looked like it wasn’t starting up, preventing me from getting at my files for class. Needless to say, I panicked.

After a course of events in which the window didn’t get fixed, and an angry note (which denied that my storm window was broken) from my apartment manager appeared on my floor, my window was not fixed.

Around this time, I began to get angry. I realize that seven months living in what is essentially a meat locker seems like it would do that, already.

Here’s the thing, though: Grad School distracts you from everything.

In all honesty, I noticed the low temperature in three cases: when it caused me health problems, when it prevented me from doing my work, and when my power bill showed up.

So, Monday, I went to the housing office, and insisted that something be done about it. It took a while, but they checked the work order and reposted it.

I’m glad, because just about everything in my apartment’s been fixed, except the bathroom fan, and that just means that I need to scrub my bathroom again.

But what they said to me afterward had to be one of the most irritating things anyone has ever said:

“You really should have told us sooner.”

(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.

The man had been sitting in a cafe, reading a book he held in one hand and drinking coffee. This plan was interrupted by the intrusion of the Bureaucrat, the short, thin man stormed in with his tie flapping over one shoulder and a black briefcase trailing behind him in one thin arm.

“Mr. Jones,” the Bureaucrat said, even managing to pronounce the “.” in “mr.”, “I’ve been looking all over for you. I need you to sign these forms.”

A thin folder slid across the table.

“What?” the man asked, marking his page in the book he’d been reading, “what do you want?”

“Those forms should’ve been signed eight years ago.”

“Can we just say that ship’s sailed?”

“No, sir. You were supposed to have died eight years ago.”

“Wait, what?”

The Bureaucrat sighed.

“Okay, I’m the representative of death, and I need to get your signature so that you can have died in a lightning storm eight years ago.”

Mr. Jones looked up at the bureaucrat.

“But I don’t want to have died eight years ago. I’ve got a wife and daughter.”

“But it will have never happened, and you’ll be dead anyway. It won’t matter.”

Mr. Jones furrowed his brow.

“That doesn’t make me feel better about it. I don’t want to have died.”

“But it’s foreordained, you can’t fight fate,” the Bureaucrat said emphatically.

“I can choose not to sign your paperwork.”

“No, you can’t,” the Bureaucrat said.

“I think that’s what I’m going to do,” Mr. Jones said, picking up his book again and opening it emphatically.

“We’ll garnish your wages, take your house. Up until you choose to have died in that thunderstorm eight years ago.”

“Do that and I’ll sue your ass, Mr. Death.”

The Bureaucrat’s face darkened.

“Well, Mr. Jones, I’ll see you in court.”

(This story is a companion piece to Monday’s.  Non-trolling flash fiction will return next Monday.)

“Come in here,” the doctor said, shifting his cigar to the other side of his mouth.

“Are you sure this is sanitary?” the woman asked.

“Sanitary as a tattoo parlor,” the doctor assured her with a grin.

He wore scrubs, but the arms had been cut off, revealing dozens of little black fetus silhouettes up and down his arms. Obviously, he knew what a tattoo parlor was like.

“I’m not so sure I want to go through with this…” she said.

“Why? Is it because my office is in a basement? I’ll have you know that history has been made in this basement.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Yeah. It was a speakeasy back during prohibition, and a brothel in the ’50s. These flaking walls and concrete floors have seen a lot.”

He took the cigar out of his mouth and put it out on the bottom of his shoe.

“How about a drink?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Shot of morphine? Laughing gas? I get this stuff wholesale, and don’t really need it for my work.”

“I…I’m alright,” she said.

“Good. Now how about you climb up in the chair?” he said, gesturing into his workspace, “I’ll get you a lollipop when this is all done.”

(This is probably the product of reading way too much criticism on a particular author, lately.  Not going to go into who; some of you will be able to figure it out despite the text, the rest of you might be unfamiliar.)

I stand and watch the living thunderhead rise from the blackened, broken earth, seeping out of the cracks like oil.

Progenetoi. Something in the root of my mind screamed the name to me. One of Blake’s “giants who formed this world into sensuous existence” I knew it as.

The iron-black anvil-cloud stretches out an arm that reaches to the horizon. Another joins it in the opposite direction. I see it straining to pull free of its prison of stone and soil.

Countless eyes open, and a mouth gapes, its teeth like skyscrapers.

Progenetoi. Progenitors. Why do I name it thus?

My feet are rooted to the ground; what use is running from something that stands at the center of the world? That reaches to the edge of it?

I call it a thunderhead, but it is not insubstantial like the clouds that part around its great and shapeless head. Its shadow is heavy like lead, and the thing that casts it is more real than I.

The Giant stretched upward, planting one deceptively slender leg, so thin that it should not be able to stand.

Logic fails. The ground stands firm.

Each breath it draws is like a thunderclap, an earthquake, a hurricane-gust.

Yet, I can hear hooves.

Turning, I see a column of figures, lead by knights in armor; they are insubstantial, like mist in the morning sun.

Behind them, I see Shakespeare’s fairy host, and Marlowe’s demon horde; the gunslingers and Indian braves of American folklore; the citizen-soldiers and identical idealized workers of Soviet Agitprop; Zulu warriors with their spears gleaming in the sunlight, and countless others.

They march along the blacktop road, riding into a fateful, hopeless battle. The dreams of humankind streaming down the road towards the most material of enemies.

Unable to join them, I lay down in the dust by the side of the street, and close my eyes. I have a duty of my own, and in dreams begin all responsibility.

None of you are looking for this now, and if I don’t post this at the moment, I’ll wait until Thursday.  No one wants that.

I don’t know where your dog is, but I found this in his head.

The note was taped to my refrigerator: written in sharpie on a note card, with a bronze-colored house-key taped to it. I stared at it for a good minute, before I ripped it down, and looked at it.

Taking out my keys, I discovered that all of them were still there: it most certainly wasn’t something of mine that had ended up in the dog, somehow.

Setting the key on the counter, I washed my hands.

It was too late to deal with this. I had been intending to microwave some nachos, but now I upgraded to beer.

Leaning on the counter, I took a draught off the beer, and considered the key and the note.

The handwriting wasn’t that of anyone I recognized. Not my roommate’s, and not the landlord’s.

It had been so long since the dog had been around the house: it was like the animal didn’t even live here. Animal shelters and veterinary offices had no information, and he hadn’t come back.

Those were definitely red-brown bloodstains on the key. What had happened? Who had left it here?

Putting it on my keyring, I left the note where it was. No telling what the key matched.

This video was created by Mr. Steve Gardels, and I provided the voice over.    This is primarily just academic posturing, as you can obviously tell.

If you like this, just go to the youtube account the video’s from.  There’s tons of stuff there.

I’d watch this movie, wouldn’t you?

This is a video created by an acquaintance of mine.  It basically consists of a number of still shots of him wearing an airsoft mask and a sleeping bag while holding a gun, with a monologue about how terrible “Eragon” is interspersed with schizophrenic ramblings about zombies and cyborgs reprogramming your mind when you go to sleep.

The entire thing is intentionally done in an amateurish and sloppy fashion, which sort of explains some parts.